new Q for Friday...

How do you feel about poetry?

Good, it's something beautiful, catching things often better than prose or the plain spoken word - similar to photography and cinematography.

it's alright.
better than maths.
can't stand poets though.

whose?

any's whose you like or don't like or...

this one makes sense today:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

***

I like poetry, when executed well.

with a gun, preferably.

My feelings about poetry are private.

DON’T WORRY, YOU’RE NOT IN THIS POEM

Big names draw little name clusters
Like wrecks draw insurance adjusters:
The image their raw hatred musters
Is Manson or Dahmer;
The meetings and greetings and seatings
Of poets at poetry readings
Remind me of sharks at their feedings --
Except sharks are calmer.

The women compete for attention
From powerful people whose mention
May get them promotion, a pension,
Or merely a raise;
Another year fatter and older
They flirt with old flames now grown colder
Then fall for a younger one’s bolder,
If less truthful, praise.

The men snort their picayune grouses
And act like low libertine louses
Betraying their principles, spouses,
And significant others,
Drinking to knock back the terror
That there’s been a terrible error
And history may yet prove a fairer
Judge than their mothers.

I watch the free-versers and rhymers,
Idealists and down-in-the-slimers,
Sweet hermits and sly social climbers
All chasing careers;
Their earnestness makes me despair of them --
Each likely recombinant pair of them;
You’d think I’d have learned to beware of them,
Shielded by sneers.

But now they have organized locally,
The urban-enraged and the yokelly,
Leaving the business side jokily
Under-explored;
Did I, when asked for my attitude,
Give it? Or give them wide latitude?
No, I accepted with gratitude
A seat on the Board.

when it's good, there's nothing better.

when it's bad, there's nothing worse.

auntie you sure you are taling about poetry?

i feel very strongly about poetry

so does the entire lower east side

even those who choose to ignore it

new question for saturday:

astrology - fascinating insight into the cosmic forces which influence our lives, or load of old bollocks?

i grant you permission to copy and paste my answer at will as it applies.