/lit/ - Literature

I think that good poetry exists within the context of a tradition and the modernists inaugurated a radical break with tradition. The effects of this break are more pervasive than you think. Not even 100 years ago, the bulk of an English literature curriculum would be poetry and drama. Today, it’s prose. The break opened the door to allow the novel to replace the poem, and that’s more or less what happened. I mean, even most literature nerds have had basically no exposure to poetry at all. You’re totally on your own.

>>22792521
Jews

>>22792521
because you won't write it.
>>22781524

It’s stupid but in fact the way the words are laid out on the page makes a huge difference for the reading experience. Not just the rhythmic effect but the visual effect: the words themselves are an image. Is it a cheap effect? You bet. And yet it’s extremely useful

>>22792521
There are no more Muses.

>>22792521
>>22792536
I could ramble about this for hours, and I have, but I think that it's both worse than you think and not as bad, and if you study the actual Modernists you will be able to see why.

>>22792677
Could you be any more vague? Just say what you mean and let’s actually talk about it. Please.

>>22792521
Banananana two and two
Wrapped together
In red tape

>>22792677
I just tend to get caught up in expounding in a way that wastes a lot of my time and then nobody ends up engaging with it anyway - not saying it's necessarily worth engaging with, but either way it is time-consuming and stressful for me.

Basically my point is that the tradition was walking wounded and ignoring it would've only been a way to continue producing pale Edwardian imitations of genuine poetry. Modernism at least acknowledges the problem and points us towards it, and its fragmentary nature is an outgrowth of the real, lived world of the author; an attempt to reproduce products of a lived world one has not actually experienced will always fall flat, will always ring hollow and false, when it comes to the telling details.

>>22793156
Fuck, replied to myself lol. Meant for >>22792847

>>22792521
Poetry is lame and gay
The essence of poetry is some fancy dude sitting in a chair saying line after line with an affected tone and pausing over and over again like that means something
Now throw some chords and a bassline under it and it becomes a lot less gay

>>22793156
You could be right. Ultimately the death of poetry is, like the rest of art's arc over the last century, tied up with the spiritual death of our culture. Note that the Arabs and Chinese still memorize and declaim their classics and quote stray lines to recall whole works.

>>22793156
Idk why you just assume the tradition was wounded. The modernists wounded it. I despise TS Eliot for writing so much defense of carrying on a tradition, only to go and completely break with all tradition and leave no tradition behind. That’s modernism in a nut shell. TS Eliot is why poetry sucks now. It’s not whoever you think wounded it.

>>22793199
>Note that the Arabs and Chinese still memorize and declaim their classics and quote stray lines to recall whole works.
That doesn't mean they're producing classics now or that they aren't soulless shells of their former selves either

>>22793180
The essence of poetry is the musicality of language. The fact that what you said is what you and most people (including poets for some reason) view poetry as is why it is gay trash now.

People are so disappointing. An old friend reached out to me only never reply to my reply.

>>22793218
Literary tradition is not an ethereal entity that exists apart from culture as a whole. You're aware that culture changed a bit between the Modernists' touchstone (Dante) and their own time, are you not? Have you not heard about a little incident that went down back in (17)'89?

The Modernists' problem with the Romantics was that they tried to do what you are trying to do, which is to live in "the tradition", i.e. in books, not in the world, and to write poetry drawn from that pseudo-life. The Romantics wrote lots of pretty stuff, sure, but it did not have real weight, it was all fantasy.

Also Eliot wasn't a "lone gunman" lol, there were many others in the movement and he drew his inspiration from considerably earlier French writers.

>>22793199
Yeah they are better custodians for sure. As the other anon said idk that it helps them much in terms of producing anything new.

>>22793218
I challenge you to prove that the modernists did this singlehandedly rather than responding to social realities of their time.

>>22793227
True, and both of those cultures are pretty spiritually dead. Maybe Egypt isn't.

>>22793238
I live in the midwest USA, nobody wants to hear poetry. There's something sickening about enjoying the way words feel that much to people within the culture. It feels disgusting, vain, masturbatory. Poetry is allowed in music, and somewhat over text as meme culture (I find it pretty gay and twitter). There's still the way different ways of speaking (strong, soft, seductive, cute, casual) reflect the speakers intentions and qualities , not to mention the differences in speaking among various ethnic groups

>>22792521
Because the 1970s were only 20 years ago, Anon.

