Is this poem bad?

Epmd607 said:

The poet of one poem. That poem is horrendous, even in an early 20th Century context. It was sing-songy, same as the hooks in any number of current pop songs. The sentiment is cloying, and it was perfect for the emerging progressive movement that was embracing national/state parks all over the country. Hence Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. I bet I can find the first two lines on some preservationist propaganda regarding just the Adirondack Park decade by decade going back to the printing of the poem. Also, Joyce is a girl's name.

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With the right promotion and musicians, you'd be glad to live off the royalties.
He should change his name Joyce-Zee.
Trees rocks Kilmer is right up there with Barry Manilow! Besides he was a war poet, not liking him or Trees would be Unamerican. And Ungreen.
Poets just don't like him because he puts Trees ahead of poems. I think they are equal - fucking sumacs. Kudzu, only god can make kudzu, poems grow faster though.

Joyce was originally a male name from Britain. Their was a St Judoc, which was the original name. I suppose it got sissyfied as it got Anglicized.

twelveoone said:

yeah but is that
sentimentalism
or even trite?

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Sentimentalism is too much emotion. There is a judgment there. And trite is an additional judgment ("I don't like it"). Note it could be "endearing sentimentalism" instead.

I said one could argue that any poetry is trite sentimentalism. I was referring to the fact that many don't see the point in poetry, especially so today. Many people aren't interested, you can't get their attention long enough to be entertained, they don't care about your gimmicks, they don't even notice anything different as they rush straight from A (on the top left corner of a page) to B (bottom right).

They'll smile and wrinkle their noses at the mention of writing poetry, for why would anyone spend time creating something that has no use? Writing a song, or a novel, or composing music, or paiting — those are perfectly valid activities which generate things they can understand.

I was also saying that, since poems can't fill bellies or cure cancer (and poetry has trouble inspiring people to do so, too), writing a poem is a luxury (it's nonessential, perhaps superfluous). A poet is moved by the desire to communicate emotion and by the craft (passion for the act of writing in itself). Which could again be seen as sentimentalism (and trite, and vain) by some. Or as some others might say, "you write poetry, dude? That's so gay."

bronzeage said:

I suppose if 37 million people slipped in their bathtub and died young, during a four year period, it would matter a great deal. Certainly, safety in the home would become a matter if international importance.

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Safety in all its forms is a matter of international importance. It's why we have seatbelts and adherent floors, and standards, and quality control, and "mean time to failure", and organizations that supervise whether standards are being followed. It's the reason why cars don't casually become balls of fire and buildings don't usually collapse. That's why it's a complete act of randomness and chaos if something does happen in our all-too-safe day-to-day lives, ensuring human beings can better fulfill their higher purpose of going over the hill to bash the skull of the monkey speaking a different language.

bronzeage said:

If we concede the sun does not breed maggots in a dead dog, poetry is not generated from within. It is a distillation of all that is poured into the vat. How a poet died may not be of particular significance, but the events leading up to it probably will. A small school of poets sat in trenches and bunkers and wrote short verses to mail home. Although we can't know how they saw their future, somewhere between the first casualty and the 37 millionth, a fatalistic feeling must have set in.

How a poet dies may not matter to the poem, but if it doesn't affect the reading of the poem, something is lost.

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It doesn't affect your reading that this poor guy, with wife, children, a dog and a brilliant future saw his end one day by totally randomly slipping and breaking his neck? Certainly that warrants special consideration?

Why is the fatalism of a bunch of people who volunteered as targets for the sake of patriotism more important than any other fatalism? Each person writing a poem in new poems is doing so for a reason. Some of them are writing a pervy ditties because they are horny. Some are writing about their dead dogs. Or cancer. Or whatever. Each of them believes it's important (enough) that they'd like someone to read it.

Epmd607 said:

Also, Joyce is a girl's name.

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And that is a problem because...?

twelveoone said:

Besides he was a war poet, not liking him or Trees would be Unamerican. And Ungreen.

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"Unamerican" is so funny. Is there a committee to decide who is doing "unamerican" things? What would those be? Not liking Budweiser? Buying a hybrid compact instead of a SUV?

twelveoone said:

Poets just don't like him because he puts Trees ahead of poems.

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Well, back then they only had paper to write on. So yes, trees really were more important, as a necessary resource to enable the writing of poems.

This comment is probably a bit out of context but I remember reading TSEliot's essay/introduction to his selection of Kipling's verse, Faber about 1940ish.

