I carry your heart - E.E Cummings

'If.' - Rudyard Kipling. I think it's because of its inspirational qualities:- 'If' by Rudyard Kipling. If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master, If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build them up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will, which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

When asked for a favourite poem I usually say Wodwo by Ted Hughes because of the effect it had on me when I first read it (aged about 21 in a library when I should have been studying for exams). Wodwo by Ted Hughes What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge I enter water. Who am I to split The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed Of the river above me upside down very clear What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret interior and make it my own? Do these weeds know me and name me to each other have they seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped out of nothing casually I've no threads fastening me to anything I can go anywhere I seem to have been given the freedom of this place what am I then? And picking bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it me and doing that have coincided very queerly But what shall I be called am I the first have I an owner what shape am I what shape am I am I huge if I go to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees till I get tired that's touching one wall of me for the moment if I sit still how everything stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre but there's all this what is it roots roots roots roots and here's the water again very queer but I'll go on looking *** Since then I've had lots of favourite poems, including this one by a Scottish poet. The Poet by George Mackay Brown Therefore he no more troubled the pool of silence. But put on mask and cloak, Strung a guitar And moved among the folk. Dancing they cried, 'Ah, how our sober islands Are gay again, since the blind lyrical tramp Invaded the Fair!' Under the last dead lamp When all the dancers and masks had gone inside His cold stare Returned to its true task, interrogation of silence.

Edgar Allan Poe is my favorite poet. Though I love Edna St. Vincent Mallay. Alone by Edgar Allan Poe From childhood's hour I have not been As others were---I have not seen As others saw---I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I lov'd, I loved alone. Then---in my childhood---in the dawn Of a most stormy life---was drawn From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that 'round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold--- From the lightning in the sky As it pass'd me flying by--- From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

I know it's cliché, but Edgar Allen Poe.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow!

Walt Whitman, because of his use of imagery, and because he is in a class all his own.

John Keats. My favorite poem by Keats is Hyperion

Robert Creeley

Robert burns

Shakespeare because of his economical use of words to convey meanings.

Shiki, at the moment. It changes.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was the most popular American poet in his lifetime, and one of the first American poets to be taken seriously abroad. He helped capture and define American Culture in the 19th Century when the nation was still young.

It changes all the time... but I've got a little group that I like more than any other little group: George Mackay Brown Ivor Gurney John Clare Norman MacCaig Coleridge

Edgar Allen Poe

Poe. or me. ..um. Both. ~+~

I'm not big on poetry but a couple favorite poems are "the road less travelled" and "the walrus and the carpenter".

Pam Ayres. http://www.pamayres.com/

I love Sylvia Plath, and I won't lie.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Allen Ginsberg

