Poetry

[jim]

I guess I just don't get it. I was helping my son last night with some poem by Wordsworth(nice name for a poet btw). Tinern Abbey or some god damn thing. I think you must either get it or you don't, because to me it was just a weird collection or words written on paper. Made no sense to either me or my son. We bs'ed our way through the handout, but honestly I just have no idea what that guy was talking about. Is poetry something that you just kind of get, or do you have to learn to appreciate it?

Here is the poem we worked on last night: I don't even know what five years he's talking about - five years since what?

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view 10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, 20
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:--feelings too 30
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world, 40
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-- 50
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart--
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man 70
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once, 120
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 130
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 140
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance--
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream 150
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love--oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
1798.

[vinsanity]

Is poetry something that you just kind of get, or do you have to learn to appreciate it?

Deeply personal. It's sort of like music in that sense. You either like something or you don't. You can learn some of the different intricacies of poetry but it doesn't mean you'll 'get' it or like it. But alot of times it's kind of pretentious and snobby.

Here's one I've always liked
Rudyard Kipling - If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[lukethedrifter]

William Shakespeare.

My daughter was 5 when I took her to see Julius Caesar with my Mom. We were going to leave at intermission since it was already 9:45 but the kid wondered why everyone else wasn't getting up to go. When I explained she said she wasn't leaving until it was over. So now I've seen her perform in 5 or 6 of his plays plus gone to see multiple other performances and my eyes still glaze over and my brain starts to hurt after about 10 minutes.
I totally get the cleverness of many of the lines but I just can't stick with the whole thing.



Maybe you need that French anchor lady to read you the poem.

[jim]

I'm not one to label stuff pretentious or snobby. I know there is music I really really like that gets that tag, and it's just not true with me. I like it. Period. There is literally NO poetry that I like. I tried to read the one you posted and I start daydreaming about other stuff within 3 lines. Then I'm reading but not reading, then run into a word like "knaves' which snaps me out of my daydream so I go back to read the entire sentence "Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools" which makes absolutely no sense to me partly because I don't know what "knaves" means and partly because I've already lost interest and then I just stop.

I guess that abstract writing just doesn't capture my attention like it does others.

[vinsanity]

I'm not one to label stuff pretentious or snobby. I know there is music I really really like that gets that tag, and it's just not true with me. I like it. Period.

I don't mean all of it. And it was a little flippant. But I like some of it, some of it you 'get' and some of it you don't. Some you can work to like. Just seems like a lot of time poetry does seem really....well pretentious. It seems like they try too hard to use flowery words and vivid imagery to obscure a deeper meaning? Hard to explain I guess.

Frost is shorter, not so abstract but can pack a decent punch succinctly.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

[TGantz]

That's a cool story Luke. It makes you wonder how many of the little things like that leave an impact.

A Supermarket in California
Allen Ginsburg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

[heyzeus]

DAMMIT i've just wasted 5 minutes trying to find a Miguel Batista poem to post here, but his stupid [expletive] website is down.

[jeffbgoofy]

I have written over 120 poems. Some lyrics too, so I get it but I don't like to read a lot of them, it's like reading a diary or something. This is one of mine that has actually been published.

Freedom

We dream of the day the world can be free.
We hope for the time that will never be.
‘Cause freedom is a gift
Not all of us will get
Freedom’s a love
For when we will live.
Freedom.
You can live without it,
If you get used to it.
Never will you have to decide,
Always wondering why,
Freedom never came to you.

[sighyoung]

I only began to study poetry because I was entering grad school in English and didn't know much about it. I spent a summer reading up on it--its forms, traditions, rhythms, visual arrangements, etc.

First, I'm not a big fan of all poetry, by any means. The Romantics aren't my cup of tea at all. But it really helps to know the time period, the specific form or genre of poetry, audience, structure--and after a while, you can pick up those clues pretty quickly. For instance, if I see that a poem is a sonnet, that tells me a lot of potential things--both how the poem is structured, but also the tradition it is part of, and how the poem is "talking back" to other poems. But this is true of prose, too.

In addition, unlike novels or short stories, it helps to read other poems by a particular poet. The "classic" poems by, say, Whitman, aren't the best way into his interests and style. Sometimes, as one of my favorite teachers once said, you need a text "in which the seams show" so you can see how a poet often is operating--his or her interests, recurring themes and images, ways of using language. You pick that up pretty quickly. English teachers who seem to have a miraculous understanding of a poem are really only bringing a broader range of knowledge to that specific poem.

It's also a matter of style. I'm not a novel guy. I don't get immersed in stories. I like creative play with language, and I like reading and working with short texts that suggest a lot, and with which I can do a lot.

Finally, poetry is a form of power. So many English teachers are afraid of poetry themselves, so that if you know it, you can watch snotty academics literally pee in their pants with fear. There is pleasure in this that perhaps only serial killers understand, and yet this pleasure is legal in all fifty states.

[cardinalkarp]

After going back to school these past couple quarters I've had to read quite a bit of poetry for the classes. As someone already said, some of it resonates w/ you & some of it doesn't. A poem as long as the one jim posted will always be hard for me to get into because as he said, I just begin daydreaming & thinking of other things while reading. For the longest time poetry made no sense because I would always try to read it line by line and would pause at each line break which made it make absolutely no sense. Now that I've become more adept to reading it, it seems to be a bit easier to understand.

My teacher always told me that when trying to analyze poetry, the first time you read it, it should always be for enjoyment (I know that's sometimes hard), it's not until you read it for the second & third times that you should go through it breaking the poem down & try to understand the meaning.

A poem can have a number of different meanings, it's up to the individual to interpret it & get out of it what it means to them.