/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14142156]

>want to read poetry
>try to do it
>don't understand anything
How can I do it guys?

[Anonymous No.14142168]

>>14142156
If you're not trolling, it's over if you don't "get it" past a certain age. Some people just have a hard time understanding or doing things. You remember those kids in English class who couldn't describe what they just read despite how hard they tried? Yeah.

[Anonymous No.14142177]

Step 1: stop making threads and close 4chan
Step 2: open book of poems and begin to read

[Anonymous No.14142178]

>>14142156
Just buy an annotated edition and start from there.

[Anonymous No.14142190]

>>14142156
What is there to understand? Poetry is just writing in a gay and obnoxious way. It's no different from a book, just gay and obnoxious

[Anonymous No.14142191]

>>14142178
This.
Or go on YouTube and find some poem readings.
Also check out ModPo

[Anonymous No.14142200]

>>14142178
Legit good advice if you actually are serious OP. But honestly I would have to agree with the first-post. I went to a good high school with teachers that were specialized in Early Modern poetry and even with their best attempts to get me to appreciate them, I still thought that nearly all the poems we read were incoherent and excessively pretentious.

I graduated high school years ago and recently graduated from college, and I still think those poems are nothing but pretentious hogwash. Poetry is just inferior prose. Because good prose often has a poetic quality to it, but doesn't sacrifice coherence for that end.

[Anonymous No.14142203]

>>14142200
Inferior prose.....
Please read a book

[Anonymous No.14142211]

There are three ways of looking at existence: feeling it, seeing it, being it. The first is science, the second is art, the third is religion.

Science looks at the universe in an objective way. It looks at the universe as if it is there, outside. Hence science concludes that there is only matter and nothing else. The very method of science limits it; it is a great limitation. If you look in an objective way, you can catch hold only of the objectivity of existence. That is matter. Matter is the objectiveness of existence.

The word object is significant. It means: that which obstructs, objects you. Anything that obstructs your vision is an object. Hence science becomes antagonistic toward the world. It starts trying to conquer it because the object is the enemy and has to be conquered.

It is because of the scientific approach that man has become so alienated from nature. And now he feels so isolated and alone that it seems suicide is the only way to get rid of the whole misery that this isolation has created.

The second approach, the second way, is that of art, aesthetics, poetry. It is a subjective approach toward existence. Art is not concerned what is there, but what is here, inside you.

It is not concerned with the roseflower itself but how it feels to you. When you see the roseflower, what happens in your inner world? When you see the sunrise, how does it reflect in your being? When the cuckoo starts calling from a distance, how does it echo in your innermost recesses?

Art is concerned with your response: not what is there but what is inside you. Art is closer to home than science, although not yet exactly in the home, but on the way. It is a midpoint between science and religion. Art gives you more freedom than science.

The poet has more freedom than the mathematician; the musician has more freedom than the physicist. The scientist is obstructed by his own objects. The scientist cannot go beyond matter, and matter defines his world. But the poet can soar, can go beyond, can create his own worlds.

Science discovers, art creates. Science can only discover that which is already there. Art creates, hence art brings you closer to the creator.

And whenever I talk about poetry, I mean the essence of art. Poetry is the essence of art. The sculptor is creating poetry in stone, the musician is creating poetry in sound, the painter is creating poetry on a canvas with colors. They are all poets. Their mediums differ, their expressions differ, but their basic approach is not of arithmetic but of poetry.

[Anonymous No.14142230]

>>14142203
>Please read a book

I do. Most books are written in prose Anon...

[Anonymous No.14142497]

>>14142156
unironically kys

[Anonymous No.14142977]

>>14142211
Did you mean seeing it as science, and feeling it as art?

[Anonymous No.14142982]

>>14142156
Poetry is fucking gay op. Rhyming is fucking gay. I only really like translated poetry so I don't have to endure rhyming.

[Anonymous No.14142986]

>>14142200
>recently graduated from college
I didn't know they stacked shit that high! Do you suck dicks?

[Anonymous No.14142990]

>>14142497
this
>>14142982
kys reggin

[Anonymous No.14143057]

>>14142982
Why yes, I never heard of euphony!

[Anonymous No.14143104]

Poets are the niggers of writing

[Anonymous No.14143154]

>>14142982
You must be so fucking stupid to think all poetry rhymes

[Anonymous No.14143171]

This thread has potential

[Anonymous No.14143193]

>>14142168
You're wrong. I was completely unable to understand poetry until I was 27, then I suddenly became able to intuitively comprehend it at some point and it just made sense. I don't have reason to believe that any age is a complete cutoff point, but you may just go years without being able to make anything of it.

