Poetry meme: Post your favourite poem

[mythichistorian]

Oh, this one's hard!

There are a great many peices of poetry I love, and my love of them shifts as my mood and the moment changes.  And sometimes it's just part of a poem that appeals, or catches my heart - so there are lines that echo, and stanzas I admire.

If I'm pushed, it has to be declamatory - quotable, lyrical, and filled with hints of magic

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

Yeah, that's one of my favourites too - but then Kipling is wonderful, up there with Marvell and Donne and Tennyson and Eliot...

[mythichistorian]

He's out of fashion (and favour), of course, but he was a master storyteller and a superb poet.

[lil_shepherd]

Bugger fashion. He's one of the greats. Just because he scans...

[caarianna]

Hard not to love Kipling; he had a way of calling to the best within us. For me, it's his Thousandth Man.

There's just too much wealth, though, to choose from throughout the span of time, even within our limited cultural context to choose a single favourite. I love some of Shakespeare's lines, too, like the Quality of Mercy speech, and though they aren't often classed as 'poetry', there are a great many songs that haunt my heart.

[mythichistorian]

Song lyrics can be pure poetry - and some poems sound better set to music, so I don't think there's a distinctive line. If anything, I'd say that the true poets of our - and the next - generation are the song writers, since a lot of modern poetry (like some modern art) struggles to be something it doesn't need to be.

And yes, far, far too much to choose from ...

[meaghann]

One of my favourite poets is Eliot and one of my favourite poems of his is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It just has a feel to it that I can identify with. I won't post the whole thing here, but a selected bit:

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.