Should we be 'mad as hell'?

I don't usually post politically since I try to remain moderate, but then again we are in the middle of an election cycle. And there's some crazy stuff going on in Washington, Wall Street, and even on the streets of small-town America, what with the whole country seemingly on the verge of financial collapse. Eeek, to put it mildly. In any case, I'm not "mad as hell" like the guy in this clip, but having seen it on another website and struck by how remarkably it fits in today's climate, I decided to repost it here.



Howard Beale, from the 1976 film Network.

Should we be mad as hell?

Mere Air, These Words, but Delicious to Hear

Poetry can be intimidating exactly because every word has intent. Extracting the hidden meaning or intent from the poetic is challenging, but it's sort of what the experience of poetry is all about. As Kipling wrote:

Something hidden. Go and find it.
Go and look behind the Ranges-
Something lost behind the Ranges.
Lost and waiting for you. Go!

An enthusiast of poetry is an explorer of words. Something hidden, go and find it. Go!

To help explorers of poetry, the Poetry Foundation has reprinted the first chapter from the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Its 16 sections provide strategies for reading poems, and each section has plenty of links to example poems to illustrate the points given by the guide.