Sensitive NewsBusters Correspondent Challenged to Give Examples of Favorite Poetry

NewsBusters ^ | February 17, 2009 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Your humble correspondent recently wrote a NewsBusters story casting aspersions upon the poetic ability of one Elizabeth Alexander whom many thought delivered the absolute worst poem ever at a presidential inauguration. This came to the attention of ConWebWatch whose mission seems to be to keep a jaundiced eye focused on evil rightwingers such as myself. Here is the ConWebWatch post decrying what they consider to be my deep insensitivity on matters poetic:

...Another apparent Hallmark-card fan is P.J. Gladnick, who in a Jan. 25 NewsBusters post likens Alexander's poetry to that allegedly written by a "crazed woman passenger" accused of biting a bus driver. Gladnick then offers an alleged sample of the biter's poetry, followed by Alexander's inaugural poem, then adds: "Which poem is more unpoetic to qualify as an Obama inaugural poem? And has anybody spotted Elizabeth Alexander biting bus drivers recently?"

Perhaps Bozell and Gladnick can provide examples of poetry they do like (if there are any) so we can judge how snobbishly anti-elitist their tastes are.

[PJ-Comix]

I once actually met a girlfriend due to the fact that I was reading some Robert Service poetry aloud at a swimming pool. She thought that I was a really, really sensitive guy because of that.

(Little did she know.)

[PJ-Comix]

PING!

[DJ MacWoW]

I was asked in high school to recite a poem. I picked:

I twist your arm
You twist my leg
I make you cry
You make me beg
I dry your eyes
You wipe my nose
And that's the way
The lovin goes.

I was told to sit down.

[Williams]

I’m offended at Newsmax. The worst ever was Maya Angelou at Clinton’s Inaugaral. BTW they actually have her as the narration for a “Big Bang” exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium. Cannot understand a word she is saying.

[DainBramage]

There once was a dude name obama

his dad black and white was his momma

Wont say his birthplace

just uses his race

to make whitey not call him Osama.

[lewisglad]

I gave my love a cherry without a stone
I gave my love a chicken without a bone
I gave my love a ring without an end
I gave my love a baby with no cryin’
[ string ]
How can there be a cherry without a stone
How can there be a chicken without a bone
How can there be a ring without an end
How can there be a baby with no cryin’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o-SuRXwK5o

[IronJack]

Figure if that’s what she considers poetry, there’s not much use in introducing her to Shelley or Yeats or God forbid, Shakespeare. Or Milton or Tennyson or Vachel Lindsay or Walt Whitman or Kipling or Emerson or Whittier or Stevenson or Longfellow or Robert Frost or any of those untalented hacks. She’s more from the William Carlos Williams school of poetry that is so advanced it reads like gibberish to us untrained, unenlightened fools.

[mbraynard]

jeez.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are both great poets as they were both very conservative, both have to be considered great poets by anyone who claims to understand poetry, and thus are annoying to most modern day liberal poets.

How can such rightwing nutjobs be capable of writing the best poetry of the 20th century?

Howard Nemerov was a great modern American poet. He was the Poet Laureate once. He has a good sense of humor and captured the sense of post WWII America really well.

G.K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis have both written decent poetry.

There's lots to like that doesn't sound like something coming out of the mouth of an insane woman.

[muir_redwoods]

Ahem,

"Whenas in silks my Julia goes

Then, then methinks

How sweetly flows

That liquifaction of her clothes

When next I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration

Each way free

Oh, how that glittering taketh me"

[arderkrag]

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are both great poets as they were both very conservative, both have to be considered great poets by anyone who claims to understand poetry, and thus are annoying to most modern day liberal poets.

Yep. Same reason Hemingway is defamed now in most English classes. Consequently, my favorite poem has always been "The Road of Kings" by Robert E. Howard (Another conservative, who also happens to be my favorite author period).

[Robert A Cook PE]

Kipling?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are both great poets as they were both very conservative

Ezra Pound? He spent World War 2 in Italy making propaganda broadcasts and writing pro-fascist articles for his close personal friend Benito Mussolini. He was brought back the US to face treason charges, but instead they decided to declare him insane and chucked him into an asylum for the next 12 years.

Great poet, though.

[Jonah Hex]

But now I know the things I know

And do the things I do;

And if you do not like me so,

To hell, my love, with you!

That little Dorothy Parker quote got me in trouble with my college lit teacher. :-)

[elcid1970]

My favorite Dorothy Parker quote, from when she was attending a social event at a women’s college:

“If all these sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised!”

;^)

[Mad Dawg]

Roses are red
Violets are blued
Any more new laws
[the last line is crude.]

Actually, some months ago there are a post here of an article that began:
"The Silent Sun's Uncertain Course Disturbs"
and it was all about sunspots and how we are all going to freeze to death instead of broil and there are no Northern Lights, not like there used to be, and all that.
So I done writ:

The silent Sun's uncertain course disturbs
  The fearful cries and threats of global fire,
Of parched rivers, dead cities and suburbs,
  Of dessicated doom in stifled quire.

Almost immaculate the Sun now glows,
  And safe are radio and power grid.
The solar wind now only weakly blows;
  From Northern Lights the night sky now is rid.

They say new doom now stalks, and voices rise
  Proclaiming now the threat of death by ice.
Now free from heat our fearful minds and eyes
  Find killing cold the way to Paradise.

Ye know, daft men, we'll die one way or other.
Meantime, be men; love God; love one another.

Of course, I was pretty well likkered-up at the time ....

[Arthur McGowan]

Your humble correspondent recently wrote a NewsBusters story casting aspersions upon the poetic ability of one Elizabeth Alexander WHOM many thought delivered the absolute worst poem ever at a presidential inauguration.

He means WHO, not WHOM. WHO is the subject of "delivered," not the object of "thought."

[Mad Dawg]

Nice catch. Don't nobody speak no English no more.

He could have said "whom many thought to have delivered the absolute worst ...," because an infinitive takes a subject in the objective form. And that's one way folks get confused.

Wired said their style manual doesn't admit "whom" any more in any form. Sheesh!

[arderkrag]

Kipling is wonderful. My father used to read me his stories when I was little. I think it’s sad that all that’s taught about “White man’s Burden” is that it’s racist, never noting that what Kipling was saying was that if civilized nations were going to colonize, we should educate and give back to the natives.

[Cicero]

Here’s a poem for the season:

---

The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.