But..Who will teach the children

Another poetry news story happened in London this week. This time, a smear campaign started by the newly chosen Oxford Professor of Poetry, Ruth Padel, against Derek Walcott. Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature (for Poetry) in 1992, and now aged 79 was also vying for the Oxford Professor spot.

The smear campaign originated by Padel was on a settlement reached by Walcott in 1996 from a Freshman Harvard girl’s claim of sexual harassment in 1981. Padel has now resigned.

Forget politics, apparentlyoetry is where the real competition is at.
Source: BBC

Now for a poem,

In The Way

by Abhinav Singh Baghel

In the way,
I and they,
In fierce competition
To reap recognition
Along the day, along the night
Engaged well with all the might
Intermingled with the thoughts to light
intentions to make life more delight

In the way
I and they
In the conflagration
To seek specification
All the days, all the nights
There stay some sobbing sights
Impede others possibilities, how that counts
Immoral thoughts to give them wounds
—
Image edited from original, available at 1 One Poet 4 Man

Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen

According to an article by the United Kingdom’s Metro, 

“Poetry is in danger of dying out. More than eight in ten Britons cannot recite a verse by heart, a study shows.”

In comparison with older generations the article states that:

In fact, it is only the over-60s who can remember verses – with 72 per cent able to deliver lines they learned as children. Two-thirds know entire poems – with Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est (It Is Sweet And Right) most popular.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST (It is sweet and proper)

by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(1917, 1920)

April is National Poetry Month

Designed by: Number Seventeen, NYC. To see previous posters, click on image.

You can view staff pick’s for April, 2009 from GotPoetry.com or read more about National Poetry month from the Academy of American Poets.