Do you Read Poetry?

I do read poetry, and I am delighted to see that this is the very first question you asked on your culture board.

Poetry—specifically English poetry, for at the time I did not care much for the Irish language, mea culpa—was one of the very few enduring things I took from my secondary school education. In the 1980s we had a poetry textbook in English class called 'Soundings'; I used to read it for pleasure in my spare time, and it is my lasting regret that I never kept my copy of that book, for I would love to enjoy it again, and introduce my children to its treasures.

I do not have a favorite poet, as such—different moods and life events call for different poets—although Yeats would perhaps be the closest I have to a favorite; his Weltanschauung is not the same as mine, but it's close enough. Of English-born poets, Thomas Hardy without a doubt; the closing line of 'During Wind and Rain' is to my mind one of the most powerful lines in the entire corpus of English verse.

On a completely different track, if you've never read Christopher Smart's (1722-1771) poem 'For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey', you need to.

On the eve of my deployment to Afghanistan I read the war poets—Rupert Brooke, Wilfrid Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and our own (much underrated) Francis Ledwidge. This was perhaps overly dramatic of me—but as I had never deployed to a combat theatre before and had no idea what to expect, it seemed fitting at the time.

Poetry is a reflection of the society in which it is produced as much as of the interior life of the poet. For this reason, I read almost nothing written after 1960 (this holds in the ecclesiastical as well as the secular sphere), and I especially shun 'verse' (if one could call it that) that is used as a vehicle to push some kind of poz or degenerate agenda.

I have so much more to say on this subject; maybe later, as I don't want to make this post over-long, and I do hope others will join the discussion.

On the subject of modern poetry, particularly post-1960 compositions, I have an amusing anecdote to relate.

In my first year at UCD (now nearly thirty years ago), I joined the English Literary Society, as I had an interest in creative writing and assumed that participation in the activities of the aforementioned society would have a stimulating effect on my creativity. Such is the idealism of youth.

I did not know quite what to expect when I went to my first ELS meeting, as I was then a callow youth of eighteen years, still wet behind the ears, without much experience of life and with even less to say for himself... but I know exactly what I found.

What I found was a coterie of self-absorbed, navel-gazing gasbags who thought they were the bees' knees. One read his (or her) work, while everyone else listened and afterwards offered comments (usually praising the 'ground-breaking' nature of the work or the 'courage' of the author, thus swelling the latter's already over-inflated ego). The 'work' (mostly a species of construction that attempted to pass itself off as poetry) was utterly unremarkable; I think it safe to say that none of this stuff (if any of it was ever published) will still be read in a hundred years' time. In addition, most of it seemed to be about sex (these were college-age kids after all). I particularly remember an almost comic scene, in which one very earnest (and very overweight) young man read his composition to the assembly, almost breathlessly... and when he fell silent, nobody had anything to say except one brave and forthright young lady who asked the question that everyone else wanted to but didn't dare: "Yes... but what is it about?"

His response was absolutely predictable of the kind of amateurism one finds among students at English departments the world over: "Don't ask me! I'm only the poet!"

What, guy?

You're "only the poet"? What the heck does that mean?

You wrote the poem.

Instead of having something to say and then finding the most poetic way of saying it, he jotted down whatever happened to pop into his head at that given time. His poem was probably written in one sitting, and without further editing (for the work of editing presupposes some thought about the nature of the piece, which we might expect would give its author some clue as to what he was writing about).

These kids knew nothing about the origins and development of poetry, and in any case their ideas (if one can call them that) had been formed by the feminist-marxist-queer axis which dominates the study of English literature at university level. We can at least console ourselves that the masterpieces composed by the much-derided 'dead white males', having stood the test of time, will survive as long as civilization endures; but the scribblings by the disciples of inclusivity and progress are so tied to a social and political ideology that they will evaporate like mist in the sunlight as soon as our society begins to recover its wits.

How I read it: seldom, random. What aspect I like about it: cannot say / more or less all. Favorite: have read far too little yet.

How important: interesting thing to consider but the first thought was that perhaps its own nature is being in some sense more "hidden" than important in social and cultural terms. Maybe this invaluable thing (in itself) will always be very well also in the background?

For me personally this is a recent interest. Even though indeed an amateur, and one glad to be invited to the Irish Conservatives Forum as a non-Irish member, I can in gratitude only say that I intend to continue reading.

I´m beginning to like poetry.

We had to learn poems off by heart at secondary school as homework. Normally this approach doesn't encourage the pupil to appreciate the thing being learnt but on this occasion it worked a treat - I remember quite a few poems and can still recite bits of them from memory and have taken a liking to some of the poets we memorised from that time including Thomas Hardy, John Keats, William Blake, Wordsworth and Robert Frost.

Here's a little poem, Eternity, by Blake, telling us that happiness and joy cannot be possessed or captured.    

Eternity

William Blake, 1757 - 1827



He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise

I'm a poetry nut but the demands of practical life and lures of the information age have kept me away from it for way too long.  I've never read Macneice or Hartnett but I will look them up.

In the days before the internet I used to read it out loud to myself - mainly Yeats but sometimes Tennyson.  I really liked "Idylls of the King."   I would really be interested in hearing recommendations from others re. specific poems.  A few of mine are:


"Kindness" by Naomi Shahib Nye
"Good Friday Riding Westward" by John Donne
"Sailing to Byzantium" by Yeats
"The Circus Animals Desertion" by Yeats
"Quarantine" by Eavan Boland
"I see His Blood Upon the Rose" by Plunkett

From a dead white male saint:



From a dead white male Catholic patriot & martyr:

thomaspatrickashe.com/let-me-carry-your-cross-for-ireland-lord/

For someone that has never read poetry, what would you recommend?