Thread: Poetry?

Thanks Brad. I actually like this version much better than the original

I have studied both poems. I think calling the second one a poem is a stretch, it's more like badly written prose.

xman-> Poe did free verse, but he did it well, and he did it with the goal of having a certain phonetic impact when read aloud. The whole poem is an onomonapeaia which I can't spell. The Obama poem has no extra merit when read aloud.

icedog-> yeah, I think that's a better version. Of course, I also think House of the Rising Sun is a better song entirely, but there you have it.

I don't think a poem has to rhyme to be a poem, Tennyson frequently didn't rhyme and I think he's one of the greatest English-language poets to live. But I think you do need SOME structure, or it's just prose.

Originally Posted by JMS

I have lately been paying close attention to the inaugural poem for Obama by elizabeth Alexander Praise for tha Day I have not been able to make heads or tails out of it!

How does the poem relate to the inauguration? If one bit should be interpreted, it is the part I am having the hardest time understanding: It is a praise song for walking forward in the light of being able to make anything and being able to begin any sentence in today's sharp sparkle and this winter air and I don't have a clue what that means

There is much poetry I don't understand though and so I don't know how to judge this poem as poets do, but this poem seems to me to partly suggest that the inauguration is a symbolic culmination of the efforts of working and or struggling people. And partly that those efforts are and were so that an ambiguous form of bright love can be swam in and people can keep working at the edge of that pool.

So thank *something* for the act of struggling and for the day that represents the fruit of the efforts of that struggling. Are we thanking each other? Or Obama? Or the Democrats or God or America or Mother Earth or what? I'm also curious as to whether this inauguration day is meant to be praised by all mankind for the efforts of all mankind, or if this is an American hymn, etc. Many questions, and maybe that is what the poem is meant to do - to make me think

Originally Posted by icedog

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!

Well. that was the easiest 20 bucks I have ever made!
Brad, if it was my wifes poem I wouldn't like it.

Well, first of all I want to thank you for introducing me to "Ballad of the Goodly Fere." I've been acquainted with Pound's later and better-known works for many years, but this one is new to me. I like it very much.

The inaugural poem less so, but I think it's reasonably good. Part of the problem is that it's an occasional poem (meaning, written specifically for an occasion), and speaking from experience I'd say it is hard to write a really fine poem, on deadline, for a particular event. (It's good discipline, though, and I'd recommend to any developing poet to angle for a few such invitations or failing that just to pick an upcoming occasion and write for it.) The comparison to Frost's reading is instructive. "The Gift Outright" was a poem that Frost had written years before and knew from memory; he recited it when he couldn't follow "Dedication," the poem he had written for the inauguration, because the wind kept blowing the manuscript around. And while "Dedication" shows Frost's thoughtfulness and wit and his precise command of language and form, and is not a bad poem at all, I think "The Gift Outright" is much stronger.

Another question these two poems raise is that of formal versus free verse. Personally, I suspect one of the reasons formal verse fell into disfavor with poets is that simply mastering form, with nothing else, makes it easy to write doggerel. But free verse carries its own risk: it's all too easy to chop up prose into lines and call it poetry. I'm not saying that's what Alexander has done with her poem; as I said, I personally find it a pretty good poem and am actually liking it more as I reread it. But--I'm not sure, this is an idea I'm just starting to play around with--I wonder if a really good poem in formal verse announces its quality more clearly. There is some connection, I am sure, between the near-abandonment of traditional form and the loss of a general audience for poetry in America, but I hesitate to get too simplistic about what it might be.

Well--this has gotten far afield--I hope you'll forgive my rambling. One thing I will say (as a lover of literature and an off-and-on practicing poet myself) is that just to have poetry once again given an honored place at such an event feels like the first warm day of spring.

~Rich

Originally Posted by JMS

Well. that was the easiest 20 bucks I have ever made!
Brad, if it was my wifes poem I wouldn't like it.

Que? How you make 20 bucks easy?

I heard the author's husband doesn't get it either.

I was a bouncer in a club in Portsmouth, NH while my ship was in the yard up there. Once upon a time the Bruebeck Brothers (Dave's sons) played there. Their music was way over my head. It was ridiculously complex. They'd introduce a song and say something like, "The next song is written in 145 over 9 time." It was iimpossible for me to find any beat in it al all. After the show, Darius Bruebeck sits at the bar next to me and asks, "So what'd you think of our music?"

"I hate to admit it but I don't think I'm smart enough to appreciate your work."

"Dad doesn't always like it either."

Hey. four more!!

Originally Posted by icedog

Que? How you make 20 bucks easy?

I was betting that not only would you make an appearance in this thread but that you would wonder aloud whether I would like the poem better if it was McCains inaugural!
I guess I owe you a thanks!

Originally Posted by JMS

I was betting that not only would you make an appearance in this thread but that you would wonder aloud whether I would like the poem better if it was McCains inaugural!
I guess I owe you a thanks!

WIth whom did you make this bet?

Do you take Paypal Mark?



James.

Why yes I do! Thats genuine Aussie dollars right?