Recommend me good poetry

[motion denied]

I want to restart reading poetry.


Any help will be greatly appreciated. :)

[TheIrrationalist]

Pretty much the best way is to look up a bunch of poets and see who seems the most interesting to read. Personally my favourites are the French symbolists: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine etc. Also Comte de Lautréamont if you like some sick prose poetry. William Blake is also someone I recommend highly.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

The late 19th century Georgian poet going by the name Soselo is pretty great.

[Comrade Jacob]

J.R.R Tolkien wrote some good poetry in 'The legend of Sigurd and Gudrun' & 'The Fall of Arthur'.

[Brutus]

The late 19th century Georgian poet going by the name Soselo is pretty great.

Otherwise known as the man going by the name Stalin in the 20th century. :)

[ed miliband]

thom gunn. not much a poetry guy but he was a badass. a brit who relocated to san francisco and wrote about all sorts of seedy things in a style that was like an elizabeathan / modernist mash-up. this has to be one of the must beautiful poems about love i have read:


It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who'd showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I've always been partial to the poetry of the Beat writers, especially Allen Ginsberg.

I'm also pretty fond of E.E. Cummings (politics not withstanding).

My favorite poem of all time, however, is probably Maurice Ogden's "The Hangman":




Into our town the hangman came,

smelling of gold and blood and flame.

He paced our bricks with a different air,

and built his frame on the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,

only as wide as the door was wide

with a frame as tall, or a little more,

than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered whenever we had the time,

Who the criminal? What the crime?

The hangman judged with the yellow twist

of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were with dread,

we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.

Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,

for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye

and he gave a riddle instead of reply.

“He who serves me best,” said he

“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”

And he stepped down and laid his hand

on a man who came from another land.

And we breathed again, for anothers grief

at the hangmans hand, was our relief.

And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn

by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.

So we gave him way and no one spoke

out of respect for his hangmans cloak.

The next day’s sun looked mildly down

on roof and street in our quiet town;

and stark and black in the morning air

the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

And the hangman stood at his usual stand

with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.

With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,

and his air so knowing and business-like.

And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,

yesterday with the alien one?”

Then we fell silent and stood amazed.

“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,

“Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,

To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.

To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”

Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”

and into our midst the hangman came;

to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,

“With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”

He laid his hand on that one’s arm

and we shrank back in quick alarm.

We gave him way, and no one spoke,

out of fear of the hangmans cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise

the hangmans scaffold had grown in size.

Fed by the blood beneath the chute,

the gallows-tree had taken root.

Now as wide, or a little more

than the steps that led to the courthouse door.

As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,

half way up on the courthouse wall.

The third he took, we had all heard tell,

was a usurer…, an infidel.

And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do

with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”

And we cried out, “Is this one he

who has served you well and faithfully?”

The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme

to try the strength of the gallows beam.”

The fourth man’s dark accusing song

had scratched our comfort hard and long.

“And what concern,” he gave us back,

“Have you … for the doomed and black?”

The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,

“Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”

“It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know

for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”

And so we ceased and asked now more

as the hangman tallied his bloody score.

And sun by sun, and night by night

the gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide

until they covered the square from side to side.

And the monster cross beam looking down,

cast its shadow across the town.

Then through the town the hangman came

and called through the empy streets…my name.

I looked at the gallows soaring tall

and thought … there’s no one left at all

for hanging … and so he called to me

to help take down the gallows-tree.

And I went out with right good hope

to the hangmans tree and the hangmans rope.

He smiled at me as I came down

to the courthouse square…through the silent town.

Supple and stretched in his busy hand,

was the yellow twist of hempen strand.

He whistled his tune as he tried the trap

and it sprang down with a ready snap.

Then with a smile of awful command,

He laid his hand upon my hand.

“You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,

“That your scaffold was built for other men,

and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.

“You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,

“Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…

for I answered straight and told you true.

The scaffold was raised for none but you.”

“For who has served more faithfully?

With your coward’s hope.” said He,

“And where are the others that might have stood

side by your side, in the common good?”

“Dead!” I answered, and amiably

“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.

“First the alien … then the Jew.

I did no more than you let me do.”

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky

none before stood so alone as I.

The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there

to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.

[Sasha]

Blake, Milton, breytenbach, Joyce, Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Ezra pound (even though he was a fash)

[tallguy]

I want to restart reading poetry.


