You guys beat me to the first two I was going to post (“The Ballad of East and West” and “The Thinker”), but here’s yet another one from Kipling:
Excerpt:
"ONE man in a thousand, Solomon says.
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it’s worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you."
Junk, by Richard Wilbur. Written in the ancient strong-stress rhythm and alliteration of Old English and Norse poetry, it’s an ode to man the maker and a lament that we have fallen away from craft:
Hurt Hawks, by Robinson Jeffers
Sharon Olds. A “woman poet,” a woman poet with parental issues, no less, in a manly thread? If you pick through her large body of work, you can ignore the “My daddy hated me” poems and find some as manly as any in this thread. Listen up, guys, this chick can be fierce.
In The Promise, she reassures an aging lover she will not let him linger in paralysis or disabling illness:
Here are some more excerpts from her works (in this case, on the theme of defiance).
There we come up against the hard question of Honor.
One cannot, finally, abhor war without making suckers of anyone who had a part in such an abomination, ie: by dishonoring them. So there must always be a nod to the nobility, or at least the inevitability, of war.
There is nothing particularly manly about fierceness in the face of death and destruction. That is a universally human quality.
Manliness, I gather from our cultural legacy, is the willingness to put oneself on the line against a threat that is abstract - that does not have to do with one’s nearest and dearest. It has to do with sustained sacrifice over years, even lifetimes, often “just in case” something bad might happen - and often for no clear reason at all, such as outdated ideals or fallen leaders. Manliness stands outside reason, even as it is shaped by reason.
So “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem dishonoring the soldiers? It certainly thinks they’re suckers.
It dishonors the basic ideals which sent them to fight: “the old Lie.” It does not, exactly, dishonor their dying, but it questions the ideals which, we’re left to assume, were theirs.
It’s a tough question. It’s probably not one we should ever even try to resolve. The horrors of WW1 left us underprepared for WW2; the memory of that underpreparedness made us a militarized society helpless to avoid Vietnam. It’s as if embracing peace is as likely to bring war as embracing war, and in a way, worse, because in the end all that matters is lives lost.
And does it have to be seen as pro-war? I read it that way when I first read it but later as I thought about the cyclical nature of war I thought it could remain true to its original theme.
It seems to be a kind of woeful reminder of the inevitability of war. As men have died, how else can we honor them but to say their cause was just and worth continuing?
To me this line echoes the trap men/nations are caught in when they begin to espouse the view that violence is necessary. And it’s a melancholy and obligatory generational burden.
Just another viewpoint. And certainly a manly and poignant one.
It would not have become such an eternal favorite had it had the tone of Dulce et decorum est. You would get your clock cleaned for reciting that on 11/11, and probably rightly.
Here are a couple more authors of manly poems.
Langston Hughes, whom I think wrote the quintessential Father’s Day poem. I’ve failed to access it after a quick google but it speaks of hearing his angry father arise early in the blue-back dawn to start a fire before he goes off to work. And what did his children know of his burden? Quite an image.
Then, Carl Sandburg, in mind of the origin of this message board. “Chicago, Hog Butcher to the World.”
Did you know he once said, “Dante wrote about Hell without ever laying eyes on the place. We write about Chicago after looking around for a while?” How tough is that?
Don’t hit me. . . 
But read all the way to the end…
Regards,
Shodan
I get the general Christian gist, but the syntax has me totally at sea.
Remember that Dulce et Decorum was written by a British soldier in WWI. It really doesn’t speak to the US involvement in that and later wars.
That is not the case in Britain. There have been many wars, by fuck so many, but the sentiment is largely with Tommy Atkins, the Poor Bloody Infantry, and *Dulce et Decorum * sums that up.
Anyway, here’s a bit by Siegfried Sassoon, who mentored and encouraged Wilfred Owen when they were both in the Army hospital at Craiglockhart (my gran on my mums side worked there as a young girl, washing bandages and blankets).
My usual suspects have been named here (Service, Kipling, Tennyson), so I’ll offer two who haven’t yet been mentioned.
First, turning from war and conquest to the time-honored male tactic of using sweet-talk in order to liberate a wench from her drawers, I present Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress: The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.
My other choice is more obscure: Don Blandings. His most famous poem was “Vagabond"s House” – and what’s more manly than a vagabond? My favorite of his is “Drifters,” which doesn’t appear to be available on line.
The last stanza:
We are the riders of the aimless flood,
Strayed human driftwood watching with wise weary eyes
The brassy tropic suns and shallow empty skies
Of chartless seas. One day is like another day,
and we unhappy, happy… who can say?
We know not what strange port shall be our last
Nor care. Today we feast, tomorrow fast.
The treasure found is less to us than treasure sought.
And we most dearly treasure trifles dearly bought,
While all those tender things, love, friendship, home
That haunt the dreams of us who drift and roam
We trade for worthless star-dust which we vainly seek
In nameless valleys lost behind some mist-enshrouded peak.
Frank’s Wild Years - Tom Waits
Yes, this qualifies as poem, dangit!
And the first thing that leapt to mind for me <not being a big poetry memorizeroroer> was from The Return of the King, though I concede thoroughly that it isn’t as moving on it’s own, without knowing the circumstances, so…meh.