/lit/ - Literature

Hey /lit/

What do you think of writing in dialects? I'm writing this story at the moment and just want to know what you think of the style I'm going for.

http://pastebin.com/24jHNSTC

Hey /lit/
I've been playing around with automatic writing, using it as a starting point for some poems. Can you recommend some surrealist literature?

If you can recommend any other surrealist writing techniques, that would be cool as well. Surrealism general, I suppose.

Hey /lit/

Do we have any poets here? It would be cool to see some poetry sharing/critique. I'll offer critique if I feel I can help.

I may may post some stuff midthread, so it doesn't seem like I'm only here for myself.

OC poetry/critique thread?

I produced this pitch black material after watching Shallow Grave last night. If you want to give me your opinion, it would be appreciated.

Perhaps, He can, through the roofholes, see
what they do, the strange men.
Because the light they shine on me is blinding
and white,
like the noise they blare at me all night.
I cannot see the strange men,
but I think they may be cool.

As they wrench my head up from the bowl,
I may have time to gasp:
"This bowl did not pour the blood that fills it."
But they would not get it. And,
as they lift the breezeblocks from the freezer door,
I might have time to shiver:
"This freezer did not birth the bones it chills."

But when they produce the electric drill,
I will have only time to scream:
"I do not know." And I do not know,
oh strange men, oh laughing girl.
Will vases remind me of your silhouettes?
Oh strange cool men: if you must,
then drown me, but please dear God not drill me.

Hey /lit/, I just finished a new poem. What do you think? Feel free to post your own as well, and I will do my best to give good criticism.


I
On those sandstone steps,
where Woolf once sat and cried,
we talked like bottomless wells
into the night,

II
And his wordwater gurgled forth, all erratic and strange;
minerals of memory and imagination mixed,
earth and thought, into a flavour too rich to taste in full.
"It's a wood cabin," he said and rocked.

I said "What's a wood cabin?" but he just rocked
on the steps of the mansion,
the dark innards of his well trying to reveal
themselves all at once.
"What's a wood cabin, Andrew?"

III
He rocked.

"I just remember it."

>>2010141
Me again. I've made a start and I'm doing it as an Angela Carter pastiche. Is my purple prose working?

Bald, broken, bent, the Widower pulled open his curtains to find encroached upon his village an awful carnival. His view had been obscured entirely – the black-and-white wood-beamed houses, the tiny sandstone chapel, and the lighthouse striking out upon the disappearing cliffs had all been replaced by a tumult of lorries and tents. The trucks were laid bare, deploying their rides of strange functions, and the fabric of the tents – red and white as if jousting were about to begin – flapped in a wind implacable as time.

Blast it.

He was old as the cliffs. Age had swallowed him, like a useless road amid the undergrowth. And yet, age was all he had – his home was a collage of it. He saw it in the photographs, his wife's head cocked back in laughter as she sat atop a carousel horse, and in the dark wood piano where he dueted with his daughter. She had long since moved away, and she had done so without even bearing him a grandchild.

You are my dialysis machine. Your branches bear fruit and imprison me.

I finished a rewrite the other day. Is it an improvement?

New:
Peat

The blocks clash midair.
Distant, silent,
in outstretched hands.
A short pause

and fractured echoes of the sound recur,
from the windows, walls, tarmac, halls,
of the school’s demolished grounds.
Silence does not stop the swell:

it lingers on in heavy heads,
bound in thick-wound bandage gauze
and buried deep in peatbog holes,
to stir undisinterred.

Old:
Peat

Done undone, deeds linger on
like heavy-hanging heads,
they echo down through peatbog holes,
in tightly thick-wound bandage gauze
round bodies, said unsaid.

Memory is echo-bound,
regret is ever-stirring,
a sealed cave of repetition,
preserved undisinterring.

>>1894890
Me again. I just finished this rewrite. I'm off out, but I'll be checking this thread later, so please let me know what you think of my changes. I'm always grateful for other people's opinions!

The blocks clash midair.
Distant, silent,
in outstretched hands.
A short pause

and fractured echos of the sound recur,
from the windows, walls, tarmac, halls,
of the school's demolished grounds.
Silence does not stop the swell:

it lingers on in heavy heads,
bound in thick-wound bandage gauze
and buried deep in peatbog holes,
to stir undisinterred.

Critique me if you'd be so kind, OP - or anyone for that matter.

