Poem Suggestions

[nikinoodle7]

I'm looking for some poems to begin reading. Any suggestions? I do enjoy Shakespeare.

[AmandaR]

There are so many categories of poetry, I almost don't know where to start. I guess I will give you a few from each category and you can go from there.

Love
"Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare
"She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron
"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe

Life
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
"All the World is a Stage" by William Shakespeare
"If" Rudyard Kipling

Dark (Not Quite Horror)
"The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes

Other
"Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Oh Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman

[nikinoodle7]

Why thank you!

[AmandaR]

My pleasure. I hope you enjoy them!

[krisssy_99]

If you haven't read " My last Duchess " by Robert Browning yet , please do! Its an amazing poem with so many hidden innuendoes all in a soliloquy. It is one of my most favorite poems of all time. My other favorites are :
A River - A.K Ramanuja
Our Casuarina Tree - Toru Dutt
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Caroll
A Poet to His Beloved - W.B Yeats
When You Are Old - W.B Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole - W.B Yeats
Home Burial - Robert Frost
I Have Loved Flowers that Fade - Robert Bridges
Since you love Shakespeare you'd probably love "Those lips that Love's own hand did make" - if you haven't read it yet I love William Blake's poems too , especially his " Auguries of Innocence"

There are so many more but I cant remember the rest as of now . Thank you for posting this question - it's going to help me find poems too! **happy dance**

[k4rm1c3n]

I read a wide range of poetry and love quite a few suggested so far. A few other favourites are:

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost
Disused Graveyard - Robert Frost
Acquainted With The Night - Robert Frost
Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Sonnet 29 - William Shakespeare
The Funeral Of Youth: Threnody - Rupert Brooke
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death - W B Yeats
Memories - Rudyard Kipling
Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

[AmandaR]

Oh! I forgot about Nothing Gold Can Stay and Jabberwocky. Good suggestions!

[Nathrad Sheare]

One of my favorites:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night



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.

[krisssy_99]

@Nathrad Sheare : I love that poem!! so much emotion , strength and depth.

I just remembered another short poem that I like so much , I'l post it here here:

"He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in." - Edwin Markham ("Outwitted")

Everytime I read that i get all warm and fuzzy inside <3

[PashaRu]

William Pitt Root is a wonderful poet. Here's one:

A Vice in Two Parts

I
I'm the absurd chameleon, trying
to match the colors of the fire
instead of leaping out.

II
The madder I get the calmer I become
until I am a stone
no one can throw.

[Nathrad Sheare]

Tennyson is one of my all- time favorite poets. The work of his that I love best is about the size of a novella, but this one works, too:

Tears, Idle Tears

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

[npandit]

Alfred Lord Tennyson poems are good too, if you like that genre.

[missanonymous]

One of my favorites is "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. It's haunting.

[christina_n_m]

I personally would recommend getting a collection of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, Jack Spicer is also great as well.