The Midnight Cremation of Sam McGee:
Despite my English degree, I don’t claim to know anything about poetry. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it; I like a lot of poems because of how they make me feel when I read them, but I don’t really understand why or how, and I would never attempt to make one myself. You know, probably like how some men feel about women. Anyway, I know that I hate Wordsworth and I like Yeats, but that’s about it.
So here are my five favorite poems. One is even by e.e. cummings. Go ahead and make fun of me all you want, but please remember that today I talked about poetry when tomorrow I’m posting pictures of girls kissing.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot
Epistle to Be Left in the Earth, by Archibald MacLeish
i like my body when it is with your body, by e.e. cummings
Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks, by Pablo Neruda
*This is the one I was searching for last night. The first time I ever read this poem, my high school boyfriend copied it out of a library book and gave it to me. I lost the piece of paper years later, and couldn’t remember the author. This version is different from the version I first read, like it’s been translated. I don’t understand how you can translate a poem from another language and have it still be a poem, or at least the same poem. Anyway, here’s the version I first read:
So what the doors were guarded,
So what we were imprisoned there,
So what the streets were barracaded,
So what the town was asleep,
So what she was starving,
So what we were unarmed,
So what night had fallen,
So what we made love.