|
Poems are way cool and come in all different shapes and sizes. The one unifying factor for poetry is that every culture in the world has it and that no one ever seems to know how to teach it in school. It's also the rare form of writing that isn't dominated by dudes Some cool poems that you probably read in high school and should give another shot: -We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks -Howl by Allen Ginsburg -I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman -the red wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams -Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni -The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot A list of influential or otherwise accessible poets to get started on: -T.S. Eliot -John Donne -Emily Dickinson -Walt Whitman -Seamus Haney -Dylan Thomas -Isaac Rosenberg -Matsuo Basho -Kobayashi Issa
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 03:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
Stravinsky posted:Robert Frost is the Thomas Kinkade of american poetry. He is garbage and his poo poo is only popular because it's easy to understand and broad enough to apply to anything.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 06:01
|
|
|
Poutling posted:That list is pretty western-centric with 2 Japanese haiku guys thrown in at the end. I would add at least Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke to the list, and maybe Cavafy and Czeslaw Milosz. That is entirely fair. In my defense, I was mostly gearing it towards Western audiences, but Neruda is a pretty gross omission on my part.  Poutling posted:You read a lot of world lit in fiction and I think you hit the same issues that you would there that you would in poetry. I hear this is especially true for Japanese literature where the kanji chosen can sometimes have 2 or 3 different meanings and can add layers to a passage that are not easily translated into English. I think the key is to find the right translator who can capture not only the direct translation but the spirit of the poem. Translating itself is an art form. As long as they're not doing an Ezra Pound style hackjob I think there's artistic merit to a translation but it becomes a separate work, filtered through the eyes of a translator. Something neat I saw in a translation of Nahuatl poetry was that they included a glossary of Nahuatl terms with a few different definitions for each so that the reader was empowered to make their own translation. It would be a shame to miss out on poems written in another language, though.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 07:03
|
|
|
Walh Hara posted:In addition, what are peoples opinion in regards to reading poetry not in your mother language? More concrete, are there English authors/poems that are more friendly towards/readable for people who have English as second language? Seems to me there is a difference in being fluent enough that you can understand nobels compaired to being fluent enough to really understand poetry. It's tough because I'd say the majority of poetry relies upon cultural cues and context along with the implicit meanings of words and statements. That and the ambiguity of language informs a lot of it (and is why poetry is so difficult) and that's really hard to transcend. That being said, I think imagery translates well, so poets like Dickinson, Robert Lowell, some Stephen Crane stuff, and Sharon Olds might be a good place to start. What kind of poetry/poems are you into?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
Poetry is all about the rhythm. I recommend going to a poetry reading (as dull as that might sound on paper) just to get a feel for the breadth of cadences possible in verse. Most song lyrics would be pretty dumb if you only ever read them on a page (although many of them are still very dumb).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2014 05:18
|
|
|
Stravinsky posted:In other poetry news, I also read former New Jersey poet laureate and also former living person Amiri Baraka. While he is no Robert Frost, I really do appreciate Baraka's in your face confrontational attitude. The fact that he was even made a poet laureate for any place is amazing in and of itself and I am really not surprised that some people were a little uneasy about that. PYF Poet Laureates  quote:Cherrylog Road Kind of reminds me of Eugenides for some reason but not in a good way
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2014 01:00
|
|
|
CestMoi posted:I got some T.S Eliot poems because I'd never read them before and The Wasteland is pretty drat deece. I'm now trying to overcome my gag reflex against writing in books so I can write down all the cool things I like and look fun and interesting in coffee shops. I have a lot of sperg book nerd friends that will buy two copies of a text: one for marking up and one for leaving pristine.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2014 01:24
|
|
|
FactsAreUseless posted:So, prose poetry. What do you think of it? Does it count as "real" poetry? I'm quite fond of prose poetry, since I think poetry's defining characteristic isn't its rhythm or structure, but its density of thought and content. Prose poetry is totally real poetry and anyone who tries to tell you that something doesn't "count" as poetry is usually wrong
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2014 03:09
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:e e cummings was pretty awesome. He's easy to dismiss as the gimmicky poet who didn't use punctuation but he's very much worth reading. I think this is what most people think of when they're like "poetry is inaccessible"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2014 18:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
A human heart posted:That sounds cool, what's the collection called? Can't remember, it had a pretty generic name. I think it's on Project Gutenberg though.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2015 03:13
|
|