/lit/ - Literature

>>17185882
I disagree, the most pedantic people I've met in my life were poets. You know that fragile, sensitive guy that thinks themselves above others and just comes off as needy?

Poetry is the oldest of the arts and the most respected. The musical tradition we practice has scarcely a thousand years. Architecture, sculpture, and decorative design have passed since ancient times through so many esthetic revolutions that very little is left in them of any authoritative tradition. Improvisational one-man easel-painting in oil (painting as we know it) dates barely from the seventeenth century.
Poetry, as we know it, goes straight back to the Greeks and to the Hebrew children. There has been no interruption for twenty-five hundred years in the transmission of its technical procedures, no hiatus in the continuity of its comprehension by the literate classes of Europe. It has survived changes in religion, political revolutions, the birth and death of languages. Its classic masters enjoy a prestige scarcely exceeded by that of the Holy Evangelists. By populace and scholars alike they are admired above confessors and martyrs, priests, prophets, historians, psychologists, romancers, and ethical guides, and far above statesmen or soldiers, orators or newshawks. For they and their heirs are the recognized masters of the most puissant of all instruments, the word.
The poetic prestige remains, but the poetic function has contracted. As champions of the arts of love, poets made war for centuries on the Christian Church and won. As analysts of its motivations and as experts of amorous device, they were the undisputed masters of that subject till Sigmund Freud, a nerve doctor, beat them at it in our own day. (Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century economist, had already beaten them at social analysis and at political prophecy.) With love now the specialty (in every aspect) of the medical profession, with government (both past and future) better understood by sectarian political groups and better explained by journalists, with dramaturgy better practiced in Hollywood and Joinville, and story-telling done more convincingly by the writers of police- fiction, what is there left for the poet to do that might even partially justify his hereditary prestige?
He could retreat into “pure” poetry, of course; and he often tries to. Much good may it do him. Because the sorry truth is there is no such refuge. In recent years the poets have talked a good deal about “purity.” I am not sure what they mean by “pure” poetry, unless they mean poetry without a subject-matter; and that means exactly nothing.

>>17185994
Music and painting can exist perfectly well without a subject-matter, at least without any obvious or stated subject-matter. Painting of this kind is called “abstract.” Musicians used to distinguish between “program” music and “absolute” music. The latter term meant music without a literary text or any specific illustrative intention, that is to say, instrumental music of an introspective nature. Neither “abstract” painting nor “absolute” music is any “purer” than any other kind of painting or music, and no painter or musician ever pretends it is. It is merely more obscure. When painters speak of “purity of line,” they mean a complete lack of obscurity. When they speak of a “pure” color, they mean a shade that is unequivocal. Say an artist’s intentions are “pure,” if you must. That means he is not commercial-minded. The word pure cannot possibly have any meaning when applied to the content or structure of literature. Poetry could be pure only if it could be devoid of meaning, which it can’t. You can make nonsense poetry, certainly; you can dissociate and reassociate words. But you cannot take the meanings out of words; you simply can’t. You can only readjust their order. And nobody can or ever does write poetry without a subject.
What subjects, then, are available to the poet today? Practically none. Money, political events, heroism, science, mathematical logic, crime, the libido, the sexual variations, the limits of personality, the theory of revolution: the incidents of all these are more graphically recited by journalists, the principles better explained by specialists. There really isn’t much left for the heirs of Homer and Shakespeare to do but to add their case-histories to the documentation of introspective psychology by the practice of automatic writing. Highly trained in linguistics (though the philologists are not bad at that either) and wearing the mantle of the Great Tradition, admired unreasonably and feared not unreasonably (for they are desperate men), they still have, as poets, no civil status, no social function, no serious job to do, and no income.
They haven’t even any audience to speak of. For some time now they have been depending mainly on one another for applause. Hence the pretentiousness and the high intellectual tone of all they write. I mean that for fifty years poetry has mostly been read by other poets, and that for a good thirty years now has mostly been written to be read by other poets.

>>17186000
The impasse is complete. Contemporary civilization has no place for the poet save one of mere honor. Science, learning, journalism, fiction, religion, magic, and politics, all his ancient bailiwicks, are closed to him formally and completely. He is allowed to render small services to these now and then as a disseminator of existing knowledge. He is always regarded, however, by the specialists as a possible betrayer; and consequently at no time is he allowed to speak of such subjects with any but a temporarily delegated authority.
His lot is a tragic one. Nothing is left him of his art but an epigone’s skill and some hereditary prestige. This last is still large enough to give him face in front of his co-citizens and to keep up the recruiting. It doesn’t pay anything at all, of course. It won’t buy a beer, a bus-fare, or a contraceptive. Nor does it prevent the darkest despair from seizing him when he is alone.

