h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Why Poetry? - A86887787
Author: minorvogonpoet - U3099090

I promised to post this rant about poetry. I dare say it could be improved upon and I don't mind if people add to it.

I like it.

I like your analogy with the garden.

While reading, I suddenly remembered my 9th grade English teacher. Lovely man, he read poetry to us. He was good at it. (We studied - and memorised - a great deal of poetry back in the Dark Ages, children. They thought it was good for us. With the exception of 'O Captain! My Captain!', it was.)

Anyway, after Mr Sutcliffe read a poem to us, he asked me, 'What does it mean?'

I looked at him blankly. 'Why, just what it says,' I replied, nonplussed.

Mr Sutcliffe laughed (he knew me). 'Yes, but you have to explain it to the rest of the class.'

'Oh,' I said. Then I found out how to talk about it.

Thanks, Dmitri.

I'm sure I remember reading a version of 'Horatius' - and quite exciting it is too.

Hah! yes yes yes

Yes!!!!

(paces around room)

Yes yes yes and yes!!!

(paces around room)

I love this piece of writng, mvp, it makes me pace the room, going yes! yes! yes! and I would say more, except the yes! is all I can say right now.

(paces room)

And may your trip to France be poetry of mantis and cicada and pine and herbs and light and lovely. And ... and .... and .... yes!! and ....

Thanks for the inspiration. I love the word inspiration. Sort of like to do with breathing life into something, I think, inspirare from the Latin, ?? , or Italian, or ... Yes! Inspirare.

(paces around room)

Thanks cc.

<> sounds good.

In my view, poetry began to lose its magic and popular following around halfway through the 20th century. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died in 1953, was possibly one of the last writing in the English language to keep poetry singing and dancing in the public consciousness. Increasingly since, it has become the purview of the academically-minded taking pride of place in the gymnasium of mental agility.
This is not to say that profundity of a kind, word games and broody introspection have no place in poetry; rather, it is to suggest that the qualities of human emotion, natural instinct and intuition largely have been supplanted by a sort of freeze-dried intellectualism.
Symbolic of poetry's redeeming features, I feel, is that of the Canadian poet/troubadour Leonard Cohen. More widely known for his songs, Cohen, now in his 70s, still writes poetry with the appealing qualities of love and human vulnerability.

I appreciate that sentiment. 'Freeze-dried intellectualism'. Oh, well put...

I also agree that Leonard Cohen is one of the modern world's important voices. Even when he's not singing.

(By the way, I owe h2g2 a note. MVP, we stole this for this week, and I forgot to fess up to it. )

Thanks for running this, Dmitri.

And thanks for reading it, Trowellian. I agree that some modern poetry can be so dense that you need to be a sort of archaeologist to read it, examining layer after layer for meaning.

But it doesn't have to be like that; there is plenty of emotion out there. Personally, I find some of Sylvia Plath's poetry over the top, but try 'Edge'.http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl187/docs/plathpoem.html