Forum / What is your all-time favorite line from a poem (or anything) ever?

Kait Mauro
Sep 10, 05:13am

Big questions.

Joani Reese
Sep 10, 01:44pm

After a decade of war that has killed, tortured, and maimed hundreds of thousands of people because of the actions of nineteen men, I keep thinking of Eliot's line from "Gerontion," "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"

To place the line in context:

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities."

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 02:20pm

"And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

From Ecclisastes 1:17&18, rumored to have been written by Solomon who was supposed to have been the smartest man ever ...

Marcus Speh
Sep 10, 03:46pm

it's the the first line of a novel:

<blockquote>Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older.</blockquote>

and if anyone recognizes this as the 2nd of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapp_and_Lucia">"Lucia" novels</a> ("<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25919">Miss Mapp</a>") by E F Benson, a british writer, then i'll be duly impressed. the wit never ceases, by the way. the next sentences:

<blockquote>Her face was of high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.</blockquote>

one of the best (semi forgotten) writers of the last century.

Marcus Speh
Sep 10, 04:00pm

...and as for poems, though rilke's "panther" is my favorite short poem, when it comes to lines, there's a strong competition between dylan thomas and t s eliot, and i think in the cold light of my own approaching winter evening, eliot wins:

<pre>
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.
</pre>

(from <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20220">The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock</a>. must read this poem aloud one day except when i begin, i hear <a href="http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/listen-to-poetry">anthony hopkins inside my head</a>, a reading that can hardly be improved upon, so lacking in sentimentality...)

Darryl Price
Sep 10, 04:13pm

There's nothing you can do that can't be done. John Lennon

Joani Reese
Sep 10, 05:29pm

Marcus: No one does it better than Eliot himself. Tried to give you a link from Salon.com, but my computer won't recognize it today. Perhaps you can go there and listen to him reading "Prufrock" on yours. Macs are sometimes recalcitrant.

Marcus Speh
Sep 10, 05:49pm

jp, you're right, this is fantastic, thank you, had not heard! found it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhiCMAG658M">here, too</a>. sounds slightly more antiquated, like someone ascending a pulpit than the hopkins version...

David Ackley
Sep 10, 06:07pm

The sublime last line of the following passage only attains its full glory from the preceding context, which I'll take the liberty of providing in full( from Barthelme's "Critique de la Vie Quotidienne)

"I remember once we were sleeping in a narrow bed, Wanda and I in a hotel, on a holiday, and the child crept into bed with us.

'If you insist on overburdening the bed,' we said,'you must sleep at the bottom with the feet.''But I don't want to sleep with the feet,' the child said. 'Sleep with the feet,'we said,'they won't hurt you .' 'The feet kick,' the child said,' in the middle of the night.' 'The feet or the floor,'we said.'Take your choice.' 'Why can't I sleep with the heads,' the child asked,' like everybody else?' 'Because you are a child, ' we said, and the child subsided, whimpering , the final arguments in the case having been presented and the verdict in. But in truth the child was not without recourse, it urinated in the bed, in the vicinity of the feet. 'Go damn it,' I said, inventing this formulation at the instant of need,'what the hell is happening at the bottom of the bed?''I couldn't help it,' the child said. ' It just came out.' 'I forgot to bring the plastic sheet,' Wanda said. 'Holy hell,' I said. 'Is there no end to this Family Life?'"

...if you see what I mean.

da

MaryAnne Kolton
Sep 10, 08:30pm

"I was sitting in a taxi wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster." Jeannette Walls "The Glass Castle"

W.F. Lantry
Sep 10, 10:59pm

I would bid them live
As roses might, in magic amber laid,
Red overwrought with orange and all made
One substance and one colour
Braving time.

Joani Reese
Sep 10, 11:36pm

It appears the sunshine boys, Eliot and Pound, have thus far seized the day...

Foster Trecost
Sep 11, 12:09am

Mine's also a line from Prufrock:

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Sam Rasnake
Sep 11, 12:28am

Not my favorite line - but the line that has meant the most to me:

"I have wasted my life."

James Wright, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Sep 11, 04:07am

The damned get one gulp. Then they’re through.

(from The Damned by John Ciardi)

Bill Yarrow
Sep 11, 02:52pm

"'Saint-Saëns!' it seems to be whispering"

from "Chez Jane" by Frank O'Hara

Whole poem:

CHEZ JANE

The white chocolate jar full of petals
swills odds and ends around in a dizzying eye
of four o’clocks now and to come. The tiger,
marvellously striped and irritable, leaps
on the table and without disturbing a hair
of the flowers’ breathless attention, pisses
into the pot, right down its delicate spout.
A whisper of steam goes up from that porcelain
urethra. “Saint-Saëns!” it seems to be whispering,
curling unerringly around the furry nuts
of the terrible puss, who is mentally flexing.
Ah be with me always, spirit of noisy
contemplation in the studio, the Garden
of Zoos, the eternally fixed afternoons!
There, while music scratches its scrofulous
stomach, the brute beast emerges and stands,
clear and careful, knowing always the exact peril
at this moment caressing his fangs with
a tongue given wholly to luxurious usages;
which only a moment before dropped aspirin
in this sunset of roses, and now throws a chair
in the air to aggravate the truly menacing.

