A reader:
“! caught a few minutes of NPR while commuting recently. According to the segment, an ‘American baritone’ claimed in his memoirs that he was often asked not to sing ‘Danny Deever’ because it was so “soul-shattering” that it caused women to faint. The program then went on to play someone else’s version. You can hear the whole NPR clip here.
“I suspect this may have generated a few letters ala Larry Summers from listeners(overwhelmingly Democratic in leaning, one assumes) claiming that they had to turn off their radios lest they swoon over the claim of women er, swooning.”
[Derb] I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that ‘Danny Deever’ is not a poem much loved by women. Here is my own reading.