Perfect poems

[icepixie]

All right, gamesiplay wrote this epic post about "perfect" poems, and now I have to navel-gaze about that for a while. A perfect poem is different from a "favorite" or "best" poem, though for me there's significant overlap. The working definition that she came up with is that "it has to do with some kind of intersection between an idea that affects me

Comments

[gamesiplay]

yessss it is spreading LIKE A VIRUS.

Where to start. Okay:

I haven't read a big chunk of your list! This is exciting, because now I get to go read them. Specifically, "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio," "Horses and Men in the Rain," the untitled poem that begins In Search of England, and... well, "Nostalgia" until you mentioned it earlier.

I'm also not sure I've read Millay's "Journey."

Modernism and its close successors ~speak to me~

I'm right there with you. I think my list looks more contemporary-weighted than the majority of my taste usually runs, mainly because there's a metaphor... device... thing... that hits my brain squarely in the pleasure center and that I find much more often in contemporary poetry. But still. Modernists and the people directly before and after them = best.

Re: steps and/or directions-- that immediately made me think of Adrienne Rich's "The School Among the Ruins." Not all of it, but a lot of the middle, which I think is the best anyway

[icepixie]

This is exciting, because now I get to go read them.

\o/

Oh, man, I thought everyone read "Autumn Begins..." in high school. Or at least that every Kenyon student wound up reading it at some point because it's James Wright. *g*

I like that Rich poem, both the second you mention and the sixth part, with the "pitiless pilotless things go shrieking."

[icepixie]

"First Fig"! I rather obviously love that poem. *points to icon* I had not read any of the others, but I might be rather a lot in love with "Neither Out Far nor in Deep" now, OMG. I always like Frost's poems when I run across them; I should get a collected works out of the library and really look at them. The Swinburn is nice too.

I am completely crap at memorizing poetry. I had to memorize two for my poetry-writing workshop, and it was very painful.