Peat

Done undone, deeds linger on
like heavy-hanging heads,
they echo down through peatbog holes,
in tightly thick-wound bandage gauze
round bodies, said unsaid.

Memory is echo-bound,
regret is ever-stirring,
a sealed cave of repetition,
preserved undisinterring.

Hey lit, I just finished this poem. I'd be interested in your opinions and if you have contructive criticism that'd be even better. Thanks


Done undone, deeds linger on
like hanging heavy heads,
they echo down through petebog souls,
in tightly thick-wound bandage gauze
round bodies, said unsaid.
Memory is echo-bound,
regret is ever-stirring,
a sealed cave of repitition,
preserved undisinterring.

I always appreciate criticism, or just a simple opinion.

Smallpox

"A room without doors,
within these walls."
This, he said, was God.

Pebbles formed beneath the skin.
Husband, daughter, mother, gone.
Light of an indifferent sun
heats an empty bed.
Imprint of a heavy head.

They have gone into the doorless room.
This, I say, is memory.

>>1715352
Thank you!
>>1715354
Yeah, I am kind of going for ambiguous, at least mysterious. "Mirrors in mirrors" was referring to a repitition in dreams, of how one word or image might lead to another similar word or image, even if it might not quite make sense. It's what "codas" is referring to as well, and the repitition in the "mist" and "gist" lines.

I heard the coal-train's broken roar.
I saw it pass the crooked spire,
the garage roofs, the pubs and bars
long into dusk and night.
I saw the birches' pale forms
half-gone in orange lamplight.
The stars yellowed, hiding,
from this firmament of cars.

Dawn rolled out as freezer-fog,
aglow in sulphur lamps.
I was glad when train-song woke me first,
and the crying birds were shooed.
Machines don't mourn in throngs
for homes and nests chopped to wood.
Was nature any good?
Or does my mind build garage roofs
where a crooked spire stood?

Hi /lit/
I was supposed to be writing an essay, but I ended up writing a poem instead. This poem has gone through a few versions. I kind of liked them partially but felt the ideas were a little underdeveloped. It was just about night-time, but now I've fleshed that out to be about the city and nature more generally. I think it still feels a little disjointed in places though. What do you think?

I heard the coal-train's broken roar.
I saw it pass the crooked spire,
the garage roofs, the pubs and bars
long into dusk and night.
I saw the birches' pale forms
half-gone in orange lamplight.
The stars - they hid and yellowed
from this firmament of cars.

Dawn rolled out like freezer-fog,
aglow in sulphur lamps.
I was glad when train-song woke me first,
and the crying birds were shooed.
Machines don't mourn in throngs
for homes and nests chopped to wood.
Was nature any good?
Or does my mind build garage roofs
where a crooked spire stood?

Hey /lit/ I was writing this poem about walking around at night and kind of hit a wall with it. I did like what I was producing, but I feel I need something more for it to be finished. Anyway, what do you think of what I have written? Your critiques would be much appreciated, as well as any ideas as to where I could take it next.

The long sigh of night sets in
when the sulphur scores of light begin
and the stars hide and yellow
beneath a firmament of cars

This long exhaust of outward breath
is pulled back from the lip of death
by the hiss of bus and yawn of road
in this cul de sac of ours

Hey /lit/
I wrote this poem just now. It was inspired by a poignant moment I shared with my mum. It involved a DVD she got in the post with footage of her hometown in Holland from 1955. The only sound it had was fairground-type music. She sat down awkwardly on the floor to watch it, nearer the TV than the sofa. Perhaps it was the grainy footage and her bad eyesight that made her do it. Either way, it was a weird role reversal; I was there in the armchair she normally sits in, while she sat where I sat as a child when I got particularly excited about a Playstation game.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts and criticisms of my poem. I haven't written many poems, perhaps 2 or 3. 'Moe' is a Dutch word for mum and is pronounced 'moo'.

Moe
You sit hunched in a spot which I used, too,
By the TV and grey box where I span away my youth.
You clambered down, like I did to play,
To the carousel songs on loop
And the bleached out reels from Holland '55.

Cataracts' misty film
Blocks the story from your eyes.

The carousel keeps on spinning,
Past the cobbler who once taught you
How bad glue falls apart,
Past the church who warned you
Of gamblers' dice and art,
And how we all must suffer well
In time's unflinching carousel.

Yes. Yes it is, OP.

This is now a thread for contemporary art.

Also, as >>1356421 said, it's contemporary.