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Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#2The long night;
The sound of the water
Says what I think.
-Gochiku
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#3"Cynthia"
-Jonah Hill
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#4I like this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski#Poetry_collec...
"War all the time" is a good place to start.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#5There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison
Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.
Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.
Feynman
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#6There are the rushing waves mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain. Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the…
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
(First verse of Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#7If - Rudyard Kipling https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...
Emily Dickinson!
Here is one
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#8I don't really "get" poetry. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and well-read, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around poetry as a medium.
That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in a "Understanding Poetry's Awesomeness for Dummies" course, though...
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#9I don't really "get" poetry. I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and well-read, but I've just had a hard time wrapping my head around poetry as a medium. That said, I do enjoy Robert Frost (cliche, I know). The only poem I can recite in totality is "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and part of why I really liked that one is that it tells a short story, and a vivid one at that. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I'…
Poetry is like visual art or music, sometimes there is nothing to "get". Of course there are ways to approach analytically, but I don't believe that's where the awesomeness can be found.
To me its about connecting to a particular phrase, image, perspective, or description. Once you feel that connection to a certain poem its a lot easier to feel like you understand it.
The poem I always go back to when people say they don't get poetry is: " so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens. " - William Carlos Williams
It's simple and effective. A single image, a specific point in time and place, are being described with only a few lines and yet you can almost reach onto the page and touch it. You can try to see it as an extended metaphor, or take it completely at face value. Either way - it's beautiful.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?
#10Lost
by Carl Sandburg
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.