Shel Silverstein The Perfect High - a poem by Shel Silverstein There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy... He was nothin' like me or you, 'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do. As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue. And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do. He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly, and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high. But grass just made him wanna lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night, and the great things he wrote when he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light. Speed made him wanna rap all day, reds laid him too far back, Cocaine-Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back. He tried PCP, he tried THC, but they never quite did the trick. Poppers nearly blew his heart, mushrooms made him sick. Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long. Hash was a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong. Quaaludes made him stumble, booze just made him cry. Then he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high. Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat...lived high up in Nepal, High on a craggy mountain top, up a sheer and icy wall. "Well, hell!" says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly, Till I find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high." So out and off goes Gimme-Some-Roy, to the land that knows no time, Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb. For fourteen years he climbed that cliff...back down again he'd slide . . . He'd sit and cry, then climb some more, pursuing the perfect high. Grinding his teeth, coughing blood, aching and shaking and weak, Starving and sore, bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak. And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat, As there in repose, and wearing no clothes, sits the god-like Baba Fats. "What's happenin', Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz . . . I hear you're hip to the perfect trip... Please tell me what it is. "For you can see," says Roy to he, "I'm about to die, So for my last ride, tell me, how can I achieve the perfect high?" "Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "Another burned out soul, Who's lookin' for an alchemist to turn his trip to gold. It isn't in a dealer's stash, or on a druggist's shelf... Son, if you would find the perfect high, find it in yourself." "Why, you jive mother-fucker!" says Roy, "I climbed through rain and sleet, I froze three fingers off my hands, and four toes off my feet! I braved the lair of the polar bear, I've tasted the maggot's kiss. Now, you tell me the high is in myself? What kinda shit is this? My ears, before they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kinda crap; But I didn't climb for fourteen years to hear your sophomore rap. And I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the natch, So you tell me where the real stuff is, or I'll kill your guru ass!" "Okay...okay," says Baba Fats, "You're forcin' it outta me... There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabolee. A wretched land of stone and sand, where snakes and buzzards scream, And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzutzu tree. Now, once every ten years it blooms one flower, as white as the Key West sky, And he who eats of the Tzutzu flower shall know the perfect high. For the rush comes on like a tidal wave...hits like the blazin' sun. And the high? It lasts forever, and the down don't never come. But, Zabolee Land is ruled by a giant, who stands twelve cubits high, And with eyes of red in his hundred heads, he awaits the passer-by. And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the river of slime, Where the mucous beasts await to feast on those who journey by. And if you slay the giant and beasts, and swim the slimy sea, There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards the Tzutzu tree." "Well, to hell with your witches and giants," says Roy, "To hell with the beasts of the sea-- Why, as long as the Tzutzu flower still blooms, hope still blooms for me." And with tears of joy in his sun-blind eyes, he slips the guru a five, And crawls back down the mountainside, pursuing the perfect high. "Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone, Facing another thousand years of talking to God, alone. "Yes, Lord, it's always the same...old men or bright-eyed youth... It's always easier to sell 'em some shit than it is to give them the truth."

Very hard to name just one, but the two that first come to my mind are ee cummings and Pablo Neruda.

My father.

"The single rose is now the garden..." T.S. Elliot

nasir jones

"poetic justice" All of the above *.*

Rabbie Burns

Theodore Roethke

Bob Dylan.

Langston Hughes, Edgar Allen Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke.

Edgar Allen Poe.

I like so many it's difficult! Ted Hughes is a favourite, Dylan Thomas, Pablo Neruda, Philip Larkin... oh, it all depends on the day and my mood. I don't have an all-time number one, sorry!

Toss up between; Pam Ayres and Rudyard Kipling

Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen. Quand le ciel bas et lourd...

Elizabeth Bishop Here's a link the her poem "One Art" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

Edgar Allan Poe

definitely Poe

Robert Frost.

Adrienne Rich

There are just too many! Robert Service is my favorite "bawdy" poet. Thom Gunn is my favorite poet of my lifetime. Jane Shore is my favorite Jewish Female Poet *though, as I'm neither Jewish or female, I don't know why that is even on my mind* Charlotte Mayerson has the chap book of poetry I reread again and again, though. "The Death Cycle Machine: Poems" is a book about losing her son to disease, and it touches a chord with me.

love Poe and also Plath although she's not everyone's cup of tea! i think shes technically spot on and makes me think about things in a different way which is what i think poetry should do

Edgar Allan Poe.

I don't have one favourite. But I like: RS Thomas George Mackay Brown Gwyneth Lewis Alice Oswald Ivor Gurney And lots more... :)

rod mckuen

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

French: Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valery, Henri Michaux, Tristan Tsara German: Christian Morgenstern Spanish: Federico Garcia Lorca

William Wordsworth. His compositions on nature are really praise worthy. I've gone through many of his compositions during my school and graduation days. I like "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey". The poet visited "Tintern Abbey" after 12 years and paid his homage to river Wye and he composed his thoughts regarding his revisit to "Tintern Abbey". I like the way he defined poetry. "Spontaneous flow of thoughts and emotions recollected in tranquility".

I'm not really a big fan of poetry, but I do like the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley. That's about it though...