Favorite poems
“Tell me your favorite poem.”
30 answers from 27 people · Updated Oct 12, 2026
By William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
5![[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] (e.e. cummings)](https://lyric-images.gumlet.io/18c8875e-42f9-4ee7-b5f8-a769a1776eca_3000x3000.jpeg?format=webp&compress=true&q=auto&w=1200)
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] (e.e. cummings)
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
5
Perfection as far as poems go, imho. Coconut Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it's hard to get at but the thing is I wasn't looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn't happy I said to put it back because I didn't want it because we didn't need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it
7
Cinematic and imagistic, this poem has stayed with me since I was young. It’s a welcome haunting.
1
Song of Myself (1892 version) - Walt Whitman
A poem that shows so many ways to think about the world and in so doing, so many to think about yourself. I come back to it…not nearly as often as I should, but it’s words of resonated in me ever since I first read it.
2
The first poem I ever learned by heart. My late mother, a poetry lover taught it to me. She always read us, in particular, poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. And this one brings me to a peaceful place. Afternoon On A Hill I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin to show Up from the town, I will mark which must be mine, And then start down! Edna St.Vincent Millay
81
[…]my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. 💌
1
Denis Johnson the legend. “Loving you is every bit as fine as coming over a hill into the sun at ninety miles an hour darling…” – Denis Johnson, “Poem,” from The Veil (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985)
1
If I can stop one Heart from breaking (Emily Dickinson)
If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain.
8
On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets into you, may a flock of colours, indigo, red, green and azure blue, come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the currach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.
11
Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Another POEM SORRY! Goth girl origin story. A reflection of my life’s deepest sorrow and most terrifying, intimate truth in someone else’s voice from 146 years ago.
Demain dès l'aube - Victor Hugo
it's the most beautiful poem about death or maybe grieving the death of you're loved one. He wrote it for his own daughter who died tragically. (The poem is in french so the traduction is maybe to litteral...) : Tomorrow at dawn Tomorrow, at dawn, when the countryside turns white, I leave. You see, I know you are waiting for me. I will go through the forest, I will go across the mountains. I cannot stay away from you any longer. I will walk with my eyes fixed on my thoughts, Without seeing anything outside, without hearing any noise, Alone, unknown, back bent, hands crossed, Sad, and the day for me will be like night. I will not watch the gold of the falling evening, Nor the sails in the distance descending towards Harfleur, And when I arrive, I'll put on your grave A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.
3
This poem by Louis MacNeice is the first poem I read every September--haunting, beautiful, loving, descriptive--I adore it.
1
The Archipelago of Kisses (Jeffrey McDaniel)
Jeffrey McDaniel has some real gems. This one was read at my wedding 🥹
151
This poem get me every time
I still remember exactly where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing when I read the final stanza. that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
1
This cuts through all the noise and gets right to the gooey center in all of us. I cannot read it without tearing up.
FOUR FRIENDS CATCH UP OVER PASTA by Amy Kay
Such a beautifully captured experience. Love this poem.
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