Peotry

[cosmolinguist]

Further to my last post, Andrew said first of course that he liked my "sad poem," continuing his habits of being tediously positive about every single thing I do, say and am, so that praise from him is a devalued currency. Luckily things soon got more interesting as he said "I think peotry* is more for writing than for reading, isn't it?"

I had to agree. Though I'd just got a friend excited earlier this afternoon about Billy Collins and looking for poets we like on YouTube, I am also a person who does occasionally write poems (or peoms) so I'm in the writing as well as reading category and do nothing to bump up the latter's stats, proportional to the former.

"You go up to someone on the street," Andrew expounded, "and ask them your favorite peom -- and you'll have to ask about twenty before you find one -- they will say Ozymandias..."

Here I started giggling. I actually find this the most palatable of Percy's poems, but it isn't what I'd have thought the favorite poem of your average person on the street.

"That 'if you can tolerate all these things you'll be a man' one..."

This was much more expected, both because this is exactly the kind of thing people who don't like poetry quote in graduation speeches or cards but also because a comedian Andrew loves has done a massive bit hammering unfortunate listeners over the head with the inconsistencies and nonsense of this poem.

"Charge of the Light Brigade... or The Owl and the Pussycat!"

Though he did say that these are not the favorites of people who studied English; he reckoned they'd pick "that one about wearing purple when you're old" -- though I thought that a much more populist suggestion than Ozymandias! -- and "that 'not waving but drowning' one," which at least we could both agree was for English students.

But those basic four...I commented it was an interesting bunch. He said it might be different in America and I agreed; while I'd read all four of these, three had only been in my English-major lit classes in college (I still remember one of my professors booming out "half a league, half a league...!"; he was even better at "Invictus") and I don't think I heard "The Owl and the Pussycat" until I came to England. "In America it'd be all The Waste Land and 'I took the road less travelled'." I'm not sure about The Waste Land -- does anyone like it? -- but Robert Frost is plausible. Or, a guess because the next thing Andrew told me was that he didn't know anything but "those two lines, 'two paths diverged and I took the one less traveled." I fixed his misquote and told him "Birches" is good.

But I wouldn't call Frost my favorite, and indeed I'm not sure I've got a favorite peom at all.

Do you? What is it? Any of these four? (Or six if you count the suggestions for Americans.) What would you say is the likely favorite of the person on the street?


* Not a typo, but how he matter-of-factly pronounces it throughout this conversation: pee-oh-tree. Very cheerful sounding. Try it. Also pee-ohms.

Comments

[miss_s_b]

I like Poe and Sylvia Plath because I am an emo drama queen.

[sfred]

I'm not sure I have a favourite peom, but among my favourite peots are Adrian Mitchell ("...tell me lies about Vietnam"), Wilfred Owen (yes, I like depressing war peotry), WH Auden (cliché - that one from Four Weddings... - but others too), Maya Angelou, Agnes Meadows (who is not nearly as well-known as she should be) and AA Milne.

Half of my degree is in English Literature.

I also liked your poem. Will I get in trouble for being tediously positive about everything you do, say and are? (I don't care if I do get in trouble.)

[sfred]

*reads the LJ version of this post*
Oh, yes, forgot about The Lion and Albert etc., also among my favourites for other reasons.

And one of my favourite poems ever is Dejeuner du matin by Jacques Prevert - but it's not in English so I don't know if it counts.

[cosmolinguist]

I like that you don't care; I'm sure that getting in trouble wouldn't stop you from being positive, and that's awesome.

But no, you won't get in trouble. He doesn't either, as such, it's just something I find it easy to disregard because it's constant. He says I am "best" a lot (and "most loved" and that sort of thing) which doesn't mean anything to me; for one thing it's not a competition! and for another I don't believe it.

All you do is be kind to me and seem happy to see me, and what's to cause trouble there? :)

xx

[cosmolinguist]

Good stuff here. I've been a fan of Auden for a long time too. A.A. Milne is another not known as well as he should be to Americans (well, the Americans I know anyway). I don't know who Agnes Meadows is but look forward to finding out :)

[sfred]

I will show you some Agnes Meadows sometime, when I've (eventually) unpacked my poetry books.

[cosmolinguist]

Well knowing me I will only eventually get round to being able to visit, so we're even :)

[nanila]

Choosing four English favourites off the top of my head, of which I could recite at least a portion from memory:

Edward Lear - The Jumblies (granddad used to read this to me)
Lewis Carroll - Jabberwocky (the first poem I ever memorized of my own volition; I still know the portmanteaus as explained by Humpty Dumpty)
Sylvia Plath - The Applicant (ah, my angry teen years)
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse (ah, my angry early twenties)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh yes, Jabberwocky is brilliant. Good choices here! :) Thanks for sharing.

[chiller]

Hm. I don't know what the person on the street would say was their favourite poem - it would be interesting to know.

My own fave poet is Gerard Manley Hopkins, though which of his is my favourite changes (and is usually the one I have read most recently). The Windhover is a superb example. But here I get to the point where I disagree with Andrew, where he says poetry is for writing, not for reading. Poetry is for reading - aloud. You can't enjoy GMH unless you read him aloud, the alliteration of him, the pace of the thing, the roll and lift of the words.

Second favourite would have to be Shaw's letter "To 'Stella' Beatrice Campbell", which I think sums up exactly how I would like to be loved, were I loved.

I love Tennyson's Tithonus, which has some lines in it that are so astonishingly beautiful I always have to stop reading it ("here at the quiet limit of the world" - OH DEAR GOD, MAN); and of course Yeats's "The Second Coming" - which feels so apt for these times; and its antithesis, "The Stolen Child".

But all of these must be read aloud, preferably while pacing around the house with bare feet.

[cosmolinguist]

Poetry is for reading - aloud.

This is a very good point! I sort of wanted Andrew to be wrong about this but I couldn't think of any reason to argue with him; I can't believe I missed this one. Especially as a day or two before I wrote this I was talking with a friend who says he doesn't really have a good head for poetry, and I mentioned a favorite poet of mine he hadn't heard of, so I linked him to a youtube video of the guy reading one of his poems, and my friend lit up at that and started searching for poets he liked, to hear them read aloud.

I know listening isn't quite like pacing around barefoot doing the reading yourself, but it's a similar point :)

I grew up very reserved and shy and the idea of reading poems out loud had to be met with dread and stilted reading voices, so I probably missed out on a lot then!

Such lovely poems you include here! I like Yeats a lot. I hated Tennyson when I had to read him in school but now it's more fun; the rhythms are driving but not obtrusive. And of course George Bernard Shaw is the best thing ever (the ad at the top of that linked page for the "BEST SEX EVER!" is still making me laugh.