While talking to my mother earlier she started referring to random pieces of poetry, and reciting bits of it that she knew and liked. I realised I couldn’t actually parse the poetry very easily as the manner of her speech changed to something unfamilliar.
My maternal grandparents, my mum and older sister all enjoy poetry, they give each other poetry books as presents and in letters to one another will often write out a poem that they enjoyed or felt particularly suitable for the occasion. The last conversation I had with the grandfather in question was about his lifelong collection of poetry and what it meant to him.
Now I’ve never seen the point in poetry myself. Yes it’s often clever and I can appreciate the linguistic forms in the way I can appreciate mathematical puzzles which are clever. Could it be that poetry is fundamentally auditory in nature, that to appreciate the beauty and meaning one has to have the auditory processing which can recognise and relate to that?
Certainly if I talk to a poetic friend who reads and writes poetry this would seem to be the case for at least some people. She who was unable to learn her times-tables was eventually taught them as a series of rhymes/poems and to this day she can only use them if she recites them in the way she was taught.
Does anyone here like poetry, hate it, indifferent to it? And why?
November 26th, 2005 at 11:03 am
I like to write it sometimes, read it occasionally. Generally, though, I find myself “disconnected” from what is traditionally called poetry. The forced rhyme, etc.
I hate limericks. I hate haiku. I hate long long long poems.
I like things like this: http://freedomlaw.com/IFKiplng.html
:)
November 26th, 2005 at 11:04 am
(I know that the poem I just linked to has a lot of rhyme, but oddly it doesn’t feel “forced”.)
November 26th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
I love poetry. But like Sara I don’t like the very forced and (in the case of English-language haiku) pretentious verse forms. And speaking of pretentious, I’m afraid I really love French poetry too (but you might have guessed as much).
Anyhow, Natalya, it’s not the sound of it that appeals to me so much as the beauty of the language, or the way an almost inexpressable thought can be captured in a poem - in something like a Sonnet by Shakespeare.
I also like the way poetry can be visionary in a way that prose can’t be. I’m thinking of someone like Walt Whitman here, and one example of that comes to mind:
Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet
Nor any path to follow.
Now, isn’t that just a lot richer and more beautiful than “How would you like to walk to a place we don’t know?”
Some poetry can be funny too – I don’t mean limerick “funny”, but actually amusing. I’ll try to think of a decent example, but I need to get back to writing hard-wired academic prose…
November 27th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
well, growing up in primary school, i could never really appreciate poetry, but as i grew older, i learned to love it, but only certain poetry i can relate to.
I write a lot of my own poetry, mostly amusing childish rhymes, because i can relate to children better than most adults!! for example….
Feathers and fun:
Today i saw a blackbird,
splashing in the rain,
stretching its wings and having fun,
and cleaning off its tail.
as i look at this little fellow,
it simply seems to me,
i,d love to be a blackbird,
and fly from tree to tree.
XXX-lette-XXX
i have tons of silly poems like this!! though i have my fair share of serious poems too like:
Love Letter.
First introduced in a bustling school corridor full of noise
he was a gentle sort with an alternative side.
With winning ways we soon were friends
but always just out of reach.
I always felt outside the group
friends with a lot, but great friends with a few.
Something in the future was going to happen
but at that point in time none of us knew.
We remained friends till the very end,
the final bell rang the corridors emptied.
We went our separate ways, followed our hearts and careers
until we would meet again for a brief moment on a wet street.
Two years later it was we decided to meet up
in a dark and crowded club full of smoke and lights.
Our eyes met, our hearts locked and we saw each-other different
his lips tasted sweet, the windows to his sole deep with truth.
To this day i consider each moment we have a blessing,
his words sincere our love intense never a burden.
Nine years growing together, three years in loving,
and i look forward to our growing old together
XXX-Lette-XXX
November 27th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Nice poetry, Lette.
I think I like reading the poetry of people that I know, the best. It gives you a certain type of insight into them, the things they choose to express, and the patterns their words take on.
November 28th, 2005 at 2:47 am
My mum really likes the poem that Sara linked to there, she’s a big Rudyard Kipling fan and was delighted with an audiotape of his poetry that I found in a cheap shop near university last year - sadly now a Subway ;(
There are some individual pieces of poetry which I can appreciate, but I guess I’m too much of a pragmatist to be particularly enamoured of a beautiful way over a functional and clear way - sorry Nigel. I wonder if French poetry is substantially different to English poetry, other than being in French.
I have a friend who write poetry in her native Arabic as well as in English. I must ask her if she finds a big difference between the two languages in terms of functionality and expressive capabilities.
I do have a poem that I like, from my GCSE English days. The teacher spent lots of time explaining it and the contexts involved which I could appreciate.
Rain splinters town.
Lizard cars cruise by;
Their radiators grin.
Thin headlights stare
shop doorways keep their mouths shut.
At the roadside
Hunched houses cough.
Newspapers shuffle by,
hands in their pockets.
The gutter gargles.
A motorbike snarls;
Dustbins flinch.
Streetlights bare
Their yellow teeth.
The motorway’s
cat-black tongue
lashes across
the glistening back
of the tarmac night.
The cynics amongst you could also argue I like this poem because it has lizards in.
November 28th, 2005 at 8:03 am
Oo, I like that poem. It’s like a painting with words. Strong imagery.
The best poems are.
Oddly, the example that I always recieved of this in High School was by Carl Sandburg- the little cat feet one:
“THE fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.”
I never really saw how that painted images, at all. The lizard cars cruise by.. THAT I see the imagery in. Love it.
Who is it by?
November 29th, 2005 at 12:06 am
poetry is like painting or music
you have to expose yourself to lots of it
i didn’t really care for paintings until i went to a couple of museums in NYC. i had only seen thomas kincaid paintings and prints of famous people. now i know i really like Degas and Picasso. I like Monet but only when you see the original (huge) paintings.
if i never listened to music, i would only know nursery rhymes i heard as a kid, or old church music. i wouldn’t know that i love bluegrass and counting crows. i probably wouldn’t like music at all!
i’ve been reading and writing poetry for a few months now. i haven’t found too many poets i really like. i know they are out there. do you like MY poetry???
if not, that’s cool. i just thought i’d give you a chance to give one more poet a try.
visit my poetry blog…read a few.
cheers,
matt graham
November 30th, 2005 at 7:53 am
Matt, thank you for sharing your link with us.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:40 am
I’m not a huge fan of traditional poetry, but I love reading song lyrics - it could be considered a modern form of poetry, I guess. One of my favorite music groups to listen to is The Postal Service, and their lyrics are just as creative and powerful as their music - all in a very subtle gentle manner. Check out the lyrics to one of their songs (Such Great Heights) - definitely poetry to me in the sense that it evokes more feeling than thought:
December 1st, 2005 at 10:41 am
www.lyricsondemand.com/p/thepostalservicelyrics/suchgreatheightslyrics.html
(sorry, link didn’t come thru first time ’round, sigh)
December 1st, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Cool use of staccatos..I think
. But I like Goethe’s Faust, Dante’s Inferno and some of Poe’s…well, poetry of the darkly morbid and disturbed of mind >:).
And yes..Vermont’s all good so far..I’m enjoying the mountains…at least…it’s all nice and while…”somewhat silent” away from the big cities
. Care to join ladies?
-Adam