In celebration of poetry month we asked fans to tell us about their favorite poem on our Facebook fan page. Five winners were recently chosen (at random) to win a copy of Endpoint by John Updike. Click through to see their favorite piece of poetry.
Lesley Fan: “My favorite poem is ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath. For better or worse, it certainly brings to mind my own relationship with my father in a very powerful, visceral way. Of course, Plath was also simply a poetical master, and her mastery of imagery is strongly present here.”
Jim Metz: “My favorite poem: The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens because . . .
Poetry
is the music a stream
of consciousness makes
when sentences flow
down the page
over line
breaks”
Carlos Alcala: “My Favorite Poem…
I like Updike’s “The Short Days” because it was his answer to a question I asked not long before he died. While speaking in Sacramento, he said he was packing his literary baggage as his life drew toward its end. I asked if he would recite a poem, and asked where he thought his poetry fit in the baggage: Was it a toothbrush, small but important? Was it a necktie, decorative but no longer holding a practical function? Or was it perhaps like underwear, something you don’t want to be without, yet don’t want others to see? He laughed and recited the opening of ‘The Short Days’.”
Doug von Koss: “My Favorite Poem is Mary Oliver’s WILD GEESE. Her reminder, ‘the world offers itself up to your imagination,’ speaks to me daily. And of course the Wild Geese ‘over and over announcing your place in the family of things’ is a great antidote to the pull to isolation. This poem is a gem.”
Nancy Kienzler: “My Favorite poem: ‘The Writer’ by Richard Wilbur. It captures the wishes of a father for his daughter, and also the understanding of one writer for another.”
All content posted by permission of the contests winners.