/lit/ - Literature

>>20456688
You’ve paid no attention to rhythm and rhyme. Reading this makes me wonder why you even tried to write a poem. I don’t think this is a meaningful contemplation of time or even the vague notion of “days”. I don’t think you’ve read enough poetry. It’s not this easy, unless you’re a child seeking mother’s approval.

Nice Larkin larp

It’s boring. Sorry.

Less good than the lyrics to the Kinks song of the same name

>>20456688
I like it. The image of Doctor and priest running over the field is nice

>>20456688
pretty good but it's not finished.

>>20456812
Thanks :)

>>20456688
boring, with a limited grasp on the notion of time and a classic asian style ending that means little to nothing, sorry.

OP if you want to get better with poetry, say your poems out loud and if possible try to sing them. If you can’t sing them outloud and if they tumble over or sound bad when you actually say them, you have found the problems and you can work from there in refining your sound. I’m not saying you have to write perfect iambic pentameter, I’m saying you have to pay attention to how what you’re saying sounds.

>>20456688
>they are to be happy in
Sounds very awkward

>>20456970
Thanks anon. Do you think this could have a chance of being published?

>>20457022
Not really no, and if it did it would be among the worst type of poetry of the contemporary sort which is usually more published for the context and connections of who the author is.

I don’t mean to be rude, but poetry is an art like any other, your first 40 drawings and paintings and attempts on a guitar won’t be public ready, neither will your first 40 poems.

>>20456688
It's shit. Master metrical poetry before trying free verse.

>>20457044
>>20457033

Can you recommend any poets to help hone my style?

>>20457115
That really depends on your taste, this is why it’s good to either check out an anthology of poetry or listen to some recitations on YouTube. Check these out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfrx_JQcIsI - kubla khan by Coleridge recited by Cumberbatch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vJrCO153LdM Blake’s chimney sweeper
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I Yeats reciting his own poetry
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lX0h1KSM5fs Pound reciting his own poetry
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BefliMlEzZ8 Poe’s raven recited by Christopher lee

>>20457154
Hmm I love all those poets, but I'd say my style is closer to the likes of Larkin and Auden.

>>20457182
Auden put a lot of thought into his sound and into meter, if you want to write like Auden you have to study his form a lot. He has a quote somewhere saying what he wants most out of the reader is a reader who understand when he’s using weird syllable patterns and uncommon meters.

>>20457218
Interesting. Do you think my poem could pass for something by Larkin?

>>20457250
Probably, I’m not a fan of him, he’s fine for his period but I dislike him, I consider him worse than pound who I have no love for.

in fact checking if this his poem, it is in fact his poem, good proof of how mid Larkin is.

>>20457262
Interesting. I'm a big fan of him, so I guess I shouldn't pay attention to critiques on this board.

>>20456982
disagree 100%

>>20457299
Personally I find most prose and verse goes down the drain beginning at around 1890, with 1950 being the point where it’s almost universally a boring slog. For example auden who I believe is technically skilled I believe content wise and conceptually is absolutely boring to the point I would prefer a number of rappers to him.

Larkin’s even worse, and I think this thread shows that the common person when shown Larkin doesn’t really care for him either, not very impressive. What exactly do you see in him? I don’t see any lyricism, again try singing the poem it’ll stumble over, “they are to be happy in” really does sound clunky and the last stanza really does feel like a meaningless pseudo-Asian pastiche, what do you like about him? And this poem in particular? You had to think it felt amateur enough that it could be posted here.

>Ah

>>20457299
The larkin poem you posted is so fucking trash that I believed it was the very first poem you wrote. What pleasure do you find in D list Verse?

>>20457490
Anon a lot of verse at and after 1950 is like this, like a lot, it’s shitty but this is why at this point you’re better off finding lyricism in song lyrics in a lot of cases.

>>20456970
You sound like you know your shit.
What do you think about 3 poems translations I did recently. Please read it here
>>20446337

>>20457380

Talking about poetry is difficult, but ultimately its the tone that I like. It is very understated and blunt, but beneath its surface you can feel something beautiful and despairing.

>>20457490

Well, first of all I don't consider it to be D list.

>>20456688
Days nutz

I've always thought Larkin's free "verse" was shit

>>20456688
The priest believes in an afterlife, a life outside of the day. What does the doctor believe in? And why are they on a field?

>>20456688
>no rhyme scheme
Not a real poem bro. You have to use rhymes as often as possible. Here's something I just wrote when I was on the toilet at work, what does /lit/ think? Am I gonna make it?

SALISBURY STEAK
Salisbury steak,
Salisbury steak,
Name another dish for brutal carnivores to make
Why can't we leave cows alone and try to bake a cake?
cuz of salisbury steak, My Grandpa punched me in tha face:
"You dumb leftist ingrate, I'mma send you out to space!"

