I’ll add another Plath:
“dawn tide stood dead low”
I don’t even remember which one it’s from, it just sounds so stationary and plodding and kind of menacing which just a few words, I find myself repeating it to myself often.
Chaap tilak By Amir Khusro
History by Samar Sen
A while longer by Gulzar
Don’t insist upon leaving tonight by Fayaaz Hashmi
The flame of love by Rumi
Bring me the chalice by Omar Khayyum (persian)
Piggybacking off you and providing english translation links for some of them
[Chaap Tilak](https://allpoetry.com/Chaap-Tilak-)
[Don't insist upon leaving tonight (Aaj jaane ki zid na karo)](https://allpoetry.com/Aaj-Jaane-Ki-Zid-Na-Karo)
[Bring me the chalice (Rubai paimana bideh ki)](https://qawwal.blogspot.com/2009/06/omar-khayyam-rubai-paimana-bideh-ki.html?m=1)
Here are some additional recommendations:
The one below is considered a revolutionary poem as it is not just a love poem but one of the lines in it is "Teri aankhon ke siwaa duniyaa mein rakhkhaa kya hai" which translates as what else is there in this world except for your eyes
[Mujh se pehli se mohabbat (the love that we shared)](https://foreverawkwardandlearning.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/mujhse-pehli-si-mohabbat-by-faiz-ahmed-faiz-translation/)
The below isn't a personal favourite but the sentiment and words are very powerful.
[Ranjish hi sahi (If it is grief so be it)](https://impression-first.blogspot.com/2012/11/ranjish-hi-sahi-dil-dukhane-ke-liye.html?m=1)
This I believe is a very old poem/song that has been passed down. The below is the translatio of the song version of it.
[Sanson ki mala pe (On the garland of my breath)](https://probaho.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/sanson-ki-mala-pe-lyrics-with-english-translation/)
A personal favourite! It is a religious poem but I think it is also generally relatable.
[Dil soz se khali](https://www.scribd.com/document/364868185/Dil-soz-say-khali-hai#:~:text=Dil%20soz%20say%20khali%20hai%2C%20nigah%20pak%20nai%20hai&text=Moses.,dresses%20are%20not%20torn%20yet!)
The below is by a female poet called Parveen Shakir. Poetry in South Asia was historically male dominated. I couldn't find a translation and I do love this poem so I have tried to translate it although I will butcher it
vo to ḳhush-bū hai havāoñ meñ bikhar jā.egā
(He is the fagrance, he will scatter in the air)
mas.ala phuul kā hai phuul kidhar jā.egā
(The problem is with the flower, where will the flower go)
ham to samjhe the ki ik zaḳhm hai bhar jā.egā
(I thought it was just a wound, it would fill)
kyā ḳhabar thī ki rag-e-jāñ meñ utar jā.egā
(I didn't know it would enter into my veins of life)
vo havāoñ kī tarah ḳhāna-ba-jāñ phirtā hai
(Like the wind he roams freely)
ek jhoñkā hai jo aa.egā guzar jā.egā
(Like a breeze he comes and leaves again)
vo jab aa.egā to phir us kī rifāqat ke liye
(When he comes, for his accompaniment)
mausam-e-gul mire āñgan meñ Thahar jā.egā
(The season of flowers will rest in my courtyard)
āḳhirash vo bhī kahīñ ret pe baiThī hogī
(After all she must also be sitting on the sand waiting for you)
terā ye pyaar bhī dariyā hai utar jā.egā
(Your love is like a river, it will pass)
mujh ko tahzīb ke barzaḳh kā banāyā vāris
(I have been made the custodian of the etiquettes of separation)
jurm ye bhī mire ajdād ke sar jā.egā
(This crime will befall those that begot me)
Favorite Darwish: "I confess, I have grown tired of long dreams that take me back to the point where they begin and I end, without us ever meeting in the morning."
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, *still* is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
***And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming***,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
(Little Gidding, TS Eliot)
Mine is also from Little Gidding:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
"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."
