Kill 'em All

Good poem FTSE.

Love it. Val

Is this about human blood lust? And boredom. There is usually something to satisfy this on the telly i find - i liked this, made me think about Vegetarianism, picking the legs off daddylonglegs, PG ratings, and how nasty i can be - good stuff :)

Love this! Reminds me of Carol Ann Duffy's 'Education for Leisure'.

Magic xxx

Thank you for your indulgence, ladies. This certainly doesn't deserve comparison with CAD's poem, which is sharp as the bread-knife she speaks of. This is a bit of fluff and if anyone finds it mildly amusing that's all I can reasonably ask. Thank you very much for your comments and God bless you all!

Feels like WH Auden's 'Stop all the clocks' in rhythm.

Especially loved the Gollumesque 'cowses'

Vituperative and punchy - this is why I have not missed my television - gave it up 18months back! My students cannot handle the idea of it!

Bet you listen to the radio though. Way back in the mists of time, when I first left home, I couldn't afford a television licence. So I used to listen (illegally I suppose) to the radio. Thing is, I didn't miss it - but this was a long time before the internet, Facebook, ABCtales, MSN, Yahoo and so on. I reckon the students wouldn't miss it that much either, if they tried it.

This one made me laugh. I felt ambivalent about that. Unsure of whether that was what FTSE wanted, or, even if he did, whether I should.

So I read it again, and guffawed. So, either way, I reckon it is funny.

Jen, thanks for your comments. You are not missing anything by giving up TV, I assure you. The land of TV is a sad place these days - okay to visit for fifteen minutes but I wouldn't want to live there. Even worse now Jonathan Woss and Wussell Bwand are gone...

Ewan, your reaction makes me think there might be something to the poem after all. I often underestimate the power of words, and let's face it, shooting kids at play is an ugly image. I assume that people will know my intentions simply because I do. It had no great emotional import for me when I wrote it because I knew I didn't mean it, but that doesn't mean anybody reading it will feel the same way. I think you're safe to laugh, but do make sure the PC police don't hear you.

More interesting than my effort is the Carol Ann Duffy poem that Magic mentioned. I can't reproduce it here because it is protected my the magic sigil of the copyright sign, which can melt computers, but it's here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/04/gcses.english

Now that's how the job should really be done! It's so sharp you could shave with it. CAD's poem has also been misunderstood: to the semi-literate, to describe a thing is to endorse it. The howling ninnies managed to get it removed from the AQA GCSE syllabus because it deals with violent behaviour and must therefore encourage it. God preserve us from the dummies. Surely that's why kids do GCSE English - comprehension isn't the name of a lesson, it means understanding, and if you understand you no longer howl because a poem has 'knife' in it.

Anyway, enough ranting. Your final response is the one I hoped for, Ewan. And if it discourages you from shooting bees and nailing ant corpses to trees, which I know you like to do, so much the better!

The poem got removed ?!?! When? I did an essay on it for my English lit GCSE this summer and it got me my grade! Jesus, these people take political correctness way too far sometimes! I shall mourn the students who can no longer read CAD's brilliant poem. And while I'm on the verge of a rant too, did they remove Simon Armitage's 'Hitcher'? Because surely, if not removed, this will encourage students to pick up hitch hikers then hit them repeatedly with a crook lock.

i bet they removed Hitcher, Magic - i despair - i wonder what else? Macbeth?!! They were great poems to discuss in class - :(

Don't worry - it's on the Welsh Board A Level Lit syllabus - am studying Duffy with my students.

But yes, let's remove all Literature from the mainstream that deals with or comments on society's biggest issues... oh, hang on, would we have any left?

PC = Philistine-esque Cretins!

-------------it's a brilliant piece---------

And it rhymes! &&