As an English major, I’ve read (and written) lots of poetry. I have a few favorites, though – some lines that are close to my heart, and float into my head once in a while. April is National Poetry Month, so I thought I’d share them with you. In no particular order:
1. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver, from “The Summer Day”)
2. “She will look at me with her thin arms extended, / offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.” (Billy Collins, from “Tuesday, June 4, 1991.” I love pretty much everything Collins writes.)
3. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” (My friend Joy and I once climbed a hill in Salzburg, Austria, through a yellow-green spring wood, and recited this poem as we climbed. Yes, we were and are huge nerds. But now when I hear Frost’s lines, I remember our hike up the Kapuzinerberg.)
4. “In a house in Paris all covered in vines / lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. […] The smallest one was Madeline.” (No explanation needed – unless you’ve never heard of Madeline, whereupon I say, go find out about her right now!)
5. “All that is gold does not glitter, / Not all those who wander are lost…” (I love this poem from The Lord of the Rings…such deep truth here, and it fits into Tolkien’s magnificent mythology.)
6. “I am living. I remember you.” (the heartbreaking last lines from Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” – posted in its entirety on Sarah’s site)
7. “Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – At all” (Oh, how I love Dickinson. This one is my favorite.)
8. “I dwell in Possibility, / A fairer house than Prose – ” (More Dickinson. Love it.)
9. “Ricky was ‘L’ but he’s home with the flu…” (From “Love” by Shel Silverstein – see this post about fourth grade poetry.)
10. “You don’t own it – English majors!” (From a poem about poetry, by my friend Grant, who took creative writing classes even though he wasn’t an English major.)
What are the lines that have stayed with you?
cakes, tea and dreams 
Thanks for this. As a lover of books, I am too ignorant about poetry. I think when I was young (like, high school I guess) I didn’t think I “got it” and perhaps didn’t give it its deserved attention. This inspired me to go dive in!
love this post! what a great collection of poems.
some of my favorite lines are…
“but my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow” from “aimless love” by billy collins
“and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves” from e e cumming’s “who knows if the moon’s”
“take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep” from yeat’s “when you are old”
“sorrow like a ceaseless rain beat upon my heart” from edna st. vincet millay’s “sorrow”
oh how i could go on 🙂
xo Alison
“Wild and precious life” — love it! These are some beautiful bits of poetry.
Thanks for rekindling my love of Dickinson.
I hope you have a lovely Monday, xo abby
I love #5! It’s one of my favorites as well. 🙂 I’m not very well-read in poetry, sadly, so don’t make fun of me if all my favorites are a bit cliche.
“I’m nobody, who are you?/Are you nobody too?” – Dickinson
I hate to be a downer, but I think this is one of the most potent paragraphs in the English language:
“Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.” – Eliot
My other two favorites – not exactly flowers and chocolate, but a little less stark, at least:
“Therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee” – Donne
“O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!” – Burns
Wow, maybe I should read more happy poetry – it seems the only ones that stick with me are fairly (or very) negative.
“there once was a boy from nantucket” No, no, I kid.
Seriously:
“Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? / Have the been, like, chopped down with the rest of the rainforest, ya know?” Taylor Mali, Totally Like Whatever.
“Oh! She wants me to / Love her the way she would love / Her if she was me.” Kent Foreman, Epihany, a haiku.
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” Poe, The Raven
“But we in it shall be remembered / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother;” Shakespear, Henry V
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.” henry David Thoreau, Walden. (not poetry per se, but pretty darn close for my eyes)
Let’s see if I can do this one from memory:
“And now the pitcher holds the ball / and now he lets it go / And now the air is shattered / By the force of Casey’s blow… / Oh somwhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright / Oh somehwere bands are playing and somewhere hearts are light / Oh somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout / but there is no joy in Mudville / Mighty Casey has struck out.” Ernest Thayer, casey at the Bat
That was fun.
Thanks Katie
[…] of the language used. Recently, my friend Katie posted a list of her favorite lines from poems to her blog. I enjoyed reading her list and the comments that others posted with a few of their favorite […]