what the fuck is appealing about poetry?

[Anonymous No.18292091]

Whenever I try to read it I just feel like I'm back at school. It doesn't really teach you anything and poems can never tell a story better than normal prose. It is also a fucking hassle to try and figure out the convoluted phrasing of everything.

[Anonymous No.18292097]

>>18292091
Read Shakespeare and Goethe.

[Anonymous No.18292110]

>It doesn't really teach you anything
wrong
>can never tell a story better than normal prose
very wrong

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18292116]

Depends on the poet, poetry by its nature should fuse form of writing with the content to allow for a totality which has more aesthetic harmony than normative prose. Poetry can be used for education and mysticism and mystical reading it so inclined, some of the best books in general would be poetry. (Unless you think the divine comedy, paradise lost, or any big epic poem or the like isn’t good.) and if they’re good poets their lines shouldn’t feel mangled and forced to fit by convulsed phrasing, no just the opposite, they should be more smooth than any other example of the language and have more rhetorical power than anything else.

I would recommend getting a poetry anthology and sampling the different years, the various poets and finding which you like.

[Anonymous No.18292138]

>>18292097
>>18292116
I should have clarified that I enjoy the long epic type of poems. But then there is shit like sonnets and
>Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.

I really do not understand why anyone would read this outside of school.

[Anonymous No.18292163]

>>18292091
>Whenever I try to read it I just feel like I'm back at school
people say the same things about books. open your mind stop trying so hard to understand and you will

[Anonymous No.18292165]

I can only appreciate poems in ballad meter. Everything else is pointless.

[Anonymous No.18292169]

>>18292116
Mysticism is schizo garbage.

>Unless you think the divine comedy, paradise lost, or any big epic poem or the like isn’t good
They would be better as prose.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18292171]

>>18292138
How about something like this?


“ Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep. ”

Or something like this?

He who has trod the shadows of Zothique
And looked upon the coal-red sun oblique,
Henceforth returns to no anterior land,
But haunts a later coast
Where cities crumble in the black sea-sand
And dead gods drink the brine.

He who has known the gardens of Zothique
Were bleed the fruits torn by the simorgh's beak,
Savors no fruit of greener hemispheres:
In arbors uttermost,
In sunset cycles of the sombering years,
He sips an amaranth wine.

“He who has loved the wild girls of Zothique
Shall not come back a gentler love to seek,
Nor know the vampire's from the lover's kiss:
For him the scarlet ghost
Of Lilith from time's last necropolis
Rears amorous and malign.

He who has sailed in galleys of Zothique
And seen the looming of strange spire and peak,
Must face again the sorcerer-sent typhoon,
And take the steerer's post
On far-poured oceans by the shifted moon
Or the re-shapen Sign.“

Or something like this?

“ I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which crawling one and every way
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise;
Her belly, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced.
About her head I writhing hung,
And with rich clusters (hid among
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
(All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke;
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.”

[Anonymous No.18292179]

>>18292163
I read books for fun though. I've tried reading poetry and it really feels like I'm getting nothing out of it.

[Anonymous No.18292187]

>>18292091
I've learned that if you want to grab the content of poetry you have to read them at a faster pace than how you regularly read. You then read slower to grab all the language games.
The motifs utliized in poetry are simply the same motifs used in prose, but taken to the limit. Reading and writing poetry trains you to read and write prose.

[Anonymous No.18292198]

>>18292171
First one I slightly enjoyed, but I don't think I would ever seek this out over any prose.

[Anonymous No.18292203]

Good poetry is literature to the nth power. Read larkin's aubade, dulce et decorum by wilfred owen. Teo casual ones but they're great

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18292209]

>>18292198
Eh, it’s not impossible to hate poetry, but I would recommend just trying out more narrative heavy long poems and more of the classics. I find most people who hate poetry mistake the highly confessional narrative-less kaleidoscope of images which is so common in contemporary poetry and common modernist favorites as being, ya know, the norm throughout history. Though if you don’t enjoy it, no reason to push yourself into doing something you dislike.

I will say though, that at points prose and poetry stop dividing, there’s no hard divide between the best prose and good free verse for example and there’s no difference between terrible free verse and chopped up ugly prose.