Although I haven't read it for 20 years I recollect (I hope accurately) how Eliot stressed that the point of view one brought to a work influenced to a considerable extent how, or if, one appreciated it at all. I recollect that he split Kiplings work into poems, verse ballads, lyrics(not sure on that one) and hymns. He was somewhat reserved on Kipling as a poet but less so as a writer of ballads verse and hymns (particularly Recessional)

In any event (in my opinion) Eliot's introduction is a model of how to approach the consideration of a poets work and worth reading in its own right as a superb essay.

Having said that maybe I had better go and dig it out - somewhere in the back of the garage I think.

bogusagain said:

Joyce was originally a male name from Britain. Their was a St Judoc, which was the original name. I suppose it got sissyfied as it got Anglicized.

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I was thinking of the French-Egyptian Anti-Joyce when I added that last bit.

Joyce Mansour, Untitled

Never tell your dream
To the one who doesn't love you
The hostile ear is dried up
The bitter mouth maligns
Hatred vomits the sand in the hourglass
Faster always faster
The betrayed night aborts
A passion in the present already passed
And fear only augments
The rage of the caiman
The size of the cancer
Bury your dreams in the bags under your eyes
They will be safe from envy
They will be safe from the adage
That the African babbles
And all the old are wise

Is Ted Hughes a bad poet?

Is Silvia Plath a bad poet?


Personally I thought Hughe's Wolfwatching brilliant but there are poems that bore me and are too predictable but he wasn't writing for the likes of me, he was too mainstream. However, most poets write good, bad and indifferent stuff, that's the nature of creativity. I can certainly understand why he left his hysterical wife though.

I suppose we should view poetry like music. There is a whole spectrum from classical through jazz, rock, flok, country to pop and much more besides. I like to dabble across the whole lot because none on their own satisfies me.

ishtat said:

This comment is probably a bit out of context but I remember reading TSEliot's essay/introduction to his selection of Kipling's verse, Faber about 1940ish.

Although I haven't read it for 20 years I recollect (I hope accurately) how Eliot stressed that the point of view one brought to a work influenced to a considerable extent how, or if, one appreciated it at all. I recollect that he split Kiplings work into poems, verse ballads, lyrics(not sure on that one) and hymns. He was somewhat reserved on Kipling as a poet but less so as a writer of ballads verse and hymns (particularly Recessional)

In any event (in my opinion) Eliot's introduction is a model of how to approach the consideration of a poets work and worth reading in its own right as a superb essay.

Having said that maybe I had better go and dig it out - somewhere in the back of the garage I think.

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This should be obvious to anyone that has eyes. I believe I said something to the effect of "two steps over is another view", which means, for the oblivious:
You don't know have to modify your position much to come up with a different outlook. Duh, too much fucking trouble, duh, let us be told, by the experts.
Let us live in that weird combination of comfort and fear that is our lives and not be bothered much by engagement. It disturbs the comfort and raises the fear that our lives are not our lives.

In real terms, most of the people here are lazy asses, with a hole(sic) lot of opinion, little sense of play (is it good or bad?) and an execrated (sic) sense of importance. Let's write some more fucking poems, and generate some more fucking opinions, instead of finding out just how it works.

Go back in this thread, what constitutes analysis versus opinion. Are the poems "Bad", are they are guilty of use of a tool done to excess? Your holy tools.

Oh, and by the way, let's put labels on it, that will help the non thinking part, and raise the comfort. Oh this is a poem about ass fucking, whew, relieves me of the trouble of thinking about the possibility it may be an analogy that one of my belief systems may be screwing me.

In poetry engagement is supposed to operated on by sides of the fence.

Here is poetry.
So, yabba, dadda, do.

...besides
twelveoone is a non name

Tsotha said:

"Unamerican" is so funny. Is there a committee to decide who is doing "unamerican" things? What would those be? Not liking Budweiser? Buying a hybrid compact instead of a SUV?




Well, back then they only had paper to write on. So yes, trees really were more important, as a necessary resource to enable the writing of poems.

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PBR
Pabst Blue Ribbon, the beer of all true AMERICANS that hate the government. If my reading of bumper stickers is apt.
But what the fuck do I know? I don't even have one.
Without a bumper sticker, you don't exist.
Dulce et Decorum est
is commie (or current bad, islamofacism?) talk.

Hi! I write WAR POEMS (label)
Yeah, I 'm sure he was dying for that label.

