We have a thread for original poetry, but not for favorites. In honor of Kintsugi, a forum where pronouns are particularly important, I give you my favorite poem about pronouns: E E Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town But the poem most on my mind the last couple of days is from my favorite poet: W. B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium There is a wonderful fantasy novel inspired by this poem, written by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Sarantine Mosaic. But I also like the Ramones' version: Na Na Na-na, na-Na Na Na Na, I wanna be uploaded.
The most beautiful poem of all: Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird "A man and a woman/ are one./ A man and a woman and a blackbird/ are one" explains my experience of gender in an innate way that nothing else has ever come close to. And I want to get a tattoo on my arm of the sprawling branches of a tree with three blackbirds on it. And ugh, this entire beautiful poem. Also, the one with the most personal significance to me (I love it so much and it's so important) T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland "The burial of the dead" was singlehandedly responsible for ending a creative block of over 3 years in which I'd been unable to draw.
I'm really fond of Norwid's Fortepian Szopena, if only because it took me so long to get through the whole thing. I read a lot of Auden recently because of a friend, but I can't think of any specific poems/titles right now. Allen Ginsberg's Howl. I read it out loud sometimes and it helps a lot. Edit: Fortepian Szopena = Chopin's Grand Piano forgot to translate
I love epics a lot. Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Illiad, The Fate of the Children of Hurin (incomplete anglo-saxon styled epic poem telling the Turin story), and The Aeneid in particular. Oh. I love the Bhagavad Gita too. AND THE DIVINE COMEDY. Some of my absolute favorite poems though come from the Therigatha, which aren't epics at all. These are very important and wonderful besides. They are poems written by a variety of nuns in the earliest days of Buddhism. One of them being my particular favorite. Namely a short poem about how some woman feels so liberated and freed to be in the Sangha. Because she left behind her horrible husband who was a dick to her and now she gets to be happy and free and respected! The Conference of the Birds is a lovely poem too. Thomas Kinsella's translations of poetry from the Táin bó Cuailnge are lovely too. Like. Really fucking lovely. I'm going to transcribe my favorite one here when I can. Because it's great. So great. ALSO YEATS. The Wanderings of Oisin is my favorite of his works though I like Yeats in general.
SO A FULL MONTH after Elaienar was kind enough to point me in the general direction of this thread I AM HERE TO BRING IT BACK FROM THE DEAD to yell a bit about my fave, Karin Boye, She's Swedish and she wasn't straight and all of her poems just feel like home, sort of? There's a site here which has a bunch of her work translated. (it is, naturally & unfortunately, way better in Swedish :( sometime's I'm tempted to just go through and give my favourites a go just to see if I can translate them in a way I deem satisfactory but spoons.) "Of course it hurts" (/"Visst gör det ont") is without a doubt her most famous one. Depending on who you talk to it's about growing up, watching your child grow up, or about being queer/not fitting the norm. Spoiler: poem itself Spoiler: short screaming about this poem i went with Jenny Nunn's translation even though david mcduff's is a bit more accurate bc to me the rhyming is a big part of why they feel like home. It just makes a nice sound, y'know. anyways of course it hurts when things are changing, of course it's difficult, but you'll be alright, you'll be okay. jesus christ tiny me found such comfort in this poem. that last verse. also, ' hard to want to stay // and want to fall ' just kill me, karin boye, just murder me right now please (WHEN!!! FEAR!!! NO LONGER HOLDS YOU!!! resting in the trust that creates the world) and then there's my all-time fave which is much shorter and infinitely less well-known (this time we're going w mcduff's translation) "A Stillness Unfolds" (/"En Stillhet Vidgades") Spoiler: poem itself Spoiler: me dying I can't analyse this one the same way I could have analysed Of course it hurts because this one is so much shorter and we never talked about it in school which means I'm probably miles off with my interpretation, but please let's all take a moment to just feel how beautiful "A stillness expanded, soft as sunny winter forests" is and how absolutely wonderful "Then I was flooded over and carried by the strength from fragile things" is? Just that last line, the strength from fragile things, I have carried with me since I first read this one, I love it so much. So. What it means to me is, I think potentially this poem actually is supposed to be about motherhood or whatever (the 'fragile thing' being a child) but fuck that I like it better (and can only really relate to it) if I think of it as just being about protection in general. The phenomenon of being stronger when you have something, or someone, to protect, something to lose, something to care for, whether long-term or in a single instance. That last line was basically echoing in me every time I went between my sibling and my parents, or a friend and a teacher, bc god knows I could barely ever fight back for my own sake there. The way the world just crystallises when you have something to fight for, and the uncertainty just vaporises because it has no place there. That's what it means to me. good poem good poet a+ i could probably point and scream at Karin Boye's poems all day tbh but I gotta go do homework now (ironically, homework is analysing poetry bc that's where we're at in my literature module,) but if you have time, definitely go click around a bit on that page, extra definitely come talk to me about it if you want to, no one ever wants to cry about poetry with me and that makes me sad.
Five Poems for Dolls by Margaret Atwood Reconciliation by Siegfried Sassoon Still I Rise by Maya Angelou Sarah Kay ("If I Should Have a Daughter" is right at the start and "Hiroshima" is at about 15.00 if you don't want to watch the whole talk) Here are some poems that make me feel things deep in my bones and with every revisiting they just make me feel more. I love them so much. I actually love poetry in general quite a bit even though I'm not too widely read so expect me to take up residence and/or frequently spam this thread now that I've found it
