What's the best poem?

[Anonymous No.21751672]

[Anonymous No.21751675]

>>21751672

[Anonymous No.21751686]

In order to determine the best poem, we have to determine the best topic, which is of course love. So the best poem must be a love poem. And the love poem which I like best is anyone lived in a pretty how town by e e cummings.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

[Anonymous No.21751872]

>>21751672
nigger nigger splattered on the wall
who's the blackest of them all?

[Anonymous No.21751963]

21751872
That's mean.

[Anonymous No.21751989]

>>21751672
Clearly it's IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[Anonymous No.21752025]

[Anonymous No.21752153]

>>21751672
What constitutes a poem here? Technically, epic poems like the Illiad and the Faerie Queene and whatever that are extremely long are still poems. Narrative poems can be pretty long too, see Childe Harold's Pilgrimage or Idylls of The King.

[Anonymous No.21752159]

>>21751672
The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité

[Anonymous No.21752761]

roses are red
violets are blue
anything is possible
nothing is true

[Anonymous No.21752944]

>>21752761
Wealth has no permanence: it comes in the morning,
and at night it is scattered to the winds.
Physical beauty too has no importance,
for a rosy face is made pale by the scratch of a single thorn.
Noble birth also is of small account,
for many become fools of money and horses.
Many a nobleman’s son has disgraced his father by his wicked deeds.
Don’t court a person full of talent either,
even if he seems exquisite in that respect:
take warning from the example of Devil.
Devil had knowledge, but since his love was not pure,
he saw in Adam nothing but a figure of clay.

[Anonymous No.21753033]

>>21751672
Hertha by Swinburne

[Anonymous No.21753215]

>>21751672
I have not nearly read enough poetry to say what the best poem is but my personal favorite would be The Odes of Anacreon (I think of them as one long poem cut into parts). I read the Thomas Moore translation. It makes me feel good about life in a way that no other poem has done (though Keats came close with Endymion).

[Anonymous No.21753217]

>>21751672
I like that thing I started about hats a couple of weeks ago, and I wrote a very good one about a bag lady over winter which I only found on my phone lat week.

but still,
>What's the best poem?
from olden days? easily Regime de Vivre. Wilmot demonstrates that humans have not changed at all from the 1500's to e modern days, as the entire character (action and mindset) proves true today. I know of no other poem capable of soldering five centuries together.


.ASIDE FROM THIS ONE,
>>21751872
>i wandered like a crack smoke cloud
>my telephone rang, i answered loud,
BRAVO, BRAVO


>>21751989
>IF
nah that's depressing, a poem is supposed to be insightful 'and' funny.

[Anonymous No.21753221]

>>21751989
>If you can make one heap of all your winnings
>And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
>And lose, and start again at your beginnings
>And never breathe a word about your loss;
this is the bad bit

THIS POEM SPONSORED BY BETTING SHOP

[Anonymous No.21753227]

>>21753221
Do you not know what a metaphor is?

[Anonymous No.21753231]

I before E, except after C -Margaret Thatcher

[Anonymous No.21753250]

The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
(1/2)

[Anonymous No.21753251]

>>21753250
(2/2)

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

[Anonymous No.21753260]

>>21753227
No, doesn't ring a bell, anon.

[Anonymous No.21753262]

My hand.
Isn't it grand?

[Anonymous No.21753266]

>>21751672
this gave me a fun idea: >>21753244

[Anonymous No.21753268]

The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out

[Anonymous No.21753276]

the nights you fight best
are
when all the weapons are pointed
at you,
when all the voices
hurl their insults
while the dream is being
strangled.

the nights you fight best
are
when reason gets
kicked in the
gut,
when the chariots of
gloom
encircle
you.

the nights you fight best
are
when the laughter of fools
fills the
air,
when the kiss of death is
mistaken for
love.

the nights you fight best
are
when the game is
fixed,
when the crowd screams
for your
blood.

the nights you fight best
are
on a night like
this
as you chase a thousand
dark rats from
your brain,
as you rise up against the
impossible,
as you become a brother
to the tender sister
of joy and

move on

regardless.

[Anonymous No.21753550]

>>21753217
how is it depressing?

[Anonymous No.21753558]

Boomer/greatest gen nostalga poems

Back in the days of tanners and bobs,
When Mothers had patience and Fathers had jobs.
When football team families wore hand me down shoes,
And T.V gave only two channels to chose.
Back in the days of three penny bits,
when schools employed nurses to search for your nits.
When snowballs were harmless; ice slides were permitted
and all of your jumpers were warm and hand knitted.
Back in the days of hot ginger beers,
when children remained so for more than six years.
When children respected what older folks said,
and pot was a thing you kept under your bed.
Back in the days of Listen with Mother,
when neighbours were friendly and talked to each other.
When cars were so rare you could play in the street.
When Doctors made house calls; Police walked the beat.
Back in the days of Milligan's Goons,
when butter was butter and songs all had tunes.
It was dumplings for dinner and trifle for tea,
and your annual break was a day by the sea.
Back in the days of Dixon's Dock Green,
Crackerjack pens and Lyons ice cream.
When children could freely wear National Health glasses,
and teachers all stood at the FRONT of their classes
Back in the days of rocking and reeling,
when mobiles were things that you hung from the ceiling.
When woodwork and pottery got taught in schools,
and everyone dreamed of a win on the pools.
Back in the days when I was a lad,
I can't help but smile for the fun that I had.
Hopscotch and roller skates; snowballs to lob.
Back in the days of tanners and bobs.