Song lyrics

This second trash makes millions of dollars.  Who thinks this is good verse?

My heart just sank a little, Betty.

Dear Shelagh, When I think that this woman was a judge on American Idol, my heart cried. Love, Betty

Shelagh, the poetry that you write could be used in songs that would comfort and encourage many people.  My poem about Matilda the Banana Spider is more poetic and uplifting than these lyrics (if they can be considered lyrics at all)  Even Fannie's songs are better. 

“Oh! Worm of green with golden spots
Sunk into this mud so brown
Who doth bestow your beauty thus?
Where commeth thou frometh?
Don’t blink your eyes so.
It maketh me blush.”

I rest my case.
Love,
Betty

Great topic.  Every generation, however, has its really awful music that seems so wonderful at the time to that youth. The music of youth reflects the culture from which that youth comes and the culture to which it targets the words to gain their recognition.

If you remember, Elvis Presley and a few others were considered indecent.  Much of the dancing was considered indecent.  My Baptist Church considered all dancing indecent.

I consider many ads today indecent.  My generation held sexual matters as generally private unless somebody got "knocked up" or was the talk of the locker room.  I don't remember the early television ads as showing young women in bras or talking about erectile dysfunction or even menses. Today, the Internet has opened sexual content to all in every variance and marriage is seldom talked about as the "first experience."  Thus the word "hoe" repeated often is good for a dance beat even if we find it offensive.

There are still beautiful, hopeful lyrics in songs written today. It is the outrageous that get the attention, but youth are still being entertained by those with purpose and meaningful songs.

I spent my impressionable youth hearing music at The Lake dances and then at Cinnamon Cinder in Long Beach.  I don't even remember who the entertainers were or the lyrics and didn't pay much attention then.  If it was danceable, I was on the floor.  I did love disco music and the movie with John Travolta.

I do remember going to one nightclub where the music was so shreaking I begged my date to leave as I felt it was not dance music and it ran through my nerves until I had a migraine.  Everyone else was having a gyrating good time.

Today, we visited Howarth, the home of the Bronte sisters. I took this photo of one of Charlotte's poems inside the church:

Lovely!  My Florida rainy season has sunny mornings and gloomy afternoons but everything is blooming and one day I saw a vivid double rainbow with the complete arch in duplicate.  Some days the front yard is dark and raining and the backyard is sunny.

Those who peddle filth will always find an audience. We've thrown out all standards in the name of eagalitarianism. Artists do not need to learn to draw, to know about perspective, light, colors, human anatomy or anything else that takes time, effort to learn, nor do they need any TALENT. Most art schools do not teach classic art techniques any more. No one really teaches basic grammar either; it is difficult and talking about other things is much more fun. (Yes, this is an overstatement, but is very, very close to the truth.) Everyone is an artist, a poet, an intellectual in his or her "special way".  Who needs to understand anything about rhyme or meter? Who cares what an iambic pentameter or a pyrrhic substitution is?  At this point, what possible difference does it make if we write in blank verse of free verse? Or how many lines a sonnet has, or how many syllables per line, or whether it has an Italian or Shakespearean rhyme scheme? Poets used to pour out their lives' blood onto the page, seeking to leave something behind after their passing that might mark their pain, their yearnings, and give some meaning to their lives. These days, poetry flows like so much urine from the urethra, the distilled essence of the poet's beer-imbued intake splashing sonorously on its way to the sea. All that matters is making as loud a splash in the process as possible in the never-ending modern "song of myself" that celebrates the unholy trinity of Me, Myself and I in as loud, obnoxious and controversial a way possible. 

Well by golly, I had two beers with dinner last night. Let's prove the point:

Death is a abstraction,
Just a sad reaction,
To lives that get no traction,
I'll abide no redaction,
Or any cop's retraction,
Or racists and their faction,
It ain't no infraction,

To strike a pig and make it squeal,
To strike a pig and make it squeal,

And that I'll do with endless Zeal,
To liberate is not to steal,
Bust 'em up under my wheel,
Stomp him under my heel,
You better heel,
Uh huh, dog, you better heel!

Go strike a pig and make it squeal,
Go strike a pig and make it squeal.

Hey, I'm, pretty good at this m****r *f*****g s**t! Quick, somebody get me a contract. Or is it kontract? Whatever.

Victor, i thoroughly appreciated your description of the losses.  I tend to agree - though you admit to a bit of exaggeration. Your frustrated expression is a poetic piece of prose!

I remember my students slaving away at their own poetry, pouring out their little hearts with some attempt at haiku which was my fall back to give them some form.  Then they would take their poetry and attempt to pass it on to expression in visual arts with various media for choices from oils to charcoals and bits of paper. Some would put theirs to music. One teacher gave them large chalks for the sidewalks and was banned to an old dump of a school because the bell rang and the chalk had permanent dies in it that ruined the new carpets throughout the entire school.  They were marvelous until the bell tolled.

I do know that over time art is redefined.  I just interviewed the son and curator of a weaver of tapestries that are now classified as fine art and were considered a craft at the time of their weaving. I interview many artists including photographers or their curators.

For certain anyone can write anything and get it published and have the luck of the draw and become wealthy as a result with such stuff as 50 Shades of Gray that's still a major best seller.  Once we stuck up our nose, or hid the books for surreptitious reading, at Harlequin novels and erotica and then it goes to the New York Times Best Seller list.

I don't know the answer.  Maybe it's just a new world that will produce its own genius because it leaves behind all we studied and held dear as classical education in favor of this raw stuff that lays it all out there without rules or our recognition of talent. 

