The poetry thread

[Mik]

@Aqua-Letifer said in The poetry thread:

Yeats could certainly see what others couldn't.

"The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity"

[Horace]

yeah that line hits with some resonance of truth.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Mik said in The poetry thread:

Man, does this resonate today.

I didn't realize—today's the old man's birthday!

[Mik]

[Aqua Letifer]

Yeah. Appropriate for the season and one of my favorites, @Mik .

[Aqua Letifer]

This one's @Jolly 's fault. I read this story he posted:
https://nypost.com/2024/10/27/us-news/west-va-boys-build-road-so-helene-victims-can-go-home/

And then it occurred to me that America has no folk heroes anymore. Where are our John Henrys and Annie Oakleys? What happened to Paul Bunyan and Calamity Jane?

So I figured I'd do my part to commemorate these guys. They're certainly deserving of a folk ballad.

On 26 September,
The winds and rain arrived.
Helene, they learned, would have her way
As every road was washed away;
Against the storm, the swell and spray
Few houses had survived.

From Chimney Rock to Bat Cave,
The storm had cut them off.
They worried for their homes and wept;
Some pleaded for support—except
When governments are this inept,
No plea is strong enough.

But there were some who listened
And knew, amid the noise,
No bureaucrats or engineers
Would haul the roads or bridges clear;
That’s when the miners volunteered,
The West Virginia Boys.

They all arrived together
And brought the locals in—
They said like Noah’s flood it rained,
But when at last the water drained,
The mountain’s all that had remained
Of where the roads had been.

So could the Boys move mountains?
They all had little doubt.
“It’s difficult, but there are ways,”
They said, “To get that mountain razed,
Just give us all about three days—
We’ll have a road punched out.”

They got to work that morning
And knew just where to blast.
Within three days, a willing crew
(And sure, a couple backhoes, too)
Would do what no one else could do
And brought them home at last.

When DOT does nothing
And FEMA sends a squad
Of wonks who give you protocol
And you’re ignored by city hall,
Remember, you can always call
The Boys of West-By-God!

[Mik]

Look out, John Henry.. you got competition.

Well done, Aqua.

[Tom-K]

Cretins have it easy
They don't have to do anything to be what they are.
Me, I have to do everything
Maybe I'll get a lobotomy and drive a car.

My friend romanticizes cretins
and wants to drive a car,
Me, I like my beatings
And things the way they are.

[This is a Post-Structuralist interpretation of Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".]

[taiwan_girl]

@Aqua-Letifer Very nice!!

[Mik]

[Mik]

[Aqua Letifer]

Those are great. Love the collective nouns in particular.

[Mik]

[Aqua Letifer]

Link to video

[Mik]

My daughter is a big Dorothy Parker fan.

[Mik]

"The House With Nobody In It"

The poem was written by Joyce Kilmer in 1914. In April 1917, he enlisted and was deployed to Europe to fight in WWI. He would not survive as he was K.I.A. by a German sniper's bullet on July 30, 1918, in France.

"Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there’s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,

That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart."

[Horace]

It's an evocative piece, but I'm afraid that guy might have been a depressive.

[Mik]

I had a house like that off a bike trail I used to hike daily. It reminded me of that.

[jon-nyc]

A Yeats excerpt that feels all too current.

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.

[Aqua Letifer]

@jon-nyc said in The poetry thread:

A Yeats excerpt that feels all too current.

Know what he's referring to here, though?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Being Irish, he means something very specific.