/lit/ - Literature

Hey guys, do any of you keep lit-related blogs? It could be your poems, book reviews, whatever really. I'm just starting a tumblr now and I'd like some blogs like this to follow. To avoid accusations of spam I won't post my URL unless asked, but I'll be writing about poems, books and the odd current affairs thing. I'm making my first post now about a Yeats and a Dylan Thomas poem.

Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.
- All Souls' Night by W.B. Yeats

>>1754936
Google Scribe. I got stuck on that loop too. It has kind of a nice rhythm.

Hey /lit/,
Do you ever you find lines so incredible you take a moment to marvel? I've just re-read Yeats's All Souls' Night, and the ending's just beautiful:
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

Likening thoughts to mummy-cloth, how inspired - and the rhyme is symmetrical like the wound-up cloth...

Anyway, show them to me /lit/. What lines move you?

>>1599771
Thanks, I wrote it myself.

Ring up Yeats. I'd be all like "Hey Yeats".

Hello /lit/
I absolutely adore Yeats and - if I want to - I could write my next coursework essay on some of his poems. This seemed like a wonderful and exciting concept until I came to realize exactly how airy-fairy and intangible my appreciation of Yeats is. I more or less accepted the mystery of a lot of his imagery with barely any understanding of what most of it means. I knew his poems were a lot to do with his personal philosophy as described in A Vision, but I didn't realise they were quite as esoteric as they are. Do you have any suggestions of poems that would allow me to explore symbolism and metaphor without getting too 'out there'? Since I'm going to be writing an essay, I want to have a fairly good grasp on what I'm talking about. I also think my enjoyment comes mostly from slowly unravelling his meanings - I don't want to just look it all up and know it straight away.
So, recommendations of Yeats poems to write about would be nice. My ideas at the moment are 3 poems out of these: The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, The Circus Animals Desertion, and All Souls' Night. Recommendations from other poets would be fine as well. If I don't do symbolism and metaphor, I'll most likely end up doing feminism/marxism in Carol Ann Duffy poems, which I find a bit yawn. Thanks /lit/

tl;dr Recommend poems which have enough symbolism/metaphor to write an essay about.

Hey /lit/
What does 'well written' mean to you? How do you achieve it?

I know something is written well when I get the shivers from it and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. That's also what I get from music, films and comic books that really work.

As for my second question though, I don't how it works. It's something intangible, when an image resonates with me in a way I can't explain. I think it's also to do with achieving the right balance between what is said and what is left to the imagination.

Here's a poem that gives me the shivers:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/yeats.html#hare

Hey /lit/
I've never thought of myself being into poetry, but for the past week or so Yeats's The Second Coming has just kept coming back into my head till I just HAVE to read it again. I've enjoyed poems before, just ones that I read in English lessons, but this one has hooked me in the same way my favourite songs do.

I've been reading some other things by Yeats and reading about the man himself too. He seems like a fascinating figure, and I did like the poems I read.

So, it would be great if you could recommend some more Yeats poems. General discussion of the man would be welcome too.