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Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#11

Post by hood_syntax »

nxsynonym wrote: post #9
Jemaclus wrote: post #8

I 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…

I love William Carlos Williams. I'm not an avid poetry reader, but I always loved going through his work. Another favorite is Alfred Tennyson.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#12

Post by seeyes »

The Frog and the Nightingale (Vikram Seth) - https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-frog-and-the-nightingale...

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woo...

Mending Wall - Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall

The Second Coming - W.B.Yeats http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

The Mountain and the Squirrel - Emerson https://sites.google.com/site/rainydaypoems/poems-for-kids/c...

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#14

Post by mapster »

Jemaclus wrote: post #8

I 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'…

don't try to 'get' it. a poem is like a song. just listen or read it, and the words have meaning or they don't.

eventually you will want more, so you will listen/read with closer attention etc.

poetry is an inside joke.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#15

Post by yung_endian » 

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

        They may not mean to, but they do.   

    They fill you with the faults they had

        And add some extra, just for you.


    But they were fucked up in their turn

        By fools in old-style hats and coats,  
 
    Who half the time were soppy-stern

        And half at one another’s throats.


    Man hands on misery to man.
        
        It deepens like a coastal shelf.

    Get out as early as you can,

        And don’t have any kids yourself.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#16

Post by krapp » 

   pity this busy monster, manunkind,

   not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
   your victim (death and life safely beyond)

   plays with the bigness of his littleness
   --- electrons deify one razorblade
   into a mountainrange; lenses extend
   unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
   returns on its unself.
                              A world of made
   is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

   and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
   fine specimen of hypermagical

   ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

   a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
   of a good universe next door; let's go.
E. E. Cummings

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite poems?

#18

Post by bmomb »

I'm Brazilian, so my poem favorite poem is in portuguese, its called A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine).

Wikipedia as an assert about it: The most prominent of these later metaphysical poems is A Máquina do Mundo (The World's Machine). The poem deals with an anti-Faust referred to in the first person, who receives the visit of the aforementioned Machine, which stands for all possible knowledge, and the sum of the answers for all the questions which afflict men; in highly dramatic and baroque versification the poem develops only for the anonymous subject to decline the offer of endless knowledge and proceed his gloomy path in the solitary road. It takes the renaissance allegory of the Machine of the World from Portugal's most esteemed poet, Luís de Camões, more precisely, from a canto at the end of his epic masterpiece Os Lusíadas.[0]

[0] Wikipedia about Drummond, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Drummond_de_Andrade

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