Poetry is a load of horse **** waste of time and most people intrinsically know it.

1o059k7ewrqj3n · 06-11-2020 11:04AM

Ode to My Goldfish

Oh wet pet!

By Ogden Nash

Poetry is nice OP.

banie01 · 06-11-2020 11:14AM

Can't say I agree with the OP's premise.

The oldest and earliest literature we have apart from grave inscriptions is poetry.
The Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Norse sagas, the early English, the Egyptians all used poetry it's structure and it's mnemonic properties to share stories.

Poetry was the 1st information revolution.
Bards would learn poems, news, genealogies and other information by rote, then travel and share that info all whilst learning more.

The Catalogue of Ships in the Illiad is a prime example of this. So many of the locations mentioned in what was long thought a work of mythic imagination are now being found.
Even ignoring the Schliemann discoveries, so many more locations are being found that tie in with the Homeric description and improve our knowledge of the bronze age.

Yes, poetry can be pretentious and tedious and bloody annoying! In particular and ironically given my example of the Illiad..
No 2nd Troy irks me as does much of Yates.

The thing is tho, poetry of any era and it's study.
Is not about appreciating flowery language. It's about building a store of critical language skills.
It's about parsing what someone says against what they actually mean. It's about developing critical reasoning and rhetoric.

TP_CM · 06-11-2020 11:20AM

I think this might just be a misunderstanding. The OP thinks that what makes him and his friends (probably less than 10 people) happy is the same stuff as what makes the 6 billion people on earth happy. Do you work in IT, OP? If not, you should consider it.. Particularly with headphones and code. You would love it.

sbsquarepants · 06-11-2020 11:23AM

weldoninhio wrote: »

Poetry is excellent. I write a bit, it's not high falluting or anything like that. How can something like this not move you??

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Jesus christ, this last part hits me like a train every time!

I pass by a painted esb box on my way home every night has a quote from Heaney on it very fitting for the times "if we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere"

I don't think it's even from a poem, just something he said - but you have to hand it to him, that man just had a way with words!

Montage of Feck · 06-11-2020 11:42AM

“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can **** off.”
― Philip Larkin

endacl · 06-11-2020 11:43AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Abstract art is an expression of how the human mind works. It's the only thing that separates us from animals.

Well, that. And trousers.

Immortal Starlight · 06-11-2020 12:10PM

And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils

G'wan Wordsworth!

fonecrusher1 · 06-11-2020 12:37PM

This one always makes me tear up a bit.

Erraah I wouldn't be fond of the drinking,
but when I do go at it I go at it awful hard.
I'd have about 45 pints in about 2 hours,
and I'd have an oul packet a crips then or an oul packet eh peanuts,
and I'd have 3 more anyway.

And I'd get up in the morning then, and Maureen'd have the fry on.
And I'd go at it again. And I tell ya one thing,
there'd be no ****in shtopping me.
I'd drink the shirt off any man's back.

Bastards.

TheIrishGrover · 06-11-2020 12:38PM

TP_CM wrote: »

I think this might just be a misunderstanding. The OP thinks that what makes him and his friends (probably less than 10 people) happy is the same stuff as what makes the 6 billion people on earth happy. Do you work in IT, OP? If not, you should consider it.. Particularly with headphones and code. You would love it.

Annnnnd THIS is what puts many people off - The elitist, Trinners, David-Norris Joycians rolling up and down their socks, thumbs in braces and sticking out their chests and harping on about how hilarious and pertinent Joyce is today. And how fabulous they are about appreciating something mere plebs and manual workers can't.....

I work in IT
I wear headphones
I code
And yet.......

topper75 · 06-11-2020 12:44PM

weldoninhio wrote: »

Poetry is excellent. I write a bit, it's not high falluting or anything like that. How can something like this not move you??

Mid-Term Break
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
...

That is excellent writing (in the dictionary definition of the word 'excellent'). But it is really just prose with weird spacing and segmentation to make it seem like verse. I can never consider that poetry, despite the fact that huge banks of the 'poetry' I studied in school was of that nature.

