No music tonight
Jan 25– “To A Mouse” and other poems by Robert Burns (1770-1794)
Got a little messed up with the order last night. Here's what should've been the 25th.
Summary: I. Hate. Phonetic. Accents.
Commentary: Seriously, half of these are unreadable. I think I'd have better luck reading Spanish poetry. Apparently yesterday is "Burns Day" when he's celebrated. I assume if I was Scottish it would be better. As it is, writing in both a dialect and a phonetic accent (neither of which are consistent) feels like a weird gimmick that might be tolerable for a minor character in one chapter of a larger work. As a major part of someone's body of work, it's baffling. I wouldn't write an entire collection of poetry using Pennsylvania slang and spelling it "wudder." Subject-wise, they're fairly generic. People have filled entire books with poems about respecting nature, the dignity of man, etc. All of them are readable, and thus better than Burns. I was going to write nonsense there, but then I remembered I actually enjoy nonsense poems, since they're still more readable (and cleverer). I think they'd be better set to music. I know many of his poems were, but I think we were specifically got a set that wasn't. Sort of makes sense (doesn't require you to know/find the song in the pre internet days) but maybe I'd have enjoyed them more. I'm doing these rather late, and am kind of tired, so maybe give it another shot later.
Edit: I did. They were worse. While I'm complaining about Burns here, I feel like I should be less upset with him than with Eliot. It's fine for a Scottish poet to write with a Scottish dialect/accent. Including them in T5FSOB feels like including the Engrish translation of Zero Wing in an anthology today. But not just including one as an example of a meme or whatever (which would be cool, and culturally relevant), but devoting an entire book of your anthology set to Engrish.
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