I'm planning to add another stanza during my diarrhea episode later tonight.

>>20458102
Not OP, but I work in a funeral home and the last client we had indeed lived (and died) in a place you reach by crossing fields.

>>20458250
Unironically more musical than the Larkin poem.

Le Poem

Drilling holes in my brain
Like you did last Sunday
Passed out and limp
Beneath the sky

Shadows fall cement
This concrete ruin
We walk its streets
Going nowhere

More broken-glass cuts
From me to you
Our pale reflections
Clasp the sea

Cover up the stars
A black fog overhead
It exhausts them
In sweet excess

We pass a circus act
Full of dancers and whores
Raving a masked god
So like unto myself

They worship death!
Magicians and tricksters
They worship death!
A bitter, bitter wine

Kiss me like before
I can’t stand this
Kiss me like before
Kiss me like before

You recline and bend your neck
I bite it in return
Blood drips onto the carpet
Staining the morning

>>20456688
Gonna keep it real with you chief I didn’t like it til the end. You may wanna try varying your aesthetic choices n just being a little less, honestly plain and generic. That’s what I got from the first part. The second part has some good imagery and I just overall like. So you got potential, yes. But I think you can push yourself harder

>>20456688
I don't get it

>>20458299
Seize the day bro, the afterlife isn't real. Proof: a PRIEST is running on a FIELD. Do you understand me?

>>20456688
Poetry is literally a dead medium, you might as well ask if you have potential as a writer of classical Japanese Noh dramas.

I like it

>>20457743
well you should

>>20458322
yup

>>20456688
You're being too coy in the last stanza. It comes across as smug and self satisfied. Like, "uwu I have the answer to the secret of life in this little box and maybe if ur lucky Ill show you whats inside~ ;) maybe? Oh no no no. It's too special so I'll just give u a hint~"

>>20458439
seething. maybe he does have the answer nigger

Isn't this Days by Philip Larkin? Stop baiting faggot. Also the critiques of this poem shows how nobody on this board understands poetry... like at all

>>20456688
Quaint is the most suiting description of this. Don't kniw anything about potentual. You should pursue it if it makes you happy and is a healthy activity.

>>20456688
is this a gay poem?

That is an excellent poem, but you need to fix the last line. Just the last line. I would make it "With their white gloves and books /
Wondering . . .

And you figure out the rest, because if you like that idea I don't want to fuck you up by making you plagiarize me.

>>20456688
Boring, but surprisingly not awful. You might get good if you keep practicing.

>>20456688
It isn't very good, m8. Too general and metaphysical, but in a superficial way. Stop writing in an affected, dated way. It's better than some of the absolute drivel I've seen on here, though.

These threads are retarded. And they are all created by the loser who got BTFO for self-fellating over reading OBSCURE books, so now his Schlick is finding excerpts from writers then pawning them off as his own, such as this thread since this is literally a Larkin poem

>>20456688
you might like this chapbook
omg the day by theo thimo

>>20456785
>>20456787
>>20456791
>>20456812
>>20456823
>>20456936
>>20456982
>>20457033
>>20458102
>>20458286
>>20458299
>>20458322
>>20458368
>>20458439
>>20458489
>>20458524
>>20458535

If you've ever felt disheartened by the overwhelming negativity of the anons on this board, know that this is how they respond to one Philip Larkin's most celebrated poems.

Poetry is highly subjective, of course, and no critique is objectively wrong. But keep in mind that if you've ever considered giving up, or changing your style because of what the anons on this board have said, even if you were writing poems as well as one of the most esteemed poets of the 20th century, the vast amount of anons would only be able to spew bile in your direction, so take their views with a pinch of salt.

Perhaps your writing genuinely is terrible, but this place is no barometer.

Keep that in mind.

>>20458720
Also, fair play to those few who gave the poem praise.

>>20456688
Reads like shit.

>>20458322
Did the dumb-dumbs writing screenplays and zine articles convince you of that, anon? Plus, aren't most anons on here contrarians? Wouldn't poetry be cool, then?

>>20458720
If it can’t even impress us then it’s a shit poem. It’s not that everyone will be shat on. Shit works will be called shit.

>>20458720
They are to be happy in doesn’t sound good

>>20456688
>proof /lit/ doesn’t read

>>20456688
Idea is nice, but doesnt read too well. Also that part at the end is random and feels very out of place.

>>20458720
>OP got BTFO when he made the Faulkner thread
>OP got BTFO when he made the Proust thread
>OP gets BTFO in the first comment when he makes this thread
What's your problem? Why are you such a huge faggot?

Reminder to report OP for spamming/flooding or low quality threads. This is the third thread in 24 hours.

>>20458453
Well then he should do his civic duty and share it.