>>22793278
Already basically figured out that you live in the ass-end of culture death and are proud of it but didn‘t expect you to throw in your perverse sexual repression just for good measure.

>>22793289
>ass-end of culture death
Lol what would be the front end?

>>22793292
1776 I guess

>>22793304
Kek I'm not going to argue with you. I want to travel the world and learn a few languages once I finish my degree and get big boy money

>>22793278
Interestingly self-aware perspective, appreciate the honesty. If you're ever capable of transcending the prejudice, you're probably smart and sensitive enough to develop a serious appreciation.

Fwiw, poetry started out as music in every culture. The perception of these sorts of things is very, very heavily culturally conditioned and it is not something one can form meaningful judgments about with limited information. I've consistently had to restructure my whole view of the literary world as I've continued to learn more and more.

>>22793218
>only to go and completely break with all tradition and leave no tradition behind
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Entirely clueless.

>>22793260
I only mention Eliot because he’s the most egregious example considering he wrote essays about the role of the individual poet in regard to tradition (and turned out to be a hypocrite). My reply was not some defense of romantic poets. My reply merely pointed out that the romantic poets bequeathed a rich tradition of poetry. Eliot didn’t. Nobody picked up the torch that Eliot handed off. He and his friends destroyed it.

>>22793266
What would proof even be? Of course there is no proof. I’m making an assertion about historical development of a particular craft. It’s like saying “prove painting changed since Da Vinci”. Okay. Just look at it.

>>22793401
Great reply. Very substantive. Surely, you know your stuff.

Because they stopped making it rhyme

>>22792521
The English language simply isn't built for poetry

Modernism wasn’t just a trend in poetry. The modernists pushed in general for a radical break from tradition, even when they advocated for using the tradition in a suitable way as Eliot did. The modernists are responsible for transformation of education into something other than the classical model, for the core of literature being poetry and drama, as was mentioned, for the replacement of the canonical classics with more modern works, a fight which was finally won in the 1990s. Literary modernism in general was indeed a disaster and extremely decadent. That modernist poets made valid points about the romantics or whatever is completely besides the point.

>>22793260
>The Modernists' problem with the Romantics was that they tried to do what you are trying to do, which is to live in "the tradition", i.e. in books, not in the world, and to write poetry drawn from that pseudo-life. The Romantics wrote lots of pretty stuff, sure, but it did not have real weight, it was all fantasy.
This is so fucking gay. Why writer shouldn't write from fantasy? Why should we give more importance to experience? My inner world is more important than the outer.

Borges and weird fiction pissed on to these soulless modernist cuckolds.

>>22792521
It's been replaced by songs. Why wants to hear a dry poem when you could have it set to music? The only reason poetry ever became separated from song is because it became easier to preserve words than sounds with the advent of writing.

>>22792521
Here's some poetty I translated for you:

The third letter from Paul the apostle to the corinthians

I, who am supposed to die
Dwell with thee whom the lord hath giveth
Eternal life

And the Lord giveth all
Eternal life
But eternal life isn't real
Sorry
But, Eternal life

>>22794811
Whoops ignore the end

>>22792554
The poetry general is full of people who think poetry is what's in OP's pic.

>>22794800
95% of songs are about love, and usually just falling in love or falling out of love. Not to mention they're completely mindless and rely on repetitive jingles rather than something well written.

>>22793528
>He and his friends destroyed it.
I think you’re putting way too much blame on him and figures like Pound. Sure, did they possibly open the way by being very respected, influential poets who seemed to show people, “Hey, poems approaching or employing free verse and fragmented impressionist-style imagery can actually be critically acclaimed and great poetry!” Maybe, but the way they did it was very meticulous, they were very learned writers and classicists, and had a great feel for aural quality. When they broke free of some of the traditional constraints of meter, it wasn’t out of “laziness”, or because they were INCAPABLE of writing good metrical verse (they were capable of this and did do it when they wanted to or as beginning poets), but because they felt they could expand the ranges of poetry beyond the traditional constraints, while still having a great respect for them.