Agni, a fine, fined, fire poet

I saw a wetboy in the buff.....
I gave him trunks, I have enuff??!!???!

And promply got arrested!!!????
And as the verdict attested.......


For tho god makes us in the raw
Only people make the Law!!!!???????


Fuck Robie in his court
I am a God, and just for sport

So B4 he turned around
I had burned it down!!!!!!!!!!!

LABELS
Work of God!!!!!, rhymin dumblets, tripe on a half thought.

see, "Trees" rocks. Inspiring.
And they generally burn better than poets.-Agni

I saw me a lad in the nude
And quite forgot i'm a holy dude
I opened me raincoat to give him
a peek
Not seein the bobby, quick on the sneak
Dey trew me in jail, with some
really bad guys
The penance i gave dem
Was sure a surprise
When da last one was troough
Oh the wind how it blew
And da lighting came down
And cooked us, tis true!!!
Father Igna

pensivepoet said:

I saw me a lad in the nude
And quite forgot i'm a holy dude
I opened me raincoat to give him
a peek
Not seein the bobby, quick on the sneak
Dey trew me in jail, with some
really bad guys
The penance i gave dem
Was sure a surprise
When da last one was troough
Oh the wind how it blew
And da lighting came down
And cooked us, tis true!!!
Father Igna

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Father Igniteus?

Yep
A fine, fiery, fried, friar

a Poet + a Tree = Poetry !

Ashesh9 said:

a Poet + a Tree = Poetry !

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Old, ash, go back and read again.
Lesson here, if you are going to write something inane, at least put it in a form that can be parodied.

A kid without a raincoat
really gets my god goat??!!!????!!
this is pure poetry I'm Blowin'
just think if it was Snowin'??!!!!??!!
Hi Five, Hi Five, Hi Five

All rights reserved - A BrainFart production@
generated as I typed, I am a father, I am a great humanitarian, I am a Poet
...so there??!!?!??!??! Trix, Tess, et al.

twelveoone said:

Old, ash, go back and read again.
Lesson here, if you are going to write something inane, at least put it in a form that can be parodied.

A kid without a raincoat
really gets my god goat??!!!????!!
this is pure poetry I'm Blowin'
just think if it was Snowin'??!!!!??!!
Hi Five, Hi Five, Hi Five

All rights reserved - A BrainFart production@
generated as I typed, I am a father, I am a great humanitarian, I am a Poet
...so there??!!?!??!??! Trix, Tess, et al.

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You just said fart
Point goes to ash

pensivepoet said:

You just said fart
Point goes to ash

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and he wears it well

If this was a student I’d say the following things:

I don't work in terms of bad and good poems. I work in terms of poems that don't work for me and of course, that's a sliding scale. This poem does not really work for me at all but I can see how it might hold some appeal for some people.

My comments/criticisms as I read:

-Not sure why the poem needed "I think" and "I shall see"…having both adds nothing to the strength of meaning or impact of language. Having both slows down delivering of meaning.

-lovely is a lame word with very little concrete imagery

-having a poem be about poetry is a difficult construct

-I like the imagery in this couplet. I don’t like the word prest because it draws attention to itself and as a reader makes me linger without adding any real impact

-imagery-wise I don’t like this because I don’t think about trees as looking up, reaching up yes but not looking up. A quibble perhaps, but imagery has to be accurate if you want a reader to create the picture in their mind quickly and clearly

-leafy arms is too easy so it’s boring so I don’t absorb anything from that line

-The next couplet is all about the rhyme. I don’t have a problem with rhyme if it does not come at the expense of the natural flow of words. I don’t think it works here. In addition, at this point the imagery is getting mixed up. The branches were arms before and now they are to be hair…if there is an extended metaphor in a poem it needs to be consistent for it to work for me.

-the rhymes are affecting natural syntax again in the next couplet which bothers me as a reader. I like the idea of the tree being intimate with rain but because it is basically stated it loses some of its strength of impact for me

-the religious context of the poem does not work for me personally so it does not add any magic to the poem for me that might allow me to overlook other issues. Plus I tend to balk at the idea in the last line and mentally think, “well, acttttuallly…I can make a tree. I just need to plant a seed. Or I can graft two existing trees together. Science!”

All opinions are those of my own and not intended to comment or criticize trees, other poems or Gods of any kind.

Ashesh9 said:

a Poet + a Tree = Poetry !

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Start at the beginning, again.