Poetry Is A Bit 'girlie'
- Thread starter terry
- Start date
A
Ardross
Guest
If you don't like poetry fine . Some people find it difficult to understand or cannot make the effort . Dismissing it as" girlie " is the attitude of a 9 year old
A
Ardross
Guest
Shakespeare's plays are written in verse . Girly ?????????
Read Titus Andronicus for a start .
Read Titus Andronicus for a start .
simmo
Senior Jockey
There would seem to be a remarkable number of children visiting this website. "Some people find it difficult to understand or cannot make the effort" is just as limp an attitude as finding it "girlie".
Personally I have only rarely come across any poem which I did not find to be hugely boring. Why should I bother to read something which I find boring, simply in order to "appear" intellectual. The fact that I prefer to concentrate my reading time to those pieces which interest me, or fulfil some other requirement for me, has not and will not diminish my capacity for intelligent activity. Similarly, reading poetry does not and will not enhance my ability to do the same.
Burns Night tonight, what a load of twaddle.
Personally I have only rarely come across any poem which I did not find to be hugely boring. Why should I bother to read something which I find boring, simply in order to "appear" intellectual. The fact that I prefer to concentrate my reading time to those pieces which interest me, or fulfil some other requirement for me, has not and will not diminish my capacity for intelligent activity. Similarly, reading poetry does not and will not enhance my ability to do the same.
Burns Night tonight, what a load of twaddle.
A
Ardross
Guest
Simmo - you have ignored my first line . Some people just don't like it - fine but trying to justify this by saying it is all girlie is pathetic . Some people do struggle with it and give up because they find it difficult to understand ( sometimes due to the vocabulary used , some can't be bothered with it . They are statements of fact .
Anyway here is a classic and realtively easy to understand non girly poem
I
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Anyway here is a classic and realtively easy to understand non girly poem
I
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
A
Ardross
Guest
They are line numbers B)
Philistines . It must be how PDJ and Maurice feel when teaching year 10
Philistines . It must be how PDJ and Maurice feel when teaching year 10
K
Kathy
Guest
That surely means detention and 1000 lines for you young Terence. 
B)
B)
Shadow Leader
At the Start
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2003
- Messages
- 9,884
Ballet??? Ballet is a form of art!!! Just because you're not agile enough.... 
:lol:
:lol:
simmo
Senior Jockey
BORED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
K
Kathy
Guest
and farting is definitely blokey as is working on a building site!
I can do "girly" sometimes, as I like the colour pink, and I like handbags, but I also like blokey things like drinking too much on a Sunday lunchtime and having mud fights - not whilst I am wearing me little pink number though.
I can do "girly" sometimes, as I like the colour pink, and I like handbags, but I also like blokey things like drinking too much on a Sunday lunchtime and having mud fights - not whilst I am wearing me little pink number though.
Merlin the Magician
At the Start
Simmo I agree with your evaluation entirely its not all!! that it appeals too....
I suppose you could ask who reads the bible every night?
I bet the hospitals will be busy tonight too????
P
Phil Waters
Guest
I've never had a mud fight in my life.
Wore loads of pink things though....
Wore loads of pink things though....
Wassermusik
At the Start
- Joined
- May 2, 2003
- Messages
- 146
a bit girly, definitely.
READY TO ROLL
To Mexico! To Mexico! Down the dovegrey highway, past
Atomic City police, past the firey border to dream cantinas!
Standing on the sunny metropolitan plateau, stranger prince
on the street, dollars in my pocket, alone, free -
genitals and thighs and buttocks under skin and
leather,
Music! Taxis! Marijuana in the slums! Ancient sexy parks!
Continental boulevards in America! Modern downtown
for a dollar! Dungarees in Les Ambassadeurs! And
here's a hard brown cock for a quarter!
Drunkeness! and the long night walks down brown streets,
eyes, windows, buses, interior charnels behind the
Cathedral, lost squares and hungry tacos, a calf's head
cooked and picked apart for meat,
and the blackened inner roofs and tents of the Thieves'
Market, street crisscrossed on street, a naked hipster
labyrinth, stealing, pausing, loitering, noticing, drums,
purchasing, nothing
but a broken aluminum coffee pot with a doll's arm sticking
up out of the mouth.
Haha! what do I want? Change of solitude, spectre of
drunkeness in paranoiac taxicabs, fear and gaiety of
unknown lovers
coming around the empty streetcorner dark-eyed and watching
me make it there alone under the new hip moon.
('Reality Sandwiches' x Allen Ginsberg)
"Girly"? I think you've confused poetry with Patience Strong's verses, Terrykins! Understanding poetry doesn't, per se, make anyone 'intellectual'. If it interests you, you'll make the effort to understand it, not the other way around, I think. I'm not the slightest bit interested in lots and lots of things, and it wouldn't matter how much I was tutored, read, and analyzed, they'll still be of no interest, albeit better understood. A bit like people working out their own ratings, for example.
To Mexico! To Mexico! Down the dovegrey highway, past
Atomic City police, past the firey border to dream cantinas!
Standing on the sunny metropolitan plateau, stranger prince
on the street, dollars in my pocket, alone, free -
genitals and thighs and buttocks under skin and
leather,
Music! Taxis! Marijuana in the slums! Ancient sexy parks!
Continental boulevards in America! Modern downtown
for a dollar! Dungarees in Les Ambassadeurs! And
here's a hard brown cock for a quarter!
Drunkeness! and the long night walks down brown streets,
eyes, windows, buses, interior charnels behind the
Cathedral, lost squares and hungry tacos, a calf's head
cooked and picked apart for meat,
and the blackened inner roofs and tents of the Thieves'
Market, street crisscrossed on street, a naked hipster
labyrinth, stealing, pausing, loitering, noticing, drums,
purchasing, nothing
but a broken aluminum coffee pot with a doll's arm sticking
up out of the mouth.
Haha! what do I want? Change of solitude, spectre of
drunkeness in paranoiac taxicabs, fear and gaiety of
unknown lovers
coming around the empty streetcorner dark-eyed and watching
me make it there alone under the new hip moon.
('Reality Sandwiches' x Allen Ginsberg)
"Girly"? I think you've confused poetry with Patience Strong's verses, Terrykins! Understanding poetry doesn't, per se, make anyone 'intellectual'. If it interests you, you'll make the effort to understand it, not the other way around, I think. I'm not the slightest bit interested in lots and lots of things, and it wouldn't matter how much I was tutored, read, and analyzed, they'll still be of no interest, albeit better understood. A bit like people working out their own ratings, for example.
Shadow Leader
At the Start
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2003
- Messages
- 9,884
Here's another classic piece of poetry....doesn't seem 'girly' to me!!!
On the Ning Nang Nong
Spike Milligan
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the Monkeys all say Boo!
Theres a Nang Nong Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the Mice go Clang!
And you just cant catch em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!
The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!
For more of Spike's poems, have a look at Spike Milligan Tribute Site it's very amusing!
On the Ning Nang Nong
Spike Milligan
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the Monkeys all say Boo!
Theres a Nang Nong Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the Mice go Clang!
And you just cant catch em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!
The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!
For more of Spike's poems, have a look at Spike Milligan Tribute Site it's very amusing!