what are some of your favourite poems?
First, let me preface this by saying that most of these poems are accessible online. I am aware of how difficult buying books can be, so I made sure that most of these were somehow easily found from a quick google search. These are some of the poems I love the most! I selected a few of my favourite passages from each one of them in hopes that you might want to read them in full. One of my most-used and favourite website, the Poetry Foundation, has many, many poems available. You can read them for free. Their podcast, VS, hosted by poets Franny Choi and Danez Smith is also brilliant! Just putting this out there in hopes that you might be swayed into giving it a go, you can find it on Spotify (I donât have Spotify premium and can still download the episodes) and Apple Music, I think. Enjoy! <3
Mayakovsky [âI love you. I love you, / but Iâm turning to my verses / and my heart is closing / like a fist.â],
Aus Einem April [âFingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips / of the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist rolls / in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.â],
Poem (Thatâs not a cross look its a sign of life) [« everything / seems slow suddenly and boring except / for my instable thinking towards you / as you lie asleep completely plotzed and / gracious as a hillock in the mist from one / small window, sunless and only slightly open / as is your mouth and presently your quiet eyes / your breathing is like that history lesson »]
Steps [« oh god itâs wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much »],
and Having a coke with you (and many more) by Frank OâHara [it is hard to believe when Iâm with you that there can be anything as still / as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it / in the warm New York 4 oâclock light we are drifting back and forth / between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles »]
Fog by Carl Sandburg [âThe fog comes / on little cat feet. It sits looking / over harbor and city / and then moves on.â]
The Promise We Live By by Simon J. Ortiz « So Iâm not sure this morning when I step outside, / and suddenly itâs not winter anymore but some / warm mask that molds the contours of my face / with unbidden warmth. »]
On the Back Porch by Dorianne Laux [« I want to stay on the back porch / while the world tilts / toward sleep, until what I love / misses me, and calls me in. »]
Sanity by Caroline Bird [« I change nappies. Donate my eggs. Learn / a profound lesson about sacrifice. Brunch. / No singing floorboards. No vents leaking / scentless instructions. My mission is over. / The world has zipped up her second mouth. »]
The Love Cook by Ron Padgett [« Let me cook you some dinner. »] (thatâs all youâre getting, go check it out on poetry foundation)
America by Allen Ginsberg [« America Iâve given you all and now Iâm nothing. »]
Onions by William Matthews [« How easily happiness begins by / dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter / slithers and swirls across the floor / of the sauté pan, especially if its / errant path crosses a tiny slick / of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions. »]
A Phonecall from Frank OâHara by Anne Waldman [« I was living in San Francisco / My heart was in Manhattan / It made no sense, no reference point / Hearing the sad horns at night, / fragile evocations of female stuff »]
New York by Valzhyna Mort, translated by Franz Wright [« new york, madame, is a monument to a city »]