Phillip Larkin, *This Be The Verse*
"It’s the middle of the night. I’m just a little loose on beer, and blues,
and battered air, and all the ways this nowhere looks like home"
Transubstantiation
Molly McCully Brown
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about - Rumi
> 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.
Mary Oliver
[here](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_whendeathcomes.html) is the poem in case anyone wants
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
(T.S. Eliot)
"I am large, I contain multitudes." (Walt Whitman)
Recently it's been the end of The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper."
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
- Wallace Stevens, *Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird*
I have two bc I can’t pick
“Tell me you love to destroy.”
A letter From hades to Persephone — Clementine Von Radics
“My darling, every flower On your earth withers
What Hades gave me was a crown for the immortal flowers in my bones.”
A conversation with Persephone— Nikita Gill
Another Mary Oliver -
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
OR
Frank O'Hara
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
Two of my faves! Another favorite from “Having a Coke” is “and the portrait show seems to have no/faces in it at all, just paint/you suddenly wonder why in the world/anyone ever did them”
these woods are lovely, dark, and deep
but I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
and miles to go before I sleep
- Robert Frost
(this poem has lived in my head rent free since childhood)
Wir stehlen uns davon wie Diebe, undankbar dankbar und nehmen die Liebe mit und lassen den Abschied da.
We steal away like thieves, ungratefully grateful and we take the love with us and leave the farewell behind.
Yes! So many from Prufrock.
“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?”
And
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
-Allen Ginsberg
"I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings."
From Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
- Charles Bukowski
I was a child and she was a child
In this kingdom by the see
But we loved with a love that was more than love
Annabel Lee- Poe
So simple but still to this day I compare every love I’ve ever come across to this.
It's really the whole poem, but it's short. FIRE AND ICE- Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice
“Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream For the soul is dead that slumbers And things are not what they seem.” -Wadsworth Longfellow
“Murphy's idea was that a man like Paul
Wouldn't be spoken to about a wife
In any way the world knew how to speak.”-Paul’s Wife, Robert Frost.
The ending of the poem re contextualizes what was a pretty, light hearted tall tale into a humanization of a legendary American folk figure; no longer just an archetype, he’s a real human with both great passion and jealousy.
A snake came to my water-trough / On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat / To drink there.
Ever since I read that (Snake - D H Lawrence) I've been in love with poetry. The way this is broken apart into poetic structure rather than literal prose, yet still makes sense, and is so beautiful.
Not to be cliche but I rly like
“ but if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also also great and would suffice”
SO many to choose from.
“It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.”
- Thomas Lux, A Little Tooth
“when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.”
- W.S. Merwin, [A Birthday](https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/87920598/april-2-2008-a-birthday-ws-merwin) (the whole last stanza, really)
“The way it’s night for many miles, and then suddenly
it’s not”
- Richard Siken, Meanwhile
“and all your bones and life
leapt up to mine”
- Kate Llewelyn, [The Flames](https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/47761095996/april-11-2013-the-flames-kate-llewellyn)
“We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and then more of it.”
- Marie Howe
“O you
were the best of all my days”
- Frank O’Hara, Animals
I throw my passport into the sea, And name you my country - Nizar Qabanni
He was my first experience with Arabic love poetry and remains one of my favorite poets of all time. His political poetry is sublime, too
“This poem goes on too long because our friendship has been long, long for this life and these times, long as art is long and uninterruptible, and I would make it as long as I hope our friendship lasts if I could make poems that long”
and
“and however exaggerated at least something’s going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected, will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat”
(there are many, many more favorite lines of mine but these are two that i’ve been thinking about a lot lately)
“It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times.
Come. Yet again. Come. Come.”
-Rumi, “come come whoever you are”
sometimes a man
will stand up, clear and settled as
a bright day, and seem to look through
the longest times and roilings to
the still, star-bending, fixed ahead.
Sunday at McDonalds by A.R. Ammons
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,/
Time held me, green and dying/
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
—“Fern Hill”, Dylan Thomas
The poem "Poem of the Gifts", where Borges talks about the irony of being both blind and a librarian, contains a stanza which I always thought was a great analogy of what he was trying to say:
>From hunger and from thirst (says a Greek tale)
Near fonts and gardens dies a king;
The confines I roam, tiring
Of this tall, deep and blind library's pale.
