What poems changed your life, /lit/?
I read Owen in HS and it's really stuck with me, even years later
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659
Because it's a lomg poem, here's an excerpt from the closing lines:
>Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
>We are not now that strength which in old days
>Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
>One equal temper of heroic hearts,
>Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
>To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I met a man
Only once
For the man disappeared
My blood approved
My soul in anguish
I waged a war
I simply could not win
The war was over
Before the first bullet flew
Birches by Robert Frost:
'It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.'
And a lot of Robert Burns, every time I read him it's like an atom bomb going off inside my head. Like, for example, A Winter Dirge:
'The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
"The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,"
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want - O do Thou grant
This one request of mine -
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.'
Both = beautiful.
piercing my heart
with his blue eyes
and my arse
with his monstrous prick
>>7632752
I haven't read a poem that's changed my life. That's a bit to melodramatic for me. However, there have been poems that have stayed with me over the years such as Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Rilke's Duino Eligies, and Transtromer's Tracks.