I think the issue was mediocre people taking their seemingly looser, more free-form stuff as examples without being as deeply studied in the classics and reverent of tradition (while in other ways breaking from it) as they were. As the cliche goes, the original great modernists like Eliot and Pound “knew the rules before they broke them”. I think it’s lazy to blame mediocre imitators for looking at them then going, “Aha, I can write poetry like this too, and without expending as much effort, care and study as they did!” This is something that has happened in modern English-language poetry, I’ll concede that, but as posters like >>22793260 properly point out, what were poets like Eliot and Pound to do? Try to create stale lukewarm diluted rosewater versions of old Romantic poetry stuffed full of cliches, in a way that would be D.O.A. in modern times?

>>22795446
Excellent post, I completely agree.

>>22793966
U fokin wot m8

>>22792521
There has been a lot of fantastic arabic poetry.

>>22794616
Literary modernism was, I’ll say again, a *reaction* to *massive* changes in society and culture. And I think you are conflating different groups and strains of thought that should not be conflated.

>>22794681
I’m not entirely unsympathetic to this pov but the fact is that, as Pound realized so clearly, the earliest roots of literature lie in experience. It’s nice to say “fantasy is great and we should live in it”, but we all have a little voice in the back of our head that says “hmm, this seems fake and gay” whenever we encounter something that’s a little too perfect, a little too tailored to our desires and expectations. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with creativity and imagination - the Modernists absolutely loved Dante and Chaucer, both boundlessly imaginative authors that nevertheless kept their work grounded in a feeling of verisimilitude. This is also a huge part of what people have always praised in Shakespeare.

>>22792521
Always thought this lol

>>22795446
Thanks for taking the time to explain this. The important thing, though, is that they didn’t just get good enough and then decide it was time to leave formal constraint behind (ok, Eliot kinda did talk about this in his reflections on poetry vs prose); generally speaking it was about, as I said above, reaction to external circumstance. Mallarmé, perhaps, was doing it more purely for the sake of exploration, but even then he only found himself in that realm of pure aesthetic play because of his deep awareness of the decadence of his age. If he had looked around him and seen the proverbial ship of state, or of culture, or society, happily sailing along with a robust tailwind, he wouldn’t have needed to write his shipwreck.

good thread

>>22793355
>>22793238
>>22793180
Could poetry and music be properly joined once more? Poetry today uses neither rhythm nor rhyme, and the lyrical “music” is anything but poetic. Imagine a genius of rhythm in both words as Dante and instruments as Bach writing an epic.

>>22792521


WHAT GOOD POETRY WAS MADE IN YEAR 1972?

>>22796004
>genius in both words and music
Richard Wagner

>>22797260
I’m not familiar with him. Did he ever write a poem with music meant to accompany it?

>>22797267
It takes 4 days to watch.

>>22797267
he's the quintessential example of music and words combined right, all of his operas nearly are self written

>>22797260
Shit, I meant to reply to >>22795776

>>22797260
Shit, I meant to reply to >>22797165

>>22797165
>genius in both words and music
John Lennon and Paul McCartney

>>22792521
There really, REALLY has been. Do more digging. I'm serious. You won't be disappointed if you look hard enough. Here: I'll give you a few which I consider to be worthwhile. Take care, these are my valuables, OP.

>Mark Strand
poetryfoundation.org/poets/mark-strand
voetica.com/poem/12227
youtube.com/watch?v=kw6dAZwg24c
>Tracy K. Smith
poetryfoundation.org/poets/tracy-k-smith
>Henry Taylor
poetryfoundation.org/poets/henry-taylor#tab-poems
poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=35971
>Vernon Scannell
poetryfoundation.org/poets/vernon-scannell
>Dylan Thomas
>Seamus Heaney
poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney

And there are many others of all sorts, quite nearly.

>>22793180
Poetry is the highest form of literature. That is precisely why the gap between a great poet and a crap one is so astronomically huge. The essence of poetry is to say as much as possible with as few words as possible - high information density; and like philosophy, all great poets are in conversation with one another and engaging in introspective self-observation. It is an abstract and introverted artform - more literary than philosophy, more abstract than literature, less visual than painting, and yet somehow at the epicenter of all three. Tread softly, boy! You walk upon the stones of our forefathers - without whom, none of us would stand here. Not a man!

>>22792536
This is an interesting point. Even if I'm unsure that's the reason for scarcity. I think it's probably much simpler than that - television, video games, film, and pornography.