The OP has a point. The majority of poetry is pretentious rubbish. But I'll not throw out the baby with the bathwater and agree that ALL poetry is a load of horsesh*t. Too extreme.

It is telling, is it not, that despite years spent by kids in forced study, so very few of them go on to actually buy a book of poetry, any poetry, as adults. But the system grinds on regardless. Kids get their LC points and the curriculum planners make a cuppa and pat themselves on the back that they have 'cultured' yet another Irish generation.

Zaph · 06-11-2020 01:00PM

O pointy birds, o pointy pointy,
Anoint my head, anointy-nointy
- John Lillison

TP_CM · 06-11-2020 02:31PM

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Annnnnd THIS is what puts many people off - The elitist, Trinners, David-Norris Joycians rolling up and down their socks, thumbs in braces and sticking out their chests and harping on about how hilarious and pertinent Joyce is today. And how fabulous they are about appreciating something mere plebs and manual workers can't.....

I work in IT
I wear headphones
I code
And yet.......

I don't really understand this post as a response to mine. But yes I agree there is quite a bit of snobbery in the arts which stops the rest of us from getting involved. I can still let them at it though without claiming the world feels the same as I do.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:33PM

paleoperson wrote: »

The whole point of language is to communicate, to be clear, and sometimes to provoke feeling. Meanwhile poetry is about making vague statements that are supposed to be "symbols" of something else.

Poetry is all pretentious nonsense. It's elitism in its purest form. People feel like they "get it", they're part of an elite group of people.

If a single person here has respect for or actually reads or even buys poetry - what do you get out of it? How does it improve your life?

Everyone else, what do you think of poetry.

You are right ..but i still like it.

06-11-2020 02:36PM

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Poetry can explain a whole world in a few sentences, it's got an economy that other writing does not have.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:37PM

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan. A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran. Through caverns measureless to man.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:38PM

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

It makes your brain feel good!

Brain tingle ...is good good

Church on Tuesday · 06-11-2020 02:39PM

paleoperson wrote: »

I'm glad you brought that up. When I say "poetry" I'm not talking about the Iliad or Shakespeare or The Raven or anything where there was a sensible story in it but it was written in rhyme.

I'm talking about books you buy where each page or two is a different poem that is barely decipherable and go something like "small tower, overhanging abyss - the beautiful view, oh lonesome joy", that sort of thing.

Well most poetry is like a snapshot of the minds eye and a written reflection of one's feelings at that particular time, what you describe above is something like a Haiku.

This is one of my favorites, what is remarkable about it is how you can almost taste and feel the fruit in what is, in and of itself, a fairly banal event in leaving a note.

This Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos William.

amacca · 06-11-2020 02:40PM

paleoperson wrote: »

I'm talking about books you buy where each page or two is a different poem that is barely decipherable and go something like "small tower, overhanging abyss - the beautiful view, oh lonesome joy", that sort of thing.

Thats actually not bad as a starting point for a song verse

Im talkin bout the books you buy
Oh lonesome joy!
I bet its a beautiful view from your small tower
Im here in the abyss if youve got a spare hour

Etc etc .....from the album poetic license rejected.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:41PM

All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I\'m sure of that, And I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I\'ll be completely sober. Meanwhile, I\'m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly off, But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn\'t come here of my own accord, and I can\'t leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I\'m going to say. I don\'t plan it. When I\'m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Wanderer78 · 06-11-2020 02:44PM

paleoperson wrote:

Poetry is all pretentious nonsense. It's elitism in its purest form. People feel like they "get it", they're part of an elite group of people.

Maybe you're like me and don't have a fcuking clue how to understand it, but unlike me, you certainly don't respect it, being able to write and understand it, probably should be a goal for both of us

begbysback · 06-11-2020 02:44PM

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Annnnnd THIS is what puts many people off - The elitist, Trinners, David-Norris Joycians rolling up and down their socks, thumbs in braces and sticking out their chests and harping on about how hilarious and pertinent Joyce is today. And how fabulous they are about appreciating something mere plebs and manual workers can't.....