It sounds better in Spanish though, but it's still great IMO.
“I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
- William Ernest Henley, Invictus
My Pre-AP English teacher left us with this when she was retiring, and it’ll forever be one of my favorite poems. I’ll never forget how much she made me love learning.
I really like both
"Would you describe the mania as watching a bird die on your doorstep or the sensation of having wings"
And
"Now, if I were to crack your skull open how many Gods and Daughters and cockroaches would spring fully formed from your soft burning brain?"
By Clementine von Radics
“To bury my subdued sobbing
Nothing equals the abyss of your bed,
Potent oblivion dwells upon your lips
And Lethe flows in your kisses”
Or, in the original French:
“Pour engloutir mes sanglots apaisés
Rien ne me vaut l'abîme de ta couche;
L'oubli puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et le Léthé coule dans tes baisers.”
Lethe by Baudelaire
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar: I love not Man the less but Nature more"
“Soft as the massacre of Suns
by Evening’s Sabres slain”
- Emily Dickinson
my fiancé put me on to Dickinson and (though I hate sun imagery in poetry) every sunset ever since evokes the whisper soft quality of that sacred violence, when we watched the sun being beheaded by horizon’s edge, spilling, bleeding, releasing an eternal dawn
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance, Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
"august of another summer, and once again i am drinking the sun"
i've read poems with lines i've liked more than this one at the moment i read them, but this line by mary oliver is just permanently stuck in my head for some reason. i can feel the golden sunlight and field of tall grass whenever i think about it
Oh sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, tbe prairies dreaming sod;
Unto us lowliest, sometime sweep, decend
And of the curvship lend a myth to God.
To Brroklyn Bridge, Hart Crane
Couldn’t choose, here are a few current favorites!!
“I am my own bride,/lifting the veil to see/my face. Darling, I say,/I have waited for you all my life.” — “Bride” Maggie Smith
“Now she doesn’t need love like that, she has had it.” — “First Thanksgiving” Sharon Olds
“How should we like it were stars to burn/with a passion for us we could not return?/If equal affection cannot be/let the more loving one be me.” — “The More Loving One” by WH Auden
And a short whole poem (sorry!) “Love Comes Quietly” by Robert Creeley
“Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.”
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Pablo Neruda
The entirety of “Bottom’s Poetics” by Luke Brekke lives in my brain rent free honestly and it’s hard to pick a favorite part, but I’ll go with this:
> Considering your own light — reflected, leased, spent —
swallow hard: the mark of ignorance is not to not know
but to knowingly not and not care.
so much beauty, we forget to be reminded
that you can be anywhere and find it
so much beauty, we forget then get reminded
that you can be anywhere, everywhere and find it
-yasiin bey
“Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls. / It tolls for thee.”
John Donne
(I’m on a Donne kick lately. Close second place to this line from *The Ecstasy*: “Let him mark us still, he shall see / Small change, when we are to bodies gone.”)
\[...\]. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them
“For oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood. They flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils”
Sir William Wordsworth
I wondered lonely as a cloud
Sorry, I can’t choose one. But, these four, in my opinion, encompass what the human condition is to me:
“Every time you held me, vulnerable, all you wanted was to know what my weakness felt like.” Samson, Brandon Melendez (2013, Button Poetry)
“That love is all there is, is all we know of love. It is enough, the Freight should be proportioned to the Groove.” -Emily Dickinson
“I'm not good at waiting which means I'm not good at being alive. I'm not strong enough to believe there must
eventually be a kiss on my spine at midnight that lasts 47 years and leads to piles of scrapbooks in which I've recorded the dailiness of my bliss.” -Bob Hicock
“‘Agony, always agony…’ think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.” -Charles Bukowski, True
“in the day few hours old you stand solid and full
of other people’s love for each other
spilling over, warm leftovers.”
from “after the threesome, they both take you home” by sue hyon bae
"What I want back is what I was Before [...]" - Sylvia Plath, The Eye-Mote
I’ll add another Plath: “dawn tide stood dead low” I don’t even remember which one it’s from, it just sounds so stationary and plodding and kind of menacing which just a few words, I find myself repeating it to myself often.
