/lit/ - Literature

>>12426829

You need to read a lot of old metrical poetry. You'll pick up the stresses then. I was like you and it took me literally a full year of listening to recitals of poetry and reading poetry anthologies of classic poems to pick up meter. The thing is, prosody used to be taught in schools just like the basics of reading literature, poetry used to be read out loud, it's just not anymore. We don't get any training. So you have to make up for it.

>>10663760

I agree. There's definitely a "book culture" that is a "culture' only in the modern capitalist sense, which is to say a group that makes highly visible displays of their consumption of a certain good and claims that their identity is derived from that good.

The difference between this and, say, the Marvel Fandom, is that literature aspires to be worthy of this kind of treatment. People of great intelligence devote the meat of their lives to making things worthy of this kind of devotion. The people of this group who succeed are the ones who write the great books, which are rightly regarded as somewhat sanctified. Churchgoers aren't a "culture" in this sense. There are groups of people devoted to a kind of study of reality that expresses itself not through mathematics and sciences but through philosophy and the arts.

The issue is that a lot of people who are "book people" are not devoted to this sort of book, or even interested in it in the slightest, but instead to the kind that is turned out for much less honorable and productive ends. At its worst, this book "culture" consumes things that are made by cynical technicians, at best by people who are passionate about a disposable kind of fun. The best of these writers are no more or less admirable than great chefs - worthy, sure, of some admiration, but devotion to the point of identity? We find that ridiculous just as we find foodies ridiculous. We sense that at the core there is a hollow.

They also seem to devote themselves intensely to things peripheral to the actual good itself, even if that good is of that lesser kind. There's discussions of covers, ereaders, etc, that can't help but suggest that it is the person glorying in the sort of person who would read, just like an eminent statesman might delight in talking about what the chambers are like.

>>10562268

>tfw bottom left corner tells you everything you need to know about posters on /lit/