What is the best poem? I vote for Dickinson’s poem beginning “Apparently with no surprise”

there is no single 'best poem', hun

WILD GEESE You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Mary Oliver

Thich Nhat Hanh's "Please Call Me by My True Names" is a poem that really moved me when I first read it.

If you were coming in the Fall

Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall,

I'd brush the summer by

With half a smile and half a spum,

As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,

I'd wind the months in balls,

And put them each in separate drawers,

Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,

I'd count them on my hand,

Subtracting till my fingers dropped

Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,

That yours and mine should be,

I'd toss it yonder like a rind,

And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length

Of time's uncertain wing,

It goads me, like the goblin bee,

That will not state its sting.

This is my favorite:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

^^^^Sorry,

"When you are Old"

William Butler Yeats

^ Yeats

Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias"

I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Your choice sucks.

Your mother fucks.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

a springtime ribbit awash in dump truck headlights-- green gravel pancakes

I cry into wool, Crimson stains remain, alone, Like shit on the moon.

Movie star drives car She drives too fast splat Stupid star dead

The conclusion of Tennyson's " Ulysses" for the elders:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene

An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

A strange young fellow from Leeds

Rashly swallowed a package of seeds.

Great tufts of fine grass

Sprouted out of his ass

And his balls were covered with weeds.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop but maybe that’s too obvious.

Dover Beach

good thread; reminding me of many of my favorites over the years

Thanks, guys.

There once was a boy from Duluth

Who was missing a prominent tooth

He could swallow a cock

While whistling Bach

The older queens thought him uncouth.

Not sure it's the best, but I did a pretty deep dive into Holy Sonnet X for a class once.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

La Vita Nuova

A work in poetry more than a poem though. If that makes sense. Not sure how to explain it.

OP, that may be your favorite poem but, as noted, there is no "best" poem.

And dear Emily would shiver with pity that you would call her lapse her best poem that year, much less the best of all.

She would, if a DLer, post, "Oh, dear."

Favorites?

Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

Basho's frog haiku

"The Iliad"

Dickinson's "My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close"

Whitman's "The Wound Dresser."

Frost's "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things"

Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies," "When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue," and "Under the Greenwood Tree"

Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat"

Dylan Thomas' "Fern Hill"

Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" and “In a Station of the Metro” of 1911" (The latter is the best Imagist poem. See, a subgenre or style can have a "best." But not the category of "all poems," for fuck's sake.)

I have many poems that I love,and think are brilliant; I studied and taught poetry and literature for over 30 years.

But because the question is for THE best---and mindful of the fact that I know only British (UK) and American poems---I would have to nominate:

Milton's "Paradise Lost."

No, r25; NOT "favorites." Or my answer would be 100 lines long!

I love any poem by Emily Dickinson, since they each can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

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.

“…and all disheveled wandering stars.”

[quote]I love any poem by Emily Dickinson, since they each can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

Just as " Amazing Grace " can be sung to the tune of " Gilligan's Island."

There once was a man from Nantucket.

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

He said with a grin as he wiped off his chin

"If my ear was a cunt I could fuck it. "

Locust Shell

The locust thought she'd die, she laughed so hard. She didn't but her sides split. Surprised she lay dazed, dazzling; she was beside herself or what had up until then given her definition. It doesn't mean anything. You can take it lightly.

--Jody Gladding

Distance from Loved Ones by James Tate

After her husband died, Zita decided to get the face-lift she had always wanted. Half-way through the operation her blood pressure started to drop, and they had to stop. When Zita tried to fasten her seat-belt for her sad drive home, she threw-out her shoulder. Back at the hospital the doctor examined her and found cancer run rampant throughout her shoulder and arm and elsewhere. Radiation followed. And, now, Zita just sits there in her beauty parlor, bald, crying and crying.

My mother tells me all this on the phone, and I say: Mother, who is Zita?

And my mother says, I am Zita. All my life I have been Zita, bald and crying. And you, my son, who should have known me best, thought I was nothing but your mother.

But, Mother, I say, I am dying. . .

