On “When shall man understand?”
The poem: https://theprose.com/post/234824/when-shall-man-understand
It is not my oldest piece, but it is one of the first pieces I wrote and one that got a bunch of attention. I hadn’t read much poetry prior to reading W.B. Yeats and when I did, I thought he was amazing. I read how he was influenced by Percy Shelley. I read Shelley’s radical poetry and so I wrote this poem. His style of vividly rendering of nature beauty and attack on tranny really inspired me to write something like it. I was also into socialism and anti-authoritarian politics, so that explains the obvious anti-capitalist message in the poem. I don’t know if I thought I was being unique, but the poem is not very good and very in your face moral outrage at the world. I hope my poetry has gotten somewhat better over the years but sometimes I force my political and social views too much. I think if I made some imaginative scenario to carry the message instead of just writing out the protest injustice message. More focus on imaginative language and ambiguity on the moral aspect would have helped as well. I still hold roughly the same political views and still eager to write more but time is an issue right now.