>>22797339
And nevermind Thomas. He lived earlier than I thought he did.

>>22797339
Post your favourite poem by one of the poets you posted.

>>22797398
It's difficult to choose a favorite, but I'll recommend one poem by each of them. And although I'm going to recommend a poem by Scanell from 1949 - just because it is good - he kept writing all the way up to 2007, and like Ashbery, his poetry stayed good. Speaking of Ashbery, he should be on the list and my recommendation for him - my favorite of his later poems, is called Chinese Whispers.

>Mark Strand
Black Maps
>Tracy K. Smith
Sci-Fi
>Henry Taylor
Taking to the Woods
>Vernon Scannell
Pain
>Seamus Heaney
Blackberry Picking
>John Ashbery
Chinese Whispers

There's plenty more to be read. Pic related even.

RS Thomas' best work came towards the end of his life, in the 90s

Poetry requires command of language and almost no one has enough of that for it to be commercially successful. Because it's impossible to be commercially successful those with talent who would have in the past gone to poetry end up going to other mediums.

Granted there are virtually no mediums that are easily financially successful. Not poetry, not prose, not film or TV.

>>22797864
I'm not sure I see the point of free verse, it appears vastly inferior.

>>22798161
I'm not sure I could argue a point to free verse - I don't know enough about meter to try, but each of those poems contains interesting ideas, presented with skilled command of language, and powerful imagery - each with a distinct writer's voice. Perhaps they may not be to your tastes, but I think they're good and I think people of the future will be able to find writers they find interesting and who they feel exemplify our times in a good way.

>>22797958
No one goes into poetry for money. Commercial success is overrated.

>>22798243
>I don't know enough about meter to try
So you're another one of those people who know nothing about poetry. Free verse really was a mistake.

>>22797267
Yes, Richard Wagner is exactly that. Start with Das Rheingold if you're interested.

>>22797260
>>22798323
Moliere was also meant to be in music and sometimes even danse (made by Lully or Couperin or others at the time but some others composers also rewrote music for it later).

>>22792521
Ponge, Du Bouchet, B. Noël, Jaccottet, Bonnefoy, Sanguineti, Zanzotto, Cagnone, E. Bowers, R. Edson, C. Coolidge, A. Barnett

>>22798161
He's writing in an approximation of saxon verse, without hinging too hard on all the alliteration and unavailable linguistic tricks that make it corny when you try to do it in modern english. I'd actually argue strict meter is unsuitable for english and was merely an attempt to ape the clout of the latin and french greats that dominated. We have an established idiom of verse, which is what the modernists went back to and pulled from. Thanks Hopkins.

>>22792536
Do you think that, as modernism becomes the tradition in the future, there could be a resurgence of poetry in that tradition? Or is it prose from here on out? Intend to view the insurgence of prose poems as an intermediary shift from prose back to poetry. But it could just be that this is just the form of poetry in a "modern tradition."

>>22797864
>1957 poem
The OP says "in the last 50 years"

>>22798589
>On /lit/erature forum
>Can't even read a post completely
NGMI

>>22798627
>"Post a favourite poem by one of the poets you mentioned"
>post Ted Hughes who wasn't mentioned
>poem was written before "the last 50 years" as said in the OP
I'm not sure why you're trying to trick us with this Ted Hughes poem

>>22795776
>“hmm, this seems fake and gay” whenever we encounter something that’s a little too perfect,
Okay but what would you say about Borges and weird fiction and magical realism?

But can we at least agree art must be based in both fantasy and experience too mean something? Discarding myth for mundane/experience is foolishness and artist is sabotaging his own material by doing that.

>>22798666
Nta but mythologizing internal experience is the part most dependent on the tradition no? What mythology would a modernist poet draw from to describe what they are trying to convey? Techno-paganism? Transhumanism? I don't think those choices have much of a tradition to draw from to make much meaningful poetry anon, but I'll try.

>>22798686
By mythology I mean the 6000+ years of humanity with Gods and supernatural stuff like that. To discard that is same as chopping off your clit or penis one night before your honey moon for an artist.

