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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: World Poetry Day
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
Apparently UNESCO has nominated next Friday (21/3) as World Poetry Day.
Not sure about the copyright implications, Hosts, but if permissible, it would be good to celebrate this week by quoting favourites (as long as it's not Paradise Lost or The Fairy Queen in entirety) chosen because they are so good, so bad, or just because of their associations for you.
Original poems, too - I wouldn't have suggested this in the past, because they can be as excruciating as listening to a description of someone's last night's dream, but I have on occasion been pleasantly surprised.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I'm all in favour of poetry. We need to be careful about copyright, though, so for the avoidance of doubt:
Up to four (4) lines may be quoted but a link must be provided to the rest of the poem, please (and your hosts would be very grateful if you could resist posting a long list of links!).
If you can't find the poem on the internet, this is often because it's only available in a printed book, and the imprint page of the printed book will almost always have a some kind of clause saying you can't reproduce the poem elsewhere.
Your own original poems are okay for inclusion on this thread but please remember that while you will retain copyright of your own poem, the Ship also has copyright of everything you post here.
That's the hostly bit done - looking forward to your contributions!
* * *
I'll kick off with Seamus Heaney's excellent The Shipping Forecast. I love the way he's put this together, and the "bay that toiled like mortar" is an excellent way of phrasing it.
Also Yeats' beautiful poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Poetry, four lines could be four words or four hundred.
One of my favourites Fog by Carl Sandburg.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
ETA: Beautiful in its simplicity, yet evokes much.
[ 15. March 2014, 16:39: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry. Arty farty. Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it. Or saying that the only struggle is to 'express ourselves' while the world goes hang.
Well, that's the Book of Psalms on the scrapheap then, which is a shame as there is plenty in there pleading for peace and justice, expressed with more clarity than in much of the prose writing in scripture.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
One of my favourites Fog by Carl Sandburg.
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
I like that very much. I also like the parody, quote:
The frog comes in on little flat feet.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry. Arty farty. Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it. Or saying that the only struggle is to 'express ourselves' while the world goes hang.
Poetry is an expression of many things, including the attempts to capture a scene, a feeling, a mood; sum up something beautiful in words; express love, joy; make the reader smile or laugh; become closer to God, attempt to express a feeling of the numinous - and so much more than in your definition. There are odes, sonnets, clerihews, free verse, limericks, ballads, epics, sagas, and so much more.
Poetry speaks for us when we cannot articulate something ourselves; a good poet has a turn of phrase that lingers in the mind and sums up the definition or the concept neatly, and in a way that makes you think. A good poem and a good quote will last you a lifetime and enrich you. They are an ancient, and noble tradition, and the mark of a civilized society.
There can be a joy to be found in discovering a new, beautiful, or thought-provoking way of looking at the world, and a pleasure and a comfort to be found in rediscovering old favourites, sometimes half remembered. I'm sorry you hate all of them.
Keats, on Autumn
Jenny Joseph's "Warning"
9th century Irish poem on winter
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry. Arty farty.
I feel sorry for you. Some people are, unfortunately born blind or deaf. Few of them boast about it.
It must be impossible to read or understand the Bible if you don't get poetry. Or to understand liturgy.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it. Or saying that the only struggle is to 'express ourselves' while the world goes hang.
A few too many single malts? You are surely too intelligent to write bollocks like that while in possession of your faculties.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Like many bloodless, boring, and unemotional logic-choppers, I find a fair bit of poetry a bit too sentimental for my taste—not bad, mind you, just a bit heavy on the overt emotion. Like I said, bloodless and boring.
So of course I like the stuff that uses obscure, complicated forms and extended conceits to hide powerful feeling behind walls of logic and cleverness. John Donne, anyone? Too clever by half, I'll grant you; if I hadn't written a thesis that involved Thomistic angelology, I would have never figured out the conceit behind "Air and Angels." However, the overwrought style forces you to engage with Donne, to enter his mind, to read his poems at a more than superficial level if you're going to read them at all; you can't half-read a Donne sonnet. Also, nobody does frighteningly calm and collected hurt, jealous rages like Donne in "The Apparition." Something about how he so carefully controls his conceit, manipulates such a complicated sonnet-based form with a really weird rhyme scheme, while channeling the thrashing, complex emotions of one who's just been scorned—well, only Donne could pull that off.
Also: Borges. While it helps a bit if you know about his philosophy (summary: thinking about something hard enough makes it real; trying to think like someone, like in trying to figure out their poetry, makes you them), "Elegy for a Park" still channels that longing for a place and time lost in memory, to reclaim what exists only in your mind—but when you understand it, you realize that this poem is remaking the lost park each time it is read, bringing it back into existence, that
quote:
We are time, the indivisible river,
are Uxmal, Carthage and the ruined
walls of the Romans and the lost
park that these lines commemorate.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry. Arty farty. Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it. Or saying that the only struggle is to 'express ourselves' while the world goes hang.
