First Poem that Impacted You

[Todd]

I first read poetry in school. It rhymed and sounded like a renaissance faire. I moved on to Eliot and Prufrock which engaged my mind. Later in college, I remember Keats and Shelley. None of them moved me then, they have since. The first poem I read that made me think oh crap that's what poetry does was by Charles Bukowski. I don't like all of his stuff, but this poem will always hold a special place for me.

Here's the first poem that had that impact for me. What was yours, if you remember.

DREAMLESSLY
By: Charles Bukowski

old grey-haired waitresses
in cafes at night
have given it up,
and as i walk down sidewalks of
light and look into windows
of nursing homes
I can see that it is no longer
with them.
I see people sitting on park benches
and i can see by the way they
sit and look
that it is gone.

I see people driving cars
and I see by the way
they drive their cars
that they neither love nor are
loved -
nor do they consider
sex. it is all forgotten
like an old movie.

I see people in department stores and
supermarkets
walking down aisles
buying things
and i can see by the way their clothing
fits them and by the way they walk
and by their faces and their eyes
that they care for nothing
and that nothing cares
for them.

I see a hundred people a day
who have given up
entirely.

if I go to the racetrack
or a sporting event
I can see thousands
that feel for nothing or
no one
and get no feeling
back.

everywhere I see those who
crave nothing but
food, shelter, and
clothing; they concentrate
on that,
dreamlessly

I do not understand why these people do not
vanish
I do not understand why these people do not
expire
why the clouds
do not murder them
or why the dogs
do not murder them
or why the flowers and the children
do not murder them,
I do not understand.

I suppose they are murdered
yet i can’t adjust to the
fact of them
because they are so many.

each day,
each night,
there are more of them
in the subways and
in the buildings and
in the parks

they feel no terror
at not loving
or at not
being loved

so many many many
of my fellow

creatures

[hamartia]

The first poem I remember learning, aged 8 and under duress, was Robert Louis Stevenson's From A Railway Carriage, all of which I can still recite to this day. Not exactly a positive impact. I didn't really read any poetry for pleasure until my early-ish teens, and it was Philip Larkin's Poetry Of Departures that made the deepest impression on me. Not the most original of choices, probably, but hey. The second stanza in particular meant a lot, when I was at the age where home was the last place I wanted to be. In fact I'm fairly certain that this poem was the deciding factor in me actually clearing off away a few years later.

Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

[Todd]

The second strophe is great. I love the "we all hate home"

I also enjoyed the idea of a life reprehensibly perfect.

I can see why you liked it.

[billy]

in all honesty i wrote my first poetry at the age of 45 or so up till then i'd only read prose. the stuff i wrote was so hall mark, i thought it great stuff.
if was one of the 1st poems i read, that had some hold on me, and then i read...she walks in beauty. i wanted to write poetry like that but sadly all i ever write is poo etc

the jabberwock was another poem that influenced me, it made me realise that sound can play a part in how understand things. the nonsense when broken down is quite remarkable. i always looked on poetry as something dipshits did it's seems i became a dipshit

[Leanne]

There were quite a lot of poems floating around in my house -- lots of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson as well as a cassette of Pam Ayres (I don't want to go to school mum, I want to stay home with my duck!) -- but the first poem I knew by heart and loved to recite was The Triantiwontigongolope by C J Dennis. It's almost the Australian Jabberwocky

[heslopian]

Possibly this:

The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

***

I remember reading Anne Sexton in bed at my Nan's house when I was 16 or 17. As a depressed, pretentious teenager it really spoke to me

[billy]

i just read it again and it's a perfect childs poem, i never had that stuff when i were a kid

---

you're the swine that put the sexton/plath hex on me. the more of them i read/hear the more i like.

Possibly this:

The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

***

I remember reading Anne Sexton in bed at my Nan's house when I was 16 or 17. As a depressed, pretentious teenager it really spoke to me

[Leanne]

It's ok billy, I'll even it out for you by still quite doggedly despising Sexton and Plath... but then again, I was never a teenager...

