ive never really had a poem ‘speak to me’, im aware that what others may find very meaningful personally may not align with me, but i want to have a poem or poetry book that if someone asks ‘whats your favorite poem?’ my mind just goes straight to one. i want a poem that hits me so hard i memorise it and write it on the mirror
by frog_in_a_tophat
6 Comments
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Wasteland by TS Eliot
The Complete Maximus Poems by Charles Olson
The Heat Bird by MeiMei Bersenbrugge
Oracle Night by Michael Brownstein
Gunslinger by Edward Down
Prelude to a 20 Volume Suicide Note by LeRoi Jones (Aka AmiriBaraka)
The Collected Poems of Audre Lord
Beginning With O by Olga Broumas
Imagoes by Wanda Coleman
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley
So Going Around Cities by Ted Berrigan
Lunch Poems and Meditations In An Emergency by Frank O’Hara
Love Is A Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
Revolutionary Letters by Dianne DiPrima
Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds
Villianelle by Lynn Crosbie
Schrecker’s *Insomniacs, We*.
Ginsberg’s *Kaddish*.
O’Hara’s *Lunch Poems*.
Silken’s *Crush*.
Carver’s *Aquamarine*.
Bukowski’s *Pleasures of the Damned*.
Some individual poems,
The Questioners by E L Mayo,
Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service,
Robert Frost Acquainted with the Night,
May I Feel said He E E Cummings,
Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen,
Funeral Blues by W H Auden
starting with Stop all the clocks, cut off the Telephone
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
The book Subjects in Poetry by Daniel Brown had excellent poems.
Ada Limón is an amazing poet
She wears pain like diamonds by Alfa was a great collection
Dramatis Personae by Robert Browning
OK, so Shel Silverstein is known for his silly little children’s poetry books, but have you ever read them as an adult? My kid and I have them all on rotation and reread them regularly, and sometimes I’ll read them on my own. This one from *Where the Sidewalk Ends* is my absolute favorite—it makes me cry.
ARROWS
I shot an arrow toward the sky,
It hit a white cloud floating by.
The cloud fell dying to the shore,
I don’t shoot arrows anymore.