>>20458720
The fact that it doesn't impress us when we're given it blind shows that it's shit. Midwits praise established poets because they think it makes them cultured. They have no discernment of their own.

>>20457250
>>20457262
>>20457299
>>20457380
Lmao. OP thought he had Frater but all he proved is how mediocre one of his favourite poets is.
Good job OP. you made a fool of yourself and Larkin.
>>20458720
Literally seething.

>>20458720
>t. got told his fantasy novel in the writing general was hot garbage

>>20459975
>>20459738
>>20459713
>>20459704
>>20459199
>>20458902

Again, remember you would have to be an idiot to trust anything anyone says on this board. Because it's about 95% trolls.

>>20458250
What in the fuck, this is actually great

>>20460638
Being unimpressed by a critically acclaimed work does not equal being a troll, or even having poor taste.

>>20460834
It does show that you could have the potential to become one of the most celebrated poets ever, yet you wouldn't know it if you only posted on this board. You could be a Faulkner, a Proust, or a Larkin, and all you would get would be negative responses.

>>20458720
The real lesson is that if you too write under a woman pseudonym, some faggot will still publish your shitty poetry just like when Larkin wrote as Brunette Coleman. Pretty prescient point actually.

>>20460868
What is the lesson to be learnt from this Proust, or the Faulkner thread before it?

>>20455434

https://imgur.com/a/CYe8ofQ

>>20460877
>What is the lesson to be learnt from this Proust, or the Faulkner thread before it?
That Borges was spot-on in Pierre Menard. Look at this post from the Proust thread:
>If you want to evoke the sense of childhood nostalgia and fears you need to be more generic or go all out like Proust.
>> the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor,
>This is a good example, it yanks the reader out of any nostalgia they are feeling since almost no one will have experienced those details, their nostalgia is not the narrators, at best you replace nostalgia with empathy.

>>20461008
Ah yes, if only Proust had consulted an anime board, then maybe he would have been respected as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, and remembered specifically for his skill at evoking childhood.

>>20456688
Gays

What are gays for?
Gays are in our butts.

They come, they rape us
Time and time over.
We are to be soaked in cum:
Who would rape us but gays?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

>>20456688
Ah is unnecessary and messes with the flow.
Final three lines feel unfinished: poem should be two or three times longer, based on the feeling of those lines. In other words, add a story to the philosophy; add an anecdote to the statement.

>>20461437
>final four lines unchanged
massive kek

>>20461430
That doesn’t work because he’s not appealing to his own ability, but a man most people consider in the same league as Proust. Borges is probably more respected on average.

The problem with poetry is that all poems sound the same.
It’s an inherently limited medium. When it’s basically a requirement of your medium that you have to work in a series of short little lines that have only a tenuous logical connection to each other, then there are only a couple emotional effects and aesthetic impressions that are really possible - the default wistful melancholic mood of most poetry, or maybe if you’re lucky, an eclectic outburst of mania.
People who think that poetry provides privileged access to the most sublime realms of the aesthetic are quite wrong - in fact it’s the exact opposite that’s true. Accessing the full range of possible emotional states in writing REQUIRES subtly refined concepts arranged in a logical structure that unfolds over time - i.e. prose. This is why Nietzsche’s prose works are far more profound and aesthetically beautiful than any poetry.
Of course there are “poems” like The Iliad, but I’m not sure how works like that can be meaningfully distinguished from what we now call prose. I know the ancient Greek is written in dactylic hexameter, but there’s no rule that says that prose can’t conform to meter as well.

>>20461495
But that's not the point. Tolstoy didn't like Shakespeare. There are plenty of great writers who didn't like other great writers. But you could literally post anyone's writing on this board and you will always get largely the same response, which is negative. I've tested it with Faulkner, Proust, Yeats, and Larkin, and the response is always the same. If you posted some poems or paragraphs from your favourite writers, I can guarantee you would get the same response. Why? Because no one on this board has a clue what they're talking about, so they just act as critical and cynical as possible, because it makes them feel as it they're clever.

>>20461430
>>20461564
>There are plenty of great writers who didn't like other great writers
That wasn't my point in bringing up Borges at all (I don't even know where he stood on Proust). Pierre Menard is a short story about some guy (Pierre Menard) who writes the novel Don Quixote verbatim in the 20th century. This bit:
>The contrast in styles is equally striking. The archaic style of Menard -who is, in addition, not a native speaker of the language in which he writes- is somewhat affected. Not so the language of his precursor, who employs the Spanish of his time with complete naturalness.
reminded me of the post I quoted. Anons likely do go out of their way to be edgy, but you can't write In Search of Lost Time, The Sound and the Fury or Larkin's poems nowadays and expect them to be regarded the same way as the originals. I think Frater and that anon in the other thread (though he hasn't read Swann's way in a while) had very legitimate and understandable reactions to your posts.

