Poetry

[minestrone]

Does it mean anything?

[doodab]

What would be the point of writing something that didn't mean anything?

[gingerjedi]

Does it mean anything?

Does anything really matter?

[minestrone]

I read Tam O'Shanter yesterday for the first time since school and the whole meaning was lost at that age.

[vetran]

Yes


Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.
"How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths."

Horace

or

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

[minestrone]

'I wandered lonely as a cloud'

I mean FFS, what does that mean? Did a cloud tell Wordsworth he was lonely and he thought yes, I am as lonely as that and when I get back to the house I shall write a poem about the loneliness of clouds. Pile of nonsense.

[TimberWolf]

I've little patience for poetry and put it down mostly to a girly/arty thing. Didn't get past the first line of the one posted above for example.

This ain't bad though:

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

[starts to go downhill a bit after those two lines, and may not strictly be called poetry]

[vetran]

'I wandered lonely as a cloud'

I mean FFS, what does that mean? Did a cloud tell Wordsworth he was lonely and he thought yes, I am as lonely as that and when I get back to the house I shall write a poem about the loneliness of clouds. Pile of nonsense.

he was stoned on Laudanum.

[Mich the Tester]

Does it mean anything?

Do you like it as much as you like jazz?

[minestrone]

Do you like it as much as you like jazz?

Don't get me started.

Jazz and poetry.

Shoowbdeee raa skeee, bee be be show doo wap. ahhhhhh, ra ta skillidy bop.