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That poetry meme, only not, because there's a lot more than just one favorite here. It's not a comprehensive list either, just the ones I thought of off the top of my head and could find easily via Google.
Anne Sexton - The Truth the Dead Know
Anne Sexton - Courage
Anne Sexton - Rowing and The Rowing Endeth
Anne Sexton - The Starry Night
W.H. Auden - As I Walked Out One Evening
W.H. Auden - September 1, 1939
John Donne - The Canonization
Robert Browning - Two in the Campagna
Tennyson - The Lotos-Eaters
William Butler Yeats - The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats - When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats - The Second Coming
T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land (annotated version, because that's how I like to read it)
Philip Larkin - Talking in Bed
e.e. cummings - i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings - i thank you God for most this amazing day
Wallace Stevens - Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Louise Gluck - Trillium
William Dickey - A Kindness
E. Powys Mathers (transl.) - Black Marigolds
William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
This last probably wouldn't qualify as a favorite, but it's meaningful to me. In tenth grade Honors English, we were all assigned a different poem to analyze and then present our analysis to the class; I'd never really understood poetry before, and I remember agonizing over this poem, and I remember the moment when it finally started to click. I might like poetry a lot less if not for this poem, is what I'm saying. (We also read a LOT of Shakespeare in high school, and Shakespeare's another really good way to learn to read poetry, I think.)
And also, I couldn't find this anywhere, but it's a nice poem that for some reason struck a chord in me during a really difficult time in my life:
Philip Levine -
On the way down
blue lupine at the roadside,
red bud scattered
down the mountain, tiny
white jump-ups hiding
underfoot, the first push
of wild oats like froth
at the field’s edge. The wind blows
through everything, the crowned
peaks above us, the soft floor
of the valley below,
the humps of rock
walking down the world.
On the way down
from the trackless snow fields
where a blackbird
eyed me from
a solitary pine, knowing
I would go back the way
I came, shaking my head,
and the blue glitter of ice
was like the darkness
of winter nights, deepening
before it could change,
and the only voice
my own saying
Goodbye.
Can you hear me?
the air says. I hold
my breath and listen
and a finger of dirt thaws,
a river drains
from a snow drop
and rages down
my cheeks, our father
the wind hums
a prayer through my mouth
and answers in the oat,
and now the tight rows of seed
bow to the earth
and hold on and hold on.
Anne Sexton - The Truth the Dead Know
Anne Sexton - Courage
Anne Sexton - Rowing and The Rowing Endeth
Anne Sexton - The Starry Night
W.H. Auden - As I Walked Out One Evening
W.H. Auden - September 1, 1939
John Donne - The Canonization
Robert Browning - Two in the Campagna
Tennyson - The Lotos-Eaters
William Butler Yeats - The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats - When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats - The Second Coming
T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land (annotated version, because that's how I like to read it)
Philip Larkin - Talking in Bed
e.e. cummings - i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings - i thank you God for most this amazing day
Wallace Stevens - Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Louise Gluck - Trillium
William Dickey - A Kindness
E. Powys Mathers (transl.) - Black Marigolds
William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
This last probably wouldn't qualify as a favorite, but it's meaningful to me. In tenth grade Honors English, we were all assigned a different poem to analyze and then present our analysis to the class; I'd never really understood poetry before, and I remember agonizing over this poem, and I remember the moment when it finally started to click. I might like poetry a lot less if not for this poem, is what I'm saying. (We also read a LOT of Shakespeare in high school, and Shakespeare's another really good way to learn to read poetry, I think.)
And also, I couldn't find this anywhere, but it's a nice poem that for some reason struck a chord in me during a really difficult time in my life:
Philip Levine -
On the way down
blue lupine at the roadside,
red bud scattered
down the mountain, tiny
white jump-ups hiding
underfoot, the first push
of wild oats like froth
at the field’s edge. The wind blows
through everything, the crowned
peaks above us, the soft floor
of the valley below,
the humps of rock
walking down the world.
On the way down
from the trackless snow fields
where a blackbird
eyed me from
a solitary pine, knowing
I would go back the way
I came, shaking my head,
and the blue glitter of ice
was like the darkness
of winter nights, deepening
before it could change,
and the only voice
my own saying
Goodbye.
Can you hear me?
the air says. I hold
my breath and listen
and a finger of dirt thaws,
a river drains
from a snow drop
and rages down
my cheeks, our father
the wind hums
a prayer through my mouth
and answers in the oat,
and now the tight rows of seed
bow to the earth
and hold on and hold on.