/lit/ - Literature

>>13333130
>>13333184
>>13333204
And the two people in pic related I think are the best we've gotten since the aforementioned songwriters. They've actually managed to build off the work of those that came before rather than just cheaply imitating, though both in very different ways. Bill of course is far more laconic, and has taken Cohen's modernist sensibilities even further:

"The wind is pushing the clouds along
Out of sight.
A power is putting them away.
A power that moves things
neurotically.
Like a widow with a rosary.

Everything is awing and tired of praise
The mountains don't need
my accolades.
Spring looks bad lately anyway.
Like death warmed over.

And the bantam is preening madly.
waiting for the light of day."

And of course Joanna takes Dylan and Mitchell's decadence and control of language to almost absurd levels. Her sincerity makes it work though.

He said,
"It's alright, and it's all over now," and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened, (The boy was known to show unusual daring—
and called a 'boy', this alderman confounding Tammany Hall,
in whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall!)

So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest soul may repair;
to which a hunter, a hundred years from now, may look, and despair, and see with wonder the tributes we have left to rust in the park:
swearing that our hair stood on end,
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart
for the Western Front,
where work might count.
All exeunt! All go out!
Await the hunter, to decipher the stone
(and what lies under, now).
The city is gone.

Certainly the most important. The poet/scholar/critic persona was certainly influential. The Waste Land almost serves as a poetic/philosophical problem which is answered (either intentionally or unwittingly) by every poet attempting to write since. Eliot's own conversion to faith presents an interesting path. Almost that the search for water in dry rock forced him to find other spiritual avenues that were not explored in The Waste Land. However that path is not adequate for many, as giving oneself to organized religion isn't something one can do simply. I find H.D to be the greatest poet of the 20th century as her answer to the problem presented by The Waste Land was the focus of poetics on a moment of inspiration, and to condense that to an aesthetic expression. Often these experiences were object-oriented, such as looking at the ocean, and allowing the subconscious to emerge in subjectivity from the objective approach.
Crane of course must be mentioned (as well as Samuel Greenberg) as great composers of the musical phrase in poetry. And Wallace Stevens, as proposing himself as an artist, rather than the critic/scholar persona of Eliot; the mystic/political persona of Yeats; the immense posturing of Pound. (That is not to discount the talent of Pound.)
It is unclear if the spiritual aesthetic inspiration of any certain moment is the answer to The Waste Land; however it is more convincing than Eliot's conversion to the Anglican church. It must be said, however, that Eliot's way of amassing knowledge as a way to better connect with that around him, physically and spiritually, is quite reminiscent of Joyce, and is something to strive for.

>>11066603
Joanna is great, but she's not the best working lyricist.

However, she did date him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_IEQSqpF9Y