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i like poetry now thanks to RK

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  • 26-07-2005 4:13am
    #1
    condra
    Registered Users Posts: 3,849 ✭✭✭


    just thought id mention that i just found a new love for poetry having dismissed it as pretentious for years. the poem If, by Rudyard Kipling


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    #2
    supersheep
    Closed Accounts Posts: 656 ✭✭✭supersheep


    If? The gaudy, sentimental poem that is dear to mothers' hearts everywhere? There are many better poems than that... I don't like Rudyard Kipling, as a poet, as an author, or as a person (racist as hell, he was... I suppose it was the way back then, but still...)


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    #3
    o Fiac
    Closed Accounts Posts: 228 ✭✭o Fiac


    This post has been deleted.


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    #4
    Manach
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,711 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manach


    Whilst "If" is not my favourite of Kipling's poems I do rate his body of work highly. He was writing during a time, at first first glance, totally different from our own: in the zenith of the British Empire. His poetry reflects this.
    Yet his Indian poems do give voice to the many native peoples present on the Sub-Continent and to the ordinary soliders called to serve there. His sense of realism, of the growing power of Engineering and Techology, is reflected in other poetry
    "They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose"
    which is certainly relevant in to-day's IT industry :).
    Finally his age was an Imperial age, which with the acceptance of the fact of the existance of the American Empire, and its "Savage wars of peace", implies a closer reading of his poetry would give a better understanding of our own age.


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