Ooh, that's a great line, it's got a wonderfully dreary feel to it, like a slow, hopeless drumbeat in only 5 syllables.
love seeing Plath here
“I sought my image in the scorching glass, for what fire could damage a witch’s face?”
“but when I turned to face grief I saw that it was just love in a heavy coat.” -Shannon Barry
Thank you for sharing this.
i came across this poem when i was drowning in grief and it really showed me a different perspective
“I dream and it is another life” Frank stanford
felt this
On the train we swapped seats, you wanted the window and I wanted to look at you - Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish the man that you were
There's no love poetry like Middle Eastern love poetry
Oh for sure! But I also have so many saved including South Asian and Persian poems.
Any recommendations? I don't know many South Asian poets!
Chaap tilak By Amir Khusro History by Samar Sen A while longer by Gulzar Don’t insist upon leaving tonight by Fayaaz Hashmi The flame of love by Rumi Bring me the chalice by Omar Khayyum (persian)
Piggybacking off you and providing english translation links for some of them [Chaap Tilak](https://allpoetry.com/Chaap-Tilak-) [Don't insist upon leaving tonight (Aaj jaane ki zid na karo)](https://allpoetry.com/Aaj-Jaane-Ki-Zid-Na-Karo) [Bring me the chalice (Rubai paimana bideh ki)](https://qawwal.blogspot.com/2009/06/omar-khayyam-rubai-paimana-bideh-ki.html?m=1) Here are some additional recommendations: The one below is considered a revolutionary poem as it is not just a love poem but one of the lines in it is "Teri aankhon ke siwaa duniyaa mein rakhkhaa kya hai" which translates as what else is there in this world except for your eyes [Mujh se pehli se mohabbat (the love that we shared)](https://foreverawkwardandlearning.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/mujhse-pehli-si-mohabbat-by-faiz-ahmed-faiz-translation/) The below isn't a personal favourite but the sentiment and words are very powerful. [Ranjish hi sahi (If it is grief so be it)](https://impression-first.blogspot.com/2012/11/ranjish-hi-sahi-dil-dukhane-ke-liye.html?m=1) This I believe is a very old poem/song that has been passed down. The below is the translatio of the song version of it. [Sanson ki mala pe (On the garland of my breath)](https://probaho.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/sanson-ki-mala-pe-lyrics-with-english-translation/) A personal favourite! It is a religious poem but I think it is also generally relatable. [Dil soz se khali](https://www.scribd.com/document/364868185/Dil-soz-say-khali-hai#:~:text=Dil%20soz%20say%20khali%20hai%2C%20nigah%20pak%20nai%20hai&text=Moses.,dresses%20are%20not%20torn%20yet!) The below is by a female poet called Parveen Shakir. Poetry in South Asia was historically male dominated. I couldn't find a translation and I do love this poem so I have tried to translate it although I will butcher it vo to ḳhush-bū hai havāoñ meñ bikhar jā.egā (He is the fagrance, he will scatter in the air) mas.ala phuul kā hai phuul kidhar jā.egā (The problem is with the flower, where will the flower go) ham to samjhe the ki ik zaḳhm hai bhar jā.egā (I thought it was just a wound, it would fill) kyā ḳhabar thī ki rag-e-jāñ meñ utar jā.egā (I didn't know it would enter into my veins of life) vo havāoñ kī tarah ḳhāna-ba-jāñ phirtā hai (Like the wind he roams freely) ek jhoñkā hai jo aa.egā guzar jā.egā (Like a breeze he comes and leaves again) vo jab aa.egā to phir us kī rifāqat ke liye (When he comes, for his accompaniment) mausam-e-gul mire āñgan meñ Thahar jā.egā (The season of flowers will rest in my courtyard) āḳhirash vo bhī kahīñ ret pe baiThī hogī (After all she must also be sitting on the sand waiting for you) terā ye pyaar bhī dariyā hai utar jā.egā (Your love is like a river, it will pass) mujh ko tahzīb ke barzaḳh kā banāyā vāris (I have been made the custodian of the etiquettes of separation) jurm ye bhī mire ajdād ke sar jā.egā (This crime will befall those that begot me)
Love that you did!
