/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13987277]

I've read a bit of poetry and I haven't read a single thing that had any emotional effect on me. Do you guys have anything that might work? I had this thread a long time ago and people posted but there was nothing that worked. The only thing that counts as poetry that moves me is Leonard Cohen but it's probably just because of the music.

[Anonymous No.13987292]

>>13987277
You're probably just soulless and cynical.

[Anonymous No.13987293]

>>13987277
how does this make you feel:

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[Anonymous No.13987303]

This is what happens when you masturbate or have sex excessively. It makes you emotionally and mentally dull.

[Anonymous No.13987330]

>>13987292
Or maybe poetry is just garbage

[Anonymous No.13987337]

>>13987303
Yes masturbation makes you dull in a single art form but not all the other ones.

[Anonymous No.13987364]

>>13987293
nothing

[Anonymous No.13987371]

I know what you mean. Most poetry seems bland and unimpactful to me. This is the only poem I’ve read which has affected me emotionally.


October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.

But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?

[Anonymous No.13987420]

>>13987364
what about:

I'm not myself or the other
I'm something intermediate
A pillar on the bridge of boredom
That goes from me to the other

[Anonymous No.13987425]

>>13987330
>Am I the problem? No, thousands of years of poetry are the problem!

[Anonymous No.13987442]

>>13987425
You might be right. There is something wrong with my brain where poetry doesn't work.

[Anonymous No.13987451]

>>13987420
no :(

[Anonymous No.13987466]

>>13987277
>art is about emotional response
>>13987292
>art is for the soul and not for the spirit
subhumans

[Anonymous No.13987481]

>>13987466
cringe

[Anonymous No.13987491]

>>13987466
thanks for providing useful commentary to the thread

[Anonymous No.13987516]

>>13987277
how about this?

[Anonymous No.13987569]

>>13987516
nothing

[Anonymous No.13987580]

>>13987569
Try reading it out loud and slowly, not just like you're reading some slut's facebook posts.

[Anonymous No.13987596]

>>13987466
Based and solar pilled
>>13987481
>>13987491
USURA'S!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.13987608]

I feel similarly, the only real time a poem makes me feel anything is when I go back and read this old book of poems for little children that my mum bought me when I was maybe three or four years old.
Maybe because I actually memorised a bunch of them and used to recite them for fun I actually appreciated them as they're meant to be, poetry is meant to be spoken not read as people love to say

I also quite like the peom On A Portrait Of A Deaf Man, because I had to write an essay on it in school around the same time someone close to me had died (which the poem is also about, in part)

I'll never understand people who can just read entire poetry collections, are they just pretending to enjoy it?

[Anonymous No.13987619]

>>13987608
>are they just pretending to enjoy it?
No, they're not lol.

[Anonymous No.13987623]

To be fair, Leonard Cohen is top tier as far as songwriting goes. 'One of Us Cannot Be Wrong' and 'Suzanne' at least could stand as excellent poetry even without the music

[Anonymous No.13987630]

>>13987608
When they say read they mean read out loud and for themselves. At least that's what I do.

[Anonymous No.13987632]

[Anonymous No.13987646]

>>13987619
I am pretty certain that some people are doing that, but ok if you get genuine enjoyment (or fulfilment, affirmation, whatever) from just reading poetry collections like a novel that's great anon
>>13987630
Some of them maybe, others certainly not

[Anonymous No.13987659]

>>13987277
take the prosepill anon

>The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

[Anonymous No.13987671]

>>13987659
the prosepill is the default setting, though.

[Anonymous No.13987918]

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has been already in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

[Anonymous No.13987990]

>>13987277
Probably just lack imagination. Reading something means nothing if you do not expand it in your mind and feel it. Most poetry does nothing for me too but I assume I just have a poor understanding of it.

[Anonymous No.13988003]

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

[Anonymous No.13988031]

>>13987671
that's not true, verse predates prose

[Anonymous No.13988093]

>>13988031
Only because it's much easier to memorise.

[Anonymous No.13988106]

>>13988031
historically, yes. but in modern times people are more exposed to prose, hence why it's the default setting.

[Anonymous No.13988109]

>>13988003
This is the only one in the thread that works for me. Maybe just because it rhymes.

I think poetry is just too antiquated for them to mean anything to us. I tried reading William Blake and it was just boring.