Any help will be greatly appreciated. :)

Labbi Siffrey. I like some of his stuff

http://www.intothelight.info/


What Violence Is

If you build your cities on my land
That is an act of violence
If you bar my family from return
But welcome yours with open arms
From wherever they were born, that
Is an act of violence
If you copyright the sinews, cells, the bones
The blood, the atoms of my body, that
Is an act of violence
If you copyright the food we’ve grown
For thousands of years of sweat and learning
Struggle and scrape, that
Is an act of violence
If you blame the raped
Say the fault is their's
That is an act of violence
If you condemn with God
With no evidence of
That is an act of violence
If you kill a child with a machete slash
Another with a blow from the butt of your gun
Then (your pockets bursting with grain)
You leave a third to starve to death
Which of these is not violence?
If you kill the river that feeds my land
My children's future history
That is an act of violence
If “innocent civilians” you call yourselves
Then vote democratic and free for any
Of these, that vote is an act of violence
To stop the war theism bequeaths and gives
To stop the war that greed loves and lives
To stop the testosterone initiative
To stop the killing of innocent kids
First, stop the denial of what violence is
Stop the denial of what violence is

[motion denied]

Thanks everyone, will look them up!

Also, keep 'em coming, if you will.

[Goblin]

Some of my personal favorite poets: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Henrik Ibsen, Charles Bukowski, Heinrich Heine, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henrik Wergeland, Pablo Neruda, Karin Boye, Khalil Gibran, Federico Garcia Lorca, Edith Södergran, Octavio Paz.

[Decolonize The Left]

Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath to start.

[Sasha]

Pretty much the best way is to look up a bunch of poets and see who seems the most interesting to read. Personally my favourites are the French symbolists: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine etc. Also Comte de Lautréamont if you like some sick prose poetry. William Blake is also someone I recommend highly.

You ever read any Maeterlinck? It's really good, Belgian symbollist, he won the nobel price but got blacklisted by the church pretty soon after that so he never got the recognition he deserved; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Maeterlinck

[PhoenixAsh]

paul van ostaijen and herman gorter

both in dutch/flemish though...not that it really matters one is mainly dadaism and the other one is really really long winded.

[Sixiang]

Could you perhaps say which poets you are already fond of or something more specific you are looking for?

I have repeatedly let myself down by putting all of my eggs into one basket with poets, so to speak. I have found that for most of the poets I tried to get into, I only enjoyed maybe a dozen of their poems if that and the rest I did not like. That being said, my favorite poets are:

Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and Nguyen Du, the Vietnamese poet who wrote the epic and beautiful poem "Truyen Kieu" or "The Tale of Kieu."

[Queen Mab]

I'm a huge fan of the British Romantics. So Blake, Burns, Byron, Coleridge, Keats (basically God), Shelley, Wordsworth. All brilliant poets writing at a time of massive social upheaval and all involved in radical politics to varying degrees.

Apart from that you can't go wrong with Shakespeare.

[Alan OldStudent]

I'm a huge fan of the British Romantics. So Blake, Burns, Byron, Coleridge, Keats (basically God), Shelley, Wordsworth. All brilliant poets writing at a time of massive social upheaval and all involved in radical politics to varying degrees.

Apart from that you can't go wrong with Shakespeare.

I quite agree, comrade Kritik. To add to your suggestions, I would suggest reading poetry aloud. Too many people who try to get into poetry just read it. It is to be read aloud, because the poetry you recommend seems to me to be a filigree of sounds, cadences, and rhythms, working with words and pictures to create a design of beauty and passion.

This poem illustrates the radical nature of the British Romantics. It is by Blake and is one of my favorites:


I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infant's tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
(William Blake)
And this one by Shelly:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The unexamined life is not worth living—Socrates
Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto—Violeta Parra

[Art Vandelay]

Not sure if its good or not, and truth be told poetry isn't something I've read a bunch of despite enjoying, but I've always really enjoyed the work of the Canadian poet Rod McKuen. I stumbled across his collection 'alone' in a used book store in high school and I still reread it, every now and then, to this day.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I'm also very fond of Clark Ashton Smith. Smith was a poet who turned to writing short fiction in the 20s and 30s, mostly for Weird Tales (the same place H.P. Lovecraft was published). He still wrote (excellent) poetry, but even his short stories have a strong poetic cadence to them.