>>17185882
When I heard this I am reminded about a poem I read in grade school where a dude was trying to convince a girl to fuck him because it’s no different then the flea sucking on his arm and then sucking on hers.

Yes.... truly big brain stuff...

>>17185953
Yeah, literally every guy

>>While philosophy elegantly slips from the poet's fingers, philosphers pick up metaphors from the opium store.

>>17185882
disagree.

ONLY THE BEST POETS ARE PHILOSOPHICAL; ONLY THE BEST PHILOSOPHERS ARE POETICAL.

>>17187697
Nice meaningless blather.

>>17185882
>Poets are philosophers
Please don't insult poets like this

>>17187697
Your semicolon is a stain. Why type in all caps if you’re just going to use senseless punctuation to undermine any emphasis?

>>17187788


LEARN PUNCTUATION, AND STOP RIDICULING YOURSELF.

>>17187880
Punctuation is a joke. Your statements are small. Flimsy. Weak. Use a period. Stop writing.

>>17187697
>poetical
t. tripfag

>>17187880
That comma is superfluous, since the subject did not change.

>>17185882
How to get into poetry?
I can read prose and appreciate the nuance and deeper meaning of language used in that context and I enjoy poetry in the context of some music, but poetry on its own is so fucking boring in almost every case I can think of.

>>17187974
Have soul incel

>>17187986
I can’t

>>17185994
>>17186000
>>17186006
beautiful

link please, if there's any

>>17188639
https://books.google.se/books?id=dCIwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT33

>>17187974
Poetry is meant to be read slowly and read multiple times, take time to go over the poet's choices - words, meter, literary techniques, etc. I suggest voicing the lines (either out loud or in your head) as you read to feel the poem's rhythm. Let yourself visualise the images the poet is trying to create.
One of my favourite ways to digest poetry is to go for a walk/hike with a book of poetry and sit down in a nice spot and read a poem or two every now and then, then think about what I've read while I keep walking.
I would recommend starting with the English Romantics, they are very accessible. Get a copy of "English Romantic Poetry, An Anthology by Dover Thrift Editions" and work your way through the major poets in there, see which ones you like. If you're from the US you might like to read some American poets instead.

>>17188656
thanks

>>17185953
>comes off as needy
Define needy.

>>17185994
Based enemy of "poetry about poetry" poster.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination”: and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Æolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away; so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects which delight a child these expressions are what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statute, the chord and the harmony.

cont.

>>17189287
The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general considerations which might involve an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.

>>17189239
Unable to take any kind of criticism or banter, or totally misunderstanding innocent questions as personal attacks to his persona. Constantly needing validation. Obsessed with himself and his own name.

I legit remember asking an old poet friend of mine if he had a printer at in his house (Cause I needed to print some CVs to apply for jobs) and the retard legit raised his voice almost screaming at me ''Well yeah of course I have a printer, I have a pool, I have a car, I have instruments, I have expensive art and all the drones, camera and stuff for film don't I? Why wouldn't I have a printer?''
I thought he was joking, but then I realise he was actually serious. That day I quickly realized why the last 5 women he had been with left him, despite having immense amounts of wealth.

Anyhow, I tried to be his friend but he didn't want a friend, he wanted someone to stroke his ego all day in exchange for his money, and I just moved on with my life

>>17189326
Man, that was weirdly specifical. Kek
That said, I met a rich old fella some months ago and he, besides not being a poet, stroke me like someone miserable
in an uncanny way as you're describing. The difference was that this old-fart apparently thought he was Casanova. Trying to pick-up every young girl he saw on the street and fishing for compliments from me all the time.
He also tried to "buy" my friendship and was incredibly neurotical. He tried to impress me just because I was young and also because some cute chick in the avenue smiled at me, I guess.
Then he talked about the goodoldtimes. When he was much wealthier and how he didn't he care for money back then. Even forgeting he had some cars.
He kept talking about how he still looks good (he's in his seventies).
And when my dad went to the bathroom he told me his networth, all of the blue.

Bump

>>17189415
Kek, was he Italian as well by any chance?

The literary artist flowers in poetry, and stars in philosophy.