In today's New York Times Book Review: "What's your favorite poem?" Responses to the question are from a number of well-known writers.
I'm not much of a poetry reader, but several of the poems listed are also among my favorites. Here are some of the beloved poems from the article, and my own memories of them:
TA-NEHISI COATES: Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage.” I reread this poem just now. It's an incredibly powerful evocation of what it would have been like to be a captured slave on a slave ship in the Middle Passage from Africa to the new world. The poet Robert Hayden was a neighbor of ours for a few years in the 1970s and I remember greeting him as he walked his dog named Sadie. This adds to my appreciation of the poem.
ALAN CUMMING: Yeats’s “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.” Another that I remember loving a long time ago when I took a course about William Butler Yeats.
KATIE COURIC: John McCrae's “In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row” is her favorite, and she also mentions a poem I often recited when I was a child: “The Swing,” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
MO WILLEMS: Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.” What a great choice. What parent or grandparent doesn't love to remember reading this to small children and then seeing them learn to read it for themselves!
I suspect that you might find some of your favorites in this engaging list!
2 comments:
I saw that, too. You'll mock me. My favorite is by Victor Buono. It goes:
I think that I shall never see
My feet.
Suitable for this time of year. My favorite real poem is the same as Katie K's -- Flanders Field.
I saw that, too. You'll mock me. My favorite is by Victor Buono. It goes:
I think that I shall never see
My feet.
Suitable for this time of year. My favorite real poem is the same as Katie K's -- Flanders Field.
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