What are some good poems? What's your favorite?

Question

I need to find a poem for my english class but I have looked and haven't been able to find a good poem that catches my attention must less interest, so i was wondering what you guys recommend? What's your favorite poem? If you know a site or just the same of some peoms that you find good and interesting would be great.

Thanks for any imput.

Answer 1

You want to rock your class and freak out your teacher: try offering them something a little more profound, a little more serious, than the typical poem about love or boys being bad to girls. The world is full of great poetry that requires a little thinking. So make your classmates think.

Here is a wonderful poem by Stephen Spender what asks a serious question about why young people so easily get caught up in war:

ULTIMA RATIO REGNUM

The guns spell money's ultimate reason
In letters of lead on the spring hillside.
But the boy lying dead under the olive trees
Was too young and too silly
To have been notable to their important eye.
He was a better target for a kiss.

When he lived, tall factory hooters never
summoned him.
Nor did restaurant plate-glass doors revolve to
wave him in.
His name never appeared in the papers.
The world maintained its traditional wall
Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well,
Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour,
drifted outside.

O too lightly he threw down his cap
One day when the breeze threw petals from the trees.
The unflowering wall sprouted with guns,
Machine-gun anger quickly scythed the grasses;
Flags and leaves fell from hands and branches;
The tweed cap rotted in the nettles.

Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive trees, O world, O death?

*********

Or think about using Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gently...' or Myra Angelou's 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings' or Walt Whitman's 'Leaves Of Grass' or Ted Hugh's 'God Help The Wolf.'

Or you can use my last poem posted here:

http://unmired.livejournal.com/

*********************

The point is: Make them think: The girls in your class will have crushes on you and you might get lucky, your teacher will respect you more and you may end up becoming a great writer yourself some day.

Answer 2

Here it is. Amazing:

~Shakespeare's Sonnet 116~

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Answer 3

"The Raven" Edgar Allen Poe
"Wreck of the Hesperus" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Land of Counterpain" Robert Louis Stevenson

exit dondi, stage front

Answer 4

Emily Dickinson's "If You Were Coming In the Fall..."
She never titled her poems, so most books simply use the first line of the poem to index it.

It's very straight-forward, and simple, yet beautiful too.

God Bless!

Answer 5

reflective by a.r. ammons

i found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it

or the red wheelbarrow by williams carlos williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Answer 6

There's a poem titled "IF" - By Rudyaed Kipling.
A very nice one.
Try " Solitary Reaper ", too !

Answer 7

look up any Pablo Neruda poems, he is a nobel prize winning poet from Chile, his poetry is beautiful but it is translated, his poem 'Los Nacimientos' (Births) is very good.

Answer 8

my fave poems...
'on a dead child' by Richard Middleton (I think that's his name)
'the tiger(sometimes written as tyger)' by william blake. (highly recommend it, perfect for reading out)
'neutral tones' by thomas hardy (about love gone wrong)