Ann Bogle
Sep 11, 04:20pm

From H.D.'s Trilogy:

I go where I love and where I am loved, into the snow: I go to the things I love with no thought of duty, or pity.

MaryAnne Kolton
Sep 12, 04:43pm

Bill,
How I loved Chez Jane! Had not read it before.

You all are so lofty.

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations that fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadows and the soul."
Pablo Neruda

MaryAnne Kolton
Sep 12, 04:57pm

How's this for movies?

"Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Marcus Speh
Sep 12, 05:40pm

what i'm taking away from this thread is "you're all so lofty". i like 'em lofty, mate.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 12, 07:12pm

That's quite enough loft.

Favorite line from a very bad Japanese monster movie titled, (of course) War of the Monsters.

Context: The scientists, along with an ordinary, though urbane, hip young couple who are not scientists, but serve as hero and heroine, seek to lure the dangerous monster, Barugon, into a fresh water lake so he will drown. They seek to accomplish this by dangling a 6,000 carat diamond in a glass case from a helicopter.

Hero (a hansome young man in a sport jacket, black slacks, white shirt - no tie): "Hunh! Doctor! Do you think this will work!?!"

Scientist (White haired man in a lab frock - yes, a lab frock, in a helicoper no less): "It's our only hope. According to ancient island legends, Barugon will follow a 6,000 carat diamond anywhere."

Frank Vander Rasky
Sep 12, 08:25pm

Lofty…

My favorite line of poetry by my favorite poet:

“In the green morning I wanted to be a heart.”

From Ditty of First Desire by Federico Garcia Lorca.

Unlofty…

My favorite line of lyrics when I was age five:

“Laugh, laugh, laugh, like a silly giraffe.”

From songs for children recorded by Groucho Marx.

Marcus Speh
Sep 12, 08:51pm

will you show me how to be "unlofty" if i ask you nicely? [going to bed now in my royal blue ralph lauren pajamas, if you must know. will switch on tiffany lamp & read some dostoyewsky before dropping off.]

stephen hastings-king
Sep 12, 09:04pm

among them:

Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?

The Dude: Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.

Frank Vander Rasky
Sep 12, 10:50pm

The words “lofty” and “unlofty” in my earlier post were my attempt to stay in step with the playful banter of James Lloyd Davis and Marcus Speh. That’s all.

Social networking can be a delicate thing, and subject to misinterpretation, which are a few of the reasons I rarely post in this Forum.

So here is the non-loft version of my earlier post. (I call it non-loft because I will never again use the word unlofty.)

My favorite line of poetry by my favorite poet:

“In the green morning I wanted to be a heart.” From Ditty of First Desire by Federico Garcia Lorca.

My favorite line of lyrics when I was age five:

“Laugh, laugh, laugh, like a silly giraffe.” From songs for children recorded by Groucho Marx.

Joani Reese
Sep 12, 11:04pm

Frank--I wouldn't sweat it. I'm unlofty quite a bit and no one's chased me down the street with a hammer or anything yet. Unloft away. MY favorite unloft is:

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

MaryAnne Kolton
Sep 12, 11:21pm

Frank, I only said everyone else was "so lofty" as I quoted my favorite first line from a novel by Jeannette Walls and all the other quotes are from Eliot, Pound, the Bible et.al.

I tend to like the cheap meat as a rule. . .

"The Dude Abides"

stephen hastings-king
Sep 13, 12:04am

i like "certain humans are situations" from lyn heijinian's "my life"

i like the opening line of pynchon's gravitys rainbow: a screaming comes across the sky.

i like lots and lots of lines from j.g. ballard's atrocity exhibition. which is still the best collection of flash fictions i've seen. even though it didn't have a name at the time he wrote it.

there is a line in the tunnel (william gass) that i remember but cannot find: a description of the narrator's uncle balt. something about air going nowhere like wind over the top of an empty bottle.

there's lots of lines in joyce's ulysses..but for some reason, the one that's haunted me comes in the second chapter, i think. the image of a drowned man who bobs to the surface of the ocean. here i am.

W.F. Lantry
Sep 13, 05:40am

well, if we're doing Lorca:

"No-one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
No-one understood you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

A thousand persian ponies fell asleep
in the moonlit plaza of your forehead
while through three nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow...."
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