The Wretched Life of a Poet

[bug]

Feeling uncultured and wondering if my lack of interest in poetry was, in reality, just a lack of exposure to good poetry, I decided a Brit Lit Romanticism course was in order for my schedule this semester. Verdict is in, after immersing myself in flowers and woe is me--I still can't like it. The thing that bothers me is the "requirement" to feel sorry for oneself. It appears that, even when the poem is about a completely different subject the whole way through, the last stanza or line has to come back to how hard it is to be brilliant and the rest of the world should feel lucky to not be the author. Charlotte Smith wrote a poem about a lunatic on a cliff, who is to be envied because he's too bat poop looney to realize how awful life really is. Robert Burns' famous "That Mice and Men Poem" (disclaimer: actually called "To a Mouse") is a story of guilt over wrecking a mouse's home and how it was symbolic of plans and hard work getting thwarted by circumstance. That's a great poem....until the last stanza, where he lets loose with a ranting of how lucky the mouse is not to be the tortured intellectual he is. That's so random and unnecissary!! I'm wondering if anyone has any comments on this--is this just an isolated era's style, or is this typical of poetry? Anyone have any well-crafted poetry that appeals to the side of humanity that despises self pity? Has anyone else noticed this? Am I being too judgemental? Is there a judgemental smiley? Maybe one banging a gavel on the head of another smiley with a beret?

[Michael]

Feeling uncultured and wondering if my lack of interest in poetry was, in reality, just a lack of exposure to good poetry, I decided a Brit Lit Romanticism course was in order for my schedule this semester. Verdict is in, after immersing myself in flowers and woe is me--I still can't like it. The thing that bothers me is the "requirement" to feel sorry for oneself. It appears that, even when the poem is about a completely different subject the whole way through, the last stanza or line has to come back to how hard it is to be brilliant and the rest of the world should feel lucky to not be the author. Charlotte Smith wrote a poem about a lunatic on a cliff, who is to be envied because he's too bat poop looney to realize how awful life really is. Robert Burns' famous "That Mice and Men Poem" (disclaimer: actually called "To a Mouse") is a story of guilt over wrecking a mouse's home and how it was symbolic of plans and hard work getting thwarted by circumstance. That's a great poem....until the last stanza, where he lets loose with a ranting of how lucky the mouse is not to be the tortured intellectual he is. That's so random and unnecissary!! I'm wondering if anyone has any comments on this--is this just an isolated era's style, or is this typical of poetry?
I'm no expert on poetry - indeed, we seem to share the same outlook on this! :D

Anyone have any well-crafted poetry that appeals to the side of humanity that despises self pity?
:ummm: I'm probably not a good one to ask.

Indeed, the first poem I ever encountered (Casey at the Bat) has that same tale of woe at the end. The one poem I actually liked was Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and it is certainly a sad tale of woe as well.

Has anyone else noticed this?
Yes.

Am I being too judgemental?
No.

Is there a judgemental smiley?
Sadly, no.

Maybe one banging a gavel on the head of another smiley with a beret?
:rofl:
I'll ask Dominick to look into this one - he's pretty good at finding these things! ;)

We can name it "philistine" if we find one! :D

[wphelan]

Ah, it's not all bad...or depressing.

The Purist
by Ogden Nash

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

[wphelan]

Another one I like by Ogden Nash, which is perhaps appropriate with Valentine's Day coming up...

To My Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're love by me.

[dilettante]

Another one I like by Ogden Nash, which is perhaps appropriate with Valentine's Day coming up...

To My Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're love by me.

:) Thanks for posting that; I just have to commit that one to memory.

[Dominick]

Feeling uncultured and wondering if my lack of interest in poetry was, in reality, just a lack of exposure to good poetry, I decided a Brit Lit Romanticism course was in order for my schedule this semester. Verdict is in, after immersing myself in flowers and woe is me--I still can't like it. The thing that bothers me is the "requirement" to feel sorry for oneself. It appears that, even when the poem is about a completely different subject the whole way through, the last stanza or line has to come back to how hard it is to be brilliant and the rest of the world should feel lucky to not be the author. Charlotte Smith wrote a poem about a lunatic on a cliff, who is to be envied because he's too bat poop looney to realize how awful life really is. Robert Burns' famous "That Mice and Men Poem" (disclaimer: actually called "To a Mouse") is a story of guilt over wrecking a mouse's home and how it was symbolic of plans and hard work getting thwarted by circumstance. That's a great poem....until the last stanza, where he lets loose with a ranting of how lucky the mouse is not to be the tortured intellectual he is. That's so random and unnecissary!! I'm wondering if anyone has any comments on this--is this just an isolated era's style, or is this typical of poetry? Anyone have any well-crafted poetry that appeals to the side of humanity that despises self pity? Has anyone else noticed this? Am I being too judgemental?
I'm a big literature fan but poetry doesn't really do it for me either. I've got Wordsworth on the shelf but barely ever take it down. It's not the style that puts me off, but I'm not sure what it is. Some I do like such as Poe's Raven. Back when I had a memory I knew it by heart.