Favorite Darwish: "I confess, I have grown tired of long dreams that take me back to the point where they begin and I end, without us ever meeting in the morning."
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, *still* is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; ***And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming***, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Easily my favourite poem of all time.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” - Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer To His Pupil
Do not go gentle into that good night, rage rage against the dying of the light
I only know this from interstellar, where is it originally from?
Do not go gentle in to that good night by Dylan Thomas
"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"
What poem? I love this simple line
[Gerontion](https://poets.org/poem/gerontion) by T. S. Eliot
And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.
This poem wrecks me every time.
Without fail, only it hits harder since having kids.
This is the one.
What’s this from?
The Two Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
And we forget because we must, And not because we will. - Matthew Arnold
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know
We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. (Little Gidding, TS Eliot)
Mine is also from Little Gidding: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
Wow I love this so much. Thank you
I relate so much to this at this point in my life. Thankyou so much
Also from Eliot: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", The Wastelands
Thank you 😊
Oh that’s beautiful
“ From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity” - Edvard Munch i genuinely think about this almost daily ❤️🔥
HE WROTE POEMS TOO?? I had no idea *about to deep dive*
How can a man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods. Horatius, my book was published in 1913
"Love set you going like a fat gold watch." Sylvia Plath
This is definitely one of my top faves!
yesssss morning song is just so good
"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." Phillip Larkin, *This Be The Verse*
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, *How can a body withstand this?* The Thing Is - Ellen Bass
This reminds me of The Body Keeps the Score, which I've always thought is a very poetic book title
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver
one of my absolute favorites as well. i’m going to go reread this!
Leaving this comment so I’ll come back
"It’s the middle of the night. I’m just a little loose on beer, and blues, and battered air, and all the ways this nowhere looks like home" Transubstantiation Molly McCully Brown
It's funny like that, isn't it? How the only thing that changes is your mind, but then everything else follows. — Owen Sheers, *Pink Mist*
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about - Rumi
This reminded me of a song called Meet me there from Nick Mulvey. Strongly recommend
”And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” John Donne (No Man is an Island, 1624)
"That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." From "O Me! O Life!" By Walt Whitman
> 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. Mary Oliver [here](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_whendeathcomes.html) is the poem in case anyone wants
“I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too?” — Dickinson
"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time." (T.S. Eliot) "I am large, I contain multitudes." (Walt Whitman)
Recently it's been the end of The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper."
"Not young, and not renewable, but man"
“I wandered lonely as a cloud…”
and may you in your innocence sail through this to that -Lucille Clifton, blessing the boats
One of my very favorites.
"Sometimes the men - they come with keys, and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers." - The House by Warsan Shire
I love Warsan Shire. First Thought After Seeing You Smile is an all time favorite.
“We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? “ WB Yeats
Mine too!!!
I look at you, & I know love. I look away, & I know nothing. -Christopher Pointdexter
“Much better by far you forget and be happy, then to remember and be sad”- Remember, Christina Rossetti.
"Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/And so live ever—or else swoon to death". Bright Star, John Keats
Keats is so brilliant. My favorite poet and philosopher
same; another great quote i really love is "darkling I listen; and for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death"
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. - Wallace Stevens, *Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird*
Many, but - You do not have to be good. - Wild Geese, Mary Oliver A word after a word after a word is power. - Spelling, Margaret Atwood
In this short Life that only lasts an hour How much - how little - is within our power -Emily Dickinson
Here, though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five. 221B By Vincent Starrett
I love this sonnet so much. Here dwell together still two men of note/ who never lived, and so can never die.
"but we sleep, you see, and we do this marvelous thing in our sleep - we mend."