[Anonymous No.13988119]

>>13987293
I honestly think this is a terrible poem, the end reads like he just gave up.

[Anonymous No.13988146]

>>13987293
Makes me retch internally.

[Anonymous No.13988156]

>>13987277
What about this?

https://youtu.be/lM9BMVFpk80

[Anonymous No.13988161]

Maybe try this

https://youtu.be/QMwNvzRKX64

[Anonymous No.13988502]

>>13988161
Who the fuck is the try hard reading this

[Anonymous No.13988585]

>>13988109
If you want rhyming poetry then here

Daniel Is Six

When Daniel is six
all people should know it:
the trees show it,
the winds blow it;
nothing will be quite the same:
even Daniel’s very name
will stretch and seem to make a sound
every time he writes it down
or squeezes it into the air
or combs it through his changing hair.

He was five
and will be seven.
There is nothing under heaven
more of miracle than that
except that Daniel one day sat
upon his bed and combed his hair
and dreamed of what was changing there.

[Anonymous No.13988592]

>>13988109
Also

April Inventory
By W. D. Snodgrass

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven’t learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I’d ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who’s trusted me
I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body’s hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

[Anonymous No.13988611]

New England tradwife Anne Bradstreet wrote this in the late 1600s, her genuine love for her husband warms me bitter heart

If ever two were one, then surely we
If ever man were loviid by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye woman if you can.

:)

[Anonymous No.13988615]

>>13987277
I think that >>13987292 is right, so you should read poetry for the soulless and cynical.

[Anonymous No.13988640]

>>13987277
This might do it for you OP

[Anonymous No.13988697]

>>13987277
I want to make reading a poem a daily habit of mine. I’ve read the epics (Paradise Lost, Iliad, Aeneid, Odyssey) but I want an anthology of poems or someone’s works to just start this habit with. Any reccomendations?

For background, I’m a burger bloomer Zoomer who loves Russian literature. Fire away anons.

[Anonymous No.13988751]

>>13988697
I've got a collection of Rumi and one of William Blake that do me well. I want to get some Fernando Pessoa as well after one of his hit me right in the soul. I don't know anything about poetry really I'm just going with what resonates

[Anonymous No.13988752]

>>13988109
>>13988585
Hey buddy how about tell them your not the OP so the thread doesn't change. Did nothing for me.

[Anonymous No.13988790]

>>13988697
The most portable and consumable poet is Dickinson. Yeats has a lot of short lyrics too although some of his longer stuff are his best. Blake's songs are short. Robert Frost has short lyrics but he also shines in his long dialogue poems. Plath has short to medium lyrics with condensed imagery but may be a bit too Modernist and surreal for a beginner. Countee Cullen has loads of short poems and is very accessible. Most of Elizabeth Bishop is one to two pages but she's very descriptive. ee cummings has a lot of short lyrics and love poems but you have to get over his formal experimentation. Millay has a lot of nice sonnets. You can read the Romantics like Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley from their shorter lyrics then moving over to their longer stuff. Donne mixes up between short and medium length poetry, but you have to get over the antiquated English- worth it though. Auden has loads of different types of poems, Larkin and Lowell as well. Lorine Niedecker, Hazel Hall, and Robert Francis are good short poets. Stevens alternates between long and short poetry but he has a high difficulty curve.

[Anonymous No.13988799]

>>13988751
The Keeper of Sheep II

When I look, I see clear as a sunflower.
I’m always walking the roads
Looking right and left,
And sometimes looking behind...
And what I see every second
Is something I’ve never seen before,
And I know how to do this very well...
I know how to have the essential astonishment
That a child would have if it could really see
It was being born when it was being born...
I feel myself being born in each moment,
In the eternal newness of the world...

I believe in the world like I believe in a marigold,
Because I see it. But I don’t think about it
Because to think is to not understand...
The world wasn’t made for us to think about
(To think is to be sick in the eyes)
But for us to see and agree with...

I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses...
If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is,
But because I love it, and that’s why I love it,
Because when you love you never know what you love,
Or why you love, or what love is...

Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not thinking...

(3/8/1914)

[Anonymous No.13988806]

Literature is not for you, then.

Go back to /mu/ and stay there.

Poetry is the only thing that matters in literature. Prose is degenerated poetry. If you can't see that, you're an idiot.

You are insensible to words. You may be sensible to sounds, colors, and forms, but are insensible to words. Therefore, you are like a deaf and illiterate man. Words are not for you. Get out of here fast.

