Poetry Not By You (Unless you're published + good)

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CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I've spent the last 6 months debating whether to learn Catalan so I can read Arnaut Daniel that's my poetry story atm

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 05:00

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 14:50

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

She waited, shuddering in her room,
Till sleep had fallen on all the house. 30
She never flinched; she faced her doom:
They two must sin to keep their vows.

This house/vows rhyme is the worst. Poetry is so great but I wish it wasn't so easy to ruin a perfectly fine poem by doing one stupid thing.

edit: there's a few bad things and now I hate this poem

CestMoi fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Mar 17, 2018

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 05:05

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I've heard they're similar enough that learning one makes you basically able to read the other and if I actually learned Catalan I could talk to people in Barcelona which would be cool whereas if I specifically learned Occitan I could talk to like eight people in Toulouse. It's also something I probably won't actually do so there's that to factor in.

That book looks cool tho, I read a couple of Pound's translations a few days ago and found them super interesting with an incredible sound to them, then I tried the originals and yep they sound amazing even if I have no idea what they say

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 06:02

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

When I was a kid I had a book called THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS that was just an extremely tory book with tips about going fishing and making a slingshot and inspirational stories from British military history and it had some poems in it and one was Invictus so now I associate it with trying to make your child Victorian.

It also had Ozymandias which is a much stupider poem to have that kind of prejudice about and yet here I am

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 21:50

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

jagstag posted:

here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish

Bitterly disappointed these books are not covered in breadcrumbs and scrawled notes like �chekhov=gun???� m8

# ¿ Apr 15, 2018 20:44

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Japanese dada/futurism (link to the original is at the bottom if u can read Japanese/just want to see the original form)

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/hagiwara-kyojiro-death-sentence/

# ¿ Apr 20, 2018 01:08

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

There was a huge Japanese dada scene and they were all insane anarchists but I can't find enough of their poo poo : (

# ¿ Apr 20, 2018 14:12

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

are you the one that posted that like 4 years ago? cos I've been reading a couple of those Voddenikov poems on that website ever since someoone on this web site linked them

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 00:02

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I say a couple. i've been reading the two that there are

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 00:03

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I hope you're reading him in the intended language of his poetry, Arabic

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 22:50

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

because of things like that in saison en enfer and les illuminations in Sufism & Surrealism by Adonis there's a chapter where he argues that Rimbaud shouldn't be considered a part of the Western poetic canon, but should instead be thought of as an Arab Sufi mystic and it's extremely cool

# ¿ Apr 21, 2018 23:55

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

rubaiyat

# ¿ Apr 22, 2018 00:31

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

if we exhaust all the ones you've obviously already read you'll be forced to read Rimbaud as a Sufi

# ¿ Apr 22, 2018 00:31

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Lorca's cool, I need to pick up a collection by him for sure.

I've been reading and rereading A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by Donne for like a week straight and I'm not even all that sure why but now I'm mostly thinking of things in terms of reference to specific images in that poem so that's cool

# ¿ May 30, 2018 01:00

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Please dont post bad poetry itt theres enough of it in literally every other place on earth

# ¿ Jul 6, 2018 00:37

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Im eeading The Pound Era by hugh kenner and it owns, its great, its so good its making me write poetry again and i hate it

# ¿ Jul 13, 2018 03:39

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

It is good and admirable to learn about poetry no matter how little you know or intrinsically stupid you are

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 14:21

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

chernobyl kinsman posted:

you're thinking of meter in general, not pentameter specifically. 'meter' means any pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables; the 'penta' prefix just means 5 (see also pentagram). you're right that shakespeare usually writes in iambic pentameter; his verse lines have 5 "iambs". an iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Stress is what word or what syllable in a word you emphasize. Here's an illustration.

Try it: say the words 'emphasis' and 'syllable' out loud. I'm betting you say something like EM-pha-sis and SYL-a-ble; that is, "em" and "syl" are stressed syllables. The humor in that clip comes from Mike Myers instead saying em-PHA-sis and syl-A-ble; he's stressing the wrong syllables.

here i've marked the stressed syllables from a line of shakespeare in bold, so you can see what i mean:

but soft! what light through yonder window breaks

try saying it out loud, and you'll get a feel for how the stresses fall ("but SOFT" instead of "BUT soft"). it comes out as something like "da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM". each of those stressed-unstressed combinations is one iamb.

you can also have Dactylic pentameter but there's no real need to go down that rabbit hole.

different poets will use different meters in different poems; robert frost's The Road Not Taken, for examble, still uses iambs, but uses them in tetrameter, so four iambs per line instead of five.

anyway, defining what is and isn't poetry is one of those questions, like defining what is and isn't art, that has the potential to piss a lot of people off and is simultaneously. there also isn't always a clear line. Billy Collins, the former US Poet Laureate, writes in what's called free verse - verse without any meter or rhyme. you can see an example here. Bukowski also writes in free verse. sometimes you'll find people saying that the only thing that makes a poem a poem is the use of line breaks, but there's something called 'prose poetry', which doesn't even have that; Poe wrote this batshit thing that he titled "Eureka: A Prose Poem", for example, and it doesn't rhyme, stick to a meter, or use line breaks.

