Thread: Poetry?

Originally Posted by billyjeff2

Maybe if you moved all that hair away from your eyes you'd be able to read/understand the poem better...

Nope still got nothing

Originally Posted by billyjeff2

Do you find the following to be any more understandable compared to the Elizabeth Alexander poem?:

"The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become."

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

"Nope still got nothing"

fun-nee!!!

"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?"

Originally Posted by Jimbo

But hey! Give me a baudy limerick any day!

James.

For you James, this very old school boy limerick:

There once was an old man of Leeds
Who swallowed a packet of seeds,
Great tufts of grass
Shot out of his arse
And his **** was covered in weeds.

Remplace the **** by the end of the name of the famous film director, Alfred Hitch****