Are you a fan of poetry?
Who is your favorite poet?
How does he/she affects your life?

McGonagall ? Really ? Ayeeesh, Ddraig !


From the Burgess translation of Cyrano de Bergerac :

Sir, please cease this doggerel recital !

That was no doggerel, that was the title...




[ from memory ]

Pass me my crucifix and garlic...

would you mind sharing yours Aries? :)

Hands down Catullus

Here's why

My teacher of Latin most of the timess asked me to translate his poems. Not that I practised all of them you filthy guys...

William Blake's THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience) is a piece that both enchants and lurks into my mind with a creepy note:

You are not only man, but creatures not to be named if you let your untamed creations leave your mind carelessly.



http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/tyger.html

Perhaps because I have been steeped in poetry since I was an infant, I could NEVER pick out one, particular favourite.

However, there is one, by Hugh McCrae, which lurks always in my mind for a number of reasons; ready to pop out in bits and bobs and attach itself to some of the most significant - as well as the most mundane - moments of my journey through the years:

Song of the Rain.

Night,
and the yellow pleasure of candle-light....
old brown books and the kind, fine face of the clock
fogged in the veils of the fire - it's cuddling tock.

The cat,
greening her eyes on the flame-litten mat;
wickedly, wakeful she yawns at the rain
bending the roses over the pane,
and a bird in my heart begins to sing
over and over the same sweet thing--

Safe in the house with my boyhood's love
and our children asleep in the attic above.

I am starting to like some poetry such as John Donne, Alexandre Pope and William Blake. Everyone Englishmen.
This is a piece of poem written by Alexandre Pope:
"True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance,"
Ease means freedom from pain.

Until the next time.

Of the living robert hass is great. Of the dead I'll stick to Wallace Stevens.

A poem for every occasion. Merry Christmas everyone! Actually this Christmas[/url] poem of John Betjeman is a great inspirational one

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.


And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'

Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

And if you haven't read Allen Ginsbergs' Howl then you as missing a GREAT poem. It's far to long to put here but probably one of the greatest poems of the 20th Century. Here's a link to it at the Poetry Foundations' online website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

For sheer elegant irreverence, Byron! Byron! Byron!
And he could be the ultimate romantic, the painter of landscapes and the uncompromising idealist... but it was when he was funny that i think he was at his best.

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Friedrich Nietzsche

VENICE

At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music –
drunken it swam out into the twilight.

My soul, a stringed instrument
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
– Did anyone listen to it?


Source of the translation
http://www.georgeleemoore.com/writing/philosophy/nietzsches-concept/3-the-transition-to-style/4-nietzsche-as-poet/

To Emma - Nietzsche thanks for your compliment.

Impossible to pick just one... but even at the Oscars they do.... Gotta agree there with Romany (the first to say this on this post)
In English, which i call my step mother tongue the finalists would be: Yeats, Tennyson, Byron, Frost, Blake and Whitman. At least thirty others come close...

And the winner, perhaps on a whimsy is: Byron, Lord George Gordon Noel. The chosen work?

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Robert Burns FTW!

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen'd, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!