...or just a place to put poems you quite like at the moment! Mine:

Toad - by Norman MacCaig

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
Squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
Full of satisfaction in a man’s house?

You clamber towards me on your four corners –
Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.

I love you for being a toad,
For crawling like a Japanese wrestler,
And for not being frightened

I put you in my purse hand not shutting it,
And set you down outside directly under
Every star.

A jewel in your head? Toad,
You’ve put one in mine,
A tiny radiance in a dark place.

I’m always so bad at picking a favourite poem! my favourite might be michael donaghy’s ‘black ice and rain’, always & 4eva, but it’s a bit long to post here (also i am wary of copyright issues). look it up, though, it’s incredible. if you’re on a university network you should be able to read it here.

here’s an earlier favourite, and a stone cold classic. by edna st. vincent millay:

XXX

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

at the moment i’m also enjoying iain sinclair’s poetry & george herbert.

PAST ONE O’CLOCK
Vladimir Mayakovsky
(translated by Max Hayward & George Reavey)

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

I love Kate Clanchy’s ‘Raspberries’ - it’s one I always return to.

http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/1/artsinscotland/literature/features/archive/poemdecember2004.aspx

I love this poem by Robert Graves and I hope it’s old enough to post without worrying about copyright.

Song: Lift Boy

Let me tell you the story of how I began:
I began as the boot-boy and ended as the boot-man,
With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,
With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,
With nothing in my pockets.

Let me tell you the story of how I went on:
I began as the lift-boy and ended as the lift-man,
With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,
With nothing in my pockets but a jack-knife and a button,
With nothing in my pockets.

I found it very easy to whistle and play
With nothing in my head or my pockets all day,
With nothing in my pockets.

But along came Old Eagle, like Moses or David;
He stopped at the fourth floor and preached me Damnation.
“Not a soul shall be saved, not one shall be saved.
The whole First Creation shall forefit salvation:
From knife-boy to lift-boy, from ragged to regal,
Not one shall be saved, not you, not Old Eagle,
No soul on earth escapeth, even if all repent -”
So I cut the cords of the lift and down we went,
With nothing in our pockets.

This is good for practising your pirate-speak (got to keep up the skill…):

Togara Muzanenhamo - Captain of the Lighthouse

The late hour trickles to morning. The cattle low profusely by the anthill
where brother and I climb and call Land’s end. We are watchmen
overlooking a sea of hazel-acacia-green, over torrents of dust whipping about
in whirlwinds and dirt tracks that reach us as firths.

We man our lighthouse - cattle as ships. We throw warning lights whenever
they come too close to our jagged shore. The anthill, the orris-earth
lighthouse, from where we hurl stones like light in every direction.

Tafara stands on its summit speaking in sea-talk, Aye-aye me lad - a ship’s a-
coming! And hurls a rock at the cow sailing in. Her beefy hulk jolts and turns.
Aye, Captain, another ship saved! I cry and furl my fingers into an air-long
telescope - searching for more vessels in the day-night.

Now, they, low, on the anthill, stranded in the dark. Their sonorous cries haunt
through the night. Aye, methinks, me miss me brother, Captain of the
lighthouse, set sail from land’s end into the deepest seventh sea.

Dan on the strength of that poem I have ordered ‘Spirit Brides’ from Waterstones so it had better be as good as that all the way through.

There are some really good ones in that collection, though some others are slow-burners. It’s worth it all the same. Hope things are all well and good with The Clegg. Still haven’t got around to making that beetroot cake yet…

One of the most incredible poems I’ve ever read

Adrian Mitchell’s tribute to Norman Morrison

Norman Morrison

On November 2nd 1965

in the multi-colored multi-minded

United beautiful States of terrible America

Norman Morrison set himself on fire

outside the Pentagon.

He was thirty-one, he was a Quaker,

and his wife (seen weeping in the newsreels)

and his three children

survive him as best they can.

He did it in Washington where everyone could see

because

people were being set on fire

in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see

Their names, ages, beliefs and loves

are not recorded.

This is what Norman Morrison did.

He poured petrol over himself.

He burned.  He suffered.

He died.

That is what he did

in the white heart of Washington

where everyone could see.

He simply burned away his clothes,

his passport, his pink-tinted skin,

put on a new skin of flame

and became

Vietnamese.

so, anyone got any favourite love poems they want to share in honour of valentine’s day being just around the corner? or any anti-love poems, for that matter?

i like this one. by eleanor brown:

SONNET XLIII

He is a very inoffensive man;
a man without grave faults or dreadful tastes,
who need not be embarrassing; who can
tell an amusing anecdote; who wastes
less time than most on foolish flattery,
without descending into boorishness;
can pay a compliment quite prettily,
avoiding many kinds of clumsiness;
a very inoffensive man indeed;
an interesting man, and sensitive;
the sort that would be pleased to soothe a need,
if it were anything that he could give;
and i have sat with him this whole day through
and hated him, because he is not you.

Love Eleanor Brown.

Not a terribly romantic one, but:

SOIRÉE
Peter Reading

One funny thing about loving someone
is how much you’ll put up with - her parents’
conversazione for example,
or being sweet to these fools she works with
who smoke inferior cigars and think
it’s savoir vivre, and drag me back to drink
inadequately and long past my bedtime,
and put on records (God!) stuff like Ray Conniff.
And all their damn fool questions ‘tell me Peter,
what do you write about?’ (cunts like you mate).
‘Peter, you interested in history?’
(Mate, I ain’t even interested in
the present.) Still I’m here because I love her.

Elizabeth Bishop

Casabianca

Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.’ Love’s the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love’s the burning boy.

This is my favourite poem, by Emily Dickinson. I like it’s simplicity and clarity.

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Leaping like Leopards to the sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying her spotted Face to die
Stooping as low as the Otter’s Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone

Would be impossible to pick a favourite poem but near the top of my list would be Crossing the Water by Plath,(especially when Ted Hughes reads it, which on Youtube):

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

I quite like ‘Wants’ by Philip Larkin at the moment.