Poetry recommendations please!

[mellowyellowgirl]

The kid is into poetry these days so I need to pick your brains for recommendations.

It doesn't have to be poetry for kids. Just anything you've read and loved.

Thank you!

 

[seaurchin]

Pop Goes Korea by Franny Choi

pop goes korea poem - Search Videos

www.bing.com

For kids, "Casey at Bat." Also "The Jabberwocky."

 

[marymm]

These are two of my favorite poetry books:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486411052/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1




https://www.amazon.com/Rumi-Collect...rumi+collection&qid=1601479228&s=books&sr=1-2

 

[AllAboardTheBlingTrain]

I’m into all kinds of poetry styles: favorites being Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, e.e.cummings and Oscar Wilde.

For kids, I’d recommend Roald Dahl and Kenn Nesbitt!

 

[missy]

I adore poetry. Hard to choose a favorite poet or poem.

I know you said it doesn't have to be child specific but here is a link you may find helpful.

10 Wonderful Children’s Poets You Should Know

Eighteen years ago today, Shel Silverstein, also known as Uncle Shelby, also known as the writer who introduced a generation (or two) of current adults to poetry, died at the age of 67. Of course S…

lithub.com

As far as choosing favorite poets (which I cannot do) here are some poets and poems I adore.

Still I Rise
BY MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.




“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
orry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

“Holy Sonnet 10: Death, Be Not Proud” by John Donne (1572-1631)
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.




“A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
What the heart of the young man said to the Psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;—

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.


“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Because I could not stop for Death
BY EMILY DICKINSON
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

I also love Sylvia Plath. Her poems are heavy and dark though so probably not a good selection for children.

Waking In Winter by Sylvia Plath
I can taste the tin of the sky —- the real tin thing.
Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.
All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations —-
An assembly-line of cut throats, and you and I
Inching off in the gray Chevrolet, drinking the green
Poison of stilled lawns, the little clapboard gravestones,
Noiseless, on rubber wheels, on the way to the sea resort.

How the balconies echoed! How the sun lit up
The skulls, the unbuckled bones facing the view!
Space! Space! The bed linen was giving out entirely.
Cot legs melted in terrible attitudes, and the nurses —-
Each nurse patched her soul to a wound and disappeared.
The deathly guests had not been satisfied
With the rooms, or the smiles, or the beautiful rubber plants,
Or the sea, Hushing their peeled sense like Old Mother Morphia.

One poem/song on my mind is Container by Fiona Apple
I don't know if it is technically considered a poem but I consider it one.

Container
Fiona Apple
I was screaming into the canyon
At the moment of my death
The echo I created
Outlasted my last breath
My voice it made an avalanche
And buried a man I never knew
And when he died his widowed bride
Met your daddy and they made you
I have only one thing to do and that's
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
I have only one thing to do and that's
To be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
I have only one thing to do and that's
Be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
(Sink back into the ocean)
Sink back into the o
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the o
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the ocean


I also love Bob Dylan. Poet? Musician? As many musicians- they are also poets.

 

[monarch64]

I always loved James Whitcomb Riley when I was a kid. The cadence and lyricism of his poems is very satisfying. He is a United States poet, specifically from Indiana, a Midwestern state, and it's very old-timey, country folk dialect. You may or may not love it, but worth a read anyway.

For our Northern Hemisphere Pricescopers, here is a delicious seasonal JWR poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44956/when-the-frost-is-on-the-punkin