I hate poetry,
It's arty farty.
Rather than pay verse compliments to a tree,
I'll toe the line of the Party.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry. Arty farty. Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it. Or saying that the only struggle is to 'express ourselves' while the world goes hang.
Poetry is words,
words have power.
Poetry foments revolution,
its words name the hour.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Ah! That quote from Akhmatova! "Instead of a Preface," from Requiem, 1935-1940!
At dawn they came and took you away.
You were my dead; I walked behind...
Like the wives of Peter's troopers in Red Square
I'll stand and howl under the Kremlin towers.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
... men ne cunnon
secgan tó sóðe seleraédenne
hæleð under heofenum hwá þaém hlæste onféng
(Men do not know - neither sage counsellors nor heroes under Heaven - who received that cargo)
From the opening passage of Beowulf - the ship with its load of treasure and a dead king drifting out in to the dark sea... Anytime I need a cold shiver I think of those lines.
I am having a mental image of leo interrupting a Viking feast to tell the skald that poetry is all arty-farty. It's the wonder of poetry that it can reach across 12 centuries - or 28 for Homer - and clench your heart. Other things civilisations leave behind may impress or puzzle us, but the poetry leaps like a live thing.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
A few too many single malts? You are surely too intelligent to write bollocks like that while in possession of your faculties.
Ken, you know perfectly well that personal attacks are not permitted in Heaven. You're free to disagree with Leo's point of view, but please do so in a way that deals with the argument, not the person. And preferably, in a way that adds to the discussion.
And that reminder goes for anyone else who may be thinking of picking up this tangent.
Ariel
Heaven Host
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
... men ne cunnon
secgan tó sóðe seleraédenne
hæleð under heofenum hwá þaém hlæste onféng
(Men do not know - neither sage counsellors nor heroes under Heaven - who received that cargo)
From the opening passage of Beowulf - the ship with its load of treasure and a dead king drifting out in to the dark sea... Anytime I need a cold shiver I think of those lines.
Thanks for that Firenze.
I have read Beowulf, but many years ago, and in translation.
The line carries some reminders of Tennyson's description of the passing of Arthur, but is far more wild and tragic and powerful - it makes Tennyson in comparison seem flat and safe.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Also Yeats' beautiful poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree.
It is beautiful, as is so much of Yeats's poetry despite his having been a complete fruitcake, but Evelyn Waugh has spoilt it for many of us by using it to take the piss in his The Loved One.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
My only lines of original poetry were written when I was about ten.
An old uncle died, and l received the school prize books from his boyhood, which consisted of G.A. Henty-style heroic fiction based on English history.
They inspired me to write a poem on the battle of Trafalgar, which began:
Twas in the year 1805
That our brave Nelson did deprive
The French, for whom success was sure,
Of five score of ships or more.
It is not the bad poetry which worries so much as its bizarre anachronicity – I must have been a weird child.
I also wrote a sonnet for my future wife when we started going out, which we can’t find, which is just as well, because it was bloody awful.
Here are some favourite lines from Philip Larkin:
…..Those flowers, that gate,
Those misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.
The “lacerate Simply by being over’ is perfect.
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8495747-Lines-On-A-Young-Ladys-Photograph-Album-by-Philip-Larkin
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Which puts me in mind of Obvious Poetry : stuff that seems hackneyed now, but, when you first encountered it as a child, thrilled you to bits. You would even - well, I did - copy it out into exercise books. I once wrote out the entire Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, not to mention The Garden of Proserpine -
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
I think I was very into fin d' siècle stuff when I was eleven. Then I cheered up a bit, and wrote out an awful lot of Chesterton -
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold
To this day, I seldom go out on a cold, snowy morning but I think -
On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
And that's - what - sixty years since opened the Dragon Book of English Verse on the likes of that?
Poetry - good, bad, indifferent - becomes part of you, the way you think and feel. It's not just what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed, but rather you did not know, until you read poetry, what there was to express.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
I once wrote out the entire Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam...
I have a tiny little pocket version of the Fitzgerald translation that I bought at Foyles in Charing Cross Road when I was about 14. I memorized most of it, in instalments, on the evenings when I was waiting for a bus, usually late, to go to evening classes. I can still quote chunks of it.
The other poet who has accompanied me throughout most of my life has been TS Eliot, whose way with phrases and imagery is unparalleled. From The Wasteland and through many a commute ("unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn/A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many...") through the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ("I have measured out my life in coffee spoons") to the loveliness of Usk (scroll down to the third on this page), he is quotable.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
The one I memorised as a child was Cargoes - along with some Blake, more Masefield and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We kept being pushed to learn John Clare because he was the Northamptonshire poet, but although I read him, I didn't find the chords there I found in Hardy on the same subjects.
