This is a toughie as there are many I’d like to list. But I particularly adore Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), the American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes. This poem is Miniver Cheevy and it was also a favorite of the late actor Richard Burton. When he passed it on to me, he apologized, saying, "It is well known almost to the point of being hackneyed."

At the annual Academy of American Poets who read each year in Lincoln Center under the influence of the poet Rose Styron, I went to the podium and read "Miniver Cheevy" because it’s a good poem to "perform."  There was much applause.

But then I was followed by none other than the great actress Meryl Streep who read Wallace Stevens’s Sunday Morning. Naturally, she got a standing ovation.

It was thrilling to find an entire audience in Avery Fisher Hall … all people who adore poetry.

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Shelley’s Ozymandias. I used to recite it when asked for a voice level for television or radio, and when I got to "My name is Ozymandias," more than one television sound technician said, "It says ‘Martin’ here," whereas more than one radio technician recited it along with me.

Yeats’s The Second Coming until it began to sound like a string of book titles.

And just because they are yummy:

Hopkins’s Pied Beauty

Stevens’s Sea Surface Full of Clouds

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?”

I am impressed by the intelligence of my wOw-Sisters. Frankly, although an English major at Barnard, I’ve never really understood some poetry. It always seems esoteric or made for the very few. Sometimes it is hard for me to understand what it is the poet is trying to get at. That said, when poetry is read aloud, I kinda’ get the feel — if read by the poet him/herself.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
by Jane Taylor, 1804

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

Click here to read the rest of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

Why is this my favorite? Because I like to question as well — "How I wonder what you are!" I think that Taylor summed it all up; especially the part about the diamond in the sky. That’s the only bling I get — or want. 

However, in a more scholarly way:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas, 1951

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Click here to read the rest of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas.

I like anybody who fights against the darkness and searches for the light and the twinkle of a star. I think Jane Taylor and Dylan Thomas would have gone to the Whitehorse Tavern in New York and boozed up a bit while looking at the dark sky.