What is your favorite stanza or quote from a poem?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Karen on August 23, 2009 at 10:12pm

Ravishing!

Permalink Reply by Marit on August 30, 2009 at 5:03pm

One of my favourite stanzas is from a poem by Mikhail Lermontov (I think I have mentioned that guy before...). He was a Russian poet, often compared to Lord Byron. I especially like the two last sentences of this poem:

The Sail

A lone white sail shows for an instant,
Where gleams the sea, an azure streak.
What left it in its homeland distant?
In alien parts what does it seek?

The billow play, the mast bends creaking,
The wind, impatient, moans and sighs...
It is not joy that it is seeking,
Nor is it happiness it flies.

The blue wave dance, they dance and tremble,
The sun's bright ray caress the seas.
And yet for storm it begs, the rebel,
As if in storm lurked calm and peace!


(Again I'm not sure about the translation, but it is the best I have found so far on the Internet, in my opinion)

Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 4, 2009 at 7:28pm

Hi Marit,

It takes a poet to translate a poem.

Nice.

Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 4, 2009 at 6:55pm

I have 2 favorite poems that have always stuck in my mind for some reason. I'll post them separately. My favorite stanza is:

"Billie Holiday got lost on the subway and stayed there forever.
Raised little peace-of-mind gardens in out of the way stations,
And will go on living in wrappers of jazz silence forever, loved."

It's from the poem, "Afterwards, They Shall Dance", by Bob Kaufman

     Afterwards, They Shall Dance

In the city of St. Francis they have taken down the statue of St. Francis,
And the hummingbirds all fly forward to protest, humming feather poems.

Bodenheim denounced everyone and wrote, Bodenheim had no sweet marijuana dreams,
Patriotic muscateleer, did not die seriously, no poet love to end with, gone.

Dylan took the stone cat's nap at St. Vincent's, vaticaned beer, no defense;
That poem shouted from his nun-filled room, an insult to the brain, nerves,
Save now from Swansea, white horses, beer birds, snore poems, Wales-bird.

Billie Holiday got lost on the subway and stayed there forever.
Raised little peace-of-mind gardens in out of the way stations,
And will go on living in wrappers of jazz silence forever, loved.

My face feels like a living emotional relief map, forever wet.
My hair is curling in anticipation of my own wild gardening.

Poor Edgar Allan Poe died translated, in unpressed pants, ended in light,
Surrounded by ecstatic gold bugs, his hegira blessed by Baudelaire's orgy.

Whether I am a poet or not, I use fifty dollars' worth of air every day, cool.
In order to exist I hide behind stacks of red and blue poems
And open little sensuous parasols, singing the nail-in-the-foot song, drinking cool beatitudes.

Permalink Reply by David Sensei on May 19, 2012 at 11:53pm

Thanks for posting this fine work, AE. I share your favorite stanza. It's rather gloomy but the words dance.

Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 4, 2009 at 7:16pm

My favorite stanza from this poem by Galway Kinnell, is the last one.

First Song

Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear the pond frogs all
Calling on his ear with what seemed their joy.

Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
Listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall
Of Illinois, and from the fields two small
Boys came bearing cornstalk violins
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with rosins
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.

It was now fine music the frogs and the boys
Did in the towering Illinois twilight make
And into dark in spite of a shoulder's ache
A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk
The first song of his happiness, and the song woke
His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.

Permalink Reply by Simon Miller on October 23, 2009 at 9:03pm

Galway Kinnell is one of my favourite poets. Here is a link to another succulent morsel. Rapture

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 24, 2009 at 2:33pm

That's very well done.

Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 4, 2009 at 7:27pm

Hey Dallas,

A sensual stanza . . . reminds me of the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 4, 2009 at 8:00pm

Yes, a very sensual excerpt, expressing so much longing for connection.

Permalink Reply by annet on May 14, 2012 at 11:36am

On this note: when I was religious I used to think of the eucharist as a hug from god. Now I feel the much healthier hugs from nature are those awesome sunset moments, no woo required. 

Permalink Reply by Simon Miller on October 22, 2009 at 1:47am

This verse of Alexander Pope has stuck with me since I was at school.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

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