[Anonymous No.14143196]

It's funny because I love "poetic" prose writing, but no matter how many poetry books I've read and bought I just can't get it. It's like my mind shuts off and even though i realize in my mind how beautiful these words are my heart seems shut off to them.

[Anonymous No.14143212]

>>14142156
Keep trying anon. I was the same as you at some point.

[Anonymous No.14143261]

>>14142982
only boomer poetry rhymes

modern poetry doesnt have to rhyme at all

[Anonymous No.14143267]

start with something easy, like nursery rhymes, and work your way up

are you trying to start with The Waste Land or something?

[Anonymous No.14143295]

>>14142156
Learn some classic by heart and recite it

[Anonymous No.14143310]

>>14143212
Prime example of why poetry is shit. Who reads this and thinks “woah deep bruh William Blake is a mastermind poet”. Seriously, what value do you get out of reading this poem lmao?

[Anonymous No.14143324]

>>14143310
This, but unironically

[Anonymous No.14143345]

Understanding poetry is not that important. Poetry is mostly an aesthetic experience. You get to enjoy the many ways masters of language can mold sentences and play around with imagery. Don't go into poetry expecting some deep shit, just enjoy the ride.

[Anonymous No.14143410]

Pro tip : do no start with antiquated, rhymed couplets, like most people here usually suggest. Try Michaux. Try Ungaretti, try Celan, try Char.

[Anonymous No.14143439]

>>14143410
there's a reason rhymed couplets rule. not because alternatives would suck ass, which they don't necessarily, but because the scheme of AABB is the most simple form of poetry. It is immediately self-explanatory, telling you: "I rhyme this line with another line, but not with the third, because the third rhymes with the fourth." Short and simple, immediately gratifying.

[Anonymous No.14143475]

>>14143439
It simply doesn’t work for your average contemporary readers, and this board just makes it more obvious by the day.

[Anonymous No.14143482]

>>14143439
They rule out contemporary readers, yea. Look at that Blake poem posted above : you won’t convince the average anon with that crap. It is blatantly obvious. Unappealing form.

[Anonymous No.14143506]

>>14142191
>Or go on YouTube and find some poem readings.
I'm interested, got some good links?

[Anonymous No.14143567]

>>14143482
>you won’t convince the average anon
You're acting like it's a good thing to be a smug, complacent 4channel user.

[Anonymous No.14143573]

>>14142156

Don't you have some song lyrics you like?

[Anonymous No.14143671]

>>14142156
This happened to me a couple a days ago. Was in my local library, picked up a random poetry book. Reada a single paragraph and, even if I didn't truly understand which symbols it used or why those metrics were chosen, I felt a wave of emotion flowing throughmy chest

[Anonymous No.14143694]

Only reason why I like poetry because it's like reading short stories but in a more beautiful way. I know it makes me plebbish.
>>14143212
I mean that's like a reading a short or flash fiction about someone confessing their crush and getting rejected. Instead of being cringy it's a beautiful small little snack. Nom nom nom

[Anonymous No.14143705]

>>14143506
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aa2UJX_EpQ

[Anonymous No.14143717]

>>14143567
Complacent ? How, exactly ? By suggesting your shitty, ignorant method don’t actually work ? Starting with Éluard before Mallarmé is common sense, especially for plebs like you.

[Anonymous No.14143775]

>>14142156
Congratulations, OP, your simple and honest confusion brought out just how plebbish this board is. Finally when we approach the purest and most artful form of literature, people's aesthetic sense fails them, they reveal their fundamental hatred of literature and their deeply prosaic, materialist minds.

Which poems did you read, and in what way did you not understand them? Particular words, sentences, the literal sense of the whole, or the allegorical sense?

[Anonymous No.14143832]

>>14143694
>why I like poetry
>short stories
disgusting

[Anonymous No.14145054]

>>14143154
The only poet I've ever enjoyed is Horace.

[Anonymous No.14145065]

>>14143212
This is fucking gay. I listen to a lot of foreign music because I don't have to endure people attempting to rhyme their ideas and I can enjoy singing without connotation.

[Anonymous No.14145074]

>>14143775
Instrumental music takes a massive shit on rhyming your fee fees. Verbal and written language is a shit medium for fee fees.

[Anonymous No.14145112]

>>14143506
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYxpSjkyAg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzH9bYLQ5pE

[Anonymous No.14145153]

>>14142156
Watch that one school ghetto movie w hot white teacher talking about Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan.

When I first saw dead poet society I thought it was mediocre, because it idealized and romanticized poetry. I watched a few years later and there are levels of complexity in the movie.

[Anonymous No.14145351]

>>14142156
Read something easier. Try t s eliots book about cats. or the ballad of the white horse by chesterton.

[Anonymous No.14145420]

Start pleb and work your way up.

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch,
quitting castle when real days break.


Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?