[senior citizen]

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[LI SNOWBIRD]

Gibran is wonderful -- but there are so many great poets. I mostly favor the romantics. If pressed i would say T.S Eliot.
My daughter recently gave me a coffee mug with a TS eliot quote "I have mesured out my life in coffee spoons", from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I means a great deal to me. Hmm can you guess I was a lit major?

[birdawg]

Barry White Baby baby baby!

[graciegirl]

Dr. Suess. You can take the teacher outa Kindergarten, but you can't take the Kindergarten outa the teacher.

[bluedog103]

Whoever wrote the Man From Nantucket!

[Taltarzac725]

John Donne : The Poetry Foundation

I really liked a lot of these poems after seeing a special on his poems and his life. This was on BBC and had Simon Schama and Fiona Shaw discussing and reading his works. http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/po...hn_donne.shtml

[senior citizen]

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[zcaveman]

The Limerick guy (or gal).

Z

[senior citizen]

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[zcaveman]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
************************************************** *********
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry 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.
************************************************** ***********8
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973 / Parral / Chile
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.


SONNET XVII by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
　
　

　
　
　
　
　

You asked for the name of a poet - not a recitation of his/her works. If you name the poet we can look up the works.

Z

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by zcaveman

The Limerick guy (or gal).

Z

There was a young vicar called Herman,
Who came here to preach his first sermon;
He failed to enthuse
The folk in the pews,
Because he could only speak German.

The Mad Hatter said to the Hare:
"I think someone's taken my chair".
Said Alice: "I see—
And who might that be?"
"Myself", said the Hatter, "so there!"

There was an old mathematician,
Who had a profound intuition;
A smart operation
Called multiplication
Would speed up the task of addition.

There was a young girl called Felicity
Whose body gave off electricity;
It produced enough wattage
To power her cottage,
And earned her a lot of publicity.

When Jesus turned water to wine,
The crowd thought it tasted just fine.
A rich connoisseur
Remarked with hauteur:
"It's vintage BC 29!"

There was an American resident
Who'd long had a wish to be President,
But the modest amount
In his savings account
Was probably why he felt hesitant.

I once heard a wise observation
On how to improve education:
If children have ardour,
They'll want to try harder—
They just need enough inspiration.

A bright undergraduate's query
About the relativity theory
Was met with a dry
Professorial sigh:
"Just study your lecture notes, dearie".

A funeral rite was progressing,
And the priest was pronouncing his blessing,
When the coffin lid rose,
The worshippers froze,
And a voice cried: "I'm dead? How distressing!"

There was a composer called Handel,
Who said to a rival: "You vandal!
You've arranged my Messiah
For all-female choir—
I think it's an absolute scandal!"

"In Britain", said Julius Caesar,
"I faced the odd tactical teaser.
One tribe gave me grief,
So I captured their chief
And slaughtered the stubborn old geezer".

The newspaper headline said "Shame!
Loose morals of Queen are to blame!"
It intended to slate
Not their dear Head of State,
But the well-known rock band of that name.

The above poem was blatantly stolen from someone named Bowdein.

I also know another one about a guy from an island just off the coast of Massachusetts.

[The Mountaineer]

William Shakespeare. Playwright, but his words are poetry to me. A rose by any other name is just as sweet. Penetrating philophy in 10 words. If you insist on a poet, Wordsworth's "Prelude."

[Bizdoc]

Like all good Alaskans, Robert Service. While reading the threda on cremation, I kept thinking that I wanted to be cremated on the marge of Lake Labarge under the Northern Lights...

[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by Bizdoc

Like all good Alaskans, Robert Service. While reading the threda on cremation, I kept thinking that I wanted to be cremated on the marge of Lake Labarge under the Northern Lights...

I have read a lot of Robert Service. I lived in Nevada from 1969 or so through 1984. With much of that last year getting a MA in Librarianship and Information Management from the University of Denver. Alaska and Northern Nevada seem to have a lot of similarities with landscape and people. There were three Alaskans in some of my classes at the University of Denver. All went to work in public or school libraries in Alaska.

[Tennisnut]

Sorry, don't have one. Never got "lit" by English lit! Remember spending an hour discussing one sentence in a poem or passage. Thank God that class is over! As an engineering major, thought it was better to use the KISS principal in speech and exchange of thoughts. Have a friend who loves Emily Dickinson. Can anyone please explain what she is trying to say?