Thread: Poetry?

"Nope still got nothing"

fun-nee!!!

Originally Posted by JMS

When I read Ezra I compare him to Lou aka scarface telling a humorous story, when I read Elizabeth it is compared to me telling a humorous story, in other words, anyone can do what she did! Not everyone can be a Lou or an Ezra or, for that matter, a pablo or a Vincent! Yet she was honored by being accepted to write the inaugural poem. Surely we have better talent than this.

That's just the way it goes, I guess. Greater familiarity usually begets greater respect.

Vincent died a penniless vagrant and a commercial failure; Pablo a cultural cliche, despised by many of his contemporaries. Ever since then, even the most minor of their works have sold for fortunes.

If you bought a "2008" bottle of (lousy) wine a month or two ago, you might have stowed it away in your basement as casually as you did the Jiff peanut butter. But leave there a couple of decades and when someone dusts it off they'll say, "Oooh, a 2008!" I guarantee it. I think my point is that perspective is a lot easier to gauge when you've taken a few steps back -- or forward, in this case.

Poetry isn't so much about rhyme, meter and high language as it is personal experience. A writer's Polaroid snapshot. That's kind of a good comparison, actually: those Polaroid shots. In the moments after those cameras spit out the picture, you don't look at it with any reverence. I know I've always thought of them as novelties. But when you find them in a drawer years later, they'll speak to you. To a lot of kids, Ezra Pound was just a stupid-sounding name in a school book. Because of the personal element between you, your father and him, though, you'll never think of him in the same light as those kids.

The same is true with this Obama poem. It's a personal account of what's happened and all that had to happen before it could happen. The language is plain English because I don't think it's meant to be studied or marvelled at, but just remembered, by everyone who was there - here - to see it happen. And for the people a hundred years from now who want to know what we - she - felt at the time.

"Not more understandable but certainly more thought provoking, descriptive and emotional."

Perhaps this is more your style:

"Roses are red
Daisies are yellow
Obama's the Prez
What's any of this have to do with shaving?"

The End.

I would describe the inaugural poem as adequate. It had some decent moments, but I wasn't blown away by it.

I've always been moved by "The Gift Outright." It's a neat, tight little poem, and expresses a compelling thought. I also remember the poet, standing on the Capitol steps, the wind blowing his papers about. His voice was barely audible. He would be dead in a year or two.

j

I see nothing wrong with either poem. They are merely different. Ezra's is more structured while Elizabeth's is more free form. Poe was often criticized for his loose use of form. See his The Bells which breaks its own structure to great effect. For an even better modernist take on Jesus, I recommend T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi.

Speaking just to Elizabeth Alexander's Praise for the Day:
It is a poem of simplicity and hope. I find that it starts by painting a picture, a fairly specific picture for a day and the lives that run through it. From there it goes on to inspire progress and even progressiveness. It is a poem of hope, even if the poet's bias is showing, "love thy neighbor as thyself" is a biblical quote, "first do no harm" is part of the physician's Hippocratic oath and "take no more than you need" is an environmental cry perhaps evoking shades of the communist ideology, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

I think the sentiment is that ordinary people can accomplish much when we work together.

X

I must say that Ezra's poem is more to my taste than Liz's. I find the latter to be too prosy, and I have never liked the prose poem much.

I find the structure imposed by the discipline of cadence and rhythm (of traditional poetry) lends itself much better to the use of a more vivid, or perhaps personal and internalised, word imagery. I prefer my poetic images to be painted with parsimony and the interpretation left to the reader's experience and world view; not garrulousness with any ambiguities removed or clarified and the reader led by the nose to the conclusion the writer wants them to come to.

But hey! Give me a baudy limerick any day!

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

I must say that Ezra's poem is more to my taste than Liz's. I find the latter to be too prosy, and I have never liked the prose poem much.

......

But hey! Give me a baudy limerick any day!

James.

There was and old maid form Peru,
Who swore she'ld never screw.
Except under stress,
Of forceful duress,
Like "I'm ready dear, are you?"

Poems such as the inaugural choice really do make me feel like a heathen. I read them & think ' what a load of absolute tosh'
I can appreciate poetry, but when you take a few paragraphs & read them in a whimsical voice, it just doesn't make it poetry for me!
Could be i'm a bit too traditional, could be that i don't have the intellect, could be that they're pretentious cr@p.

I'm not smart enough to understand alot of poetry. I've got a book of TS Elliott poems that are completely baffling. I am okay with that. I don't understand alot of things.

Mark, if it were the inaugural poem of John McCain do you think you'd like it better?

Hey, six more posts!

But did you know you can sing Amazing Grace to the tune of In The House of the Rising Sun?
YouTube - amazing grace