>>20461549
Would you call his prose a prolonged outburst of mania rooted in concepts?

>>20461564
It’s because literature, art in general, is a lot of smoke and mirrors. At the end of the day there’s no text that’s “inherently” profound or beautiful (on a purely “aesthetic” level, divorced from the expression of true propositions). It’s ultimately all made up, a matter of taste. There’s no one who “knows what they’re talking about” because there’s nothing to know.
Experiencing “great art” is a kind of social ritual, analogous to primitive ancestor worship. We stand in awe of the great artist and the great work and we feel uplifted that humanity is capable of such feats. In order to provide this kind of enjoyment to us, the artist must occupy a specific place in the historical narrative, as ratified by the appropriate institutions. That’s why a random unknown text (unknown to you) can never provoke the same types of feelings that a text by a known Great Artist does, because these feelings are dependent on the social status of the text rather than its inherent properties.
I’ve been listening to Todd McGowan’s lectures on Lacan and he brought up a great example that shows how this fits into Lacan’s theory that enjoyment is always vicarious through The Other. McGowan’s example was that, “when I’m enjoying reading Hegel, it’s never just a pure enjoyment of the content of the book. There’s always a background thought like, wow Hegel was so smart, I wonder what it would be like to talk with Hegel, etc”. This kind of vicarious enjoyment is only possible through a socially-certified Great Figure, and not through random anonymous postings on 4chan.

>>20461564
Nah this isn’t true, it’s more people have a wide range of tastes and those considered the most popular simply aren’t the most tasty, example I don’t care one bit for Faulkner, Proust you only have in translation which guess what, destroys the majority of his prose style and even then I consider Huysmans a superior stylist, yeats I absolutely despise with a burning passion for using his esotericism as a prop and not living up to his blakean influence, and Larkin is directly in the 1950 current of poetry I always shit on, why do I mention all of this? Because I’ve offered anons a ton, I mean a ton, of excerpts from authors who aren’t famous at all who I love, and I’ve seen many anons enjoy and get into the prose and verse of these writers, not because clout because they’re not famous enough, but because the rarity of finding very well designed work. Example I don’t believe for a moment you get any credit for reading Clark Ashton smith with anyone, yet everyone I’ve shilled him to has enjoyed his verse and prose works, everyone I’ve gotten to read aloysius Bertrand (who I consider a far superior stylist to Proust) has again loved their work regardless of their popularity or position.

Your yeats thread is too obvious, your Proust thread doesn’t make sense because he requires build up and again by giving a translation you’ve robbed him of his power, and again when asked you said there’s not a lot going on in that Larkin poem.

Anons have differing tastes, the predominant two strands you’ll find are a taste for more edgy and/or post modern works, and a strong bend towards classicism on the other half. Of course modernists aren’t going to be well appreciated unless they’re the edgiest of the bunch or the most striking of the bunch, and this is aesthetics we’re talking about why shouldn’t that be considered?

Your problem OP is confusing your taste and academic consideration of what’s popular with what the common person would enjoy and esteem, and as I will argue any day, from around 1890-1950, poetry and prose becomes incestual academically and not worth reading by vast majority with again, a few exceptions. (Who whenever I’ve shilled them here though they’re not famous, people have enjoyed highly.)

>>20461695
>>20461704
Which one am I supposed to believe

>>20461688
My reaction was in line with what I always say when approaching poets from this period, I still argue that the reason OP posted the works that he did, is he felt they radiated a sense of amateurness, why else would he pick them?

>>20461495
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>20461704
You are a retarded faggot with shit taste who obviously has not read Proust, you dity ESL wop

>>20461710
Subjectivity and relational context aren’t things I disagree with, however laws like rhythm being rhythmical, melody being melodic, rhyme being satisfying when used properly, these aren’t things I believe are very arguable. I’ve written an autistic amount on the topic of aesthetics but I’ll spare the thread the spam.

>>20461718
wouldn’t calling me a non-French speaker make more sense in the context?

>>20461723
Nope, you are a diry ESL wop living in Brooklyn. Wish I still lived there or I would kick your ass. Possibly the most insipid poster on this board whose nauseating, solecistic posts are you just being a faggot, writing “I I I I I I I I I, ME ME ME ME ME ME ME MEM”

>>20461729
Oh so I’m living rent free inside your Brain, got you. Let me add a couple more i’s and Me’s to the post, just to twist the blade a bit more.

>>20461734
ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL

>>20461734
You do kind of sound like an ESL though. There’s a certain friction to your posts that makes them unpleasant to read. Which is unfortunate, given their length.

>>20461753
Eh, not an esl by any means, I try to avoid putting any stylistic thought into my posts and just go relatively fast, usually trying to imitate speech if possible.

>>20461766
Is English your native language?

>>20461766
ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL ESL

>>20461774
It is, kek.