>>22793317
godspeed

>>22798714
Yeah I got that. What Im trying to say is that thats what the moderns got rid of, but that doesn't mean that they didn't creat (or more aptly, are creating) some new mythology that can be used to beautifully craft poetry in a way that makes it not dead but sleeping until the tradition can ripen a bit. Those of us that hold the view, which I am sympathetic to but also avoid holding as dogma, that the beauty of poetry has to come from something before tend to be blind the beauty of what can be made out of something new which, down the line, becomes a new tradition capable of producing profound beauty. If we are not blind to this idea then the way forward is clear, we have to help ripen the new tradition. Even if our poems are appreciated by dogmatists who can only appreciate the produce, and not the cultivation.

>>22792521
free verse got out of controlled, democratisation of culture allows the uneducated to degrade it

>>22797339
>The essence of poetry is to say as much as possible with as few words as possible - high information density;
retard take. aestheticism and the possibility to create effects using language are the reason poetry exists. For example Christabel is not dense in terms of information, yet it is a masterpiece.
also consider this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Interpretation

>>22798765
*Are not appreciated

>>22797864
this isn't very good, its just so mediocre

>>22794616
You’re genuinely fucking stupid and have no idea what modernist poetry is.

>>22797165
you mean Wagner?

>>22797267
>>22798323
don't start with the ring, start with Tristan und Isolde. It is by far the most accessible of his operas.

>>22792521
There's plenty, it's just that a great poet whose output is all worthy rather than a scattergun smattering of various levels of quality is rare.

>>22798943
then post it
>rather than a scattergun smattering of various levels of quality is rare
You mean like Byron?

>>22798260
That's a stupid assumption. Having humility is something you could use a lot more of. I've no doubt read a lot more than you, or you wouldn't need my recs for modern poets, so on that basis alone I can say I know poetry, but people like you have the foolish habit of forming strong opinions despite of your lack of knowledge. I am the opposite. My opinions will remain quite loose on the matter, until I feel I'm approaching expertise.

Now, stop being such a flaming pseud and just read. You non-readers really are a cancer to this board.

>>22799125
Some has already been posted. You didn't read it - because you're a psued. You made no comments on the work - because you didn't read it - because you're a pseud. You're the Bible fool who takes no delight in sensible answers, but only in revealing your own mind.

>>22799504
calm down faggot. Now post your favorite

>>22798796
>this
>read only the image
Fucking lazy ass pseuds. And you expect your unargued opinion to be taken seriously? Toss yourself from the nearest window, and if you live, consider it a chance to change.

>>22798666
I like Borges a lot. I don’t know much about weird fiction but it’s a genre so it’s not an issue imo. The problem the modernists had with romanticism was that it falsified the *texture* of experience, not that it talked about things that aren’t literally real (again, Dante!). Discarding myth is not at all what they wanted - myth is exactly the thing for which they recognized the need, because myth is a way of making the abstract tangible. And it is also very “real” in the sense that it is filtered through an entire culture over generations, and the sorts of things that I mentioned, that don’t have the ring of truth, are stripped away to leave a pure and resonant core.

>>22793180
>The essence of poetry is some fancy dude sitting in a chair saying line after line with an affected tone and pausing over and over again like that means something

lol poetry fags btfo'd

jk i like poetry but this was funny

>>22799494
I'm sorry, I thought you were one of the many idiots who knows nothing about metre so churns out shite free verse.

>>22797864
Lol

We do have poetry today.

It's called rap and hip hop.

You're coping if you disagree, unironically. This is coming from someone who listens to classical music and 70s punk. I'm not a big rap listener.

>>22792521
>typography isn't important in poetry
smoothbrain take

>>22800207
lol

>>22799504
>some have already been posted
Exactly one poem has been posted in this thread, and it's over fifty years old

.

>>22800707
2/10

>>22792521
Singer songwriters took over.

>>22800928
But they write worse poetry, if you even want to consider it that

>>22798560
Tolkien managed to do it. And sure it sounds a little lilty and sing-song, but it works well enough for what it needs to be.

>>22800656
Multiple poets have been named

>>22800928
Song lyrics are not poetry

>>22802066
Yeah, but how many poems have been posted?

>>22793180
>Poetry is lame and gay
Easily 99%+ of poetry is. You're absolutely right. But every now and then, there is an actually talented poet. Not just your average pretentious retard. No, actual talent. And this guy shits out the most impressive combination of words to have been uttered in the language he writes in. And it's a masterpiece. And it's buried below lame and gay poetry.

