What poem would you show to someone to get them into poetry????
Here's my pick:
But I shall not want my death so soon.
For even asylum takes of the world for being.
Even asylum goes mad with winter, summer, autumn, and spring.
And my children will change into men.
I wish I could find his, couldn't say, might be love, somewhere
I'm not into poetry.
Not the snow of flowers,
That the hurrying wild wind whirls
Round the garden court:
What withers and falls away
In this place is I myself.
Here's a good one
The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower…
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.
The last line of this stanza of 'Marina' by T.S. Eliot is beautiful. Gaddis used it as the epigraph for 'The Recognitions'
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
I don't like
Sand
It's course
And rough
And irritating
And it gets everywhere
It's not like you
But then again,nothing is like you
It's worth the read. He really was one hell of a poet.
There's been some interest in reviving his work. But his kids (who are in control of his estate) refuse to allow it.
I remember an article that quoted them as saying "We detest our father's work and his life".
Pretty harsh. Hopefully one day we'll see some new additions.
is that a starwars quote motherfucker
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruite is falne, & yet my leaves are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My best guess would be to just show them the poem that got me interested in poetry.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
When the east wind blows
let it send your fragrance,
oh plum blossoms.
Although your master is gone,
do not forget the spring.
I thought it was Rupi Kaur.
nice
probably the most undeniable poem ive ever read.
literally everyone likes it.
i dont
dylan was a sodomite and a hack
hacks can't write villanelles. its the hardest form (beside maybe a decent haiku)
anyway, i bet you're just joshing.
I don't like it. I don't go so far as does, but when you are at the end of your life, you should accept your fate with stoic resignation and composure, and do everything you can to make those around you more comfortable and at peace with the inevitable. Raging against death suggests that the person dying has wasted his life - a good life is a preparation for death.
It is LITERALLY the easiest form, i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about
Been getting into Stevens lately. This one's fascinating.
A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.
The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish...
Virgin of boorish births,
Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,
When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.
Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover--
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.
confirmed joshing.
that's a weird reason, but okay, I now know one person.
I'm not the same guy, and i kinda like the poem, but saying villanelles are difficult, or even the most difficult to write is ridiculous.
how, name a harder form.
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
they'll probably already know it because ti was used in a popular movie
Yeah, me too
i though sestina was the hardest form
Interstellar, I think. I believe i've heard it elsewhere too.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
It's longer, but I'm not sold (but then again its one of the forms I haven't tried yet)
My argument for hinges on the (perhaps pre-mature) agreement that the difficult is measured in how hard it is to use the mechanics effectively.
The amount of repetition in villanelles and the length of the repeated line, coupled with the very strict rhyme requirement (only 2 ending rhyme-choices available) creates a form that requires a subject of obsession. I think this limitation that comes across in subject matter (because of the form) speaks strongly of the difficulty of using the form.
My second choice would probs be palindromes, but their are some many different sub-forms that its a bit nebulous.
GOAT
The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.
Where is this from? Where can I find more of this?
Here's a good one, from the collection "poems i wrote in notepad while thinking about how lonely i am", by mark baldyga.
things i planned on doing today
today i wanted to ride my bike
so fast and so far
that the g-force would rip me out of my skin
peel me, like a banana
and i would keep riding on as a grinning skeleton
and people would stare and mutter incredulously under their breath and go to work confused or maybe call in sick and go home and lie down on their couches and wonder if they were become senile or contracting some early form of dementia
and eventually i would ride under a clothesline and acquire a new skin; a better one
i'd also bump my head on a low-hanging street lamp and my brain would fall out with a resigned squelch
and along the way i would pick up a new brain from a black market organ dealer in chicago
a smarter brain; one that is not broken like the old one
and i would keep riding my bike
tilting my head up at the sky every so often to scream joyously
because things were okay
and things were going to be okay
and i was going to be okay
Might be the saddest poem I've ever read. Poor Hopkins and his poplars:
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
Gil Orlovitz
From his poetry collection "Couldn't Say, Might Be Love"