EPTA poem is like a woman (or man if one were so inclined): there are many different types, you probably won't love all of them, but chances are you'll love a few and like many others. While poetry is considered an intellectual domain, much more so than women, although there are a lot of intellectual women and the majority of poetry is not high-brow at all. If you are wondering why you should love poetry, the only thing I can say is: 'Because it is beautiful.' The difference between being able to read and to love poetry is like the difference between internet pornography and real women. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read on, as I may be able to clue you in on one half of the comparison.
To start with the familiar: women. Some are nice, most of them nasty, they come in different colours of skin, heigts, volumes and weights; some are best consumed young, will bloat or wither with age, while others improve with age like certain kinds of wine. There are blonds, brunettes, black-haired Asian beauties, or Spanish, or Indian, with almost seven billion people, three and a half billion different women to love. While there do not exist three and a half billion kinds of poetry, I wonder how close that number is to the number of poems written. Even if not for passion, love poetry for convenience's sake. A marriage of convenience.
Most important about enjoying women/poems is to actually enjoy them: don't let your friends, mother or walkabout literati tell you how to do so: If you let people who've studied literature in any form or shape in on your love life, you're done for, same goes for old people and beauty and all the rest.
So back to the other half of the metaphor: poetry. Allow me to present some examples:
W. Shakespeare - Richard III act 1 scene 1
Although the language may be a bit old-fashioned, and the idiom unfamiliar, the gist of the first twenty-five or so lines is clear: The protagonist introduces the audience to the setting of the story, as well as himself, by means of a speech. There is no rhyme, but there is a metre: v-v-v-v-v- (v is an unstressed, - a stressed syllable). This is not 'poetry' per se: it's drama, with poetic elements. 'Poetic elements'? Yes, figures in language, a text may possess in certain quantities. Not every poem rhymes, has a metre, or is declared to be 'a poem' like the Germans tend to do with novels. + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ck9tT.jpg)
text: + Show Spoiler +
GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I-that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass-
I-that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph-
I-that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
A. de Musset - Tristesse
Ruh-roh! French! Well pardon me for smugling in some of
text: + Show Spoiler +
J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,
Et mes amis et ma gaieté;
J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fierté
Qui faisait croire à mon génie.
Quand j'ai connu la Vérité,
J'ai cru que c'était une amie ;
Quand je l'ai comprise et sentie,
J'en étais déjà dégoûté.
Et pourtant elle est éternelle,
Et ceux qui se sont passés d'elle
Ici-bas ont tout ignoré.
Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui réponde.
Le seul bien qui me reste au monde
Est d'avoir quelquefois pleuré.
quick and dirty translation:+ Show Spoiler +
I've lost my strength and my life,
and my friends and my hapiness;
I've lost all but my pride
which convinces (people) of my genius.
When I knew the Truth[+female],
I thought her to be a friend;
when I understood and felt her,
She already disgusted me.
Nevertheless, she is eternal,
And those, who she passes by,
Ignored everything worthwile on earth.
God speaks, one has to answer,
The only good left me in the world
Is to have cried sometimes.
W.C. Williams - This is just to say
No rhyme, no metre, three stanzas of 4 lines. Pretty basic but 'poetically' beautiful? The first time I was force-fed this poem, I was a little confused, but now I'm much more liberal in my appreciation of things.
text: + Show Spoiler +
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
松尾 芭蕉 - Matsua Basho (haiku)
My Japanese isn't what it used to be in a previous life, so I nicked this one off the German wikipedia, translations included. The gist of the haiku is the combination of two ideas, in a particular form. It's very compact, which leaves little room for elaboration, the words have to be chosen with great care to express what has to be expressed while staying the form. Read the wiki article if you care to read more about the particulars, otherwise try to enjoy it
text: + Show Spoiler +
古池や
蛙飛び込む
水の音
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
Der alte Weiher:
Ein Frosch springt hinein.
Oh! Das Geräusch des Wassers.
Erich Arendt - Nach dem Prozeß Sokrates oder Nach den Prozessen
Now we're on! A German poem, which is usually classified as being 'hermetic'. We're getting closer to 'real poetry' now
Don't run away though, I translated it, and it's basically very simple, although it has been warbled a bit to fool the media control bureau of the German Democratic Republic. The first title was its publishing title; Arendt used Sokrates as a metaphor to hide his intentions a little. The press office of the GDR wasn't retarded though, but they let things like this slip because it would only be printed a couple of hundred or thousand times, and the people who'd read it would be dissidents anyway, as long as the average East-German wasn't presented with unwelcome ideas it was more or less ok. But back to the poem. No rhyme, metre, complex breaks in sentences (a technique called enjambement), this poem is all about metaphors. Words/people are being compared to cereals, which may both be threshed. Then there is a comparison between the nazi regime and that of the GDR: (Despaired the / chimaeric flags / they're paling in the suddenly / shading / Red.) The 'flags', nazi flags, pale, to the GDR/SSSR regimes, symbolised by the colour 'Red'. Then the silent 'average Joe' is being described as having been silent during either oppression, and therefore guilty of any atrocities commited.So this time not poetry for beauty, but for truth under an oppressive regime. Fun in its kind.
text: + Show Spoiler +
Steingrauer Tag,
der sein Lid senkt.