"Shake and shake the ketchup bottle, first none will come and then a lot'll." 😉

- Ogden Nash

A personal favorite is "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," by William Wordsworth:

"I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils....."

Best, people. Best.

But if you insist on FAVORITES, Katy, bar the door!

My Last Duchess. (Browning)

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. (Donne)

Ozymandias. (Shelley)

My Heart Leaps Up. (Wordsworth)

Dover Beach. (Arnold)

Dulce et Decorum Est. (Owen)

To an Athlete, Dying Young. (Housman)

To Althea, From Prison. (Lovelace)

If We Must Die. (McKay)

Mother to Son. (Hughes)

Kubla Khan. (Coleridge)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. (Eliot)

Meditation XVII. (Donne)

Because I Could Not Stop for Death. (Dickinson)

The Man He Killed. (Hardy)

Harlem Sweeties. (Hughes)

For your delectation:

Who Are My People:

My people? Who are they?

I went into the church where the congregation

Worshiped my God. Were they my people?

I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.

My people! Where are they?

I went into the land where I was born,

Where men spoke my language...

I was a stranger there.

‘My people,’ my soul cried. ‘Who are my people?’

Last night in the rain I met an old man

Who spoke a language I do not speak,

Which marked him as one who does not know my God.

With apologetic smile he offered me

The shelter of his patched umbrella.

I met his eyes... And then I knew...

When it comes to poetry, I think "best" is really just another way of saying "favorite." So can we post favorites instead of getting bogged down in debates over "best"?

If I were president, I’m a thinkin’ I’d like to be like old Abe Lincoln So when I was shot I’d be on the money and not forgot.-Irene Schweinefurth

Louise Gluck died today. “The Wild Iris” and “Meadowlands” are marvelous collections.

I vote for Dickinson’s poem beginning “Anal with no surprise”

Not a semi colon, r22. Just a comma. A pause.

Any poem by Mary Oliver.

Louise Glück, Nobel laureate and one of the finest contemporary American poets, died of cancer today at the age of 80. RIP. I bet she was a Datalounger.

An excerpt from The Ballad of William Sycamore by Stephen Vincent Benet -one of my favorites:

With a leather shirt to cover my back,

And a redskin nose to unravel

Each forest sign, I carried my pack

As far as a scout could travel.

Till I lost my boyhood and found my wife,

A girl like a Salem clipper!

A woman straight as a hunting knife

With eyes as bright as the Dipper!

We cleared our camp where the buffalo feed,

Unheard-of streams were our flagons;

And I sowed my sons like the apple seed

On the trail of the Western wagons.

They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow,

A fruitful, a goodly muster.

The oldest died at the Alamo.

The youngest fell with Custer.

The letter that told it burned my hand,

Yet we smiled and said, “So be it!”

But I could not live when they fenced the land,

For it broke my heart to see it.

I saddled a red, unbroken colt

And rode him into the day there;

And he threw me down like a thunderbolt.

And rolled on me as I lay there.

The hunter’s whistle hummed in my ear

As the city men tried to move me.

And I died in my boots like a pioneer,

With the whole wide sky above me.

Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,

Like the seed of a prairie thistle;

It has washed my bones with honey and oil

And picked them clean as a whistle.

And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring.

And my sons, like the wild geese flying;

And I lie and hear the meadowlark sing

And have much content in my dying.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,

The towns where you would have bound me!

I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,

And my buffalo have found me.

Well, frankly, r38, no. It is, indeed, the difference between "objective" and "subjective." The best car might be a Rolls, but my favorite might be a used VW. To suggest indifference to denotation is fine when the topic is poetry...!

Please don't remind me that there are real tragedies happening in the world right now. That's one reason I picked as a "Favorite" Hardy's "The Man He Killed":

Seriously, no other poem has brought me more joy than "Packing A Musket".

The best poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

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.

I went on EBay after hearing about Gluck and the prices of her books went sky high!

Agree with R38.

My favorite: "Aubade," by Philip Larkin.

Link.