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#making verses about earendil in the house of elrond MAY show a lot of nerve but what the text tells us is that the verses DID fit in there
incomingalbatross · 3 years
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Bilbo is a better poet than he thinks he is, and I feel strongly on this matter.
The younger hobbits recite/sing his work a lot, meaning they love it on its own merits; and even if one doesn't put hobbit-poetry on the same level as Elvish poetry, having made poetry that people love is worth being proud of.
"All that is gold does not glitter" is such a good expression of Who Aragorn Is that Aragorn and Gandalf both independently quote it when they're identifying Aragorn.
(Side note: I have Feelings about the fact that Aragorn undoubtedly put those verses front and center in his own kingly legacy. Bilbo’s eight lines about his friend are probably spread throughout Gondor and Arnor, given prominent place in the histories and memorials of King Elessar Telcontar for centuries to come... because “those verses go with that name,” according to Aragorn himself, and there’s no way he’s dropping them.)
Bilbo downplays his poetry constantly, because he is forever self-conscious about doing anything "un-Baggins-ish," even after he's learned to go ahead and do the things anyway. Therefore, he is not a reliable judge of his own poetry.
That said, the Elves do tease him about his poetry--but he gives back as good as he gets while he's talking to them, only showing his insecurities to Frodo afterwards, so I think it's fair to suggest that the Elves don't know how sensitive he is to their criticism and mean it less seriously than he takes it.
(He also takes Elrond’s smiling “All right, we’ll find Aragorn for you and then we’ll listen to your work before the end of the night” as basically a Royal Command, which is not how it read to me.)
"Earendil was a mariner" not only has a highly complex metre and rhyme scheme, but is said by Frodo to "fit somehow" and "to follow on from something I was dreaming about" as he'd been sitting in a trance of Elvish music--that is, to an outside listener, Bilbo's poem wove seamlessly into the larger tapestry of Rivendell's songs and stories.
...We've READ his poetry. It's GOOD. "Gil-galad was an Elven king"! "The Road goes ever on and on"! "In every wood in every spring there is a different green" hits HARD. (And, of course, we can't discount such gems as the spider poems--pure improv!--his ode to Water Hot, the Man in the Moon poem, etc.) No reasonable person can dismiss Bilbo's poetry.
Anyway, Bilbo's poetry is canonically good enough to fit in at Rivendell and to become the definitive identification used for and by Isildur's Heir. That's A LOT.
...In fact, given all his translation work (and translating poetry involves a lot of original creativity), and the fact that Elves obviously tend to compose in Elvish languages, it’s not implausible to say that Bilbo might be one of the all-time greatest poets in the Westron tongue.
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