Jump to content

Favorite Poet?


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 162
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • 3 weeks later...

The only poem I've ever really loved is Jabberwocky which was in Through the Looking Glass & What Alice Found There by Lewis Carol. It's basically a nonsense poem, but it's such fun & filled with such drama that I always adored it & it's the only poem I've ever committed to memory. And if yuo ever want to know what the words mean, read the book - Humpty Dumpty expllains a lot of it to Alice personally!

 

JABBERWOCKY

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

 

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

 

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

[PS It made a wonderful film too!]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aha! I am little Miss Clever-puss - I have found the explaination & here it is:

 

'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice.

'Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called Jabberwocky?'

 

'Lets hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty.

 

'I can explain all the poems that ever were invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.'

 

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe

 

'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. Brillig means four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.

 

'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and slithy?'

 

'Well, slithy means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe' is the same as 'active'. You see, its like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word.'

 

'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are toves ?'

 

'Well', toves are something like badgers - they're something like lizards - and they're something like corkscrews.' 'They must be very curious-looking creatures.'

 

'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty; 'also they make their nests under sun-dials - also they live on cheese.'

 

'And what's to gyre and to gimble?' 'To gyre is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To gimble is to make holes like a gimlet.'

 

And the wabe is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?' said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. 'Of course it is. It's called wabe you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it - 'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.

 

'Exactly so. Well then, mimsy is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another portmanteau for you). And a borogove is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round - something like a live mop.'

 

'And then mome raths ?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble.' 'Well, a rath is a sort of green pig: but mome I'm not certain about. I think it's short for 'from home' - meaning that they'd lost their way, you know.'

 

'And what does outgrabe mean?' 'Well, outgribing is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe - down in the wood yonder - and, when you've once heard it, you'll be quite content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?'

 

'I read it in a book,' said Alice

 

Taa-daaaa!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

This is a beautiful poem Pontalba shared with us on another forum.( Hope you don't mind me borrowing it Pont :smile2:)

 

It was originally written by Li T'ai Po and loosely translated by Ezra Pound.

Corner_ru.gif

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

 

 

 

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

 

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

 

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever, and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

 

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden,

They hurt me.

I grow older,

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you,

As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

By Rihaku.

 

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My favourite poem is Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. I also love The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, whom we studied extensively in school.

 

I also like Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas and Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

 

Other than that, I'm not very well versed (pardon the pun!) in poetry, although I would like to change that. I must devote more reading time to poetry! I've downloaded plenty of poetry that is in the public domain...just got to read it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never been much into poetry either. But I do hold a soft spot for the works of Robert Service.

 

Especially his poems "The Cremation of Sam McGee":

 

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8336/robertservice/sam.html

 

and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew":

 

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8336/robertservice/shooting.html

 

Here's the links page for those two where links to more of his poems can be found:

 

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/bluffs/8336/robert_service.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My ultimate favourite is Sylvia Plath and has been for a long time. I do love the imagery she uses and the passion I read in her poetry. Although perhaps I shouldn't, I do like Ted Hughes too, 'Birthday Letters' in particular is worth reading. I also love TS Eliot, WH Auden and Phillip Larkin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't help but quote a verse from Robert Service's Spell of the Yukon. I think it superbly reflects the peculiarities of human nature:

 

There's gold and it's haunting and haunting

It's luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,

It's the forests where silence has lease;

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

 

This way of looking at life is true with us in so many situations. We often do things not so much because of the ultimate reward, but for the thrill gleaned by searching for it high and low.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't help but quote a verse from Robert Service's Spell of the Yukon. I think it superbly reflects the peculiarities of human nature:

 

There's gold and it's haunting and haunting

It's luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,

It's the forests where silence has lease;

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

 

This way of looking at life is true with us in so many situations. We often do things not so much because of the ultimate reward, but for the thrill gleaned by searching for it high and low.

 

I think the first verse sums up the human condition perfectly:

 

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy, I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it --

Came out with a fortune last fall, --

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn't all.

 

But, having worked in the Yukon for three summers in the early to mid eighties, I'd have to say that the second verse just about sums up my experience with the North:

 

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)

It's the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it;

Some say it's a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there's some as would trade it

For no land on earth -- and I'm one.

 

One of these days, I've got to go back there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No I'm not, Oblomov, do they have some kind of significance with the Yukon?

 

Yes, very much so. The great American cartoonist Carl Barks created $crooge McDuck, a Scotland born American tycoon who made his fortune in the Yukon gold rush. But Don Rosa, a Berks student and contemporary writer/cartoonist, greatly expanded this theme into a complete life history. $crooge was also a fan of Robert Service's poems.

 

But unless you have been 'into' comics in general and the Disney Ducks in particular from an early age, the $crooge saga will have little significance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love poetry, I used to carry a copy of Palgrave's Treasury around with me when I was in my teens, you know, one of those books with the very very thin paper and very close print? My favourite poets are Blake, Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a Jesuit priest who invented a new system called 'sprung rhythm'. His poems are difficult to read because his style is very odd, but one of his best poems is Pied Beauty:

 

Glory be to God for dappled things

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...