{"id":238,"date":"2005-01-16T10:09:57","date_gmt":"2005-01-16T15:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.50.194.231\/~vqplgdbg\/?p=238"},"modified":"2005-01-16T10:09:57","modified_gmt":"2005-01-16T15:09:57","slug":"on-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"On Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mr Poretto posts a piece of poetry<\/a> that I read for the first time when I was in my early teens. I loved Kipling, longed to roam the Indian continent in khakis, to hunt and stalk the most dangerous of game, to immerse myself in the cultures. I still feel that longing, still want to see those places, do those things. “City of Brass” is not about the adventure but about the theft of freedom, among other things, go read and see. <\/p>\n

Mr Poretto speaks to the idea that Poetry is not the playground of pansies, that Real Men read poetry too. He’s right. Not all poetry is flowers and butterflies, and a lot of poetry is as manly as it comes. Read the iliad and the oddysey; poetry about war and betrayal and murder and death is as manly as it gets.
\nMy favorite poem is about cows and stones and apple orchards and firs. <\/p>\n

Mending Wall<\/b>
\nRobert Frost<\/p>\n

SOMETHING there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
\nThat sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
\nAnd spills the upper boulders in the sun;
\nAnd makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
\nThe work of hunters is another thing:
\nI have come after them and made repair
\nWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,
\nBut they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
\nTo please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
\nNo one has seen them made or heard them made,
\nBut at spring mending-time we find them there.
\nI let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
\nAnd on a day we meet to walk the line
\nAnd set the wall between us once again.
\nWe keep the wall between us as we go.
\nTo each the boulders that have fallen to each.
\nAnd some are loaves and some so nearly balls
\nWe have to use a spell to make them balance:
\n\u201cStay where you are until our backs are turned!\u201d
\nWe wear our fingers rough with handling them.
\nOh, just another kind of out-door game,
\nOne on a side. It comes to little more:
\nThere where it is we do not need the wall:
\nHe is all pine and I am apple orchard.
\nMy apple trees will never get across
\nAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
\nHe only says, \u201cGood fences make good neighbors.\u201d
\nSpring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
\nIf I could put a notion in his head:
\n\u201cWhy do they make good neighbors? Isn\u2019t it
\nWhere there are cows? But here there are no cows.
\nBefore I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
\nWhat I was walling in or walling out,
\nAnd to whom I was like to give offence.
\nSomething there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
\nThat wants it down.\u201d I could say \u201cElves\u201d to him,
\nBut it\u2019s not elves exactly, and I\u2019d rather
\nHe said it for himself. I see him there
\nBringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
\nIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
\nHe moves in darkness as it seems to me,
\nNot of woods only and the shade of trees.
\nHe will not go behind his father\u2019s saying,
\nAnd he likes having thought of it so well
\nHe says again, \u201cGood fences make good neighbors.\u201d<\/i> <\/p>\n

That’s from memory.<\/p>\n

When I was nineteen I read that poem and loved it so well I wrote it down, word for word, I used to carry paper with me and copy the poem over and over again until i had committed it to memory. <\/p>\n

Real men read poetry. Damned sure real men wrote it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr Poretto posts a piece of poetry that I read for the first time when I was in my early teens. I loved Kipling, longed to roam the Indian continent in khakis, to hunt and stalk the most dangerous of game, to immerse myself in the cultures. I still feel that longing, still want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}