Some charter schools are struggling to keep classical education in motion, but they fight against the tide as the students communicate on their iPads and leave their lessons behind them in favor of the day's slangs and lack of finesse.

I,too, an English major and journalism student have fallen into texting in obnoxious ways - how ru?  What 4?  B there soon.  and I skp th vowels and drp the capitals and spel only enuf to get the pt across.  It affects my email posts - habits are habits - I can barely spell anymore.  Perhaps we'll go back to old methods of spelling things any ole way that is readable - maybe not even readable but rather computer tech speak.

I fortunately still have friends that actually send handwritten letters with adult children they raised to send handwritten thank you notes, such a pleasure to receive yet I send none.  What?  You don't have an email address?  I don't communicate with anyone without an email address.

Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Such a short piece of poetry that I have always loved.  It resonates with me.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

Another one that I enjoy.

I think I like the lyrical.  However there are many others that I treasure.


#15 on top 500 poets

• Poet's Page
  
• Poems
  
• Quotes
  
• Comments
  
• Stats
  
• E-Books
  
• Biography
  

• [url=https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?title=For Anne Gregory Poem by William Butler Yeats - Poem hunter&u=http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-anne-gregory/] [/url]
  
• [url=http://twitter.com/?status=For Anne Gregory Poem by William Butler Yeats - Poem Hunter http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-anne-gregory/] [/url]
  

Poems by William Butler Yeats : 100 / 401

• « prev. poem
  
• next poem »
  

For Anne Gregory - Poem by William Butler Yeats

Autoplay next video
'NEVER shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
'But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'
'I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

William Butler Yeats

And of course we all memorized "Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!"  I think lyrical poetry is easier to memorize.

Another poet I love is W. H. Auden an much of his poetry does not rhyme.

I have enjoyed this discussion.  I feel that there are people who enjoy a bigger picture.  I often read books that bring me back to what I consider sane.  Tonight I will begin again The Wind in The Willows. 
I am kindred with Joyce Kilmer.  Who would not love trees.  Love, Betty

The science fiction movies where all the trees are gone always trouble me.

The ones where are the people are gone don't make me warm and fuzzy all over either, even though I wiped out the universe in one of my short stories, and the earth (but not all humanity--don't say I don't have a warm spot in the heart for the species) in another. Come to think of it, all the trees went too. In both. Well, at least no one turns into a stinky zombie, or vampire, or warewolf. And I've never sent anyone to hell. Not even the good folks at MSNBC--at least not in my fiction.

I forgot - I love Langston Hughes - He writes such meaningful verse in short words. 

Ah, Victor, it must be the pretty girls you watch on FOX as you are much too erudite to be sold by what they say.  Even our local FOX station has the models in line for the FOX bigtime as the FOX missed the message about normal people telling the news and picks only the most beautiful women - always in dresses and skirts - with some exceptions.  That proves I listen to FOX...I know what their news commentators look like.

And then there's Brian Williams who enhanced his news reporting but is back fully contrite.  He was caught.  The rest tell so many enhancements it's futile to notice.

Back to the poetry...and the science fiction...I am glad, Victor, that you avoid the zombies, etc. which are the part of science fiction I hate.  Alien monsters too.  I think if anything exists outside our earth that is a life form it will have followed a similar evolution pattern and may be less or more advanced than the people on earth - perhaps different features as they may have spread across their planets and picked up different traits. 

Betty - I love Wind in the Willows too.  There are some beautiful fiction novels that are so soothing to read.

DK,

The women on Fox are, indeed, beautiful and, much more important to me, very, very smart. I'd watch even if they were quite homely and 30 years older on average, but just as smart. The men tend to be much less good to look at but just as smart. The thing is, they hire very smart men and women from the right and left as commentators. Still, they're not as fair and balanced as they pretend, nor are they are they as unbalanced as MSNBC. I know, I know--we'll have to agree to disagree amicably (I'll understand if you roll your eyes and scowl a little ).

I agree with you on SF. I suspect sentient beings all over are prone to the same strengths and failings as are we. Those who pine for them to land and 'save" us with their superior knowledge and technology should remember the fate of those who faced the superior technology and ""societal advancement" of Spain, Portugal, France, England, Germany and other "enlightened" civilizations--to say nothing of Rome. Perhaps they will be more enlightened than we, but I'm not holding my breath or flagging down the next UFO I may happen to see while singing "we have high hopes . . ." I loved the very liberal vision of Gene Roddenberry. Loved it. But I fear there are more of the "old style" than "new style" Klingons out there, and that any travelers from afar are likelier to tell us that "resistance is futile" rather than gift us the cure for all disease, the plans for cold fusion and replicators with which the world's hungry could be fed via the miracle of Dilethium Chrystals. 

The dreamer in me hopes otherwise though. The embers of my own liberalism still glow and hope springs eternal. And no, I am not being sardonic or sarcastic--just honest

Victor D. Lopez wrote:

The ones where are the people are gone don't make me warm and fuzzy all over either, even though I wiped out the universe in one of my short stories, and the earth (but not all humanity--don't say I don't have a warm spot in the heart for the species) in another. Come to think of it, all the trees went too. In both. Well, at least no one turns into a stinky zombie, or vampire, or warewolf.

And I've never sent anyone to hell. Not even the good folks at MSNBC--at least not in my fiction.

I will overlook this in the interest of sibling love. LOL

We little brothers get away with a lot. Heh, heh, heh. (Not to worry. My Alice spanks me aplenty.)