Favourite poem?

Definitely the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol!

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

This glorious nonsense is a real masterpiece, as he manages to get his meaning across mostly without real words, the whole thing somehow remaining fairly eloquent and meaningful sounding. The work of a true genius!

by jtmb7

Any poem by Bukowski. He's God, you know. :)

by Vanessa de Largie

That he is. :)

I love his work but I couldn't pick one of his poems in particular.

:-)

The cow is of the bovine ilk.
One end is moo,
The other, milk!

Ogden Nash

by VerityG

Ogden Nash is great. :)

On a more serious note, I love Thomas Hardy's poetry. So much more direct than his novels and soul-searingly beautiful. They reflect the English countryside and the time he lived in perfectly and the rhythms he conjures up are just right for reading aloud. Goosebumps every time!

by VerityG

All jokes aside, mail, I love Ogden Nash. Simple pleasures.

My all-time favorite poem is "If Up's The Word" by e.e. cummings:

if up’s the word;and a world grows greener
minute by second and most by more—
if death is the loser and life is the winner
(and beggars are rich but misers are poor)
—let’s touch the sky:
with a to and a fro
(and a here there where)and away we go


I also love the more whimsical poems of Tolkien--"The Stone Troll," "Perry-the-Winkle," "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late." That's all the wonder of my childhood right there.

by parso

I don't know if it is my absolute favourite, but 'This Be The Verse' by Phillip Larkin comes in somewhere at the top.

by Bryony Harrison

Having asked the question I find it very difficult to answer. I have a couple of favourites but it's so hard to pick just one. I love Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman because it's empowering. I also love the untitled poem from Mervyn Peake's Ghormenghast ("Come my love, my own, my only...") because it reminds me of a time and a place when I was very happy.

by Jennifer Muirhead

I keep coming back to 'The Waste Land' by T. S. Elliot. It's possibly overrated, and certainly a bit pretentious, but such great imagery!

by Paul Douglas

My Shadow
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

by 420wr

I love Dorothea McKellar's "My Country" partly because it reflects how I feel about Australia.
I also love A.A. Milne's "Forgiven" and adore Melanie Saska's song of it.
There is an Alan Ahlberg poem called "Scissors" which is about a class losing scissors which will appeal to any teacher. My favourite line being "If it were seven pairs of children we'd lost, it wouldn't be so bad."

by lynne

My darling Dad's only poem:
"Spring is sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the boidies iz?
'They're on the wing.'
Why how absoid; I thought the wing was on the boid."

by lynne

'The listeners' by Walter de la Mare(?)
My sister taught it to me when I was very young! Strangely enough, I remember the words to this day!

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, knocking on the moonlight door,
And his horse in the shadows, champed on the forest's ferny floor'............

by donjo

I can not pick just one.

I love limericks, this one always makes me smile:

There once was a man from Perth
Who was born on the day of his birth
and married they say
On his wife's wedding day
And he died when he quitted this earth

John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning has stuck with me.

And Auden's Stop all the Clocks (as spoken in in Four Weddings and A Funeral) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA

by bellabirth

"Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. She also wrote my favourite carol "In the bleak midwinter". Her brother was Dante Gabriel Rossetti who founded the pre-Raphaelite movement. The siblings' family was incredibly artistically gifted.

by norma

Leigh Hunt - Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

by spane