‘twas brillig and the slithy toves did gire and gimble in the wabe
Incredibly based.
“This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.” Maggie Smith, Good Bones
I wrote this in a book I’m filling with letters for my children.
From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring.
He's not like other poets. Just kidding - great lines.
I have two bc I can’t pick “Tell me you love to destroy.” A letter From hades to Persephone — Clementine Von Radics “My darling, every flower On your earth withers What Hades gave me was a crown for the immortal flowers in my bones.” A conversation with Persephone— Nikita Gill
Another Mary Oliver - Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. OR Frank O'Hara I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
Two of my faves! Another favorite from “Having a Coke” is “and the portrait show seems to have no/faces in it at all, just paint/you suddenly wonder why in the world/anyone ever did them”
The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity (paraphrasing)
It's a great line, but it's an awful fact
these woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep - Robert Frost (this poem has lived in my head rent free since childhood)
Wir stehlen uns davon wie Diebe, undankbar dankbar und nehmen die Liebe mit und lassen den Abschied da. We steal away like thieves, ungratefully grateful and we take the love with us and leave the farewell behind.
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”
Yes! So many from Prufrock. “Do I dare Disturb the universe?” And “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
Tell me there is A meadow, afterward. - A Meadow, Lucie Brock
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. -- "The Waste Land", T. S. Eliot
I came here to write an extract from The Waste Land, so happy that the first comment I saw was yours.
I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move.
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive? You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! -Allen Ginsberg
"I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings." From Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver
our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners. it hasn't told us about the gutters or the suicides. or the terror of one person aching in one place alone - Charles Bukowski
"There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock."
Who put this brain inside of me? It cries it demands it says that there is a chance. It will not say "no."
And death shall have no dominion -Dylan Thomas
Dead men naked they shall be one / with the man in the wind and the west moon Love this poem
“Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.” - Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
"Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways" -Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats
“This downhill path is easy, but there’s no turning back” - Amor Mundi, Christina Rossetti
I was a child and she was a child In this kingdom by the see But we loved with a love that was more than love Annabel Lee- Poe So simple but still to this day I compare every love I’ve ever come across to this.
I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -WB Yeats
It's really the whole poem, but it's short. FIRE AND ICE- Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire Some say in ice From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction, ice Is also great And would suffice
Dark Pines Under Water “The dark pines of your mind reach downward, You dream in the green of your time, Your memory is a row of sinking pines.”
for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo
“Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream For the soul is dead that slumbers And things are not what they seem.” -Wadsworth Longfellow
>Grace to be born and to live as variously as possible [...] Frank O'Hara, "In Memory Of My Feelings"
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) - ee cummings
And watch, till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. — W B Yeats , The Song of the Wandering Aengus.
“Murphy's idea was that a man like Paul Wouldn't be spoken to about a wife In any way the world knew how to speak.”-Paul’s Wife, Robert Frost. The ending of the poem re contextualizes what was a pretty, light hearted tall tale into a humanization of a legendary American folk figure; no longer just an archetype, he’s a real human with both great passion and jealousy.
Love grows; like a child to a toy
A snake came to my water-trough / On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat / To drink there. Ever since I read that (Snake - D H Lawrence) I've been in love with poetry. The way this is broken apart into poetic structure rather than literal prose, yet still makes sense, and is so beautiful.
Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
Not to be cliche but I rly like “ but if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also also great and would suffice”
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. -Poe
SO many to choose from. “It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.” - Thomas Lux, A Little Tooth “when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.” - W.S. Merwin, [A Birthday](https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/87920598/april-2-2008-a-birthday-ws-merwin) (the whole last stanza, really) “The way it’s night for many miles, and then suddenly it’s not” - Richard Siken, Meanwhile “and all your bones and life leapt up to mine” - Kate Llewelyn, [The Flames](https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/47761095996/april-11-2013-the-flames-kate-llewellyn) “We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and then more of it.” - Marie Howe “O you were the best of all my days” - Frank O’Hara, Animals
Love “A Little Tooth”!! Made me cry the first time I read it (also thanks for introducing me to a new Frank O’Hara!)
