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

[starbrow.livejournal.com]

I adore Walt Whitman so much, and utterly love The Song of Myself, so that would probably be my favourite.

No idea what the average person would say was their favourite. Maybe in Scotland someone might quote a bit of Rabbie Burns, or mention William McGonagall as a joke.

[cosmolinguist]

I used to love Whitman, but less so now. His anti-science stance probably doesn't help (but, as we ended up talking about him last night too, I pointed out to Andrew that I'd probably be anti-science too if I were a Civil War nurse and saw how dreadfully it was lacking in helping those poor guys).

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Peotry is a spelling with good literary heritage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth). It's rarer to say it aloud that way, though. ;-)

I have a tag here called Peotry hem hem (http://bopeepsheep.livejournal.com/tag/peotry%20hem%20hem) - if you asked me my favourite poem you'd get one of those, or perhaps a different Wilfred Owen, or The Lady Of Shalott, or Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness.... It would never be If; I grew out of Ozymandias somewhere before A Level; I do still like Lear but The Pobble Who Had No Toes is better than TO&TP; and Molesworth (see above) ruined The Charge of the Light Brigade for me at least 6 years before I knew it was a real poem too. (Harfleeg, harfleeg, harfleeg onward, into the valley of er rode the six hundred. Rivalled only by notadrumwasheardnotafuneralnote in giggleworthiness.)

If you didn't know already, yes, I have higher EngLit qualifications. :)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh I know about Molesworth, but I also know not all of my friends do, so thought it was worth me saying so, especially since, as you say, it's not often spoken out loud :)

[innerbrat]

I love If... so there. It might rank among my favorites.

Or - The Highwayman or The Lion and Albert or He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven or Roundabouts and Swings or I don't know it's too much pressure!

[cosmolinguist]

I know! I found it too much pressure myself. Some great stuff here though! The Highwayman is another that left an impression on me when a formative teacher read (some of) it aloud.

I didn't know The Lion and Albert (but found a video of it, ace!) or Roundabouts and Swings (though I know the phrase, and now that I've read it I think it's awesome).

[haggis.livejournal.com]

My favourite poem is "He wishes for the clothes of heaven", which is fairly cheesy but I just love the different shades of blue.

[cosmolinguist]

Aw, you can't go wrong with Yeats; his Complete Works was one of the very few books I didn't sell back when I had to buy it in college.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

I like anyone lived in a pretty how town, and I'd imagine lots of other folk do too.

[cosmolinguist]

They should! I think E.E. Cummings was the first poet I really fell hard for, and unlike some of the others since, I still don't have a bad word to say about him. Excellent choice :)

[andrewducker]

I have a great fondness for This Be The Verse.

[cosmolinguist]

I knew I moved to a better country when I learned that people read this in school. Nothing with naughty words in, much less anything this subversive, appeared in any of my English lit classes (not even the poems we didn't read; I read them all so I know).

[bethanthepurple.livejournal.com]

I like poems about death and fucking, really.

My favourite for a while has been 'In Paris With You. by James Fenton.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh I love that one! Happened upon it completely randomly while I was looking in a book for something else entirely. A joyous discovery.

[bloodbeauty.livejournal.com]

i quite like the wasteland
and larkin. i think a lot of people will say "they fuck you up, your mum and dad" (i can quote that by heart lol. i also really like the trees, and the one about gin and tonic though a lot of it has escaped me.

i think you'll find a few people who fall back to "my love is like a red red rose" and other Shakespeare. i like Shakespeare too.
and sylvia plath
and seamus heany
my spelling of names is really bad today, please forgive
i still have most of the poems i wrote as a teenager, and those of a lot of my friends
most of them are quite depressing
i like edward lear and lewis carroll too. i did a project on caroll at primary school. an got told off for talking about how lots of people think he liked little girls.

oh, and aa milne and allan allbherg
and beaudelaire
i think i'm weird

[cosmolinguist]

I adore Seamus Heaney, I think he's marvelous and is also a great reader of poetry (which is important for me). Others' as well as his own; I have his translation of Beowulf but I hardly ever touch the book; it's him on the CD I go for.

I like "A Red Red Rose" a lot too, but it's not Shakespeare, it was written by Robert Burns. I got the cleaned-up Standard English versions in school and didn't think much of them, but in their original language his poems are far more likely to come alive for me.

[bloodbeauty.livejournal.com]

>_< of course it is. i feel like an idiot

[spacegirlkate.livejournal.com]

In the US, I would say most people would name that Frost poem, but I suspect some people would also name Maya Angelou, though I suspect considerably fewer could name a particular poem. When I mention I'm a poet, people often ask me if she's "still Poet Laureate."

I have about a trillion favorite poems, of course. Off the top of my head: "Kaddish" by Alan Ginsberg, "Power" by Audre Lorde, "On A New Year's Eve" by June Jordan, "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova, "Map Rappin'" by Patricia Smith (or practically anything else by her if she's performing it), "Fuck" by Kim Addonizio, the one of Adrienne Rich's untitled ghazals that starts "The friend I can trust is the one who will let me have my death", "An American Poem" by Eileen Myles, "The Dance" by Amiri Baraka, and "Insomnia" by Marina Tsvetaeva (although it's hard to find a good translation of it). Oh, and we'll throw in e.e. cummings's "my sweet old etcetera" and "The Window" by Robert Creeley just so I don't offend anyone by not including any straight white men. ;)

[cosmolinguist]

Millions of things I have to look up here! I'm wretchedly ignorant about poetry. Thank you :)

[rosalux.livejournal.com]

I would bet you'd get some people who could quote Whitman, at least "I contain multitudes". And there must be a lot of people who've memorized a Psalm or a sonnet for someone they loved.

I think my favorite poem might be Ciardi - Much Like an Arch This Marriage - but my favorite poem to memorize was As For Poets, by Gary Snyder:

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up

but that might be a "things high schoolers find delightful in an ice storm" kind of American Midwestern thing. Fossil love pumped back up.

[cosmolinguist]

Heh, well I'm not in high school any more but I think that poem is great. I don't hear people talking about fuel oil over here! (whereas my parents just stopped needing it a couple of years ago, dragged kicking and screaming into the liquid-propane future) Thanks so much for sharing it.

I hadn't encountered "Most Like an Arch This Marriage," and that's wonderful too.

[borneaway.livejournal.com]

I think not so long ago that "Stop All The Clocks" poem by Auden would have got high marks because it featured in Four Headaches And Some Pleurisy. And then got used in funerals everywhere because funerals, like lost cup finals, are places where the average British person deems it acceptable to display emotion and maybe wax a bit poetic about it.

[cosmolinguist]

That's very wise :) Oh, lost cup finals...

And indeed someone mentioned this one, for this reason, in the Dreamwidth version of this post.

[liret.livejournal.com]

I am here because I occasionally wander off into people's journals after reading ljidol entries. :)

I tend to like poetry with a strong meter that's fun to recite, even if only in my head. I actually like 'If,' though it's overused, but I for Kipling I'd prefer 'The Sons of Martha.' My absolute favorite probably rotates between that and 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.' If I were to go just by ones I enjoy reading, I'd add Langston Hughes' 'Let America be America Again.'

I think another popular favorite if you asked Americans would be 'Do not go gentle into that good night,' since it's one that get quoted so much.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh, that's a good suggestion, do not go gently. I think I first saw that in a movie!

Langston Hughes, oh excellent choice. I fell hard and fast for The Negro Speaks of Rivers when I discovered it as a teenager.