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Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

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11–20 of 369 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#11
Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#12
Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov... Yeah, I'm Russian :-p

Among English poems, I rather like this one by Laurie Lee:

    A golden fish like a pint of wine
    Rolls the sea undergreen,
    Glassily balanced on the tide
    Only the skin between.

    Fish and water lean together,
    Separate and one,
    Till a fatal flash of the instant sun
    Lazily corkscrews down.

    Did fish and water drink each other?
    The reed leans there alone;
    As we, who once drank each other's breath,
    Have emptied the air, and gone.
And of course W.H. Auden:

    ...I and the public know
    What all schoolchildren learn,
    Those to whom evil is done
    Do evil in return.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#13
post #10

“Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, we're afraid!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. "We can't, We will fall!" they responded. "Come to the edge," he said. And so they came. And he pushed them. And they flew.” ― Guillaume Apollinaire close second: I am Ebenezer Bleezer, I run BLEEZER’S ICE CREAM STORE, there are flavors in my freezer you have never seen before, twenty-eight divine creations too delicio…

Natalie merchant has a wonderful song using the second poem as the lyrics. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJHrc-ABp4

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#14
I like George Bacovia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia)

Here is his probably most known one:

   Plumb
   
   Dormeau adanc sicriele de plumb,
   Si flori de plumb si funerar vesmant -
   Stam singur in cavou ... si era vant ...
   Si scartaiau coroanele de plumb.

   Dormea intors amorul meu de plumb
   Pe flori de plumb, si-am inceput sa-l strig -
   Stam singur langa mort ... si era frig ...
   Si-i atarnau aripile de plumb.

(Translation from: http://www.aboutromania.com/bacovia1.html)

   Lead

   The coffins of lead were lying sound asleep,
   And the lead flowers and the funeral clothes -
   I stood alone in the vault ... and there was wind ...
   And the wreaths of lead creaked.
   
   Upturned my lead beloved lay asleep
   On the lead flower ... and I began to call -
   I stood alone by the corpse ... and it was cold ...
   And the wings of lead drooped.
Translating poems is pretty hard. That was an ok translation. It doesn't quite sound quite right.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#18
post #6

Omar Khayyam “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m -- Thomas Gray Presumptuous Maid! with looks intent Again she stretch'd, again she bent, Nor knew the gulph between; (Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.) The slippery verge her feet beguil'd; Sh…

Omar Khayyam is wonderful. I have the first stanza of the Rubaiyat painted and framed in khatam style.

This quatrain makes me think Khayyam was a HN reader:

    Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 
    About it and about: but evermore 
    Came out by the same door where in I went.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#19
Cecil Day Lewis:

   Tempt me no more, for I
   Have known the lightning's hour,
   The poet's inward pride,
   The certainty of power.
And, of course being a Scot, Robert Burns:

   What though on hamely fare we dine,
   Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
   Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
   A Man's a Man for a' that:
   For a' that, and a' that,
   Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
   The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
   Is king o' men for a' that. 
and:

   By oppression's woes and pains!
   By your sons in servile chains!
   We will drain our dearest veins,
      But they shall be free!

   Lay the proud usurpers low!
   Tyrants fall in every foe!
   Liberty's in every blow!—
      Let us do or die!
[Apologies for the bloodthirsty nature of Scots Wha Hae - but I was taught this stuff from an early age and it kind of stuck even though it's describing events of 700 years ago.]

Edit:

    Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
    Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
    Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
    Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. 

    My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
    My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
    Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
    My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#20
E.E. Cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

One of Cummings's short poems that I enjoy:

  should this fool die

  let someone fond
  of living lay

  in his left hand


  a flower whose

  glory by no
  mind ever was

  taught how to grow
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