Revealing Poetry Discussion Thread

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''NEW POETRY'' thread




This thread is all about the meaning behind poetry and discussing the basis of it

I'd like to start with Wilfred Owen's poem about Futility.


Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,—Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Meaning
Futility details an event where a group of soldiers attempt to revive an unconscious soldier by moving him into the warm sunlight on a snowy meadow. However, the "kind old sun" cannot help the soldier - he has died.

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They f**k you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
and add some extra, just for you.

But they were f****d up in their turn
by fools in old-style hats and coats,
who half the time were soppy-stern
and half at one another's throats.

Man hands misery onto man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
and don't have any kids yourself.

The melancholia of Larkin's poetry is legendary, but This Be The Verse is notable in that it takes life entirely into account and subsequently suggests what the reader should do in response. Larkin explores the notion of parents passing on their failures ('f**k you up') to their children, just as had been done to them previously. Larkin's resolution to this supposedly gloomy existence is to not have children and thereby breaking the chain. This poem is Larkin's most quoted (particularly here in Britain) despite it's nihilistic message, and though most would not think to follow his advice, the feeling is recognised inside us all the same. This Be The Verse reveals the dark and destructive part of our selves by our reluctant concurrence to its sentiment, and it is for this reason that it has endured.

Migration Pursuit ---

I'm a native by nature
As earthy as rural agriculture,
a culturist with good brass
a nameplate with alot of class.

I'm a traveller and a ponderer,
reading is my hypochondria.
If I could locate a forgotten song,
I'd ponder high and ponder long.

Brace myself the futures long,
ethnicity has claimed its right
and humanity soldiers right on.

Pleasure is being in the know,
It's also in the status quo,
Customs laws are in our sight,
Lovey dovey birds take plight.

----Unknown---

Do you write yourself? I occasionally write stories and poems myself.

^^ You might say that

A Hutched Relationship

You kept me in that draughty garden shed.
Inside a cage of your design I dwelt;
The walls of panelled wood, the roof of felt.
You gave the bare essentials: Watered, fed-
But cheap ill-gotten shavings lined my bed.
In childish hotter months it seemed I’d melt,
And winters breath would bring the goose’s welt.
The only constant was your peering head.
Those eyes had kindness, promised but reserved.
The others got what little that you spared,
As I just watched the lengthy moments pass.
I do not mourn the love that I deserved,
Instead I like to think you really cared,
And dream of roaming fields of pastured grass.

- Anonymous