A more recent discovery is U A Fanthorpe. I first encountered her with Not My Best Side and went to the National Gallery to see the painting, but I keep tripping over her poems and still liking them:
Atlas, which starts:
quote:
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
and The Wicked Fairy at the Manger make me think.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Kaplan Corday alleges that Yeats was a fruitcake but there's a tradition of mental illness amongst poets, possibly worth a Purg thread of its own.
I discovered John Clare, the "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" after leaving school (I didn't engage with poetry at school, and have exam failures to prove it) and his poetry, whether written before he was committed to various asylums or afterwards is powerful stuff, reminiscent of the seventeenth century metaphysicals though written in the industrial era.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
I found it mildly depressing that on World Poetry Day the Property supplement in The Times misquoted Wordsworth for a feature on waterside properties. According to them, Daffodils contains the line "Along the lake..".
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Kaplan Corday alleges that Yeats was a fruitcake but there's a tradition of mental illness amongst poets, possibly worth a Purg thread of its own.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact?
While there may have been some who were barking, the majority have held down day jobs as civil servants, theatrical managers, clergymen, Distributer of Stamps for Westmoreland, medical student etc - and, of course, Professional Writer.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
One of my favorite stanzas of poetry is from Byron's "The Isles of Greece".
A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?
The rest of the poem has many good lines, but none as good as this.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I shared Firenze's youthful love of "The Garden of Proserpine" and, like Curiosity Killed, learned "Cargoes" off by heart at school.
My favourites include Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" and William Souter's "The Permanence of the Young Men."
Another I love, but which isn't online, is Bessie Craigmyle's "Old Letters" about discovering, whilst clearing her late father's papers, fifty years worth of letters from his University room-mate. It was written in the 1880s.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Someone I discovered at Uni was Frost. I love Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening because it is, on the face of it, almost a nothing poem, but it has this extraordinary undertow:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
-
of Chesterton -
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold
Thanks for that, Firenze. I first enountered 'Lepanto' when it was read aloud (complete!) by a history professor on the anniversary of the battle. I've loved it ever since. I particularly like the characterizations of the sovereigns of Europe before the battle, and the cameo of Cervantes toward the end.
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You can't retire from a calling.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it.
Really? Would Peterloo have become so iconic without The Masque of Anarchy?
Would we understand the pity of war without Owen, Sassoon, Thomas and Rosenberg?
Mandelstam? Akhmatova? Ask them what 'mere' writing brought.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One of my favorite stanzas of poetry is from Byron's "The Isles of Greece".
A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set, where were they?
The rest of the poem has many good lines, but none as good as this.
Moo
Echoes of Shelley's Ozymandias, which could also be added to Firenze's list.
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
I quite like Li Po
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Drifting Star
Drifting against the wind
# 12799
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it.
Really? Would Peterloo have become so iconic without The Masque of Anarchy?
Would we understand the pity of war without Owen, Sassoon, Thomas and Rosenberg?
Mandelstam? Akhmatova? Ask them what 'mere' writing brought.
And let's add Studdert Kennedy, the pacifist in the trenches struggling against the horror to take Christ's peace and love into the fires of hell, whose poetry was a release for him, and is a gift to us.
I've just spent a very long time trying to find one verse of his to post here, but every truly striking verse needed to be read with the others around it. I've settled on this, from the poem that gave me my username.
Thy radiancy of glory strikes me dumb,
Yet cries within my soul for power to raise
Such miracles of music as would sum thy splendour in a phrase,
Storing it safe for all the years to come.
Most of his poetry is here, but you'll have to scroll through as the links on the index don't appear to be working.
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Heraclitus
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Li Po rocks.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Tiny extract from what is arguably the best poem from the man who was probably America's greates poet of the twentieth century. (And at least one of his likley rivals comes from the same town - what is it about paterson, New Jersey - is there something in the water?)
It needs to be read aloud. All 350 mostly long lines of it. This is a man who knows how the English language works.
See From Kaddish for Naomi by Allen Ginsberg.
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Avoiding the struggle for justice sand peace by merely writing about it.
Really? Would Peterloo have become so iconic without The Masque of Anarchy?
Would we understand the pity of war without Owen, Sassoon, Thomas and Rosenberg?
Mandelstam? Akhmatova? Ask them what 'mere' writing brought.
Well, yes. And what about John Ball, John Milton, John Bunyan, Robert Burns, William Blake, Pushkin, Shelley, Byron, Heine, Gorki, Joe Hill, Langston Hughes, Woody Guthrie, Hamish Henderson, Victor Jara? And loads more
(let's ALL just go with four lines, ok?)
