|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Poems to woo women
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
This is inspired by a Robin Williams line from the movie 'Dead Poets Society'.
This is a movie I used to teach a lot to year 12 students (16ish). He says it at one point in a discussion with his class about the purpose of poetry. Most poetry is written with the express purpose of wooing women.
So, Is he right? Interesting then I suppose to guess at the motive of female poets...
The point though is that most poets are inspired by a desire or infatuation of some kind. Shakespeare's sonnets for instance were predominantly written in praise of a young man, the earl of Southhampton.
It is certainly true that one is more likely to break out in verse when one is in love.
So the basic proposition for discussion is whether poetry is mainly the language of love and as a corollary what are peoples favourite love poems?
I must confess to a great fondness for Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summers day" etc.
I also confess to getting rather a shock when I realised Shakespeare had addressed it to a bloke.
However there was such a thing as the poetry of patronage. Shakespeare may well have been hired as John Donne was to write poetry in honour of some rich dude's kid's birthday. Anyhow, Any comments?
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
He didn't say poetry was invented to woo women, but language. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
Helluva good movie though.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
The Rose Family
The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose.
--Robert Frost
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
Quoting Williams was done in total ignorance of his recent death. RIP. ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
First of all, of course, it was necessary to invent Love, before you could have love poetry. In Europe, I don't think that happened until the Troubadors. Before that the main job of poetry was to give undying fame to the deeds of heroes.
Also, i get the impression - from Jacques' speech in As You Like It -
... And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow...
that love poetry was something a gentlemen was expected to be able to do, like riding or fencing, but it wasn't what he was. A point expanded by Byron (wouldn't you know it) -
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone.
Lines written in a female persona, by a male poet - so a hegemonic view rather than necessarily an accurate one.
The quote alluded to therefore seems to me a dilution of this. Poetry is what we men (active) do to influence women (passive). A narrow, biased and trivial view, dependent on ignoring all poetry about heroes, quests, wars, God, nature, life, death, philosophy, loss, grief, politics and botany (this list is not exhaustive).
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
|
Posted
The court of Elizabeth I had courtiers writing poetry to Her Majesty. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a whole series and there is on record a response to Raleigh's False Love from Sir Thomas Heneage, who was the vice-chamberlain to QEI (and whose accounts* provides one of the pieces of evidence to the existence of Shakespeare as playwright himself). Which seems to suggest that love poetry was almost a competitive sport.
* Those particular accounts were cobbled together to account for monies spent on behalf of the Queen after Heneage's death by his widow, the previous Countess of Southampton, mother of the Earl of Southampton, and are used by Shakespeare conspiracy theorists to "prove" foul play. And for a long time A Midsummer Night's Dream was said to be written for the marriage of the Countess of Southampton and Thomas Heneage, but from some research done by Norah Carlin recently that seems very unlikely.
--------------------
Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
|
Posted
I rather envy the woman wooed by John Donne in The Flea.
He's appealing to her wit and intelligence; there's no mention of her appearance. She seems perfectly capable of bantering back "yet though triumph'st" and it conjures up an image of a couple both enjoying the verbal sparring to and fro, with the extra frisson of the subject matter.
I'm fairly sure she tells him to dream on - she's not about to succumb lightly, but they'll meet again on good terms and ....who knows?
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
I've always liked the Ginsberg line about Walt Whitman fancying the grocery boys in the local supermarket: 'Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?'
It also has the wonderful line, not to do with wooing:
'What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!'
('A Supermarket in California').
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
|
Posted
That would make a great sig.
--------------------
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
