Poetry?...meh..

[Svartalf]

I don't understand
The Why of that haiku craze
It gets so boring.

[JimC]

How about this poem from WW2, Rum?

Beach Burial, by Kenneth Slessor, written just after El Alamein...

Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.

Between the sob and clubbing of gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon their nakedness;

And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -

'Unknown seaman' - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men's lips,

Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.

[Posse Comitatus]

Modern poetry is basically dead in as far as, as far as I can tell, no one outside the world of academia seems to care even slightly, (and in any bookshop the poetry section seems to consist of one shelf, nearly everything being either pre-20th century or Seamus Heaney), which is a shame because books like the one above are incredible and really a match for any prose I've read from the last decade. It's not a collection of poems but more of a verse novella about the Mau Mau uprising- it's more Paradise Lost than Sonnet 18, coming in at around 60-odd pages.

As a starting point for getting into poetry (or if you just want a good read) I really, really, couldn't recommend it strongly enough. I don't think it's what most people expect from poetry nowadays which is a massive strength, though it does make you wonder why more people aren't doing similar things with the form.

[Imagination Theory]

Aggggggh! There are so many! Just a few from the top of my head;

Anna Akhmatova,

Marina Tsvetaeva,

Vladimir Mayakovsky,

Andrei Voznesensky,

Sergei Yesenin,

Tell me what you think?


If you want some more names just tell me.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Aggggggh! There are so many! Just a few from the top of my head;

Anna Akhmatova,

Marina Tsvetaeva,

Vladimir Mayakovsky,

Andrei Voznesensky,

Sergei Yesenin,

Tell me what you think?


If you want some more names just tell me.

There's a link here somewhere - are they all Italian?

[Imagination Theory]

Aggggggh! There are so many! Just a few from the top of my head;

Anna Akhmatova,

Marina Tsvetaeva,

Vladimir Mayakovsky,

Andrei Voznesensky,

Sergei Yesenin,

Tell me what you think?


If you want some more names just tell me.

There's a link here somewhere - are they all Italian?

I know, I know, it's just from the top of my head. That's why I made sure to add that I could give other names of poets (as in from another country other than Russia).

It was accidental I swear!

[orpheus]

I dislike almost all poetry except haiku and other short, concise poems. Ordinary poetry bores the shit out of me.

Huge poetry lover here. These days I read little else than poetry and some non-fiction. So many things to post...but here are two very brief limericks, in your honor:

1.
There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two


2.
There was a young man from Verdun

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Aggggggh! There are so many! Just a few from the top of my head;

Anna Akhmatova,

Marina Tsvetaeva,

Vladimir Mayakovsky,

Andrei Voznesensky,

Sergei Yesenin,

Tell me what you think?


If you want some more names just tell me.

There's a link here somewhere - are they all Italian?

I know, I know, it's just from the top of my head. That's why I made sure to add that I could give other names of poets (as in from another country other than Russia).

It was accidental I swear!

Forgiven. Welcome to Ratz by the way. Why not stop by our Welcome forum and tell us a little about yourself? If you don't, someone else will no doubt start a thread there for you - we iz a welkumming lot!

And I never heard of any of the poets on your list - I will try to track down a few - any decent English translations out there?

[Rollo.Cohen]

Here is some fun, lighthearted poetry that you might like.

Dahl - The Three Pigs
Carrol - Walrus and the Carpenter
Betjeman - Hunter Trials
Byron - To the Author of a Sonnet

I've always firmly believed that english poetry should be accessible to any english speaker.
Enjoy!