[ 17. March 2014, 21:04: Message edited by: Firenze ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
9th century Irish poem on winter
I liked that. I liked that a lot!
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
The Canadian First Nations poet E. Pauline Johnson. Erie Waters. Her poems are more than 100 years old now, she died in 1913, so out of copyright.
"A dash of yellow sand,
Wind-scattered and sun-tanned;
Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand; "
Which has been repeated about many a pristine northern lake.
Her poem Brier contains an Easter thought;
"My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now,
That these harsh hands of mine add not unto
The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow. "
Poetry, like other art, is life sustaining and also can be challenging. Without the poetry of liturgy, perhaps I would be dead, or feel dead at least. But it does take time and patience for some verse, more work than some are willing when with smart phone in hand and the perfect playlist plugging up their ears and brains.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
I am fond of much of Kipling's verse, such as one
of his memorials (in this case to Canadian dead in the Great War):
"From little towns in a far land we came,
To save our honour and a world aflame.
By little towns in a far land we sleep;
And trust that world we won for you to keep."
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
He had his moments, Kipling.
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
The Way Through the Woods
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Kipling: Epitaphs of the War 1914-18
Common Form:
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
(Kipling's son died in the war.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
I love "The Warsong of the men of Dinas Fawr" by Thomas Love Peacock:
The mountain sheep arer sweeter
But the valley sheep are fatter.
We therefore deem it meeter
To carry off the latter.
I first learned it in junior school, and Carreg Cennen in Carmarthenshire would be a suitable stronghold for the warrior chieftain.
I also like some of the poetry of Idris davies, who was lkocal to where I live, in particular "Sad bells of Rhymney" and "Maggie Fach"
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
I've always had mixed feelings about Kipling. On the one hand, he can be read as a right imperialist tosser who needs to be condemned as Patriarchy Apologist #1. On the other, he can be read as something else. On the third, I absolutely hate "If," though that may be as much the contexts in which it's used as anything else. On the fourth, if his verse isn't just musical like nothing else—yes, even sing-song, but song!—I don't know what is.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I hate poetry.
Here's a cure for that.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Arty farty.
Not this one.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
On the third, I absolutely hate "If," though that may be as much the contexts in which it's used as anything else.
Auden talks about treating poetry as magic. Someone comes across a poem, and instead of reading it, thinks if everybody else read this they would see how right I am.
Thus (Auden's examples):
If, as magic: old school public schoolteacher reads If, thinks this is just the sort of thing to give the boys. If the teacher had really read the poem he would think, I have never staked my whole fortune on one throw of pitch and toss; I am not nor will ever be a man.
The Waste Land (*), as magic: schoolboy reads and thinks, if only everyone read it they would realise why I'm misunderstood and can't be expected to do any work. If the boy had really read it he would think, I am a senile hermaphrodite.
(*) This is back in the mid-twentieth century. Ten years ago it would have been Radiohead.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I read If thinking of Stalky from Stalky & Co and think that's possibly what Kipling was trying to epitomise. Kipling was Beetle. And they didn't think Stalky was particularly sane in his doings.
Kipling's poems often appear interleaved between the short stories in his books and they can be a bit of light relief from the intensity of the previous story, but yes, real ditties many of them.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
I read If thinking of Stalky from Stalky & Co and think that's possibly what Kipling was trying to epitomise. Kipling was Beetle. And they didn't think Stalky was particularly sane in his doings.
Kipling actually wrote If... in honour of Starr Jameson, of Jameson Raid fame who, whatever else you might think of him, did risk his life and career on "one turn of pitch-and-toss".
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Poetry can be deeply moving. This has always moved me like no other.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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aunt jane
Shipmate
# 10139
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Posted
Are we allowed to mention French poetry? Or Welsh?
If Kipling's "If" really is the best that can be offered from English poetry, we are really in a sorry state.
What about some Shakespeare? Or TS Eliot - but then, with Eliot, before or after he became a Christian?
Posts: 97 | From: South East of England | Registered: Aug 2005
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Poetry can be deeply moving. This has always moved me like no other.
Interestingly Professor John Carey cited it this morning on Midweek for much the same reason.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by aunt jane:
Are we allowed to mention French poetry? Or Welsh?
Absolutely - in translation. "World Poetry Day" is an international event. You’re welcome to provide some links to your own favourite poems. I was going to get to Baudelaire eventually, but via Cavafy, from Alexandria, and Khalil Gibran, and possibly Rumi, and some others.
quote:
If Kipling's "If" really is the best that can be offered from English poetry, we are really in a sorry state.
What about some Shakespeare? Or TS Eliot - but then, with Eliot, before or after he became a Christian?
It’s about people’s own personal choices - the poems they themselves like the best, or that have made the most impact. And if you look upthread, you’ll see that I myself am a fan of TS Eliot.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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