>>22802619
Rembrandt schreef poëzie? Vind er niet direct iets van terug, enkel gedichten toegewijd aan hem. Stuur hier eens een paar aub

>>22802706
1. I don't speak Dutch.
2. No, he was not a poet.
I should've added "pic unrelated", my bad

>>22802590
The guy picked specific poems from the poets as well. I don't necessarily think they're all good but you're being a bad-faith faggot.

>>22803439
Why doesn't he post the poems in the thread?
That's right, because they're shit.

>>22800656
False. You're just skimming for images BECAUSE YOURE A LAZY SHIT JUST LIKE THE REST!

>>22792541
Yeah probably

I will be the most excellent author of poetry in the world

>>22803793
>images?
>on an imageboard?
You're retarded

>>22805688
I believe in you

>>22805688
you go girl!

>>22795446
Maybe I am, but the fact is that the modernists were aware of this tradition and didn’t preserve or nurture it. They at best tried to modify it in a way that left basically nothing workable behind and I think Eliot’s essay on tradition and individual talent actually speaks to that perfectly. I almost don’t see how anyone could disagree that the modernists did not leave behind a tradition like their forerunners did. Do you realize there was a time where it was somewhat common for poets to take on apprentices and teach them the craft? Eliot and Pound didn’t do that. They just kind of hobsnobbed with each other, giving critique, boosting each others’ careers, and all that. We look at that and go “wow, that’s traditional” but it’s not. It only looks that way to us because we have so little to work with. The actual form and flow of their poetry is not really the issue. It’s the intent, and the lack of concern for leaving that big tree of tradition still standing. They were too concerned with their branches and clusters of branches. So what were they supposed to do? Well, if not recover what they could at least strive to pass the torch. Neither of them did that. At all. They did not even try.

>>22795776
So what? Whether it was a reaction or not is not important. Any one reaction can seek different ends. I’m arguing their ends were bad for poetry. I don’t see how I’m conflating these poets. This was the zeitgeist of their time. It was mass movements of people radically concerned with novelty, innovation, and me, me, me (and my friends) but not the tradition. For T.S. Eliot, tradition was never anything more than a launching pad for him to propel himself to fame. You see that clearly if you read between the lines of what he wrote on poetry, and especially regarding how to distinguish oneself. Now, there’s something to be said for the fact that once a poet is talking about and writing about a tradition, it should be asked if that’s because the tradition has already been lost. And that’s fair. But what I’m saying is that these guys did not even try to do what was right. They tried to be novel, and innovative, and to distinguish themselves. If you think any of them ever wasted a moment of thought on poets of the 21st century, they didn’t. The world started and stopped with them, and everything that came before was just the ammunition they needed to launch their bombs.

>>22793260
False dichotomy. I can either live in the books or live in the dystopian real world? Here’s an idea. Live in history. Live in the real world but carry what preceded it. Pass it on. If there’s a torch of tradition, you have an obligation to pass it on and not to radically change or innovate it because, simply put, you’re not that special. Do you think in the grand scheme anyone will remember or even care about the modernists? Mostly no. We care about these poets as canonical strictly because we are even more modernists (and egotistical) than they were. But nobody else is, and one day we won’t be either. Virgil wasn’t remembered because he criticized his era’s romantics. He was remembered because he recovered and protected something older than himself and passed it on. Failure to recognize that is a failure to recognize poetry as more than something like a mere display for a literary fine art gallery.

>>22797165
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a small subculture of zoomers that are getting into “poetry” because their favorite musician talks about reading and writing poetry, but the music and the poetry is mostly bad. It’s a big problem because one of the big reasons poetry isn’t popular is because it’s never performed or recited.

>>22797267
Yes…in German.

So you won’t get it and won’t pretend to you’re not a pseud like the people replying to you are.

>>22792521
The Civil Rights Act was white Americans deciding that they had no culture or history and that the entirety of western civilization exists to worship niggers.

From that moment onwards it has been socially unacceptable for white people to produce actual art, they have to produce kitsch so that shitskins can keep up and be culturally relevant.

This is inescapable and no amount of kvetching is going to make it not so, you will not produce art again as a culture until you give up on bootlicking for niggers. It's that simple.

