How do people enjoy poetry?

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Asher

Poetry sucks, with the exception of awesome song lyrics.

True

[Jon Miller]

I like poetry and ballet. I don't always like what everyone else likes, though. I think I have to be in the right mood also (for some of it).

Jon Miller

[asleepathewheel]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,...

[Jon Miller]

poetry slams at college coffee shops royally suck though

Jon Miller

[Zkribbler]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,...

Whew. That guy must have missed the day in English class when they said not to use run-on sentences.

[asleepathewheel]

That guy?

????

[Imran Siddiqui]

Re: How do people enjoy poetry?

Originally posted by Barnabas
And when I read it, I feel like I am wasting my time, because it is not a story, so it is like I am reading nothing

Err? "The Illiad"? Dante's "Inferno"? Both are famous epic poems which have very rich stories.

[Dis]

Re: How do people enjoy poetry?

Originally posted by Barnabas
I am completely untouched by it

When it is read out loud it sounds like blah blah blah to me

And when I read it, I feel like I am wasting my time, because it is not a story, so it is like I am reading nothing

and I thought I was the only one.

I tried real hard to get into poetry in my high school english classes. Interestingly, my English classes never taught english, but poetry and plays, and crap like that.

The closest I could get to liking it was T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland. I do like that poem. But I'd still take a cool song with good lyrics over that.

[Zkribbler]

"If the glove don't fit,
You must acquit!"

[Geronimo]

Poetry always seems like reading a song with all of the music and singing removed. Which to me is like ordering a plain cheese pizza. What a waste.

I can appreciate some poetry a little but I can't see how it can be compared to music as an enjoyable art form.

Frankly rather than spending a moment reading or hearing any poetry I'd much rather read some interesting prose on an interesting topic while listening to almost any sort of music in the background.

I remain greatly puzzled by the greater attention and value given to poetry compared to music by so many people especially in comparison to lyrical music.

[Cort Haus]

"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!" was the only type of poetry I ever got into - and only because it was war-porn, not because it was poetry.

I agree with those who say that it's lyrics without the music, therefore fundamentally lacking.

[Zkribbler]

"It was only a nightmare. It was only a dream.
But it bothered me all through the night.
Ten women were fighting to make love to me.
But the ugly one kept winning the fight."



"Walls around graveyards
Are silly beyond a doubt.
The people on the outside don't wanna get in.
And those on the inside can't get out."


...Nipsy Russell

[Maquiladora]

The problem is that most poetry is crap, written by crap writers.

I agree. There are only a few war poems that i like, and i can't be bothered to wade through the crap to find new ones.

I like these:

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

By: Siegfried Sassoon

[Cort Haus]

OK, here's the whole thing

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in.
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Cort Haus]

The General

‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Siegfried Sassoon