Thanks for starting this thread! I had mentioned in passing a while back that it would interesting to hear about people's favorite poems or their own work, but I never got around to starting the thread myself.
My favorite poetry tends to be longer epic stuff. It really doesn't get much better (in English, at least) than Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queene, or Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Or Leaves of Grass, on the American side of the ocean. Or Howl (much shorter than those others, of course, but that certainly doesn't make it any less epic).
As for shorter, lyric stuff, I also like Arnold, though of those late Victorian guys, I think I prefer Hopkins (sprung rhyme is pretty awesome; check out "The Windhover") and Hardy ( "The Darkling Thrush").
Plath is pretty great, too - she was so wonderful with really harsh juxtapositions of imagery - and I think if I'm going to include an actual poem (and not just a link) in this post, it's going to be "The Swarm":
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!
Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm balls and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
As for me, I wrote a number of prose sonnets last year. Here's a few of them, with the line breaks marked:
"Sonnet about Strawberries"
So earlier tonight, as I was wal/king down to Karl's apartment, right there on / the sidewalk, cold, abandoned, wet, I saw / these strawberries. They had been spilled. I pon/dered it but briefly as I passed - this taw/dry scene of hugely poignant, yet incon/sequential melancholy - as the raw/ness of the weather kept me focused on / arriving at my destination quick/ly. I was careful, though, and didn't step / on any of the orphaned fruit. No sense / in slipping on red pulp. The streets were slick / enough from hours of rain, and I had fal/len once already. There goes decadence.
14.2.2005
"Two Days after Aunt Jane Fell"
I think what most surprised me when we went / into the house was the near total lack / of stench. I had expected the warm, black / odor of death. Instead, the only scent / to be detected was the faint bouquet / of vodka: empty Smirnoff bottles - four / of them - held vigil near the spot of floor / where red had long since turned to brown. The ta/ble stood defiant. Victory was his. / I looked away. A painting on the wall - / the dog, Frisky. Long dead, if I recall. / Rabies, I think. Forget it. There is busi/ness to attend to yet. What do they say / gets blood stains out of carpet, anyway?
21.2.2005
“Voice of a Generation”
It seems like every time you buy a book-/on-tape these days, it's some celebrity / who's reading it. But what about the peo/ple that we used to hear - the ones with crook/ed teeth and dirty fingernails, the book-/on-tape professionals, who starve so we / can hear our damned beloved Michael Kea/ton narrate Moby Dick or Through the Look/ing Glass? Is modern culture really this / obsessed with Hollywood - that we will screw / folks out of work 'cause People Magazine / has never done a spread on them? 'Course, who / am I to judge? I'd sell my soul to lis/ten to Huck Finn, as read by Charlie Sheen.
14.3.2005
I also wrote this little over-the-top Spenserian excerise, which I rather enjoy:
“A Conversation with Rita, on the Eve of My Departure for Germany”
I, solitary, ‘pon the stalwart strand,
Across the heaving plain out-staring, stood.
Fev’rishly, the spray clutched at the land;
The ivory moon retreated, as it would.
A fleshly link reluctant, ‘cause I could,
I—home, alone—, into the gale, had cried:
“I’m not afraid anymore!” A voice—I should
Say that of Byron—scolded me: “I’d
Have said it better, or at least have harder tried.”
19.9.2005
All right, that's enough out of me. Onward.
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