[Anonymous No.13988807]

>>13988806
Poetry is the gayest form of writing

[Anonymous No.13988810]

>>13988751
No Room for Form by Rumi

On the night when you cross the street
from your shop and your house to the cemetery,

you will hear me hailing you from inside
the open grave, and you will realize
how we have always been together.

I am the clear consciousness-core
of your being, the same in ecstasy
as in self-hating fatigue.

That night, when you escape the fear of snakebite
and all irritation with the ants,
you will hear my familiar voice,
see the candle being lit,
smell the incense, the surprise meal
fixed by the lover inside all your other lovers.

This heart-tumult is my signal
to you igniting in the tomb.
So don't fuss with the shroud
and the graveyard road dust.

Those get ripped open and washed away
in the music of our finally meeting.

[Anonymous No.13988815]

>>13988790
Thanks broseph that's a helpful little guide

[Anonymous No.13988820]

>>13988807
Poetry is the manliest form of writing. The best poems are short, curt, and precise in their sentiment, much like curtness and precision used by your father when he slapped your scrawny ass for being such a pussy.

[Anonymous No.13988822]

>>13988807
All great writers exalted it as the highest. You have zero knowledge of literary history and are probably monolingual, American, and a man of protruding bosom.

Novelists, when they try to write poetry, fail ridiculously. Poets, when they try their hands at prose, become the greatest - Boccaccio, Cervantes, Goethe, Voltaire etc.

[Anonymous No.13988825]

>>13988822
Too bad no one remembers the poems of Boccaccio, Cervantes, and Voltaire.

[Anonymous No.13988832]

>>13988825
That's the point, you idiot. Prose is much easier.

[Anonymous No.13988838]

>>13988825
Everyone remembers the poetry of Boccaccio and Voltaire, by the way.

It's just another hole in your badly-conducted, American education.

Voltaire was translated by Pound himself.

[Anonymous No.13988850]

>>13988825
This is one of the most famous poems of the 18th century: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne

Accourez, contemplez ces ruines affreuses,
Ces débris, ces lambeaux, ces cendres malheureuses,
Ces femmes, ces enfants l’un sur l’autre entassés,
Sous ces marbres rompus ces membres dispersés ;
Cent mille infortunés que la terre dévore,
Qui, sanglants, déchirés, et palpitants encore,
Enterrés sous leurs toits, terminent sans secours
Dans l’horreur des tourments leurs lamentables jours !
Aux cris demi-formés de leurs voix expirantes,
Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes,
Direz-vous : « C’est l’effet des éternelles lois
Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix ? »
Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes :
« Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes ? »
Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfants
Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglants ?
Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vices
Que Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices :
Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse à Paris.
Tranquilles spectateurs, intrépides esprits,

De vos frères mourants contemplant les naufrages,
Vous recherchez en paix les causes des orages :
Mais du sort ennemi quand vous sentez les coups,
Devenus plus humains, vous pleurez comme nous.

[Anonymous No.13988856]

>>13988850
Sounds like a bunch of feminine euroshit to me.

[Anonymous No.13988887]

>>13988850
literally if god why bad stuff: the poem

[Anonymous No.13989063]

>>13988790
What about the guide on the /lit/ Wikipedia? Should I really read those books to understand the poetic structure before I begin with these guys?

[Anonymous No.13990137]

>>13989063
The best way to appreciate poetry IMO is to write it yourself. You'll only know how brilliant some sonnets are when you see how much they can cram in 14 lines and how much effort and intelligence it took to write something like Ozymandias.

I guess reading books on poetic structure would help for that but applying those lessons is the most important thing.

To learn poetry is no easy task.
Feeling is first, to make the deep heart's fling
into the verve of verse that shall outlast.

It needs an ear as wrought in iron cast
to hear such strings as subtle as they sing,
to learn poetry is no easy task.

No scholar's exposition shall you ask
for what can stir within the lyric's wing
into the verve of verse that shall outlast.

But drink from music's fleeting ageless cask
and hold the thought in clearest glassy ring.
To learn poetry is no easy task.

When older limbs do bleed within their rust,
the creakings of your mind should pass from skin
into the verve of verse that shall outlast.

And thereafter live well within the past,
speak the brain that rattles in the strings.
To learn poetry is no easy task.
Into the verve of verse- you shall outlast.