Knie nicht
in den Schatten!
Spreu
schleifden die Stunden,
Spreu, abermillion, die
halt nicht machen
vor deiner Stirn
- Trauerschafott -,
schneller und
schneller, ohne
Geheimnis, und -
kein blutender Kern.
Verzweifelt die
chimärischen Fahnen,
sie blichen im jäh
verdämmernden
Rot.
Gleichgeschaltet
mit abwaschbaren
Handschuhn
gleichgeschaltet durch die
gezeichneten Finger
das erschöpfte
tausendströmige Herz.
Die da
handeln, an Tischen,
mit deiner Hinfälligkeit,
allwissenden Ohrs,
ledernen
Herzens ihr Gott, sie
haben das Word:
Worte,
gedreht und
gedroschen: Hülsen
gedroschen, der
zusammengekehrte Rest.
Gehend im Kreis
der erschoßnen Gedanken
- wie war
doch der Atem groß -
halt versiegelt den Mund, daß
der Knoten
Blut
nicht Zeugnis ablege!
Wo Freude und Recht
gemeuchelt lag,
an der Wand
der Geschichte
steht noch: Du!
Gehend im Kreis - doch
der Meteor
Verfinsterung jagt
am ummauerten Himmel
knie nicht -
Blutwimper, schwarz:
das Jahrhundert.
translation:
+ Show Spoiler +
Stone-grey day,
who lowers its lid.
Don't kneel
in the shadows!
Chaff
grinded by hours
Chaff, many millions who
do not stay
for your forehead
- scaffold of sorrow -,
faster and
faster, without
secret, and -
no bleeding core.
Despaired the
chimaeric flags ['Fahne' is usually a nazi flag, eg 'die Fahne hoch' in the [link]Horst-Wessel lied]
they're paling in the suddenly
shading
Red.
Made the same [Gleichschaltung is a nazi-related word signifying the unification of a country's media]
with washable
gloves
made the same by the
painted fingers
de exhausted
heart of thousand streams.
they who
make deals there, at tables
with your obsoleteness,
with an omniscient ear,
leathern
hearted their god, they,
are doing the all talking:
words,
turned and
threshed: husks
threshed, the
swept-up rest.
Going in circles
the thoughts who've been shot
- how was
the breath drawn great -
keep your mouth closed, so
the knot
blood
doesn't give testimony!
Where joy and justice
lay murdered
at the wall
of history
is written: You!
Going in circles, still
the meteor
darkning hunts
over the walled-in sky
don't kneel -
bloody eyelash, black:
the century
E. Spenser - One day I wrote her name upon the strand
How soppy! By form a sonnet, it's rather vulgar due to the sexual reference in the last line. Due to the familiar metre and rhyme scheme it's as much a 'poem' as one could have it, a classic. Therefore, it's generally considered not to be very ugly. + Show Spoiler +
and it's one of the few poems I know by heart :x
text: + Show Spoiler +
ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washèd it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she) that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wipèd out likewise.
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Written for dying father, repetition of two last lines of stanzas,
text: + Show Spoiler +
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Anatol - Sich entwickeln (to unwind(?))
And of course there are experiments! Concrete poetry, where form and meaning collide:
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7q7Wp.jpg)
Religious poetry
Something I know very little of, if anything at all. I know a couple of poems and have had my fair share of it while studying, but my heart and mind are not with it. A couple of years ago there was an item on the news: a woman I had never heard of had died, she had published a lot of books which sold a lot of copies each, she was a poet, religious poet. How strange that a literary society which is clearly in love with ficion and fairytales and 'art for art's sake' is so unanimously opposed to religious poetry. Perhaps it is because most of it is rather in line with 'conventional' conceptions of poetry, a classic rhyme scheme and metre, and not too many metaphors and easy ones at that, a clear picture all in all?
Conclusion
'Finally! After all the words an end! Spare me and I'll read anything you like!'
Just have fun, and don't mind the narcisistic literature students and Nobel prize committees who claim the right to poetry, it's fun and beauty, only they've forgotten it 
pictures should start working by themselves after a while.![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/trochee_fixation.png)