But not all poetry is highbrow poetry. Bob Dylan and many others are poetry too. For instance:

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Sue,
She knows just what to do. .....
I've been to the east, I'vebeen to the west, but
she's the gal
That I love the best.

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy,
She almost drives me crazy ....
She knows how to love me ,
Yes indeed
Boy you don't know,
What she's doing to me

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy...


Is there a judgemental smiley? Maybe one banging a gavel on the head of another smiley with a beret?
:lol:
I'll have a look but it might be a tall order again.

[Donkey]

Ogden Nash is one of my favourite things to read.

There undoubtedly is a good deal of self-pity/loathing that comes out in famous poetry. However, there is also a good deal of writing about experiences of ecstasy or love. Basically a lot of poetry comes out of extreme emotions, and as a result a lot of it evokes despair.

I'm not sure if that's true for my favourite poem, Kubla Khan by S. T. Colerdige.

http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html

I suppose you could consider his disappointment at being incapable of properly create the image as sort of self pity:
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,However, I think that is part of the technique of creating the sublime (a popular theme for the romantics, iirc). He is not really hating on himself, he's simply juxtaposing his limited self to better illustrate the majesty which he is trying to describe.

I also like that poem because he was probably obliterated on opium when he wrote it.

[Americano]

I'm a big literature fan but poetry doesn't really do it for me either. I've got Wordsworth on the shelf but barely ever take it down. It's not the style that puts me off, but I'm not sure what it is. Some I do like such as Poe's Raven. Back when I had a memory I knew it by heart.

But not all poetry is highbrow poetry. Bob Dylan and many others are poetry too. For instance:

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Sue,
She knows just what to do. .....
I've been to the east, I'vebeen to the west, but
she's the gal
That I love the best.

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy,
She almost drives me crazy ....
She knows how to love me ,
Yes indeed
Boy you don't know,
What she's doing to me

Tutti Frutti, all over rootie,.....
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop bam boo

I got a gal, named Daisy...


:lol:
I'll have a look but it might be a tall order again.

Ah, Little Richard. Though I think the lyrics might be better applied to Check Berry's lifestyle.

[The Drunk Guy]

I agree that I prefer my poetry in musical form. My favorite poet is Maynard Keenan...

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

It's sung in the Fibonacci...
Black (1)
then (1)
white are (2)
all I see (3)
in my infancy. (5)
red and yellow then came to be, (8)
reaching out to me. (5)
lets me see. (3)

I'm mathematically retarded, so simple combinations like this are amazing to me.

Even more emotional and, therefore, emanating, are Jimmy Page's six strings of hellfire on such songs as Dazed and Confused, White Summer, and Bring it On Home.





I look at poetry like I do every other type of entertainment: either it strikes a chord within me or it doesn't. Robert Frost and Edgar Poe just don't do anything for me, while Jim Morrison and Junior Kimbrough light fires in my soul.

It's not about bending yourself to understand, but understanding yourself in others.

[bug]

Wow, the Kubla Khan poem is lovely...
And it's nice to see another Maynard fan. Tool's one of the few bands where the lyrical aspect is a draw rather than a detriment. I have spent many years of my life worshiping at the altar of Tool. Where else will you hear "fuck all you junkies and fuck your short memories"?
However, I try to form a distinction between lyricists and poets. I find music is a qualifier. Because the music brings out an emotional response and has some kind of almost mystical effect on humans (generally), it gives lyrics more power than they would have standing alone. When I look up lyrics to a song I like, I seldom find myself not disappointed with the content without its melodic accompaniment. It happens with me, too. I'll occasionally bust out the dust mound that is the guitar and spontaneously achieve what, in the moment, I am certain is a level of inspired glory previously untouched by mortals. I write down the lyrics quickly before I forget, and revisit the next day sans melody. Looking at that page and reading it detached from music is horrifying and I realize it would be best to light this trite collection of nonsensical words on fire and pretend the whole event never happened. And hope God isn't real so I don't have to be embarrassed that someone just witnessed this horror. Music is steroids for words--artificial enhancement. Athough I wouldn't say the marriage doesn't work out beautifully in many cases, or that it's much easier to be a lyricist. There's more to contend with when making music work. I just see it as a different department.
I feel as if poetry could be good. I catch hints every now and again. It's like some kind of elusive word combination fairy, hiding in some corner I haven't looked in yet.

