How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

How much shit could a dipshit dip if a dipshit could dip shit.

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It always struck me as both humble and proud and it only becomes more meaningful as I age.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I remember reading it in middle school. Poetry hadn’t done much for me at that point of my life but that one got through to me and helped me appreciate the medium much more in general

I find it almost impossible to pick a favorite poem of hers, but if I had to it’d probably be “Tutaj” (“Here” in English) by Wislawa Szymborska.

https://medium.com/illumination/here-671e29357dcc

“Starvation Camp Near Jaslo” and “Foraminifera” are two other favorites and Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak have done an amazing job at the translations.

Futility by Wilfred Owen.

Im not really too much into poetry, Im more of a song person, so obviously I found about it through a song that uses the poem as lyrics. I think I somewhat relate to to it, the feeling of futility expressed in it, even tho I havent seen the horrors he must have seen. All of his poetry is quite good, and it was written during WWI and from the trenches which makes it way more powerfull and sad IMO

I also like The Sleeper by Edgar A. Poe but that its mostly because I was a bit of a goth kid and its also been turned into a song

Schiller’s song of the Bell is his longest poem, a 430 stanza epic about building a church bell that describes the process in technical detail and uses it as a metaphor for society. Here’s an English translation:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89081025074&seq=13

My favorite poem is the condensed version. Loosely translated:

dig a hole
pour bronze in
bell is done
ding dong ding

Teeny tiny axolotl

There is really not a lotl

Of you. Not a jot or tittle

So I’ll call you axolitl

— anon

Subh Milis (Sweet jam). It’s a short and powerful Irish poem reminding parents to be kind to their kids.

English translation below. Can’t seem to get the formatting correct on mobile…

Bhí subh milis ar bháscrann an doras

ach mhúch mé an corraí

ionaim a d’éirigh

mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá

a bheadh an bháscrann glan

agus an lámh beag – ar iarraidh…”

There was jam on the door handle

But I quelled the anger

That rose inside me

Because I thought of the day

That the handle would be clean

And the little hand - longed for

“The View From Halfway Down” by Alison Tifel has always resonated with me:

The weak breeze whispers nothing The water screams sublime His feet shift, teeter-totter Deep breath, stand back, it’s time

Toes untouch the overpass Soon he’s water bound Eyes locked shut but peek to see The view from halfway down

A little wind, a summer sun A river rich and regal A flood of fond endorphins Brings a calm that knows no equal

You’re flying now You see things much more clear than from the ground It’s all okay, it would be Were you not now halfway down

Thrash to break from gravity What now could slow the drop All I’d give for toes to touch The safety back at top

But this is it, the deed is done Silence drowns the sound Before I leaped I should’ve seen The view from halfway down

I really should’ve thought about The view from halfway down I wish I could’ve known about The view from halfway down

Rainer Maria Rilke
Der Panther/ The Panther.
(I don’t really feel the english translation does the poem justice. In german the words create a certain rhythm, nearly like a melody, that I find utterly enchanting)

_His gaze against the sweeping of the bars has grown so weary, it can hold no more. To him, there seem to be a thousand bars and back behind those thousand bars no world.

The soft the supple step and sturdy pace, that in the smallest of all circles turns, moves like a dance of strength around a core in which a mighty will is standing stunned.

Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides up soundlessly — . An image enters then, goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs — and in the heart ceases to be._

----- The original German‐------

_Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille – und hört im Herzen auf zu sein._

As I walked out one evening by W.H. Auden

https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening

Or for the lazy who want to hear the poet himself read it:

The why is that long ago, when I was in college in Maine, my girlfriend’s English step-dad read it to his wife after attempting to prove he was American by driving their VW Jetta around the garden in the snow. Alcohol was involved and when everyone assembled finally convinced Tony to come back inside, an English teacher friend compelled him to read a poem as proof that he had come to terms with the car stuck in the snow out back. A life-long fan of Auden he chose As I Walked Out One Evening. As it opens, the imagery and fantastic feats of love are obviously spoken by a young man, but “time coughs when you would kiss” signalling that “time will have his fancy, tomorrow or today.” You can break down what it means to you but the undeniably great lines I continue to quote on a weekly basis, albeit in my head so as not to annoy others. As I get older I stare in the basin and wonder what I’ve missed, but I also know that I will love my best friend, and wife 'till the salmon sing in the street.

So wie die Ordnung stets in Chaos geht,
wenn keine Kraft dagegen steht,
so herrscht das Chaos nie allein:
Es braucht die Ordnung, um zu sein.

There was a young lady from Venus, Whose body was shaped like a - DATA!

-Star Trek TNG & Picard

Here I sit, same as ever. Took a dump, pulled the lever. The toilet clogged. The water flowed. Look out world, it’s a motherload!.

Why is it my favorite? I have no idea… Probably because I’m awful.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturitions are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,

That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles,
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]

Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and slipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,

Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,

See if I don’t.

– Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz