LOTR (book) -- "the dreaded poetry"

[standingwave]

@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 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.

[Dervorin]

@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.