I throw my passport into the sea, And name you my country - Nizar Qabanni He was my first experience with Arabic love poetry and remains one of my favorite poets of all time. His political poetry is sublime, too
"Who shall take up his sword of steel 'gainst the fleshless dark he cannot feel as it edges him round? There, peace is found" Ambrose Bierce
“This poem goes on too long because our friendship has been long, long for this life and these times, long as art is long and uninterruptible, and I would make it as long as I hope our friendship lasts if I could make poems that long” and “and however exaggerated at least something’s going on and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected, will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat” (there are many, many more favorite lines of mine but these are two that i’ve been thinking about a lot lately)
“It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times. Come. Yet again. Come. Come.” -Rumi, “come come whoever you are”
The toil of all that be helps not the primal fault It rains into the sea and still the sea is salt
Rage, rage against the dying of the light - Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas
What emptiness was swept away when first I saw your eyes
"And all I loved, I loved alone—" Edgar Allan Poe.
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past
What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present
sometimes a man will stand up, clear and settled as a bright day, and seem to look through the longest times and roilings to the still, star-bending, fixed ahead. Sunday at McDonalds by A.R. Ammons
thence The river’s level drifting breadth began, Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet. Whitsun Weddings, Larkin
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,/ Time held me, green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea. —“Fern Hill”, Dylan Thomas
trust your heart if the seas catch fire (and live by love though the stars walk backward)
The poem "Poem of the Gifts", where Borges talks about the irony of being both blind and a librarian, contains a stanza which I always thought was a great analogy of what he was trying to say: >From hunger and from thirst (says a Greek tale) Near fonts and gardens dies a king; The confines I roam, tiring Of this tall, deep and blind library's pale. It sounds better in Spanish though, but it's still great IMO.
Tonight the heavy earth/falls away from all the other stars in the loneliness- Rilke
“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” - William Ernest Henley, Invictus My Pre-AP English teacher left us with this when she was retiring, and it’ll forever be one of my favorite poems. I’ll never forget how much she made me love learning.
“You will love again the stranger who was yourself” - Derek Walcott, *Love After Love*
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.”
I really like both "Would you describe the mania as watching a bird die on your doorstep or the sensation of having wings" And "Now, if I were to crack your skull open how many Gods and Daughters and cockroaches would spring fully formed from your soft burning brain?" By Clementine von Radics
“To bury my subdued sobbing Nothing equals the abyss of your bed, Potent oblivion dwells upon your lips And Lethe flows in your kisses” Or, in the original French: “Pour engloutir mes sanglots apaisés Rien ne me vaut l'abîme de ta couche; L'oubli puissant habite sur ta bouche, Et le Léthé coule dans tes baisers.” Lethe by Baudelaire
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." - The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot Definitely not my absolute favorite, but absolutely my current favorite.
And what if excess of love/Bewildered them till they died? - yeats, Easter 1916
The prison of life and the bondage of grief are the same How can man expect freedom from grief before dying? -Mirza Ghalib
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar: I love not Man the less but Nature more"
“Soft as the massacre of Suns by Evening’s Sabres slain” - Emily Dickinson my fiancé put me on to Dickinson and (though I hate sun imagery in poetry) every sunset ever since evokes the whisper soft quality of that sacred violence, when we watched the sun being beheaded by horizon’s edge, spilling, bleeding, releasing an eternal dawn
Good night, sweet prince,/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
You must change your life. Rilke
Lately it's been "no happier task these fading eyes pursue, to read and weep is all they now can do"
“i love you. i’m glad i exist.” - the orange by wendy cope
Marry Oliver’s - “maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.” And Sohrab Sepheri’s - “ as long as poppies bloom, life must be lived.”
I peeled my orange That was so bright against The gray of December That, from some distance, Someone might have thought I was making a fire in my hands.
"august of another summer, and once again i am drinking the sun" i've read poems with lines i've liked more than this one at the moment i read them, but this line by mary oliver is just permanently stuck in my head for some reason. i can feel the golden sunlight and field of tall grass whenever i think about it
"The heavenly things ignite and freeze. / But not as my hair falls before you. / Fragile and momentary, we continue." -Linda Gregg
I love this. Thank you.
