April
03
POLL: What’s Your Favorite Poem?
One of my favorite things about spring is that April 1 rolls around and brings me all sorts of poetry as I scroll through my social media feeds.
Thank you, National Poetry Month!
Don’t get me wrong – I read poetry all year long. I have the Poetry Foundation app on my phone and I love to spin it and get to read new poems. I get excited when kids ask me just the right (wrong) way about what happened when they were absent so I can share “Did I Miss Anything?” by Tom Wayman with the class. I love when I turn my students loose to find their own poetry for my class and have them excited to share what they have found with me and their classmates.
There are all sorts of incredible resources for celebrating poetry with our students and with each other for Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 21) or for this month or for every day of the year.
But the best resource I have ever found for finding new and wonderful poems has been other poetry lovers’ recommendations.
So today’s poll is for you to share what poems you love – the ones you love just because you love them, the ones you love because of how your students love them, or the ones that just seem to make sense to share today – just because.
Nerdy Book Club 
One of my all time favorite poems is Shel Silverstein’s – Sick. My kids love it, my students love it, and I think it is just a great poem. I use it every year with my 6th graders.
i Like boom boom boom by cs baldrick
One of my all time favourites is Élévation by Charles Baudelaire !
The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson
Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. My father asked that we read it at his funeral. It is stoic and formal and reminds me of the ocean which he taught me to love.
Too many to list! But favorites from reading to my children are
The Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash
Stopping by a Snowy Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Fog by Carl Sandburg
I adore Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson! My favorites are The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Miracle, I Never Saw a Moor, and I’m Nobody Who are You
West Wind #2 by Mary Oliver
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. This poem is special to me because I can hear my father’s voice reciting it from memory!
“Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him” by Nancy Willard which I read when I was 16 in the anthology GOING OVER TO YOUR PLACE: Poems For Each Other edited by Paul Janeczko.
This is a hard question!!! Off the top of my head, I love “Whoso list to hunt”, “My Last Duchess”, “There is a Garden in her Face”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “When you see millions of the mouthless dead” and pretty much anything by William Blake or any Shakespearean sonnet 🙂 They’re all fairly standard to be honest!
I have lots of favorites. For poetry month I’m sharing an anthology of my favorite poems. Like:
How Much Do I Love Thee? (sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Type by Sarah Kay
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
It’s hard for me to come up with one poem that is my all-time favorite. It’s easier for me to think in terms of poets. Two of my favorites are Naomi Shihab Nye and Joyce Sidman. BTW, thanks for recommending the Poetry Foundation app. I just downloaded it and I can tell I’m going to love it!
Dante’s Divine Comedy, no question!
Love after Love by Derek Walcott is one of my favourites…and that last line “Sit. Feast on your life.” Beautiful!
My beard grows to my toes
I never wear no clothes
I just take my beard
Around my bare
And down the road I goes.
by Shel Silverstein
Kids love it and ask for me to repeat it over and over. I learned it from my sister-in-law, who is not a teacher. Her boyfriend and she talked about this favorite poem even in high school.
Snow Toward Evening by Melville Cane
The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash, After Apple Picking by Robert Frost, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. And so many more. Love reading the titles in other people’s comments and going to find those poems.
I have so many, but I have a framed Tasha Tudor print with Emily Dickinson’s poem, “There is No Frigate Like a Book” hanging over my bed. I adore that poem.
My 4th grade teacher had on our classroom door “Come In” by Shel Sulverstein. He then gave me that book for my birthday so that is definitely my favorite!
Then I read and saw “The Outsiders” and learned Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost. That opened me up to all of Frost’s poems which are amazing.
In both cases the poetry was introduced in an unassuming way. I wanted to learn it and chose to do it, so it meant much more to me than, “Here, learn this poem and write one of your own.” Poetry is special that way.
Anything by Frost or Dickinson! I also love “If” by Rudyard Kipling, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, and for reciting in front of my students “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carrol.
