Tips on improving one's poetic skills?

[Anonymous No.14852535]

Also, contemporary, living poets that don't suck. Do they exist?

[Anonymous No.14852548]

>>14852535
>Contemporary, living poets that don't suck. Do they exist?

Nope. Maybe Anne Carson and Jay Wright, but that's about it.

[Anonymous No.14852677]

Study, and above all practice, meter. Read Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Boileau, Pope, and Ezra Pound (ABC of Reading).

Good living poets in my language (Portuguese) include: in Brazil, Érico Nogueira, Nelson Ascher, Paulo Henriques Britto, Dirceu Villa, Ivo Barroso, Carlos Nejar, among others; I've also read good poems by authors such as Gonçalo M. Tavares, Pedro Mexia and Mia Couto, who are from Lusophone countries other than Brazil.

In English, there are good poets like Charles Simic, Dana Gioia. I haven't read many, as their books are nearly impossible to find here and the dollar is too expensive. The best recent Anglo poets have all died in the last decade: Seamus Heaney (the best), Geoffrey Hill (the second best), Derek Walcott, John Ashbery, Mark Strand, W. S. Merwin, among others.

Now this here is the best poetry prize I know of, and, in fact, the best of all literary prizes that I know of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struga_Poetry_Evenings.. You can look up the authors and see which ones interest you.

[Anonymous No.14853514]

Seth Seong

[Anonymous No.14853528]

>>14852535
I've been reading from Eunoia by Christian Bok.
It's quite excellent.

[Anonymous No.14853640]

>>14852535
>>14852548
Anne Carson is fucking amazing. Tim Lilburn is another living poet that I'd recommend hardcore.

[Anonymous No.14853871]

>>14853640
>>14852548
>>14852535

A Surgery Against Angelism

Tim Lilburn

Set a fat layer of fire grazing into the chest of engine heat, breast-

stroking against motion perfuming from the sickness of volt swollen inhalations. Let

this heat sag to a half-eaten meal not its own; let it eat rods,

iron shavings, green stones, dead yarrow, words head-firsting

from a rock overhang in the upper right, a skeleton of a seal; let it learn to heave-hiss

through its mouth the complete psalmic blade.

Five pound fire gravities against hurtling's musk.

In the chest of engine heat, a concussed floor;

whipped light heads cough in blow's trampoline, and choir above their husks, they lurch

into a blurred but, yes, readable circle, moving, yes, the gear

that jacks the cranial dome.

You go into the fish's mouth which is Siberian citizenship,

into the fish's mouth which is the body of a cousin at the volcano's wedding.

We come out of the colon tunnel onto the ledge, sweet-looking antlers

to smoke from the cloud deer. We've built a shack out of this numbnutsness,
We've hidden in this long grass. A stick will cure us.

Your eyes in the fish's gut are moved like a wand around the dark.

The knife snugs down through skin. And this is politics.

[Anonymous No.14853896]

>living poets
oh boy, here I go shilling again
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47547/supernatural-love

[Anonymous No.14853906]

>>14853896
Man, I haven't read a strict rhyme scheme like that in forever, and this one pulls it off great!

[Anonymous No.14853920]

>>14852677
This

[Anonymous No.14854013]

>>14852535
>Tips on improving one's poetic skills?
It'll be the same one as always. Why don't you pseuds get it?
Read
More
Poetry

That's honestly the only thing you need to do in order to improve. Consume poetry like you depend on it. Write some, just to air out your ideas, sure. But read way more than you produce, it's the only way you'll ever improve.

[Anonymous No.14854095]

>>14853896
too sluggish, couldn't finish it aloud

[Anonymous No.14854118]

>>14854013
Some exercises are useful:

1. Compose to the rhythm of some melody you like; invent new rhythms this way; find out if any of them work.

2. Grab a book of your language's poetry translated into another language, than try to recreate the poem (has to be one which you don't know yet) based on that translation, to the best of your capacity; then compare to the original poem and see where you went wrong and the poet went right.

3. Write one formally perfect sonnet everyday, no matter what, no matter on which subject. Just write. One a day. Everyday. For a few months. They will all be mediocre, but the later ones will be better than the earlier ones.

4. Translate a lot, but never escape rhyme and rhythm with the excuse of 'fidelity'. Your goal here is not to be faithful, but to learn how to be a better poet.

[Anonymous No.14854226]

>>14853871
What the fuck does this mean? I don't understand any of it.

>whipped light heads cough in blow's trampoline
What?

>>14853871
>You go into the fish's mouth which is Siberian citizenship,
Oh. Kay.

Ok, I got pleb-filtered; fine, I'm an idiot; I'll give you that. Someone just explain to me what this shit is all about.

[Anonymous No.14854237]

>>14854118
What's the point of all that when this is offered as an example of great contemporary poetry? >>14853871

[Anonymous No.14854933]

>>14852535
Who is that?

[Anonymous No.14854944]

>>14854933
Eliot.

[Anonymous No.14855615]

>>14854226
Anyone?

[Anonymous No.14855700]

>>14855615
That poem isn't very good. All style and too personal/metaphoric to be shared in any meaningful way. You're not missing anything.

[Anonymous No.14856298]

>>14855700
>All style
when people say that about a film you can cash in smart boy points by saying that film is a visual medium, so I'm gonna cash in smart boy points by saying that poetry is a poetic medium