What is your favourite poem and why?

Answer 1

It's a French poem by Paul Verlaine, about autumn, and it perfectly sums up the mood of autumn, in meaning and sound.

Answer 2

Wow. I've got so many... I couldn't possible list them all here. I keep a word document that i update every time I find a new poem I like, and at the moment it's 32 pages long. I love e. e. cummings, Stephen Crane, A.E. Houseman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gerard Manly Hopkins... Here's a poem that strikes my fancy at this particular moment.

Pink and White
Peonies are the only flower I care for
and when I saw them from the bus window
yesterday, tumbled and heavy along a fence,
fully exploded, nodding
at the ground, hanging their heads but not
yet spoiled, I remembered
a summer (maybe seven years
ago, or was it ten?) I wasn’t sure
our love would come again,
and here I am, almost

kissing the grass like that,
bursting and rich, cracked
all over like broken cake---
makes you cry but still sweet.
Deborah Garrison


I like this poem because of it's simplicity, and the way it captures the complex fullness of a moment in such vivid language. the "broken cake" analogy also really gets me - such an unusual way of describing it, but so appropriate.

Answer 3

That varies but a long-standing favorite has been Whitman's 'The Arrow and the Song'

I love the imagery: the arrow being shot into the air and disappearing. Then the song (I love music, anyway) being 'breathed into the air'. Both were gone from view... the arrow swift, powerful, deadly; the song shapeless and weak. But it was the song that found its way to the friend's heart. Brute force has a certain splendor but there is magic in a melody.

Answer 4

My favorite poem would have to be Books by Billy Collins, because it is so deep and real about the way books and stories are and how they can take you to places that you may never have been able to go to before.
God Bless!!

Answer 5

Currently, I like "My Agent Says" by R. S. Gwynn for its grim humor. To reasd it, go to:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2002/12/30/

Answer 6

This one - because it is beautiful:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
(Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!

Mary Frye (1932)

Answer 7

Whitman's The Arrow and the Song'

Answer 8

It was early in the morning
When life and love is born

A robin on my windowsill
began heralding the dawn

It sang to sweet and lovely,
as climbing from my bed

I gently shut the window
and crushed its fu-king head.