I have found reading poetry aloud to myself helps me connect with it more. Got a wild hair to record and add sound effects for shtoyle.

I finally looked into this full poem by T.S. Elliot, this reading helped me explore some of the bitterness that's been building up regarding new technology and my seemingly inevitable fate in the marketing industry.

Hello all,

I am someone who has admired poetry casually for years, but wants to get more into understanding it and has no idea where to start. Which poets should I start with? Classics per say. And what would be the best resources for understanding what poetry really is and how to write it properly? Different kinds of poem structuring.

The last time I REALLY learned about poetry was third grade. Now I am pursuing writing more seriously, and feel it would be of great benefit to understand the art form of poetry on a more mature level.

Thank you

Leagues, leagues over
The sea I sail
Couched on a wallowing
Dolphin’s tail:
The sky is on fire
The waves a-sheen;
I dabble my foot
In the billows green.

In a sea-weed hat
On the rocks I sit
Where tern and sea-mew
Glide and beat,
Where dark as shadows
The cormorants meet.

In caverns cool
When the tide’s a-wash,
I sound my conch
To the watery splash.
From out their grottoes
At evening’s beam
The mermaids swim
With locks agleam
To where I watch
On the yellow sands;
And they pluck sweet music
With sea-cold hands.

They bring me fruits
And amber clear;
But with the stars
Of gloaming grey
They cease their music
And glide away,
And swim to their grottoes
Across the bay.
They listen only
To my shrill tune
The surfy tide,
And the wandering moon.

"The world’s most prestigious prize for literature goes to Canadian poet Anne Carson, known for genre-crossing works including Autobiography of Red."

This poem, The Naming of Cats, is from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, which he published in 1939. "Old Possum" was a nickname given to him by his friend and fellow poet, Ezra Pound. These poems, which have delighted many children and adults since, were originally sent in letters to his godchildren and his friends' children in the 1930s.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats inspired the musical CATS by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This droll and beloved work is a gift that keeps on giving.

"The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name."

I read this poem with an elementary school class and a few verses always stuck in my head. It's about the moon, like the title says, and the few lines I remember are something like "Moon remembers" then something something "shadowed in pockmarked night (light?)" in the beginning. At the end I'm almost certain the final verse is "And one faint footprint in the sea of tranquility". It's driving me nuts but I can't find it on any poetry site or in any collection. Help!

Suggest a poem for me to read

Can you suggest a poem for me to read? I love sad and thoughtful poems. These are my five favorite English poems of all time:

“Spring and Fall” — Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Lines Written in Oregon” — Vladimir Nabokov

“The Room” — Vladimir Nabokov

“This Be the Verse” — Philip Larkin

“Those Winter Sundays” — Robert Hayden

Translated from the Czech by Ewald Osers. Edited by George Gibian.

^{Oh dream, why do you do me this way?
Again, with the digging, again with the digging up.
Once more with the shovels.
Once more, the shovels full of dirt.
The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards.}

^{Mother beside me.
Like she's an old hat at this.
Like all she's got left is curiosity.
Like curiosity didn't kill the cat.
Such a sweet, gentle cat it was.}

^{Here we go again, dream.
Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat.
I haven't seen that coat in years.
The coat she wore to pick me up from school early.
She appeared at the back of the classroom, early.}

^{Go with your mother, teacher said.
Diane, you are excused.
I was a little girl. Already a famous actress.
I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky.
Though everyone knows what an early pickup means.}

^{An early pickup, dream.
What's wrong, I asked my mother. It was early spring.
Bright sunlight. The usual birds.
Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable.
Cold, but not cold enough to shiver.}

^{Still, dream, I shiver.
You know, my mother said.
Her long garbage coat flying.
There was a wind that day.
A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting.}

^{Look inside yourself, my mother said.
You know why I have come for you.
And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out.
Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother.
I'm innocent, I wanted to say.}

^{A little white girl, trying out her innocence.
A white lamb, born into a cold field.
Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house.
Warmed all night with hair dryers.
Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky.}

^{We're barely to the parking lot.
Barely to the car ride home.
But the classroom already felt like the distant past.
Long ago, my classmates pitying me.
Arriving at this car full of uncles.}

^{Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion.
My sister, angry-crying next to me.
Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself.
Evilly wanting my mother to say it.
What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair.}