[Sucre]

Feeling uncultured and wondering if my lack of interest in poetry was, in reality, just a lack of exposure to good poetry, I decided a Brit Lit Romanticism course was in order for my schedule this semester. Verdict is in, after immersing myself in flowers and woe is me--I still can't like it. The thing that bothers me is the "requirement" to feel sorry for oneself. It appears that, even when the poem is about a completely different subject the whole way through, the last stanza or line has to come back to how hard it is to be brilliant and the rest of the world should feel lucky to not be the author. Charlotte Smith wrote a poem about a lunatic on a cliff, who is to be envied because he's too bat poop looney to realize how awful life really is. Robert Burns' famous "That Mice and Men Poem" (disclaimer: actually called "To a Mouse") is a story of guilt over wrecking a mouse's home and how it was symbolic of plans and hard work getting thwarted by circumstance. That's a great poem....until the last stanza, where he lets loose with a ranting of how lucky the mouse is not to be the tortured intellectual he is. That's so random and unnecissary!! I'm wondering if anyone has any comments on this--is this just an isolated era's style, or is this typical of poetry? Anyone have any well-crafted poetry that appeals to the side of humanity that despises self pity? Has anyone else noticed this? Am I being too judgemental? Is there a judgemental smiley? Maybe one banging a gavel on the head of another smiley with a beret?
I am not an expert in English speaking poetry. I do like and read poetry and do not see it as self pity". You choose a course on Romantism - It is Romantism which is about self-pity, its poetry too, but not all poetry !

There are ironic poets like Heinrich Heine (Try to read : Germany, A Winter Tale), outrageous poets like Charles Baudelaire (The Flower of Evil), political poets like Victor Hugo, illogical poets like Raymond Quenaud and the surrealists and then Poems you simply cannot get out of your mind, sometimes just one sentence which keeps hanging in your mind like a musical phrase ...

Poetry is music with words. It necessitates a minimum of concentration on the images. Reading a couple of poems has the effect of one hour of yoga. Try it. :)

[wphelan]

I don't know if this falls into the category of self-pity or not, but I can't help but like this one. The sigh seems to be more out of resignment than anything else.

A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

W.B. Yeats

[Margot]

Have you ever read any Shelley? Not Frankenstein Shelley, but her husband, Percy Bysshe. It seems like he should have been covered in your Brit Lit class. He palled around with Byron and Keats, was married to the Shelley we all know and love, was an atheist and managed to get himself kicked out of Oxford for writing his paper "The Necessity of Atheism". He's kind of my favorite person ever.
Biography aside I think his poetry is still awesome. I bet even if you didn't touch him in your class you've read this one:
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Yeah, it's melancholy, but it's not self-deprecating or angsty. Just like my this one (my absolute favorite poem ever): To a balloon, laden with Knowledge http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/pbsball.htm
Shelley was fond of distributing rather seditious broadsides by creative means (as acknowledged in another poem called "On launching some bottles filled with knowledge into the Bristol Channel") and it is possible that he launched some skyward, too ("though there is no outside evidence" according to my annotated Shelley collection edited by Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat).

I tend to love romantic poetry. I love alliteration, and well-executed extended metaphors (and albatrosses), and I adore a turn in the last stanza: here is everything that I have, and here is my conclusion. That this turn is usually melancholy just goes to show that my boat floats on Black Bile.

[bug]

To a balloon, laden with Knowledge http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/pbsball.htm
Shelley was fond of distributing rather seditious broadsides by creative means (as acknowledged in another poem called "On launching some bottles filled with knowledge into the Bristol Channel") and it is possible that he launched some skyward, too ("though there is no outside evidence" according to my annotated Shelley collection edited by Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat).

I tend to love romantic poetry. I love alliteration, and well-executed extended metaphors (and albatrosses), and I adore a turn in the last stanza: here is everything that I have, and here is my conclusion. That this turn is usually melancholy just goes to show that my boat floats on Black Bile.

I had written that post before we had gotten to the better poets (in my opinion, of course). We actually read the one you posted, and I was amused by it. We also read Mont Blanc, which was purty, and a few others, but I wished we would have read and talked about that Balloon one you just posted. That was lovely, and I like it far the best of any I've read from him

I am enamored with Keats. He alone could change my mind about poets. There is trite, woe is me, depressing poetry, and then there's Ode to a Nightingale, which shows melancholy can be done so right in a poem that it takes your breath away. Wow. I just made myself think of Top Gun. I also enjoyed Charlotte Mew (sp?), and we just finished a T.S. Elliot poem that I was stunned by. It took the most abstract feelings I've ever had and put them into words. (When we discussed it in class, it turns out I interpreted it completely wrong--if you can wrongly interpret a poem--but I don't care. It fit perfectly, and I'm obnoxiously stubborn.)

