Poetic Timbre and Root

I was recently participating in a discussion about using poetry/songs as part of non-poetry-based stories.  One primary example was the many people who complain about the poems/songs that are part of The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. 

I generally do not enjoy seeing poems/songs in narrative fiction. That is mostly because the poems/songs are passive methods of integrating a backstory that could be accomplished more effectively via other means.

I'm not a big fan of poetry in general because poetry in an educational setting was presented as a decoding challenge where the reader is expected to have sufficient knowledge to understand obscure contextual references or "cute" phrasing. In my experience, the effort expended acquiring that knowledge rarely justified the experience of decoding the context or appreciating the "cute" phrasing. My Junior High humanities teacher always got the vapors over the poetry he used in class. I found those poems underwhelming.

As an example, I recall a poem that was ostensibly about the supposed beauty of lapis lazuli; a semi-precious stone.  There were several pages containing stanza after stanza about a hunk of rock.  Ostensibly, lapis lazuli was actually a subtext for something else.  All the clues were there if the reader had sufficient knowledge to decode plain text to reveal the subtext.

It may be that the type of poetry matters in establishing a connection with the reader.  I generally enjoy (and have collected) the poetry of e.e. cummings. I have a volume of Robert Frost's poetry at my bedside that I read and enjoy occasionally. And there are some epic poems (such as The Song of Roland) that I really got into.

Poetry is a form of expression with rules, traditions, and tropes that rarely connect with me. It is difficult for an author to make effective use of poetry/songs in actively moving the narrative of a larger non-poetic narrative forward.  I've read the songs in the Lord Of The Rings. Those songs are (for me) an extended aside that does little to move the story along; a respite from an active story that offers passive illumination of characters.

That has generally been my experience with most poetry/songs that are included in larger, non-poetic tales.

In Memoriam - A Headstone

Fans of the band Rush are aware that drummer Neal Peart lost both his daughter and his wife within a very short period of time.  It crushed him. 

His daughter's headstone is engraved with part of the following poem.  Having never read this before, it moved me.

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Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

AMERICA SENT HER SONS

AMERICA SENT HER SONS.

England is a cup of tea.
France a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is her sons.

Brazil is football on the sand
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is her sons.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a Kangaroo.
America is her sons.

Japan is a thermal spring/
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh there are many lovely things,
Things of note to make one’s heart sing,
But America loves her sons above all these.

When others needed them,
America sent her sons
To fight, to bleed, to die
To settle the discontent of European kings
And force peace to reign again.

When evil arose most cruelly,
Demanding racial purity,
America sent her sons,
Black brown, white and yellow,
To stand against Siegrunen,
Totenkopfs, Hammers and Sickles.

She watched her sons bleed anew
On foreign sands in faraway lands
Places named Omaha, Utah,
Carentan, Bastogne and Arnhem.
Saipan, Tinian, Dong Ha,
Fallujah, Ramadi, and Helmand.

For the sake of millions they never met
They gave their lives.
Red blood poured out freely
To pay a high price for liberty;
With only fields of white crosses
To mark their passing.

You may criticize America her faults,
Her arrogance, her swagger
Her braggadocious bravado,
Her unrelenting roughshod manners.
But remember this most of all-
In numbers few could ever hope to match,
Time and again,
America will always give her sons,
To pay the butcher’s bill.

by Author and US Marine Corporal
Jonathan LaForce

Posted with permission of the author.

Dear Death, From An Admirer

There is a perception in the popular culture that those serving in the military are little more than unimaginative and uninformed automatons.  For [those] that know us best, they know that we can be some of the most engaged, engaging, and creative people around.

My example for today was discovered a couple months ago.

Dear Death

Dread not the one conceived to come for you
But I, and the forefathers of the wings upon which I stand.
I too shall cast with my brothers
That beautiful and far-reaching shadow of freedom across the lands
So that the young, the old, and the innocent may escape your burning clinch,
Your wretched breath, and your sickening belch.
You will, fall to your demise.
And from one humongo-ginormous deafening echo of thunder
Across the blue skies of our great nation,
I will have rudely intruded, eaten the scraps from your table, slept in your bed,
And hand delivered the confiscation of your last breath.
…Your secret admirer,
United States Marine.

Written by Jerry Collins, a fellow No-LOAD Marine.

Offered to you as a reminder of the day, and of those that shielded us and continue to shield us from feeling the premature chill of Death's cold grip.  In liberty, there is life.