Jane Wagner | 07/24/2008 4:51 pm

Jane Wagner's Many Loves

In response to: In celebration of Kay Ryan's appointment as the 16th Poet Laureate, tell us: What is your favorite poem of all time?

I agree with Liz and Joan. I have so many “favorite” poems, the task to choose one would be overwhelming. So I’ll just open the flood gates and let my mind overflow with thoughts of …

Marianne Moore: I love her observations and the piercing accuracy of the words she uses to describe them. "The mind is an enchanting thing …" Click here to read the rest of the poem.

We All Know It: "That silence is best: that action and …"

Edwin Arlington Robinson
"Time was when his half million drew …"
Click here to read the rest of Robinson’s poem.

Walt Whitman: Oh, everything he wrote, really.
Song of Myself
Click here to read Song of Myself.

W.H. Auden: Same as above, everything! But these are two of my favorites:

If I Could Tell You
"Time will say nothing but I told you so"
Click here to read the rest of the poem.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats (d. January 1939)
"He disappeared in the dead of winter …"
Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Emily Dickinson
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes …"
Click here to read the rest of the poem.

"My life closed twice before its close …"
Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Rudyard Kipling: I always thought this poem by Rudyard Kipling seemed so modern.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
"As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race …"
Click here to read the rest of the poem.

William Butler Yeats
The Pity of Love, Friends, The Folly of Being Comforted, Before the World Was Made.

Allen Ginsberg
Howl and Kaddish, although here I guess we have to give some credit to peyote buttons and amphetamines.

I’ll add to Joan’s list of T.S. Eliot’s poems The Hollow Men. Langston Hughes, of course. Stephen Spender, Robert Lowell, Robert Creeley. I used to read the Symbolists Rimbaud, Mallarmé and Verlaine, but they didn’t rush through the floodgates, this time.

The first poem I memorized when I was a child was given to me by my grandmother – we would call her “Mama Dear.” I don’t know who wrote it, I just know Mama Dear loved to hear me recite it:

She was ironing her doll’s new gown
Little Marion, four years old
brows tuckered down
in a painstakin’ frown
under her curly locks of gold

It was Sunday
and Mom coming in
said in a tone of surprise,
“Don’t you know it’s a sin
Any work to begin
on the day that the Lord sanctifies?”

Then, lifting her face like a rose
thus answered this wise little tot,
“Now don’t you suppose
the good Lord knows
that this little iron’s not hot?”

Read more about: Auden, Books, Dickinson, Poetry, Yeats

15 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

How smart. Your grandmother teaching you about the fine line between work and play. Man, that stuck.

By Emcye Edwards on 07/24/2008 5:18 pm

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Yes, Emcye, And how I loved my Moma Dear! Jane

By Edith Ann on 07/27/2008 4:17 pm

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jane, how wise you are! your choices lambent. thank you.

By mary lou s on 07/24/2008 7:52 pm

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if i were choosing, it would go like this (joni mitchell with music, please): fly, silly seabird! no dreams can possess you no voices can blame you for sun on your wings. my gentle relations have dreams they must show me (this is not remembered right) for loving the freedom of all flying things my dreams like the seabird fly out of reach out of cry

By mary lou s on 07/24/2008 7:56 pm

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now i know: it’s “names they must call me”

By mary lou s on 07/24/2008 7:57 pm

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Yes, Yes, Mary Lou s Thanks for your input.Jane

By Edith Ann on 07/27/2008 4:19 pm

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Jane, Yes, yes, yes!! We have similar tastes in poetry—Whitman, W.H. Auden (one of Plath’s favorites too), W.B. Yeats, and Ginsberg!! Great selections.

By Serena . on 07/25/2008 9:24 am

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“The More Loving One” by W. H. Auden Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

By Serena . on 07/25/2008 9:28 am

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Serena, Another one of your posts to bookmark. Thanks. Jane

By Edith Ann on 07/27/2008 4:21 pm

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Thank YOU, Lily. Love Jane

By Edith Ann on 07/27/2008 4:22 pm

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Song lyrics aside, very few poems have touched me as deeply as this one by e.e. cummings: somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

By Kryssi K on 07/26/2008 4:15 am

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Me too,Kryssi. I used to have a caedman recording of e.e.cummings reciting his poetry, remember that? I always loved this poem…especially the last line. Jane

By Edith Ann on 07/27/2008 4:31 pm

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Oh! How did I not see this sooner?
This so cool..I have really overspent my time allotment grafted to this pute today. But this is so exciting. I am going to hunt up a few poems I love and come back tomorrow and read all these too. I am just jazzed to the max!
Thanks Jane! And now I realize this is attached to another thread I had not seen, about Kay Ryan. Well this is week is looking much more fabulous!

By Deni G on 07/28/2008 7:54 pm

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here’s one loooove…
Kurtis Lamkin accompanies himself on the kora, a twenty-one-stringed West African harp-lute.
“jump mama”
pretty summer day grammama sittin on her porch easy rockin her grandbaby in her wide lap ol men sittin in their lincoln tastin and talkin and talkin and tastin young boys on the corner milkin a yak yak wild hands baggy pants young girls halfway up the block jumpin that double dutch singin their song kenny kana paula be on time cause school begins at a quarter to nine jump one two three and aaaaaaah…
round the corner comes this young woman draggin herself heavy home from work she sees the young boys sees the old men but when she sees the girls she just starts smilin she says let me get a little bit of that they say you can’t jump you too old
why they say that o, why they say that
she says tanya you hold my work bag chaniqua come over here girl i want you to hold my handbag josie could you hold my grocery bag please kebè take my purse she starts bobbin her head, jackin her arms tryin to catch the rhythm of the ropes and when she jumps inside those turning loops the girls crowd her sing their song kenny kana paula be on time cause school begins at a quarter to nine jump one two three and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah she jumps on one leg — aaaaah she dances sassy saucy — aaaaah jump for the girls mama jump for the stars mama jump for the young boys sayin jump mama! jump mama! jump for the old woman sayin — aww, go head baby
and what the young girls say what the young girls say aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
~~Kurtis Lamkin

By Deni G on 07/28/2008 8:05 pm