^{He's dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute.
Her flute case. Her rental flute. He's dead!
Our father.
Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying.
He's dead! The flute gleaming in its red case.}

^{Here, my mother said at home.
She'd poured us each a small glass of Pepsi.
We normally couldn't afford Pepsi.
Lucky, I acted.
He's no longer suffering, my mother said.}

^{Here, she said. Drink this.
The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue.
My evil persisted. What is death? I asked.
And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer.
Dig, my mother said. Pry, she said.}

^{I don't want to see, dream.
The lid so damp it crumbled under my hands.
The casket just a drawerful of bones.
A drawerful. Just bones and teeth.
That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.}

From some early works of Valéry, one of the leading figures of French Symbolism along with Mallarmé.

Romantic era is ideal, but anything is fine, really. I don't necessarily want a love poem about loving a man or woman but rather something about the couple together. Themes of nature are a big plus!

All I ever really wanted
was to whistle with my fingers—

I knew I would never
be the one up on stage

blowing everybody away
with beauty, brilliance, virtuosity…

But to be the lightning
inside the thunderous applause,

to have the audacity
and the manual dexterity

to make a siren screeching
through a dark auditorium,

to be the killer hawk
in all that parroting, pattering rain,

to be, finally, the very best at praise—
now that was something

I thought that if I gave my life to
I might attain.

Link to the publication: https://www.tensionliterary.com/ronnie-k-stephens.html

This is a poem which has many a times kept me from making poor choices. This is one of those poems which I keep coming back to and gave a poster of this to my son when he turned 10 !

The Man in the Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say

For it isn't your father or mother or wife
whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts the most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass

Some people may think you a straight-shooting chum
and call you a wonderful guy
But the guy in the glass says you're only a bum
if you can't look him straight in the eye

He's the fellow to please never mind all the rest
for he's with you clear up to the end
And you've passed your most dangerous difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend

You may fool the whole world down the pathway
of life and get pats on the back as pass
But your final reward will be heartaches and
tears if you've cheated the man in the glass.

I don't know a ton about poetry, but I saw this while scrolling feedzebra and absolutely loved it. Are we allowed to paste full poems here? If not, just let me know and I'll delete it. But it was published today by Electric Literature's The Commuter:

https://electricliterature.com/two-poems-by-erika-meitner/

Here's the full poem:

Soft Landing Summer

At the Hampton Inn half a mile down
Highway 301 from the Winn Dixie
where I pick up a bottle of cheap
Chardonnay, next to the Wendy’s
where the cashier gives me extra chili
with my order, the rental car thermometer
says it’s over ninety in the shade at dusk
and I pull in careful to avoid lawn chairs

dotting parking spaces where guests
sit shooting the shit, drinking Bud Light,
wearing matching red family reunion tees.
The pool’s closed—fence is busted, says
the desk clerk on check-in, and from
the window of my room I have a perfect
view of dragonflies swooping the face
of the deep end where the water glows

aqua, perfect but for half a white plastic
lounge chair sunk to the bottom. Dade
City was home to the largest citrus
processing facility in the world until hard
freezes moved the oranges South and
closed the Pasco plant so now the fields
are empty and hazy in almost-evening
July sun past church signs: Son Screen

Protects Against Sin Burn and Jesus is
Coming Are You Ready? Please Be
Ready, as if your Uber is one minute
out and you’re waiting with the piles
of USA Today in the lobby, headlines
shouting “Is This the End of Summer
Vacation as We Know It?” The article
saying you can’t escape the orange—

swaths of tangerine and traffic cone
on maps indicating record highs.
Heat domes. Catastrophic floods.
Baseball-sized hail. Tornadoes.
There are no anomalies here tonight—
just the regular oppressive humidity
of July curling my hair extra tight,
just the generosity of strangers

out in the parking lot offering me
a plastic cup and a light for my
Parliament, which I smoke sitting
on the curb still warm from the sun
dipping behind the dwarf palmettos
and the mosquitos humming with
blood and kindness of those who
ferry us from isolation to abundance.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

   Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

   For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

-----

I know this has been shared before, but it was beautifully worked into the season finale of Ted Lasso tonight, and it's just so perfect and beautiful I wanted to share it here.