There’s a hunger in all of us, something primal, an ache that lodges deep within the marrow—a gnawing we rarely name, but one we feel. It’s an unquenchable thirst for more—more life, more love, more understanding—and it drives the songs we place on infinite replay. This hunger is where we find folk poetry. Not a relic of the past, but a pulse, alive and beating, threading through the music of contemporaries like Ezra Hozier, Miley Cyrus, Stevie Nicks, and others. Folk poetry is the language of the unspeakable, something we all consume unconsciously, and in that consumption, we awaken to our own poetic sensibilities.
satire as folk legacy
Hozier’s “Eat Your Young” doesn’t merely drift through your headphones; it haunts you. There’s a gravitational pull that lures you into its orbit. First, it’s the melody—those sharp, soaring soprano notes, the quiet beat pulling you in—but as the lyrics settle in your bones, the true ache begins to reveal itself. Hozier is not simply singing a catchy chorus. He’s interrogating us, forcing us to reckon with our complicity in a world that devours its young for the sake of unchecked greed.
And here, we hear echoes of Jonathan Swift’s satirical masterpiece A Modest Proposal, a work in which folk poetry sheds its illusions and reveals the ugly mechanisms of exploitation. Hozier jolts us out of our complacency, shattering the lies we tell ourselves about the systems of power that prey on the vulnerable.
For context, in 1729, Ireland was strangled by famine and profound destitution. Swift’s essay—blistering in its savage irony—suggested that to bridge the chasm of inequality, the poor might offer their infants as sustenance for the rich. This was satire sharpened to a blade, protest dressed as horror, meant not to amuse but to jolt society into awareness.
Fast forward nearly three centuries, and Hozier channels this same fury. “Seven new ways that you can eat your young,” he sings. Behind the melody is a modern disgust for a machine that still preys on the powerless, a world where the wealthy feast on the labor, dreams, and bodies of the poor. This is the essence of folk poetry—rooted in protest yet cloaked in song. Hozier, consciously drawing from both Dante’s Inferno and Swift’s biting irony, bridges the past and the present, forcing us to confront ourselves. And like the best folk poets, he shoulders the weight of history to craft something urgent, something undeniably new.
Written by Rachel Harty
Tune in next week, on How to Poet to read Read Part Two: Modern Ballads and Laments: Echoes of Folk Poetry.
Writer Bio: Rachel Harty is a New York-based poet and essayist, whose work has appeared in Poetry Nation, The Madrid Review, The LA Wave, and other notable literary platforms. Her debut poetry collection, Coffee, a Sip of You and Me, delves into intimate coming-of-age moments, exploring themes of connection and solitude. It’s available on Amazon and in select independent bookstores and coffee shops across the U.S. and abroad.
To discuss poetry or for inquiries, visit her at www.RachelHarty.com.