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“I don’t think e.e cummings was his generation’s Skrillex.”
More like his generation’s “311”
Bravo!
Every Aussie knows there’s like, four poets:
-Banjo Patterson
-Henry Lawson
– That bloke who wrote ‘Said Henrahan’
– The rest
You are bitching about the wrong poet – at least Frost is accessible and you can make of his words what you want (I like to think he often wrote ironically) Thoreau is the poet who should be getting bashed – his poems are impenetrable and difficult to read and I think most people who quote him haven’t read any of his poems. And his quiet woods -within a dozen yards of active train tracks and his mom came and did his laundry every week – wuss.
Yeah, Thoreau makes me laugh because he pretended he was alone out in the woods while he living near everything and being utterly incapable of taking care of himself. He was a manchild that people took seriously somehow.
Not to mention a few blocks from Ralph Emerson’s house where he dined regularly. The original grifter hipster.
If there’s a fork in the road, take it. Yogi Berra
I’m intrigued by this new Poetopian website.
Poetry is taught so badly in the US. Half-literate English teachers, who
1) were taught one meaning, can’t read between the lines, and force that limited meaning onto poor students like some sort of mathematical fact.
2) believe poetry is only about emotion (be cause they can’t think critically themselves), and try to foist some sort of “passion” on students through rote memorization, and through “correcting” students when they just don’t care.
Skip Frost and Thoreau and start with Milne, Ronald Dahl , maybe Lewis Carroll (yes, they’re British, not American, but they’re great fun poets) But get the kids enjoying it! Teach how to play with language in novel and funny ways, then work up to the stuffy boring poetry.
Frost wrote normal, inoffensive pastorals. This is the Autopian. You need much weirder poets. But probably only short ones. I’m not going to suggest anyone go read Don Juan, Lord Byron’s 16,000 line satirical epic with an unreliable narrator.
Get the stuff that thumbs its nose at structure. The poems that put their lines in weird places to make their point. Get some of the redaction/erasure poetry. The absolute nonsense that makes you feel like you don’t understand anything.
Or, y’know, find some good car poetry.
All in favor of skipping the poem say I
2024 Toyota GR 86: The Paris Review Review
As reprinted in “The French Dispatch.”
This was the boring part of English class to me. So many poets come off as just a bunch of pretentious old farts.
Give me the weird e.e. cummings stuff.
Two paths diverged in a yellow wood,
And–sorry, there’s also a third path
Being a city boy, I simply stood,
Calculating as best I could
Three choices with unknown math;
Then turned myself away from there,
Having perhaps no proper plan,
For three choices I could not bear
Though back home, I will swear
I became a decisive man
My city ass was made for streets
But I write pastoral verse
So I’ll put my pen to the sheets
And suggest I made no retreats;
My rural view is not a curse
I write this now and know not why
I write this with a certain sense
I could spend time in yellow wood
The forest seems a simple good
But the city has made a difference
(An alternate universe where Frost stuck to his city roots and also saw three paths. And was less strict in meter, because I am lazy.)
Bravo.
Here’s the whole thing. And Torch is right. Two paths are the same, except for a bend in the undergrowth. But years later, the narrator knows he’ll be telling everyone, “I always knew which one was right!!” …even if it’s all a little bullshit.
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.
What ticks me off is he says they were worn about the same, so the whole last line is just some wank
Fortunately, as an adult who no longer has to read it for class assignments I am free to pretend poetry does not exist. I even skip the poems and songs that sometimes get injected into novels because in my experience they never have any bearing on the story, they’re just the author showing off their poetic chops.
There was a young man from Nantucket/
That’s your loss, there’s some really lit shit out there
Two roads, both alike in dignity
In fair Woodland, where we lay our scene
From ancient indecision break to new direction
Where civil age makes civil aged unsure
—
In your face, Frosty 🙂
It’s not bullshit – you just didn’t understand it. He made a choice between equal options, but in his old age he will tell people he took the road less travelled-by and lay the credit (or blame) for however his life turned out on that singular choice. It’s about self-deception and the impermanence of memory.
(I’m purposefully engaging in the same self-deception by pretending that I always understood this poem. Thanks for pointing this out, Jason! This was a great eye-opener and I appreciate Frost all the more for finally seeing his point.)
It’s also about his regret that he could not travel both. That one equivalent decision, may define the rest of his life.
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:
Yeah. I also think there are lots of times when options available basically look the same, but then, looking back on how “way leads to way” the choice really did make all the difference. But not in any way that was understood at the time.
Why is it I feel the most of you have the most fun on Slack? 100% jealous.
It’s the best.
In my workplace we have a dedicated #dad-jokes channel on Slack – it’s the only one I follow.
We have Slack at our work too and it’s 0% fun.
We used to have Slack. Now we’re stuck with Teams. Teams sucks.
Teams does suck, especially for teams that don’t have Teams.
Teams is (are?) the WORST.