Your Favorite Poem

[mirage]

During my school days..One of my teacher asked us to memorize the poem...And up to now I remember some of the lines.

Heaven's Grocery Store

I was walking down life's highway a long time ago.
One day I saw a sign that read,"Heaven's Grocery Store".
As I got a little closer the door came open wide,
and when I came to myself I was standing inside.
I saw a host of Angels, they were standing everywhere.
One handed me a blanket and said, "My Child shop with care".
Everything a Christian needs is in that grocery store,
and all you can't carry, come back the next day for more.

First, I got some Patience, Love was in the same row.
Further down was Understanding, needed everywhere you go.
I got a box or two of Wisdom, a bag or two of Faith,
I just couldn't miss the Holy Ghost, it was all over the place.
I stopped to get some Strength and Courage to help me run this race,
but then my blanket was getting full, and I remembered I needed Grace.

I didn't forget Salvation, which like the others was free,
so I tried to get enough of that to save both you and me.
Then I started to the counter to pay my grocery bill,
for I thought I had everything to do my master's will.
As I went up the aisle, I saw Prayer and had to put it in,
for I knew when I stepped outside, I would run right into sin.
Peace and Joy were plentiful, they were on the last shelf.
Song and Praises were hanging near, so I just helped myself.

Then I said to the Angel, "How much do I owe"?
The Angel smiled and said, "Just take them everywhere you go."
Again, I politely asked "How much do I really owe?"
The Angel smiled again and said,"My Child, Jesus Paid Your Bill
A Long Time Ago."

[Eric]

My favorite poem is Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". It's too long to post here, but you can read it in its entirety here: http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt

You've probably heard the opening line before: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked".

[blue_diamond21]

Spellbound

The night is darkening round me
The wild winds coldly blow
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go

Clouds beyond clouds above me
wastes beyond wastes below
But nothing drear can move me
I will not, cannot go

Emily Bronte

[mrsdalloway]

Not my favorite poem, but a wonderful one is "The Flea" by John Donne

Also, "To His Coy Mistress"

I also love Shakespeares sonnets, read in order- believe me, they are not love poems. They are written from the view of an older man to a young boy. It's all normal for the time period. They are extremely clever.

yeah these are good poems! so very witty lol!


my favourites are Spellbound by emily Bronte, There's a Certain slant of light by emily dickinson and Tulips by Sylvia Plath - all very powerful and quite disturbing: personification and imagery do the job ey!

[newspeak]

[quote="LoveHatesYou"]Not my favorite poem, but a wonderful one is "The Flea" by John Donne

Also, "To His Coy Mistress"

quote]

I love Donne also. My favorite is "The Cannonization." It's long, but here's my favorite stanza.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

[Tushu]

my poem

[Zekes]

I like the classic poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning which is How do I love thee.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

[Indigoarts]

Chimes of Freedom by Bob Dylan

[Maud Fitch]

"I Love A Sunburnt Country" by Dorothea MacKellar. A very evokative Australian poem and in recent times very true with Australia experiencing "...droughts and flooding rains..."

This is only a small part:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror,
The wide brown land for me!

[Robin jackson]

i like WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

[Mkroman]

While Sylvia Plath is my all-time favorite poet, it's really hard for me to pick one of her poems as a favorite, so I'm going to go with an Anne Sexton poem for here/now.

Lessons in Hunger is the name of the poem (copied below). I first came across it while I was in college and in the midst of a plethora of relationship problems with my then-boyfriend. Like Sylvia Plath's work, Anne Sexton's writing has always made me feel like there's someone who gets it and is speaking to me, in some way.


LESSONS IN HUNGER

“Do you like me?”
I asked the blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.

Do you like me?
How absurd!
What’s a question like that?
What’s a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

August 7, 1974

[Russellc]

twinkle twinkle little star my first and best poem

[Seregil]

After a While by Veronica Shoffstall

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads
On today, because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain for plans, and futures have
A way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate
Your own soul instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn...
With every goodbye, you learn


To His Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvell
somewhere i have never traveled - e.e. cummings
The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe
The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost
If - Rudyard Kipling
Two Loves - Lord Alfred Douglas
Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou

And lots of others...

[Ant]

I like "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth, the opening couple of lines are the sort you never forget.

[Timpane]

I was a juvenile in high school. It was in a text publication and I loved it. I really liked to state it at my marriage, but. well. didn't believe it was a good idea. And I love it because it just captures the feeling better than I have ever heard. Just devotes me goosebumps.