Favorite Poems
Favorite poems by authors other than yourself heres one of mine Candles by Sylvia Plath They are the last romantics, these candles: Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers, And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes, Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints. It is touching, the way they'll ignore A whole family of prominent objects Simply to plumb the deeps of an eye In its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds, And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all. Daylight would be more judicious, Giving everybody a fair hearing. They should have gone out with the balloon flights and the stereopticon. This is no time for the private point of view. When I light them, my nostrils prickle. Their pale, tentative yellows Drag up false, Edwardian sentiments, And I remember my maternal grandmother from Vienna. As a schoolgirl she gave roses to Franz Josef. The burghers sweated and wept. The children wore white. And my grandfather moped in the Tyrol, Imagining himself a headwaiter in America, Floating in a high-church hush Among ice buckets, frosty napkins. These little globes of light are sweet as pears. Kindly with invalids and mawkish women, They mollify the bald moon. Nun-souled, they burn heavenward and never marry. The eyes of the child I nurse are scarcely open. In twenty years I shall be retrograde As these drafty ephemerids. I watch their spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls. How shall I tell anything at all To this infant still in a birth-drowse? Tonight, like a shawl, the mild light enfolds her, The shadows stoop over the guests at a christening.

This be the verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself. Philip Larkin *slap*

This has always been a favorite of mine. I still get teary-eyed when I read it...classic love poems do that to ya, heh. i carry your heart with me e.e.cummings i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

I too love e.e. cummings. There's so many I can include and perhaps I will share more later but here is two of my favorites. ~ Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you're flush pride keeps you from the pawn shops and because you are continually committing nuisances but more especially in your own house Humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it's there and sitting down on it and because you are forever making poems in the lap of death Humanity i hate you ----- i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) ~

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-- her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--, then pushed her over the edge into the river. -William Stafford

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air - An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds - A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? ~Mary Oliver _______________________ That poem brings me to tears. It's probably my favorite poem ever written. *Sigh* =)