just read it, and read it slowly. you'll find yourself falling into the rhythm of the poem naturally.

you could definitely pick up a book, like Perinne's sound and sense, that will teach you all about different kinds of meters and whatnot, but i really don't think that's necessary to understand a poem or derive enjoyment from it. you can find a lot of pleasure and meaning in Ozymandias without knowing that it's a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

errr yeah basically this

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 20:56

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I find that a really good way to get a grip of basic meter is to read highly structured verse, with a favourite being double dactyls. A dactyl is stressed-unstressed-unstressed (DUM da da) and double dactyls are poems of 6 lines of 6 syllables (stressed-unstressed-unstressed stressed-unstressed-unstressed) and 2 lines of 4 syllables going stressed-unstressed-unstressed-stressed with the first line being nonsense, the second line being a title of the poem, the seventh line being a single double dactylic word, and the fourth and eighth lines rhyming. This sounds difficult but a few examples should help:

Higgledy piggledy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third president
Was, and, as such,

Served between Clevelands and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncrasy,
Didn't do much.

Battery Flattery
Trial of the century
This man�s been found making
Youth�s brains enlarged

He offers no defence
And so our judge declares
Apologetically
�Guilty as charged!�

Any two fluent speakers of English are going to read those poems (out loud ofc) with almost exactly the same rhythm and delivery. That's meter. Now the extent to which meter is useful to poetry is pretty contentious, but the general idea is that certain meters give poems certain sorts of feelings. Double dactyls are inherently quite comic, that's just how they move. Something like a sonnet in iambic pentameter tends to seem very romantic and clich� in English, which is what makes Shakespeare's more satirical sonnets work in the way they do. Poetry is exactly about this interplay of what the words say, what they sound like, and what associations those sounds bring. This is why people that say poetry is prose with line breaks are disgusting idiots, and any poet who claims to write actually free verse is a charlatan. If the rhythm and sound of your words isn't vitally important to their meaning, you're not a poet.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 21:16

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

It makes sense to do that in this, the Sufism thread

# ¿ Sep 8, 2018 00:12

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Songs of innocence and experience are a pretty nice intro if youre stupid but if you want the primo poo poo just read Jerusalem (the book not the shite song)

# ¿ Sep 8, 2018 02:00

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

bump

# ¿ May 12, 2019 14:54

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

i'm reading a website which has this about section:

Atop The Cliffs aims to publish poetry from the Right. Whether you are a Western Chauvinist, a Hoppean Libertarian, or an Identitarian we aim to cultivate a home for organically grown right-leaning poetry. We stand for Beauty, Truth, and Justice, in art.

and feeling very good about the future of western civilisation :blessed:

# ¿ May 12, 2019 14:55

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

kipling is just a racist edward lear

# ¿ May 15, 2019 17:41

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter�s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, �You�ll all be drowned!�
They called aloud, �Our Sieve ain�t big,
But we don�t care a button! we don�t care a fig!
In a Sieve we�ll go to sea!�
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

II

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
�O won�t they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it�s extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!�
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

III

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, �How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!�
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

IV

And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
�O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!�
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

V

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

VI

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, �How tall they�ve grown!�
For they�ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore;
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And everyone said, �If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,�
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!�
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

# ¿ May 15, 2019 17:41

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I've been reading the poems of alexander Search

Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
⁠We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
⁠And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 02:05

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

EmmyOk posted:

I finally decided to pick up some Yeats today. I'd been meaning to try some poetry because I'm not a lovely teenager in school anymore and I realised a lot of my favourite songs I liked because of the lyrics and wasn't too bothered about the music. So I decided to pick a famous one from my home country and I grew up holidaying in Sligo too because my da's family is from there. This is my poetry story.

the second coming is a top choice if you want to make extremely shallow literary references to bulk out an article about some person or trend you don't like, otherwise the rest of yeats is just very very good except his earlier stuff which is kind of bad

# ¿ Aug 31, 2019 23:55

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

the creative convention poetry thread is back and this time its a thunderdome and i hate it all so much so i'm reading some vodennikov http://bigbridge.org/BB17/poetry/twentyfirstcenturyrussianpoetry/Dmitry_Vodennikov.html

# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 15:01

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

the creative convention poetry thunderdome thread created in november is already longer than this, the dedicated book forum thread for talking about poetry

# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 15:05

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Tree Goat posted:

important news https://lithub.com/lord-byron-used-to-call-william-wordsworth-turdsworth-and-yes-this-is-a-real-historical-fact/

i somehow already knew this but im not sure how

# ¿ Jan 15, 2020 19:27

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 14:50

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

omeros by derek walcott is most likely one of the best things you will ever read

# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 16:08

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