/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.866837]

post your favourite poems! yay!

Mine's The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Classic and overdone but still my favorite...

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[Anonymous No.866840]

Looking forward to Grade 10 next year?

[Anonymous No.866844]

I stumbled upon this one yesterday... I like it.

http://noamericanidiot.deviantart.com/#/d2swxkv

[Anonymous No.866851]

i love william carlos williams. yea, i know, so very high school but I love him.


I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[Anonymous No.866857]

>>866844
I liked it. I liked the spacing of things. Its well thought out.

[Anonymous No.866863]

>>866851
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

[Anonymous No.866871]

Due to light and the thunder
You were under the seventh wonder,
son your life's a blunder
Doomed, there soon will be nowhere to run to
But out of limits, this whole planet could be finished, diminished
Lose all of his tenants, taking all life that would dent it

Major destruction, tearing down every man construction
Volcanic eruption, lava leading to human reduction
Life's grimmer for every living mortal sinner
Chances are getting slimmer when air in the atmosphere is getting thinner
The five elements will expire
Earth, wind, and water will eventually put out the fire
Your hopes get higher, eyes witness the bright Messiah
Thought he'd fly you to God's empire but delivered you to hell's fire

Earthquakes and shakes, over-flooded lakes, the dam breaks
To suffocate whatever's on the landscape
People hurting, getting bitten by Satan's serpents
Steady inserting lies in they third eye to make em servants
Physical's over, you see more pain and reigning over
Souls that are clean and sober shine like supernovas off Jehova
Mountains crumble causing mankind to stumble
God and devil go at it, get prepared for the fucking rumble

[Anonymous No.866887]

I can't pick a favorite Phillip Larkin poem.

Sorry guys.

[Anonymous No.866901]

>>866844
My mother's a drunk
and my dad was abusive
And what's sad is
my story isn't very unique
So I have nothing.

He gave me nothing.

Except more emotions than I can handle.

So I overflow
every night in front of
strangers
Knowing, they too, once
felt how I do

Which gives me hope
I'm not alone

And when I'm older
and happy
and stable
I'll go to the theater
and watch a young girl spill
onto the boards
watch her soak up the love from the seats
And know she'll be fine.

[Anonymous No.866904]

Meditation at Lagunitas
by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

[Anonymous No.866905]

I used to know a bitch named Eric Wright
We used to roll around and fuck the hoes at night
Tight than a motherfucker with the gangsta beats
And we was ballin' on the motherfucking Compton streets
Peep, the shit got deep and it was on
Number one song after number one song
Long as my motherfucking pockets was fat
I didn't give a fuck where the bitch was at
But she was hangin' with a white bitch doin' the shit she do
Suckin' on his dick just to get a buck or two
And the few ends she got didn't mean nothin'
Now she's suing 'cause the shit she be doin' ain't shit
Bitch can't hang with the streets, she found herself short
So now she's takin' me to court
It's real conversation for your ass
So recognize and pass to Daz

[Anonymous No.866907]

>>866863
LOVE the last verse

[None !UyhAEqbnp. No.866909]

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

yeah, I like ww1

[Anonymous No.866910]

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

[Anonymous No.866914]

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.

Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense. The star
Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

[Anonymous No.866924]

>>866910
amazing.

[Anonymous No.867003]

It may be misery not to sing at all,
And to go silent through the brimming day;
It may be misery never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.

To sing the perfect song,
And by a half-tone lost the key,
There the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of Life's Tragedy.

To have come near to the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lies aside its vanity,
And gives, for thy trusting worship, truth.

This, this indeed is to be accursed,
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by what we have,
But by what kept us from that perfect thing.

[Anonymous No.867013]

I love robert frost, OP. I had to memorize that poem in high school.

Unaware of my crime
      they stood me in the dock.

I was sentenced to life….
               without her.

Strange trial.
     No judge.
     No jury.

I wonder who my visitors will be.

"Welcome Home", Spike Milligan

[Anonymous No.867022]

Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost were rivals at the time, but people know Frost more than Sandburg in my opinion...but I'll post Sandburg's most famous poem...well to contrast.

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

[Anonymous No.867029]

>>867013
No offense, but I am dying of laughter here.

>...
>without her
>DUN DUN

:*D

[Anonymous No.867031]

>>867022
I love that poem. I read it in a poetry collection several years ago, but couldn't remember who wrote it. Thanks anon :)

[Anonymous No.867033]

>>867029
Quite alright. Most of Spikes Poems are comedy/children's poetry anyways.

[Anonymous No.867038]

Terrible translation but whatever:


No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one incants our dust. No one.

Blessèd art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.

A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One's-Rose.

With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our corona red
from the purpleword we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

[TripskankOnVacation !!Ls7pLtzSYWf No.867046]

While you guys have this thread, I shall sit here, serving tea to friends

[Anonymous No.867056]

One of my favorite poems by Auden:

The Unknown Citizen
by W. H. Auden

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

[Anonymous No.867059]

I really liked "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 imposters 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 wornout 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 breath 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.867066]

>>867059

When I think of Rudyard Kipling (other than thinking about The Jungle Book), this poem always comes to mind.

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

[Anonymous No.867069]

"The Street" by Anne Winters

Consider the first stanza

"A round eclipse, a pool-like dot of light
on my little sister’s glasses, bangs, her dome-cheeked, solemn face
play-powdered in a tilting compact mirror."

Another stanza

"On the sidewalk across / a girl from the house, in stockingfeet, dark silk suit
slit and ribboned by knife thrusts, was pulling herself
through the arcs and dribbles and splashes of her blood.

Her fingertips’ carmine meshed on the concrete, her elbows strained
over the wet, working shoulder blades (one still hooked
through her purse strap) and somehow her bluish felt

hat and hatpin, rolled to the curb, made me think she was pinned
to the street—pinned and moving"

[Anonymous No.867070]

>>867066
I remember having to do a report over that in AP World History.
This poem makes me feelsbadman.jpg

[None !UyhAEqbnp. No.867087]

>>867046
ooooh, I love tea. Green trumps all

[onionring !Rrxa7zePwI No.867100]

>>867087
looking at that image gave me a headache, for some reason

[None !UyhAEqbnp. No.867109]

>>867100
probably because I zoomed it. The lines are a little more jagged due to this

[Anonymous No.867110]

>>867100

lol

[onionring !Rrxa7zePwI No.867164]

>>867109
i think it's just me panicking over the feeling that your tea will fall out of your cup, then realizing it's not actually falling.

[Anonymous No.867294]

The Dung Beetle by William J. Harris

The Dung Beetle
Makes
Beautiful, perfect
Symmetrical
Balls

Out of shit