Poetry sucks
 

I'm So Incredibly Tired
Grant Harding



It's like I'm looking at something perfect.
Her complexion was everything but bland.
She is like something I would die to protect.
Her eyes were round, beautiful, and very grand.
The time I spent with her was splendid.
Our love for us was equivalent.
I would try hard to make her heart mended.
Her temper was not quite malevolent
I cannot forget her great attitude.
Her lovely voice was like music to me.
She contained large amounts of fortitude.
The single best husband for her was me.
She is the one who I dare not lose.
She doesn't really resemble Tom Cruise.

Now THAT is a sonnet. And the title is fitting. :D I hate rhyming. I'm not a freaking poet and no, I _don't_ know it. Writing about love is bad enough...writing about love all sing-songy and making it rhyme is so much worse. Now...factual reports are cool. Poems are lame!

Sorry...it's late...and my poem sucks...and I'm so incredibly tired. </rant>

Now, as a published poet I will have to say I disagree with you about poetry sucking. But I will say mushy love poems quite often suck. And rhyming poetry, unless it's in a song, annoys me to no end. And I won't kid you, your poem is pretty bad except that it is incredibly funny! And there is an obscure market out there for bad poetry...

My other hates poetry, hates it with a passion. He thinks Mr. Ray Bradbury's book "Something Wicked This Way Comes" should be retitled "Here Comes Something Wicked" and should be written in a less lyrical style. He thinks my poem that ends"but I am man made and a stranger to your heart" should probably read "But I am human and know nothing about you." I think without poetry, all things would read like Dick and Jane stories.

MissInformation

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This is the poem that never was... or was it?

Correction:

Shakespeare *does what a vaccum cleaner does*

Hey, I happen to like Shakespeare!

As for poetry in general:
I like poetry, but the only rhyming poems I like are from authors like Shel Silverstein! Love poems can be ok, as long as they aren't *too* mushy. Ew. I've written a few poems just for fun, but hardly any of them ever rhyme! ::shrugs::

- Katie

Umm, but then it wouldn't be the greatest. novella. ever.

Besides, at least where the title is concerned, good Mr. Bradbury was only quoting Shakespeare.

...and I don't think we can blame Shakespeare for living in a time when English sucked :) He was just working with what he was given.

Poetry takes many forms, and they don't all suck (Dr. Seuss rocks!). The only kind of poetry that sucks, in my mind, is fake poetry - the kind that people write while pretending to be introspective, powerful, philosophical, or critical, but just end up being stupid.

One of my favorites
 

This is one of my favorite poems - if you're interested, there are some interesting stories about Ferlinghetti's dog (one of which, an episode in which he, ahem, relieved himself on a policeman, led to his immortalization in this poem). And for the record, Miss Info, rhyming poetry is fun - if you limit yourself to non rhyming, why, that's like a florist who decides not to use yellow flowers, isn't it? ; )

<edit> hmmm - CD seems to have removed the formatting - look here for the definitive version </edit>


Dog, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn't hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He's afraid of Coit's Tower
but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master's voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything

Ah, but Mr. Bradbury is a very poetic writer, and a lot of his novels are poetry in paragraph form. Not all, but a lot, such as that Wicked book, and Dandelion Wine (my favorite) and From the Dust Returned. Of course, I like Shakespeare too, but then, I was an English major and it's required (page 52 on the English Major's handbook).

Actually, I have nothing against yellow, but I would be a florist who wouldn't use pink flowers ;). I stand by what I said about rhyme. It's good in song, and for limericks and kids books, but in poetry, it's already been done. There is only so many ways you can rhyme words, and the "masters" have already done it. Heck, Hallmark has already done it all on their greeting cards alone. I will admit, however, that I have a whole notebook at home full of rhyming poetry I wrote when I was in my teens. I keep thinking of putting a section on my web-site called "Bad Poetry" and posting some of these rhyming poems of mine there, but they are so embarrassing, I don't know if I can do it.

MissInformation

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By the prickling of my thumbs... I can tell that last weed I pulled was poison ivy...

I hate ee cummings poems since their just short simple poems but he just messes up the form. It's stupid. I don't understand his popularity. Here, I'll make one up right now.

Peo(ple)
Sa Tha
y !t
Ee?cummin gs
Ha_s
Ignsetiertn
Styl e
But(I)_think
Its ' ju-s-t
sTup i
D

Something Wicked... is among my favorite books ;) So, yes, I like the way it's written. ...I'm tired, so maybe that wasn't clear. Or it was. Who knows.

But, yes, just so the world knows - "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is among my favorite books, along with Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" - oddly, for one of it's more 'poetic' passages.

I feel you, evulish.....

when we start studying Lord Byron this year will definitely also be when my grade starts escaping from my grasp...

one of my favorites that i have written

On the edge of being a romance
On the edge of caring
On the edge of giving up hope
On the edge of something daring
On the edge of no turning back
On the edge of bawling
On the edge of this cliff called love
On the edge of falling.....

*sigh* too bad nothing has happened....yet....

i'm not a poetry fan either, but i'll read it for fun. now analyzing poetry is something else. i turned in a poetry analysis paper last week. that wasn't pleasent to write at all. we were required to explain how certain techniques used in the poem suported the theme of the poem and all that not so fun stuff. i think i just confused myself in the process. ah wells...

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Stephen Crane (Red Badge of Courage fame) is one of my favorite poets. This poem was written by him in the late 1800s:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never ---"

"You lie," he cried,
And he ran on.

MissInformation

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A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
-Stephen Crane

Like gasoline on a fire -

A Trashery of Ogden Nashery


Sure it's silly, but, as a man not much wiser than myself once said, "In silliness, the soul seeks sweet sorrow but seldom sees more than sorrowful sweetness"

A few good peoms:

Mr. Flood's Party - by Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Eve of St. Agnes - by John Keats

The Mill - by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Octaves - by Edwin Arlington Robinson

I Have a Rendezvous with Death - by Alan Seeger

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Fifth Edition Translation by Edward Fitzgerald

type any of these into www.google.com search engine, and you can read them online. I enjoyed them all.

The Eve of St. Agnes is my favorite though. It is 378 lines long, and is in perfect rhyme. It is also a nice mushy love poem.

*sighs* :D

The City of Dreadful night
 

This is one of my favorite poems, by James Thompson
Link: http://emotionalliteracyeducation.co...ne/ctdnt10.htm

The City is of Night; perchance of Death
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air:
The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity 5
The sun has never visited that city,
For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

Dissolveth like a dream of night away;
Though present in distempered gloom of thought
And deadly weariness of heart all day. 10
But when a dream night after night is brought
Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many
Recur each year for several years, can any
Discern that dream from real life in aught?

For life is but a dream whose shapes return, 15
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day, some night and day: we learn,
The while all change and many vanish quite,
In their recurrence with recurrent changes
A certain seeming order; where this ranges 20
We count things real; such is memory's might.

This is only an excerpt, as the poem itself is about 30 pages long.
As for the narrow-minded stink nugget that thinks "Correction:

Shakespeare *does what a vaccum cleaner does* ", I think when you reach the now-far off age of twelve, you will reach a state of much higher emotional maturity that your present state. The possibility of this happening is nil, though, as the "Toy's R Us Kid" song comes to mind at the slightest recollection of your infantile post. How inconsiderate of me. You must not be able to comprehend some of the two syllable words I have been saying. Here: I'l make it easier for you:

"You smeel like poopie."
thank you