[serge gurkski]

Not an English one of course, but as to English a lot of stuff by e e cummings, Dylan Thomas and James Joyce.

ee cummings:

in Just-


in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman



whistles far and wee



and eddyandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it’s

spring



when the world is puddle-wonderful



the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing



from hop-scotch and jump-rope and



it’s

spring

and

the



goat-footed



balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

---

[billy]

i'm listening to a lot of australian poetry as of late, i'm impressed. some of the ballads are very kipling like but with a great Aussie twang.

[Leanne]

I think there's a good chance it's the other way around, actually -- a lot of Kipling sounds quite like Australian bush ballads!

[billy]

well i think it's the other way round actually too

---

they're from about the same period so it's anyone's guess, i'd say it's the ballad style that makes them of a similar style. that said i have no idea

[Leanne]

we started it and that's the story I'm sticking to... mostly because there are lots of us and only one Kipling... and even then it's Rudyard

[billy]

doreen possessed me

[Smiffy]

This was the first poem that really made me go wow!! on so many levels

Killing Time by Simon Armitage

Meanwhile, somewhere in the state of Colorado, armed to the teeth with thousands of flowers, two boys entered the front door of their own high school and for almost four hours gave floral tributes to fellow students and members of the staff beginning with red roses strewn among unsuspecting pupils during their lunch hour, followed by posies of peace lilies and wild orchids. Most thought the whole show was one elaborate hoax using silk replicas of the real thing, plastic imitations, exquisite practical jokes, but the flowers were no more fake than you or I, and were handed out as compliments returned, favors repaid, in good faith, straight from the heart. No would not be taken for an answer. Therefore a daffodil was tucked behind the ear of a boy in a baseball hat, and marigolds and peonies threaded through the hair of those caught on the stairs or spotted along corridors until every pupil who looked up from behind a desk could expect to be met with at least a petal or a dusting of pollen, if not an entire daisy chain, or the color-burst of a dozen foxgloves, flowering for all their worth, or a buttonhole to the breast. Upstairs in the school library, individuals were singled out for special attention: some were showered with blossom, others wore their blooms like brooches or medallions; even those who turned their backs or refused point-blank to accept such honors were decorated with buds, unseasonable fruits and rosettes the same as the others.
By which time a crowd had gathered outside the school, drawn through suburbia by the rumor of flowers in full bloom, drawn through the air like butterflies to buddleia, like honey bees to honeysuckle, like hummingbirds dipping their tongues in, some to soak up such over-exuberance of thought, others to savor the goings-on. Finally, overcome by their own munificence or hay fever, the flower-boys pinned the last blooms on themselves, somewhat selfishly perhaps, but had also planned further surprises for those who swept through the aftermath of bloom and buttercup: garlands and bouquets, planted in lockers and cupboards, timed to erupt either by fate or chance, had somehow been overlooked and missed out. Experts are now trying to say how two apparently quiet kids from an apple-pie town could get their hands on a veritable rain-forest of plants and bring down a whole botanical digest of one species or another onto the heads of classmates and teachers, and where such fascination began, and why it should lead to an outpouring of this nature. And even though many believe that flowers should be kept in expert hands only, or left to specialists in the field such as florists, the law of the land dictates that God, guts and gardening made the country what it is today and for as long as the flower industry can see to it things are staying that way. What they reckon is this: deny a person the right to carry flowers of his own and he’s liable to wind up on the business end of a flower somebody else had grown. As for the two boys, it’s back to the same old debate: is it something in the mind that grows from birth, like a seed, or is it society that makes a person that kind?

[brandontoh]

Here i sit, broken-hearted
Paid a penny but only farted.

When I got into poetry I started with Chinese literature, so I guess it's those modern Chinese poems that impacted me?

[hobbit86]

I remember reading poetry at school, and enjoying them once I understood what they meant (somewhat got confused by the older language with 'thee' 'thou' etc), but the first poem I remember reading that I had found whilst finding my own poets and poems in free time was 'Happy The Man' by Quintus Horatius Flaccus...I think I must have been about 16...

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who secure within can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself, upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

I must admit, I did like this poem when I first came across it...but it was only a year or so back when I rediscovered it scribbled in the back of an old 'teen' sketch book of mine that I really valued it's meaning...