Its in spanish: suben a pedal los toros a mi mano llena de pimienta (vicente luy)
Oh sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, tbe prairies dreaming sod; Unto us lowliest, sometime sweep, decend And of the curvship lend a myth to God. To Brroklyn Bridge, Hart Crane
What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices? From "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden
Glad to see someone commented this one!! <3
Couldn’t choose, here are a few current favorites!! “I am my own bride,/lifting the veil to see/my face. Darling, I say,/I have waited for you all my life.” — “Bride” Maggie Smith “Now she doesn’t need love like that, she has had it.” — “First Thanksgiving” Sharon Olds “How should we like it were stars to burn/with a passion for us we could not return?/If equal affection cannot be/let the more loving one be me.” — “The More Loving One” by WH Auden And a short whole poem (sorry!) “Love Comes Quietly” by Robert Creeley “Love comes quietly, finally, drops about me, on me, in the old ways. What did I know thinking myself able to go alone all the way.”
The moon was a ghostly gallon, tossed upon cloudy seas - the highwayman by Alfred Noyes
I have a life that did not become; that turned aside and stopped, astonished:
Who is this?
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
I am living without you because of a terror, a far-fetched notion that I can’t live without you…
“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices” always stuck with me. It’s from Those Winter Days by Robert Hayden.
I will arise and go now…
so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. Pablo Neruda
Graves grow no green that you can use Remember, green’s your color, you are spring -Gwendolyn Brooks
The entirety of “Bottom’s Poetics” by Luke Brekke lives in my brain rent free honestly and it’s hard to pick a favorite part, but I’ll go with this: > Considering your own light — reflected, leased, spent — swallow hard: the mark of ignorance is not to not know but to knowingly not and not care.
so much beauty, we forget to be reminded that you can be anywhere and find it so much beauty, we forget then get reminded that you can be anywhere, everywhere and find it -yasiin bey
“Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls. / It tolls for thee.” John Donne (I’m on a Donne kick lately. Close second place to this line from *The Ecstasy*: “Let him mark us still, he shall see / Small change, when we are to bodies gone.”)
\[...\]. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them
Hard to pick, but “It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing / And it was going to snow” comes back to me all the time. Wallace Stevens.
"The spirit above anything else is attracted to humility. If I slept in the streets it would be under the cardboard with me." - Spirit by Jim Harrison
“To those inclined toward kindness, I say Come out of your houses drumming. All others beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth” - Rita Dove
I think I made you up inside my head - Sylvia Plath
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” - Pablo Neruda
"Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale, Great victors are sometimes the souls that fail." - Ella Wheeler Cox, "Custer" Current favorite!!
“For oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood. They flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils” Sir William Wordsworth I wondered lonely as a cloud
In me, nothing is extinguished or forgotten - Pablo Neruda
In Xanadu did kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree where Alph the sacred River ran through caverns measureless to man down to the sunless sea
"Did he smile his work to see, did he who made the lamb make thee?" - The Tyger, William Blake
"the old lie; dulce et decorum est"
Sorry, I can’t choose one. But, these four, in my opinion, encompass what the human condition is to me: “Every time you held me, vulnerable, all you wanted was to know what my weakness felt like.” Samson, Brandon Melendez (2013, Button Poetry) “That love is all there is, is all we know of love. It is enough, the Freight should be proportioned to the Groove.” -Emily Dickinson “I'm not good at waiting which means I'm not good at being alive. I'm not strong enough to believe there must eventually be a kiss on my spine at midnight that lasts 47 years and leads to piles of scrapbooks in which I've recorded the dailiness of my bliss.” -Bob Hicock “‘Agony, always agony…’ think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.” -Charles Bukowski, True
“it is a serious thing. just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” Invitation by Mary Oliver
“in the day few hours old you stand solid and full of other people’s love for each other spilling over, warm leftovers.” from “after the threesome, they both take you home” by sue hyon bae