The door by Miroslav Holub
“Ulysses” by Tennyson.
“Mindful” by Mary Oliver.
Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins — it reminds me not to take it all so seriously, to have fun with poetry.
One of my favorites! Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Such hard choices. Two of my favorites are “In Just” by EECummings and “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson. Thanks for mentioning the app. I downloaded it and already love it!
Oh so many…but I have to go with one that set me on fire with aspiration. Such an incredible mixture of emotion, sharp intellect, profound wisdom, powerful imagery and beautiful sounds…. Ted Hughes – Catadrome
Love poetry! Happy Poetry Month!
ONE of my favorite poems is “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by Wordsworth: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174790
Another favorite is “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost (one of my favorite poets): https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay.
For kids I love the book Baseball, Snakes and Summer Squash by Don Murray, and also All the Small Poems and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth- both are good bridges from the silly/funny poems (such as by Silverstein & Prelutsky) that often first draws kids into poetry.
My favorite is “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening” by Robert Frost
Gah! too hard! Right now I’m kind of crazy about a new one by David Caserio, “Forensic Love.” Be sure to find a video of him reading it aloud.
“The Instruction Manual” by John Ashbery has long been a favorite of mine. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177261
Recently received an offer to do some freelance technical writing, and when I remembered this poem it made me think twice about accepting…
A Childhood Christmas by Patrick Kavanagh.
Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
I love The Raven by Poe
“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye
From my teenagerhood—“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost.
My favorite poet to use in my classroom is Douglas Florian. Love all his books.
The Road Not Taken has made all the difference in my own life!
The Road Not Taken
I second that.
It is really a beautiful poem with such a great message!
The Duck by Ogden Nash.
So many! I really love “running into a new year” by Lucille Clifton.
The Patriot by Shel Silverstein!
The Golden Wings: An Anthology of World Poetry
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) by E.E.Cummings
EE Cummings and The Divine Comedy just to mention those-so many more!! I love the epics and the tragics…
The End by A.A. Milne
“Hope” (is the thing with feathers) by Emily Dickinson
“The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara
“What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes
“Peanut Butter Sandwich” by Shel Silverstein
Not at all relevant to children but I did write a post today about the poet who shaped our national identity. Take a look if you have time.
In school I loved The Listeners by Walter de la Mare.
It’s too hard to pick a favorite, so I’ll put the first one that popped into my head, Persimmons, by Li-Young Lee. The opening is brilliant and beautiful:
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
persimmons. This is precision.
Ordeal, Nina Cassian (the imperative of wings–how gorgeous is that??)
Recuerdo, Edna St. Vincent Millay (the sun rose dripping, a bucket full of gold)
‘yours is the light by which my spirit’s born’, e.e. cummings (you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars)
I love A Poison Tree by William Blake. It’s a must read, you guys. Simple yet powerful. And oh, so dark.
“If I Were a Poem” by Sara Holbrook.
maggie and milly and molly and may!
I don’t think of myself as a poetry fan, yet so many poems and poets are crowding into my head right now! As a kid, I loved Custard the Dragon. Now…Pablo Neruda’s odes, e. e. cummings, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Ursula le Guin, Marge Piercy, Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, William Carlos Williams–basically anything accessible. The Oregon chapter of NCTE just published an article about students’ False Apology poems, and the most amazing one is attributed to Kayla M.
You have probably
woken up
and realized that you’re
in the hospital.
I feel bad
about daring
you to do
a back-handspring.
Forgive me,
but it was truth
or dare and you didn’t
have to take the dare.
“Tension” by Billy Collins, anything by Mary Oliver, and all the classics mentioned above:).
If by Rudyard Kipling.. It is a really beautiful and inspirational poem. It has helped me through somebhard times..
A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
Giant Children by Brod Bagert & illustrated by Tedd Arnold. Kids LOVE these poems…especially the booger one! =)