[justcloudy]

when I was very small my dad would read all sorts of poetry to us. none of it stuck, but I began writing at a very early age... I still have a poem I wrote at 7 years old, and I'm sure it wasn't my first.
however it was in high school when I had my first real WOW poetry experience. I went to a live reading by a poet named Ted Kooser. He was a US poet laureate for a while and is a simple rural poet from Nebraska. how he saw the world, and how he read his poems was amazing. this one stuck with me the most:


Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

[rayheinrich]

I remember the first poem the second time around:
I hadn't read or written a poem for about 15 years.
One day I was looking through books in this bookstore
in Falmouth Massachusetts and I noticed this book lying
on the floor. When I picked it up to re-shelve it,
it opened to this poem by Susan Mitchell:


Once, Driving West of Billings, Montana

I ran into the afterlife.
No fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky
dark as the inside of a movie theater
at three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time,
expanding at terrific speed
over the car which was disappearing,
flattening out empty
as the fields on either side.

It was impossible to think
under that rain louder than engines.
I turned off the radio to listen, let my head
fill up until every bone
was vibrating—sky.

Twice, trees of lightning
broke out of the asphalt. I could smell
the highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling
behind the eyeballs, lariats
doing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver
dollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins.

I was starting to feel I could drive forever
when suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me.
Of course, I hit it—
branches shooting stars down the windshield,
poor car shaking like a dazed cow.
I thought this time for sure I was dead
so whatever was on the other side had to be eternity.

Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.

[Crepuscule]

The first poem to get under my skin was "Arrangements" by Douglas Dunn from his anthology "Elegies", about his wife who died of cancer in 1981.

Arrangements - Douglas Dunn

"Is this the door?" This must be it. No, no.
We come across crowds and confetti, weddings
With well-wishers, relatives, whimsical bridesmaids.
Some have happened. Others are waiting their turn.
One is taking place before the Registrar.
A young groom is unsteady in his new shoes.
His bride is nervous on the edge of the future.
I walk through them with the father of my dead wife.
I redefine the meaning of "strangers".
Death, too, must have looked in on our wedding.
The building stinks of municipal function.
"Go through with it. You have to. It's the law."
So I say to a clerk, "I have come about a death."
"In there," she says. "You came in by the wrong door"

A woman with teenaged children sits at a table.
She hands to the clerk the paper her doctor gave her.
"Does that mean 'heart attack'?" she asks.
How little she knows, this widow. Or any of us.
From one look she can tell I have not come
With my uncle, on the business of my aunt.
A flake of confetti falls from her fur shoulder.
There is a bond between us, a terrible bond
In the comfortless words, "waste", "untimely", "tragic",
Already gossiped in the obit, conversations.
Good wishes grieve together in the space between us.
It is as if we shall be friends for ever
On the promenades of mourning and insurance,
In whatever sanatoria there are for the spirit,
Sharing the same birthday, the same predestinations.
Fictitious clinics stand by to welcome us,
Prefab'd and windswept on the edge of town
Or bijou in the antiseptic Alps,
In my case the distilled clinic of drink,
The clinic of "sympathy" and dinners.

We enter a small office. "What relation?" he asks.
So I tell him. Now come the details he asks for.
A tidy man, with small, hideaway handwriting,
He writes things down. He does not ask,
"Was she good?" Everyone receives this Certificate.
You do not need even to deserve it.
I want to ask why he doesn't look like a saint,
When, across his desk, through his tabulations,
His bureaucracy, his morbid particulars,
The local dead walk into genealogy.
He is no cipher of history, this one,
This recording angel in a green pullover
Administering names and dates and causes.
He has seen all the words that end in -oma.
"You give this to your undertaker."
When we leave, this time it is by the right door,
A small door, taboo and second-rate.
It is raining. Anonymous brollies go by
In the ubiquitous urban drizzle.
Wedding parties roll up with white ribbons.
Small pools are gathering in the loving bouquets.
They must not see me. I bear a tell-tale scar.
They must not know what I am, or why I am here.
I feel myself digested in statistics of love.

Hundreds of times I must have passed this undertaker's
Sub-gothic premises with leaded windows,
By bus, on foot, by car, paying no attention.
We went past it on our first day in Hull.
Not once did I see someone leave or enter,
And here I am, closing the door behind me,
Turning the corner on a wet day in March.