I work in IT
I wear headphones
I code
And yet.......

There was a young coder named Grover
In his ears sat a pair of plugs
C++ and java he couldn’t do
Because he was too busy smoking drugs

TheIrishGrover · 06-11-2020 02:47PM

TP_CM wrote: »

I don't really understand this post as a response to mine. But yes I agree there is quite a bit of snobbery in the arts which stops the rest of us from getting involved. I can still let them at it though without claiming the world feels the same as I do.

Apologies, I must have misunderstood your post.

tdf7187 · 06-11-2020 02:48PM

paleoperson wrote: »

The whole point of language is to communicate, to be clear, and sometimes to provoke feeling. Meanwhile poetry is about making vague statements that are supposed to be "symbols" of something else.

Poetry is all pretentious nonsense. It's elitism in its purest form. People feel like they "get it", they're part of an elite group of people.

If a single person here has respect for or actually reads or even buys poetry - what do you get out of it? How does it improve your life?

Everyone else, what do you think of poetry.

I agree, with the proviso that some (and I emphasize some, the love poems are a bunch of want) of Yeats stuff, is really good.

Don't get me started on Seamus Heaney....most over-rated 'cultural hero' of all time.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:49PM

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Maybe you're like me and don't have a fcuking clue how to understand it, but unlike me, you certainly don't respect it, being able to write and understand it, probably should be a goal for both of us

The elitism is true tho........

06-11-2020 02:49PM

I like some poetry quite a lot, and a lot of it, not at all
no patience for the ice-box plums type.

enjoy some keats, emily dickinson, and things like the old astronomer to his pupil
and of course this

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die

TheIrishGrover · 06-11-2020 02:49PM

begbysback wrote: »

There was a young coder named Grover
In his ears sat a pair of plugs
C++ and java he couldn’t do
Because he was too busy smoking drugs

Except I'm old.... So very very old....

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:50PM

tdf7187 wrote: »

I agree, with the proviso that some (and I emphasize some, the love poems are a bunch of want) of Yeats stuff, is really good.

Don't get me started on Seamus Heaney....most over-rated 'cultural hero' of all time.

I love them both.

Why don't you like Heaney ? He's not so full of **** as most.

ILoveYourVibes · 06-11-2020 02:51PM

I would share my poetry ..but you wouldn't understand it

And you have to read it at midnight ....drinking absinthe

NO REALLY YOU DO.

06-11-2020 02:54PM

My personal favourite

Radiant cool
Crazy nightmare
Zen new jersey nowhere

weldoninhio · 06-11-2020 02:54PM

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Annnnnd THIS is what puts many people off - The elitist, Trinners, David-Norris Joycians rolling up and down their socks, thumbs in braces and sticking out their chests and harping on about how hilarious and pertinent Joyce is today. And how fabulous they are about appreciating something mere plebs and manual workers can't.....

I work in IT
I wear headphones
I code
And yet.......

Why let it? I come from a council estate, My dad and my mum weren't very highly educated, but they did their best. Money was tight. Poetry isn't about elitism. I wrote the below about 2/3 years ago, it was my first time writing since I left school in 2000, it just flowed out of me as I thought of the beach on a summers evening. Anyone as described above is masking something using elitism as their disguise.

The light dances like a thousand ballerinas over the slightest ripples in the water,

A breeze, fresh and warm, caresses my smiling face; the wet sand embraces my toes,

The sound of the seagulls high above, scanning the sea for their evening dinner,

As inch high team-mates jog along, far from me, in two perfect rows,

This huge expanse of sand and sea makes my mind wander far away,

To times gone by, and times to come, and times that never, ever will be,

The quiet noise of the waves kissing at the shore brings me back to today,

To this beautiful place, in this wonderful town, nestled just beside the sea.

Poetry is a load of horse **** waste of time and most people intrinsically know it.

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