[Turinbaar]

Dulce Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen

August 1968 - W. H. Auden

De Rerum Natura - Lucretius

[Firebrand]

I can't believe no-one has suggested Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The Christmas Revolution by GiantMonkeyMan

It was the night before Christmas and all through the land
The workers were producing, to reach Santa's demands.
"Work!" he demanded, "These toys don't make themselves!
And, if you don't fulfil your quota, there's always more elves!"
So the elves kept their heads down and continued their tasks
Even when cuts denied them of much needed safety masks.
Rent had to be paid and they had to deal with bills,
So they accepted their lot and worked Santa's mills.
But one elf had enough and he said to a friend,
"Dude, this life is shit and I think it should end!"
Alone the elves were weak and the power of Santa Claus
Was enough to stop their organisations with force.
"Stop this nonsense!" Santa cried, "Or I will set upon you
The full wrath of my reindeer police." And alas it was true.
Many elves were beaten or dragged to north pole prison
But the workers were determined to continue their mission.
"Freedom!" they cried, "From wage slavery and rent!
We suffer in poverty, hunger, our backs have been bent!
But Santa enjoys the spoils of accumulated capital
Even though he produces nothing while we make it all."
And so they fought back with snow ball and candy cane.
Victory seemed certain, the struggle didn't wane.
Seeing he was outnumbered, Santa tried a different route,
Because he would do anything to keep a hold on his loot.
"Look!" he cried out with a mask of false shock,
"These workers are violent! They are ruining our stock!
I just wanted to give everyone in the world a gift
but these workers have forced targets to be missed!"
But no-one was fooled by the Christmas propaganda
And the fight continued against the evil of Santa
Because the workers knew that this system of Saint Nick's
Was one of terrible exploitation that inherently contradicts.
Desperate and worried Santa looked for a way out
And once he found something he began to shout,
"The Easter Bunny! He treats his workers worse!
To produce his chocolate eggs they live like serfs!
This struggle in the north pole does nothing to aid
Those in trouble abroad that an invasion could save!"
But the worker elves looked at Santa quite vexed
"Santa," they explained, "The Easter Bunny is next."

It got ten red stars out of ten and I might be appointed as the next poet laureate.

[white picket fence]

Two great poets, who are also totally admirable leftists Bertolt Brecht, and a more contemporary obscure poet Kirill Medvedev



The Interrogation of the Good -
Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?
Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration
of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.



lots of good stuff in this list nice thread =)

[motion denied]

you are all lovely people, thank you very much.

Now I have poetry to read for months.

[Five Year Plan]

One of my favorite short poems is William Blake's "A Poison Tree"


I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

[Five Year Plan]

Another favorite of mine is Philip Levine's "You Can Have It." Levine often wrote on proletarian themes. He was also the Poet Laureate of the United States a few years back.


My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors’ appointments, bonds,
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.

[Queen Mab]

Let me share Prometheus by Goethe. Some wonderful lines in the voice of literature's first ever leftist (that's Prometheus, not old Johann).


Shroud your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And do as you will, like the boy
That beheads thistles,
With oak-trees and mountain-tops;
You must my Earth
Now abandon to me,
And my hut, which you did not build,
And my hearth,
Whose glow
You begrudge me.

I know of nothing poorer
Under the sun, than you, Gods!
You barely nourish
–By sacrificial offerings
And prayerful exhalations–
Your Majesty,
And would starve, were
Not children and beggars
Hopeful fools.

When I was a child,
And did not know the in or out,
I turned my wandering eyes toward
The sun, as if beyond it there were
An ear to hear my lament,
A heart like mine,
To take pity on the afflicted.

Who helped me
Against the Titans' mischief?
Who delivered me from Death,
From Slavery?
Did you not accomplish it all yourself,
Holy, burning Heart?
And glowed, young and good,
Deceived, your thanks for salvation
To the sleeping one above?

I should honour you? For what?
Have you softened the sufferings,
Ever, of the burdened?
Have you stilled the tears,
Ever, of the anguished?
Was I not forged as a Man
By almighty Time
And the eternal Fate,
My masters and yours?

Do you somehow imagine
I should hate life,
Flee to the desert,
Because not every
Flowering dream may bloom?

Here I sit, forming people
In my image;
A race, to be like me,
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy and delight themselves,
And to mock you –
As I do!

[fugazi]

Blake, Milton, breytenbach, Joyce, Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Ezra pound (even though he was a fash)
Eliot's a better poet AND he's 'less' reactionary
people only like Ezra because he looks like a Yakuza

[Lily Briscoe]

One of my favorite short poems is William Blake's "A Poison Tree"




That was seriously awful.