Favorite rhymed metric verse written after 1950 (e.g. Wilbur and Gunn)

[marcus]

About reciting poetry from memory, turns out there's a national contest for high school kids

It's sponsored by National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and called Poetry Out Loud (POL). Started in 2005 on a pilot basis, expanded in 2006, and includes all states. Over 300,000 high schoolers participated in 2010. First local level, then a countywide judging where each contestant recites several poems. Then statewide---here is the California run-offs: one contestant from each county, each contestant delivering 3 poems:
http://www.cac.ca.gov/artsnews/whatsnewdetail.php?id=180

The page gives links to text of many of the poems, and it gives video clips of each of the recitations. The poems range from John Donne to Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Billy Collins.

The national POL folks post a list of poems that contestants can choose from. It's about reciting poems by others, not one's own (as in a slam or reading). I think some of the young people have coaches---in many cases their delivery was subtle, understated, sensitive---not hammed, but letting the poem speak

Here's the current list of eligible poems:
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems/browsepoems.html

They keep striking poems from the list and adding new ones---to keep it fresh. Here's the list of removed poems (some have been recited a lot, indeed have been delivered by the contest winners in past years.)
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems/ineligible.html

 

[marcus]

By now this thread has gotten away from the restriction to post-1950. Here is one by Jose Marti, cuban:

http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/jmarti.html

Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo,
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo,
Cultivo una rosa blanca.


I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly.
And for the cruel person who tears out
the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.

 

[marcus]

Ruben DarioEl cisne en la sombra parece de nieve;
su pico es de ámbar, del alba al trasluz;
el suave crepúsculo que pasa tan breve
las cándidas alas sonrosa de luz.

Y luego, en las ondas del lago azulado,
después que la aurora perdió su arrebol,
las alas tendidas y el cuello enarcado,
el cisne es de plata ,bañado de sol.

Tal es, cuando esponja las plumas de seda,
olímpico pájaro herido de amor,
y viola en las linfas sonoras a Leda,
buscando su pico los labios en flor.

Suspira la bella desnuda y vencida,
y en tanto que al aire sus quejas se van,
del fondo verdoso de fronda tupida
chispean turbados los ojos de Pan.

just found this, not sure what I think of it.