# LOTR (book) -- "the dreaded poetry" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 1, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-book-the-dreaded-poetry/736336 "2015-11-01T15:28:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-book-the-dreaded-poetry/736336/21 "2015-11-04T21:52:01Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > 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. Beat me to it. I thought Robert Inglis did a masterful job. [In addition to narrating](https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/return-king-book-three-in/id564612489) the prose passages, Rob Inglis sings the trilogy’s songs and poems a capella, using melodies composed by Inglis and Claudia Howard, the Recorded Books studio director. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2015, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-book-the-dreaded-poetry/736336/22 "2015-11-13T14:32:43Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > 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_.) Count me in as someone who dislikes the poetry. I don’t actively loathe it, and it’s certainly not going to beat Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s poetry into second place in the All-Galactic Awful Poetry Competition, but I don’t think I’ve ever read one of his poems all the way through. Actually, that’s not true. I think I have read “Lazy Lob and Crazy Cob”, or whatever Bilbo taunts the spiders with in Mirkwood. Perhaps a couple of the smaller funny poems, too. My ire is largely reserved for the longer serious poems that everyone in LotR seems to recite at the drop of a hat. I think my answer is closest to B - Tolkien’s serious poetry in particular really grates on me for some reason. I like poetry in general, and I actively read it elsewhere. There is something about Tolkien’s forced epic-saga-twisted-rhyme style that feels really stilted and trite to me. I can just picture a school play where the snotty-nosed kid playing Aragorn breaks out into what he thinks is deep and meaningful poetry, with the audience bravely refraining from cringing in embarrassment on his behalf. I don’t really think the poems interrupt the story, but they inject an artifical sense of total unreality into the situation. (Yes, I know, but hear me out.) I don’t have a copy of LotR with me, so I can’t quote chapter and verse, but there’s a scene in (I think) Minas Tirith, where Pippin stands up and “declaims to the West”. I mean, really? I used to like you, and I felt you were someone I could relate to - until that point, Mr Took. Now you just look like another Romantic idiot. I’ll forgive you, but it isn’t easy. I think the difference between Tolkien and either Milne or Carroll is that the latter two are humorous, quirky authors. Much more gentle and certainly not as epic. I like the poetry in both those authors’ books, and I seek out and read their poems outside their prose context. Can’t say I’ve ever done that for one of Tolkien’s poems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-book-the-dreaded-poetry/736336.md?page=1)