LOTR (book) -- "the dreaded poetry"

Cafe Society
1

Yet another thing on a Tolkien subject: this prompted by my having been doing some browsing through threads from the past decade or so, about said author. Apologies, if someone else has already raised on SDMB, the wondering / musing which follows – I haven’t come upon any thread which does so.

Very many readers of LOTR (book), tell of – shall we say, experiencing negative reactions to the assorted verse / poetry / song, uttered from time to time by the characters. (Have heard such sentiments also, from non-SDMB sources.) This comprises some otherwise impassioned fans, who exclude this particular element from their fandom. I feel that I’ve lost count of the number of posters saying, in effect, “I find the poetry sick-making, and I skip over it”. To be fair, this view does not prevail 100%: a few posters pronounce themselves as enjoying the material concerned.

I admit to being among that few: I like the verse in LOTR, and am glad that it’s there. I enjoy virtually all of it – across the whole gamut from the hobbits’ silly rhymes and rustic ballads, to the dignified, elegant and intense content of the elves’ more-serious material. The lament for Boromir in book 3, I find to-the-verge-of-tears affecting. I’m perfectly happy with Tom Bombadil’s rhyming stuff – have always reckoned that this character is sui generis, and that in Bombadil World, absolutely “anything goes”. I do find the ballad of “The Troll and Tom” – made up, as we learn, by Sam himself – a bit twee and cringe-making; and seem to recall worse offerings in similar vein, attributed to Sam, in the separate book of verse The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; but after all, there are and have been plenty of people – excellent / talented / accomplished in other departments of life – holding, however, an unrealistically high opinion of their versifying talent.

Very many readers, though, do seem strongly of the opinion that JRRT, as well as Master Samwise, belongs in that category. They opine that his prose may be terrific; but that a poet, he wasn’t – and would have done better to limit exposure to his verse, to his kids and his circle of friends. As said: overwhelmingly, I like the non-prose elements of LOTR just fine, and reckon them an asset to the work, not a detriment. I’m aware that this might perhaps indicate that I have abysmal taste in verse; be that as it may, I’d be interested to hear if other Tolkien-loving Dopers share with me, this apparently minority taste.

2

I enjoy the verse, as well, but I don’t consider it “poetry.” For me, the definition of poetry is verse that I can read again for the first time, if you take my meaning. In that light, I want to add that we don’t read poetry so much as poetry reads us. But as verse, from the homely to sublime, I enjoy Tolkien’s verse very much indeed.

3

I like the role of verse in the Tolkien legendarium. I don’t always think it’s great poetry, and it’s not necessarily meant to be; its place is to crystallize certain expressions of the fictional cultures and the books’ themes.

Given how central language is to what Tolkien and his work was all about, I have to say that if you dislike and skip over the quotes of songs and poems, you can’t be entirely getting it.

4

JRRT was not a poet, he was a linguist and a scholar. So his poems reflect quite directly the poetic styles of other ages and languages and cultures. At least that’s how I understand it, and how I judge the quality of the poetic works. Some of it moves me, some of it seems comical in context, some of it makes me roll my eyes. But overall it enhances my enjoyment of his writings.

5

Thanks, all. Good to have your confirmation that I’m not all that strange and “outlying”. There just seem to be overall so many posts – including from otherwise red-hot fans – to the effect of, “his ‘poetry’ is utter shit, and I skip all of it” (with felt implication, “unless you feel and act likewise, there’s something badly wrong with you”). This seems to me, strangely harsh – but remarkably often heard. Well, Tolkien does seem to generate extremes of love and hate: for instance, many Tolkien-haters, and a fair number of otherwise-Tolkien-lovers, seem to detest – with the renowned “white-hot heat of” – Tom Bombadil and absolutely everything to do with him.

We get in LOTR, verse of various sorts from most of Middle-Earth’s “kinds”. I regret a bit that there’s not more input in this area, from the Orcs; but one can see why not. They would likely be good for spectacularly filthy drinking and marching songs: but the highly virtuous and upright Professor refrains from “going there”. IIRC, he mentions in one of the LOTR appendices: that the replicated orc speech-and-conversation in LOTR – coarse though it is – is greatly “sanitised” vis-a-vis what was actually said. Orcs being orcs – it is strongly indicated that verbal communication among them, is equivalent to what reckoned customary in the “lower depths” of the human military or prison scene: everybody’s every other word, is an obscenity.

6

My eighty year old mother is reading LOTR for the first time. Every week, she tells me how far she’s gotten. So far, the verses are her favorite part!