I like alliteration and themes, too, but I'm a connoisseur of the novel and have trouble adjusting to short works for some reason. I feel rather confused when I look at a poem, flipping pages and going "Where's the rest??" The exception is when I am comparing the poem to a novel, then I seem to do better with themes and feeling the work is complete. Giggle--I wrote an essay on the good ol' albatross, comparing the poem to Biblical parables (I think I mentioned that in another post here in one of my "I hate god" tirades) and it was probably the best thing I've done in school yet--only made possible by a longer work. I very seldom seem to like the "turn in the last stanza" that you enjoy, because it always seems to be sticking the Aesop Fable all-important moral of the story in where it doesn't belong, turning into some awkward lecture instead of just letting the poem exist as itself, for its own glory.

In conclusion....
So, here I am at the end of my semester, and I warily recant. I leave myself room to still make fun of about 90% of poetry, and will continue to say what I said to my class, to the chagrin of the teacher: the only thing more cheesy than a sad poem is a happy poem. But some shining stars have appeared in the midst of pea soup sky, and, best of all, I am better at Jeopardy.

[Michael]

So, here I am at the end of my semester, and I warily recant.

Apostate! :rofl:

[Margot]

I had written that post before we had gotten to the better poets (in my opinion, of course). We actually read the one you posted, and I was amused by it. We also read Mont Blanc, which was purty, and a few others, but I wished we would have read and talked about that Balloon one you just posted. That was lovely, and I like it far the best of any I've read from him

I am enamored with Keats. He alone could change my mind about poets. There is trite, woe is me, depressing poetry, and then there's Ode to a Nightingale, which shows melancholy can be done so right in a poem that it takes your breath away. Wow. I just made myself think of Top Gun. I also enjoyed Charlotte Mew (sp?), and we just finished a T.S. Elliot poem that I was stunned by. It took the most abstract feelings I've ever had and put them into words. (When we discussed it in class, it turns out I interpreted it completely wrong--if you can wrongly interpret a poem--but I don't care. It fit perfectly, and I'm obnoxiously stubborn.)

I like alliteration and themes, too, but I'm a connoisseur of the novel and have trouble adjusting to short works for some reason. I feel rather confused when I look at a poem, flipping pages and going "Where's the rest??" The exception is when I am comparing the poem to a novel, then I seem to do better with themes and feeling the work is complete. Giggle--I wrote an essay on the good ol' albatross, comparing the poem to Biblical parables (I think I mentioned that in another post here in one of my "I hate god" tirades) and it was probably the best thing I've done in school yet--only made possible by a longer work. I very seldom seem to like the "turn in the last stanza" that you enjoy, because it always seems to be sticking the Aesop Fable all-important moral of the story in where it doesn't belong, turning into some awkward lecture instead of just letting the poem exist as itself, for its own glory.

In conclusion....
So, here I am at the end of my semester, and I warily recant. I leave myself room to still make fun of about 90% of poetry, and will continue to say what I said to my class, to the chagrin of the teacher: the only thing more cheesy than a sad poem is a happy poem. But some shining stars have appeared in the midst of pea soup sky, and, best of all, I am better at Jeopardy.

I think I love you. Do you know how nice it is to know that there is at least one other intelligent English major on this planet?

[bug]

I think I love you. Do you know how nice it is to know that there is at least one other intelligent English major on this planet?
Feeling is mutual, I am delighted at your arrival! Though I appreciate it, my intelligence is debatable. My enthusiasm is not. I have trouble finding people who can cope with my two-hour ravings after reading Wuthering Heights...and I'm kind of boggled at how many English majors don't seem to really care about what they're studying.

Perhaps sometime we can bounce our literary musings off one another, like rubber brains filled with wordy twitchy-gerbil excitement.

And yes, Michael, I'm big frika flip-flopper. But I won a bunch of purple hearts, so it's alright. :lol:

[Michael]

I think bug and MFCMF23 are the same person posting under two different usernames! :rofl:

[Donkey]

Feeling is mutual, I am delighted at your arrival! Though I appreciate it, my intelligence is debatable. My enthusiasm is not. I have trouble finding people who can cope with my two-hour ravings after reading Wuthering Heights...and I'm kind of boggled at how many English majors don't seem to really care about what they're studying.

Perhaps sometime we can bounce our literary musings off one another, like rubber brains filled with wordy twitchy-gerbil excitement.

And yes, Michael, I'm big frika flip-flopper. But I won a bunch of purple hearts, so it's alright. :lol:
Do you own any goats?

[Margot]

Do you own any goats?

psh, we all know how shitty the girl-goat exchange rate is right now. Don't torment her.