>>22806906
The civil rights act was a civilizational disaster and I also believe that the civil rights activist has been elevated to a quasi-heroic symbol in this country but I don’t see how it relates to literature. Most people have no idea how to read poetry, let alone appreciate it and write it. So they don’t even get to the point where they can make good things but it’s socially unacceptable to do so.

>>22806697
>Well, if not recover what they could at least strive to pass the torch. Neither of them did that. At all. They did not even try.
What? They're both known specifically for having expended an uncommon amount of time and effort, perhaps to the detriment of their own body of work, in helping other, younger (or in the case of WCW, not literally younger but certainly less established) poets get published. Absolutely baffling statement.
>the lack of concern for leaving that big tree of tradition still standing.
Do you know what happens to trees and plants? Branches die still connected to the trunk. They need to be pruned to free up resources for the new branches that still have a chance. Modernism was an attempt at cutting off some of those heavy dead branches and returning to the *roots*. Trees also need continuous water, soil, etc., not just the previously existing body of the tree.

>>22806707
This is just pointless speculation about intent and even if it was right it wouldn't matter because what matters is the product and whether or not it works as poetry. I think it does, you think it doesn't. But most writers in history have written for self-aggrandizement on some level, it's a total non-issue.

>>22806715
>Live in history.
History is a book. It is not experiential, we are not immanent in medieval Europe or ancient Greece. We do not and cannot know what it is like to *live* in a culturally intact and cohesive society. What the modernists did was supremely historically aware in its content but the form was rooted in their direct experience, as it had to be in order to have any weight. I'm sure plenty of poets continued right on trying to keep Victorianism alive into the 20th century but we have never heard of them or felt compelled to read them because they are not in any way connected to experiential reality.
>Virgil
>In the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendour of diction.
>Samuel Johnson
Long, long before the modernists, it was obvious enough to an intelligent observer how much was lost in mere imitation.

>>22806290
>/lit/
>looks for images to read
No; literally, literarily you.

>>22792521
jesus fucking christ, few things exemplify "/lit/ doesn't read" than a thread talking about contemporary poetry. all of you assholes are pontificating and proclaiming and bemoaning and wailing and you can't even name five contemporary poets. you can't even name three magazines that only publish poetry. none of you know what you're fucking talking about. all you do is bitch about le heckin' form and whine about le based rhyme because the last poem you read was in high school. you'll accept experimentation in prose, sure -- you'll swallow a plotless novel, or a story written from five different points of view, a play that jumps around in time, an essay that intermixes photography with prose with art, but the second a poem doesn't rhyme, the very fucking second a poem isn't a tidy little sonnet or ghazal or villanelle, it's the end of the fucking world and poetry's fallen so far and it's all shit and how could the tradition end like this. jesus christ none of you know what the fuck you're talking about. nobody in this thread knows what they're talking about, except for >>22797339 . when it comes to poetry /lit/ is beyond retarded. irredeemably moronic. I just don't get it. I don't understand why everyone worships novels that break from the realist tradition but shit themselves when a poem does it. you are all fucking idiots. except for that one guy. go to poetryfoundation.org and don't come back until you've read five hundred poems

>>22808206
Yes. I came to /lit/ to read what other people post, especially if they post poetry. I did not come here to google what someone else tells me to google

>>22808739
>here's a starting place. if you want to learn more, google these things and read
>NO! I WON'T GO READ! THINK FOR ME!!!!!
I'm not even who you're responding to but christ you're a tard lmao. so arrogant and presumptuous. I just know you're goddamn intolerable irl

>>22792521
Plenty of good poetry from the last fifty years.

>>22808814
If the poems are so good, why don't you post them itt?
That's right, because they're shit.

>>22797864
It’s a poem about a farmer seething at a hawk in the rain and hoping it dies? Either I’m missing some metaphor here or this is extremely mediocre... Solid prose, but what’s the point, nothing happens and the milquetoast emotions on display aren’t exciting.

>>22809914
>milquetoast
Cringe

>>22809932
Name another word for “too mild to be interesting” dumbass

>>22792541
>>22805361
David Berman last good poet

hi, I'm a poetrylet yet I would like to learn about it, where can I start? Any book recs ? Any good online sources?

>>22808413
Any good american poets you’d recommend? i’m not very well acquainted with contemporary american poetry. Last generation I know of are the language poets.

>>22810461