# Teaching Poetry.



## John 3 (May 25, 2017)

‘I take it you have read some poetry Bill?’
‘Well, bits and pieces like’.
‘Such as?’
‘Er- one by that sailor bloke, forget his name, _I must go down to the sea again—‘_
‘Yes, yes. John Masefield, that’s old tat now Bill; poetry today is all from the modernist and post modernist school, it’s like this. The poet writes a poem then it’s up to the reader to make sense of it. Now, I downloaded the latest poem by Sebastian Peasemold, read it through and tell me what you think.

‘Well’?
‘Its gibberish’
‘Yes of course its gibberish but its *intelligent* gibberish’
‘Oh right’
‘Some call it Do it Yourself Poetry without a construction manual’
‘Sounds bloody hard to me mate’
‘Yes well, sometimes you have to move your mind to another dimension’
‘Beryl says I’ve got enough trouble living in this one’
‘Never mind, what does this line mean to you? Goats conventionally emblemize lust’.
‘Randy goats’?
‘No, No. you can’t take the meaning from how it’s written. Look, take it home with you and I’ll give you a bell next week’.

A week later.

‘Hullo Bill, its Cyril, about the poem, you got the meaning’?
‘Yeah’
‘Thought so, simple wasn’t it_. A mimetic representation is merely a representation of a social construct’._
‘I didn’t get that’
‘No? What did you get’?
‘Coconuts’
‘How the bloody hell did you get coconuts’?
‘Line 24. Answers lay in the kernel of my palm-- Kernel=nut, Palm= palm trees,= coconuts’. easy peasy.



Reading this you may have figured out that I’m not a fan of most modernist poetry.


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## Theglasshouse (May 25, 2017)

The other person who must have been talking to the poet reminds me of a lot of the people I would come across on the internet as I had a hobby of playing card games. Randy sounds like slang to me, they for example would use to call me as someone they didn't know well. I wish I could stereotype people since supposedly it is useful to depict them. It was a funny amusing read.


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## John 3 (May 30, 2017)

Thanks for reading, hope it gave you a few giggles, Randy in the UK is a slang word that means feeling lustful or sexually aroused but it’s not regarded as a particularly offensive word.

John.


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## escorial (May 30, 2017)

The bit about..the mimetic rep..etc made me laugh and there where more to come..cool


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## ireneintheworld (Jun 9, 2017)

What got me was the fact that the student seemed to be out of his realm with no real impulse to read with enthusiasm. Over the years I've come across writers in workshops who never listen to anyone else and rant 'I'm not changing a thing,' when offered advice on what to read.


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## Courtjester (Jun 26, 2017)

Having just commented about getting a laugh from your 'Curtain Up', I've now read 'Teaching Poetry' and found it equally amusing. Hope you will keep up the good work.


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## PsychoSarah (Jul 2, 2017)

Reminds me of my high school English teacher that would have us read his own poetry and interpret the meaning. Well, gee, if I'm not getting the correct meaning out of "Drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon with Jesus", maybe it's because your poems are as pretentious and terrible as the titles suggest. Just to emphasize how bad his poems were, the one with that title was entirely serious. That was its title, and that poem itself was completely serious and attempted to be philosophical.


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## Chris Green (Jul 21, 2017)

That was funny, made me laugh at the end. It is humorous how some take poetry so differently than what was in the poets mind when written, but who can tell what's in a poet's mind anyway. I really enjoyed his deductions at the end and how you brought this to point.


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