Thread: Poetry?

Is it me? is it the poet? or the subject matter?

My father would read me this poem by Ezra Pound the Ballad of the Goodly Fere and he would always get a little choked up. this is my standard for good poetry.
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! It makes my head hurt! Is it really that bad or has poetry changed so much since Ezras time that I just dont get it?

What is it you don't understand about the poem?

Originally Posted by Blade Wielder

What is it you don't understand about the poem?

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.

Having now read both poems, I'm at a loss to understand how the Ezra Pound poem is so much more understandable. Maybe you just heard it so many times that its meaning became ingrained, whilst the inaugural poem is new to you and not as familiar. I daresay that if you read the inaugural poem multiple times, its meaning is quite evident...

It's not that the inaugural poem was hard to understand, it's that it was bad. If there was some deeper meaning than what I gathered than maybe, but as is it's not a very insightful or emotion provoking poem.

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

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...

I'm bald and I don't get it either

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."

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.