7

Maybe not a professional poet, the way he was a professional linguist and scholar, but I think it’s fair to call him at least an amateur poet. He produced several well-regarded translations of poetry, and I don’t think you can do that without being at least a little bit of a poet yourself.
As for whether I like the verse bits in LOTR, well, that varies: some I like better than others. But I do think it’s totally fitting and appropriate for it to be there. People who find it off-putting maybe have no sense of history. In the entire history of literature, the notion that narrative fiction should be in prose only is a relatively recent idea. It’s fitting for the verse to be there, both because Tolkien was steeped in (and to some extent trying to imitate) older literary traditions, and because the world he was depicting is one without printing presses but with a strong oral tradition to its literature.

8

I enjoy much but not all of LotR’s poetry, just as I enjoy most but not all of the pr ose. The lament for Boromir is the best passage in the book.

9

His poetry isn’t as good as his prose, but given how good his prose is, that’s not saying much.

10

:slight_smile:

If one thinks of LOTR as a novel, you would be right. However, it is not a novel at all, but a romance.

11

…So, you’re saying that viewing it as a romance, the prose isn’t very good? I’m confused.

12

I’ve seen a bit of that, and it always perplexes me. I like the various verses, some more than others, of course. There are some additional verses in “The Tolkien Reader” that are fun, including an expansion on “The Troll Sat Alone” and some others. “The Cat” is a real delight, with intricate internal rhyme. Even “The Mewlips,” while kind of adolescent, is still fun in a nice, creepy, Halloween kind of way. “The Oliphant” and “Fastitocalon” are cute little bits of throw-away.

Of them all, “Erranty” is, I think, my very favorite: I went to the effort of memorizing it (using a bit of tune from J.S. Bach to sing it to.)

It may not be Keats or Shelley…or even Frost…but it’s pleasant work, with some engaging imagery and appealing rhymes.

13

I like the verse. God forbid any of those critics ever try and read Tolkien’s source materials. None of that shit is in prose. They should be grateful he didn’t just write the whole damn thing in Anglo-Saxon internal rhyme or Kalevala meter.

14

Have any of you heard Donald Swan’s settings of the Tolkien Poems tomusic? (Donald Swan was the pianist/composer in Flanders & Swan).

Put me down as one who is not a great fan of Tolkien’s poems, but hearing tham as songs was an interesting exercise.

15

Wallaby: Yes indeed! I have the songbook, Swann’s sheet music, and have stabbed some of the easier stuff into a music processor to hear. Also, there are a few YouTube versions.

The YouTube version of Errantry is…um…mixed. Kinda good, kinda ugh. The piano music is sublime, but the singer isn’t my favorite.

Swann seems to be of the Benjamin Britten school of English music: quite complex, and somewhat wispy and vaporous, with lots and lots of internal key changes, resulting in a lack of the kind of melody that you can not just walk down the esplanade whistling happily to yourself.

It would have been exactly what Tolkien’s elves would have composed!

16

I fear there’s no way I could appreciate any musical settings there may be. I’m next door to tone-deaf, and music of more or less any kind is a closed book to me – in the family I come from, that’s the rule rather than the exception.

17

This seems like a pretty good way to look at it.

Also, I too enjoy most but not all of it. Though I suspect the bits that I like more are the ones that aren’t supposed to be good. Hobbit Drinking Songs amuse me. High verse of some sort is more likely to produce the same reaction I have to 99% of poetry. “meh.”

Though my favorite is probably the piece that is apparently known as the Song of Durin.

18

Overall, I like the poetry in LotR… the only ones I find skippable are the ones that retell legends, like Bilbo’s poem about Earendil. (And two of my favorite Tolkien poems are in The Hobbit – the dwarves’ song and “Down the swift dark stream you go”.)

19

I’m not a big fan of his poetry, I admit, and generally skip the poems on re-reading*. Pepper Mill can’t stand the poetry.

In the audiobook version of LOTR, not only do they perform all the poetry, but it’s performed as songs, and the narrator manages to sing every one with a different tune. That’s a helluva lot of work.

JRRT himself recorded several of his songs of Middle Earth for Caedmon records, and I believe they’re still available on CD. Of course, he published the poems in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

*It;'s ironic, in that I’ve read several of Tolkien’s books that are prac tically nothing BUT poetry – Sir Gawaine and The Green Knight, Pearl, and Orfeo, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, The Fall of Arthur. I’m thinking of getting his Beowulf, which seems to have ended up in very few bookstores.

20

For those of you who skip or dislike the poetry, is it because
[A] you don’t like poetry in general,
** you don’t like Tolkien’s poetry in particular, or
[C] you don’t like the way it interrupts the story?

And how do you feel about other authors who include verse within their prose narratives? (For example, Lewis Carroll in Alice, and A. A. Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh.)