A New List of Favorites

[NoHall]

Insomnia is an ugly, ugly thing.

We have a list of your favorite old movies, and a list of songs, and a list of your first CDs.

I want to know if we have poetry geeks at the beach. I had a professor at Belmont who played golf with her sister, and they shouted lines of poetry as they teed off. She made us memorize parts of poems, and I still remember most of it.

Do you have poetry that you know well enough to shout it out in the middle of a sporting event? I don't care if the first line is "There was a young man from Nantucket..." I want to hear it.

[Beach Runner]

I have insomnia, too, as evidenced by the time of this post.

Sorry, I'm not into poetry, literature, history, the social/behavioral sciences, and even science for the most part. I love math, computer science, the fine arts, and languages.

[Miss Kitty]

I'm okay
You're okay
We're okay
Okay!

...I can't remember if this is from my time as a 1st grade teacher and we had that music teacher or if the kiddies brought it home from preschool. Either way, I just kinda' like it, it's okay!

[Allifunn]

I learned this in the 6th grade, had to recite it and have never forgotten it.....

Said Orvil Wright to Wilbur Wright "these birds are farily trying, I'm sick of hearing the cheep cheep about the fun of flying, but shall that stop us Wilbur Wright?" Said Orvil Wright "it shan't"!



Another poem I like is by e.e. cummings, I just don't know it by heart (except the first few lines) it is written verbatim

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

[DD]

Well, maybe not at a sporting event, but here's one that I always remember...

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trip's over.

~John Masefield

[Mermaid]

I love poetry. Only one of my many favorites, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge entitled Kabla Khan: or, a Vision in a Dream:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

That's all I have memorized of it but I never get tired of thinking of those lines. I like the way the words twist around your tongue when you say them. (Actually, that's what I like the best about all my favorite poetry.)

I also like (in its entirety) Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee, and X.J. Kennedy's Nude Descending a Stairway.


Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh.
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair
Collects her motions into shape.

[Allifunn]

She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

I love this part......

[Biff]

I'm okay
You're okay
We're okay
Okay!

...I can't remember if this is from my time as a 1st grade teacher and we had that music teacher or if the kiddies brought it home from preschool. Either way, I just kinda' like it, it's okay!

My own personal fav;

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?


Percy Bysshe Shelley

[Beachbummett]

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!---I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!---and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

high school literature, one of the few I can recite from memory, that and some Shakespeare.

[Bob]

Robert Frost , The Road Not Taken

[jessifunn]

poetry!!!! i love poetry

[30A Skunkape]

Celebration of the Lizard-J.D. Morrison

[Beachbummett]

Celebration of the Lizard-J.D. Morrison

do you listen to books on tape (well, cd's) skunky? I listen to them all the time on my drives to and from the beach, I have his biography on one...you want it?

[Ocean Lover]

Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil,
but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

[30A Skunkape]

do you listen to books on tape (well, cd's) skunky? I listen to them all the time on my drives to and from the beach, I have his biography on one...you want it?

No One Here Gets Out Alive? I read that sucker back in the day;if it is a different one, sure, that would be a great commuter aid!

[NoHall]

Robert Frost , The Road Not Taken

Celebration of the Lizard-J.D. Morrison

Let's have 'em!

I love some e.e. cummings, too. I can't recite it by memory, but here's the end of my fave, "if everything happens that can't be done:"

...we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

The one I was thinking about when I posted the thread was the end of "Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Frost:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.


Y'all are so cool.

[Minnie]

Not sure it is a favorite, but had to learn it and recite it in HS and never, ever forgot it.

Crossing The Bar

Poem lyrics of Crossing The Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face

[NoHall]

Not sure it is a favorite, but had to learn it and recite it in HS and never, ever forgot it.

Crossing The Bar

Poem lyrics of Crossing The Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face

Awww...that poem is a theme in one of the Anne of Green Gables books. I just got a major warm fuzzy!

[Beachbummett]

No One Here Gets Out Alive? I read that sucker back in the day;if it is a different one, sure, that would be a great commuter aid!

Nope, (had to wait until I got home to look at it) it is "Jim Morrison~Life, Death, Legend by Stephen Davis author of The New York Times Bestseller Hammer of the Gods. It is 15 CD's, total playtime is app. 18 hours (that oughta keep you busy for awhile) and took me a while to listen to them all. I'll throw it in the car and bring it down today.

It is a great commuter aid, I have all kinds if you want to listen. My taste in books is varied, I have all kinds, on all subjects. I love biographies and have everyone one from Jim Morrison to well....I even listed to Bill Clinton's autobiography....just wanted to see what he had to say. I really like historical figures I have some on Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, George Washington to modern history makers.

When I don't fly with FFF it helps pass the time. If it is really good I have to listen to them on my commute to work....which is 30 minutes each way....so I get a good hour in my drive time.

They are just stacked up in FFF's messy basement, so I am glad to share. You can pass them on when you finish.

[Allifunn]

They are just stacked up in FFF's messy basement, so I am glad to share. You can pass them on when you finish.

Do you have any fluff books on CD? I listen to the most simple books that I can on my 9 hour one way drive to SW. I own about 10 right now...but have given quite a few away. I'll bet you an Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons and raise you a The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella...what have you got??? (nothing too heavy...have to concentrate on driving ya know.....