Favourite Poet/Poem (1 Viewer)

[Lord Damian]

My humblest apologies if there's already a thread on here about this (didn't have the energy to wade through 17 pages). If there is, kindly refer me to the thread, tell me to f*ck off and get on with yr day...

Mine:

Poet - Bukowski

Poem - "Mending Wall", Frost

 

[egg_]

Similar thread once alright
My favourite poem ever is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which I think may possibly be the greatest work of art ever
See here http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=17573

 

[BC]

William Blake

e e cummings

 

[Lord Damian]

"Prufrock" is goddamn good alright, i'll give ya that.

cummings is deadly too.

 

[avernus]

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is fab alright..although wasnt mad keen on anything else I read by Elliot.

I'm a big fan of Allen Ginsburg. also love Bukowski, but have only read Post Office.

favourite poems would be:

Howl - Ginsburg
Wild Orphan - Ginsburg
This form of life needs sex - Ginsburg

Another September - Thomas Kinsella

 

[Lord Damian]

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is fab alright..although wasnt mad keen on anything else I read by Elliot.

I'm a big fan of Allen Ginsburg. also love Bukowski, but have only read Post Office.

favourite poems would be:

Howl - Ginsburg
Wild Orphan - Ginsburg
This form of life needs sex - Ginsburg

Another September - Thomas Kinsella

I dig Ginsey too - have you read "Kaddish"? Killer. And hearing his reading of "America" brought tears to my eyes.

 

[ITalkShite]

Another September - Thomas Kinsella

Another one to add to the list of "Ruined by the Leaving Cert".

 

[Buzzo]

A couple of years ago I used to go out with this spa and everyone was like 'he's a spa' and I remember reading the line 'for god's sake hold your tongue and let me love' from The Cannonisation by John Donne and nearly crying because it made so much sense. A lot of what he says makes sense. I don't know much about poetry, but I know I love him.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

I don't know much about poetry, but I know I love him.

The guy you used to go out with? Get over it, sister!

 

[ITalkShite]

The guy you used to go out with? Get over it, sister!

Cue smarmy comment from Super Dextra in about ten second's time.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Another one to add to the list of "Ruined by the Leaving Cert".

How come?

I enjoyed the Leaving Cert English course.
Didn't believe in the 'Irish poets only' option like some
Thomas Hardy question was dead straightforward that year

Sylvia Plath's Daddy is very good.

 

[avernus]

Sylvia Plath's Daddy is very good.

Indeed it is. Ted Hughes is pretty great also.

 

[Deleted member 3435]

i'd recommend to anyone that you purcahse (purCHASE) and read john montague's collected poems.

 

[cyclotron]

There are lots that I like...this is but one...

Gregory Corso

Marriage[size=-1] [/size][size=-2]( Top of Page )[/size][size=-1]

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--[/size]
[size=-1]When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap--
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son--
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?[/size]

[size=-1]O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just waiting to get at the drinks and food--
And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on--[/size]

[size=-1]then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climatic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce--[/size]

[size=-1]But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting by baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--[/size]

[size=-1]Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup--
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon[/size]

[size=-1]No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking--
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!
But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream--[/size]

[size=-1]O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and--
but there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me![/size]

[size=-1]Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible--
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.
[/size]

 

[Lord Damian]

fucking astounding. Corso, that mad bastard...boy, could he write.

 

[Buzzo]

The guy you used to go out with? Get over it, sister!

Ah Jimmeee. I'd be scarleh if I was you. You didn't get my subtle reference to my other favourite poet, Linda Ronstadt, obviously.

"Look at these dreams
[size=+1]So big and so better "[/size]

 

[ratmonkey]

Edward Barton. There was an album of people putting his stuff to music with Mick Lynch from Stump doing Knob Gob and it's savage altogether.

 

[BC]

"The Sick Rose" by William Blake:

O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

 

[Donkey OJ]

Indeed it is. Ted Hughes is pretty great also.

birthday letters is fucking astounding in parts. such an economy of words but so very powerful. i'm a big ted hughes fan.

 

[Zeelander]

I love poetry. Buying anthologies and collections of poetry makes me so happy. I have been threatening to make my boyfriend a poetry compliation book, like one would a music compilation CD, because he doesn't get poetry and thinks it's for dorks. My favourite poem remains this Simon Armitage one, which I've posted before and never fails to make me well up...

To His Lost Lover by Simon Armitage


Now they are no longer
any trouble to each other

he can turn things over, get down to that list
of things that never happened, all of the lost

unfinishable business.
For instance ... for instance,

how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

at the fall of her name in close company.
How they never slept like buried cutlery –

two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
or made the most of heavy weather –

walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
or did the gears while the other was driving.

How he never raised his fingertips
to stop the segments of her lips

from breaking the news,
or tasted the fruit,

or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
or lifted her hand to where his own heart

was a small, dark, terrified bird
in her grip. Where it hurt.

Or said the right thing,
or put it in writing.

And never fled the black mile back to his house
before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

then another,
or knew her

favourite colour,
her taste, her flavour,

and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

when he might have, or worked a comb
where no comb had been, or walked back home

through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

to his butterfly heart
in its two blue halves.

And never almost cried,
and never once described

an attack of the heart,
or under a silk shirt

nursed in his hand her breast,
her left, like a tear of flesh

wept by the heart,
where it hurts,

or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

a pilot light,
or stayed the night,

or steered her back to that house of his,
or said ‘Don't ask me to say how it is

I like you.
I just might do.’

How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

were a solid ball
of silver foil

and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

But said some things and never meant them –
sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.