[Anonymous No.18292331]

>>18292091
It is such a shame so many young kids get bastardized versions of Hamlet and Macbeth with sub-par English teachers. Teachers go over the themes, perhaps the plot and setting, but never about what makes them masterpieces
Poets dedicate a lot of time on one line, sometimes years, to make everything about the line perfect. The way your mouth moves when you read, the rhythm of the sounds, making sure the sounds fit with what they want to say, the literal definitions of the words, rhymes, pitch, everything, its language taken to its highest form. So much so, that most of the time, changing one word in a poem kills the entire thing.
>O God, God. How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!
I hope to show you OP, if you didn't already know, how much clever wordplay is going on in just this one line, and why poetry is cool
>O God, God. How weary
Lots of vowels, it starts with a fall in pitch on the O as you say it, to small rise of the o in God. He keeps the O sound till How, to show hamlet is pleading. O me O life O God, etc. How also establishes with weary a small rhythm of Bum de Bum, but that rhythm is immediately killed by
>stale, flat
The poem itself, as well as what hamlet sees in life, becomes stale and flat. Stale and flat together have a rhythm of Dum Dum. The actual A vowel sound itself goes from a higher pitch in stale to a lower pitch in flat. The A sound becomes flat. This small rhythm however is killed once and for all with
>and unprofitable
sounding out those word has no rhythm, in sound or in facial movement without forcing it so. its "unprofitable" in poetry, but Shakespeare knew it doesn't work, but made it work anyway, by combining its definition with how its said, AND he made it work for the narrative. Hamlet sees the world as unprofitable, this rhythm is unprofitable says Shakespeare. Its genius, sheer genius, but this madlad doesn't stop there. Shakespeare ends it with
>seem to me all the uses of this world
Up till now, the vowels have been consistent, Lots of O's in the beginning, weary itself having almost the same e sound, and stale and flat having roughly the same sound, but now its all over the place. Hamlet is confused, the poem echoes his confusion. There's also a little rhythm here, probably just for enjoyment.
After you dig deep into lines like these, and read them back, and everything lines up, and you know what's being said and why, its beautiful, a work of art and passion of the author
(it should also be noted that sounding out weary is very easy on the face, its a lot of breath and not much else. it doesn't take much energy to say, much like the definition of weary, but Shakespeare didn't design the word weary, only a that he knew its uses)
To go back to that earlier point I made with words not being replaceable in good poetry, if you tried to substitute weary, with say tired, a lot of the interconnectedness of the words are lost.

[Anonymous No.18292337]

>>18292331
>pitch
I mean stresses.

[Anonymous No.18292358]

>>18292091
>It doesn't really teach you anything
That's ok. Literature can and should do much more than just to teach.
>can never tell a story better than normal prose
Maybe because most of poetry is not even made to tell a story.
>It is also a fucking hassle to try and figure out the convoluted phrasing of everything.
That's purely a matter of how used you are to it, your vocabulary and your sense of grammar.
>Whenever I try to read it I just feel like I'm back at school.
Poetry is usually not written to be read in school. If you read more poetry now, you'd get rid of this meaningless association.

>>18292179
And a reader of YA garbage would say the exact same thing about your favourite book.

[Anonymous No.18292382]

>>18292169
You are schizo garbage, anon.
>>18292171
>>18292209
Another anon here. The stuff you posted is actually pretty good, I feel like I can read and comprehend almost all of it. Generally, I hate poetry because it just breaks my brain. I try to focus on the message, but there's just so much autistic twirling of words, metaphors, imagery and form that I can't create a mental image of what I am reading at all - everything just collapses in on itself. In fact, the poetry that I have found easiest to read has been the type that calls forth a sequence of mental images, because then at least I can trace a chain of meaning that I can infer from the symbolism.
I guess for me the issue is that when I am reading really good prose, I feel like the skill of the author and the beauty of the words enhance and strengthen the meaning of the text to an extreme degree, whereas with poetry, the more "poetic" the poem, the more poetic form consumes the meaning-content of the text to its own advantage.

[Anonymous No.18292395]

>>18292331
>>18292091
adding to this post, and addressing to your better storytelling point.
You shouldn't analyze every line like this if its your first time, you would analyze every brushstroke before looking at a painting, you instead look at it wholly, but if you ever come back to it, theres little details of wit and depth waiting, that deepens your appreciation of the work as a whole.
It is a solid argument that prose storytelling (in a a happens, then b happens sense) can be better than poetry, if a little subjective, but you miss a lot of nuance and skill, and poetry works will almost always be better on a re-read because of these.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18292509]

>>18292382
I think the problem is you’ve been exposed to poetry which focuses either too much on emotions/confession or too much on being somehow witty, a lot of romanticism and while I may not like it so much, a decent chunk of modernism would probably be really enjoyable to you. Once more, there are many long narrative poems which are high quality which people just kinda ignore. Even so, here is a shorter poem which has a richness in imagery, progression of imagery and sound by John Keats which isn’t a long poem to show what I mean about the difference between confessional and non-confessional styles.

To autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies

[Anonymous No.18292603]

>>18292509
Yes, barring the second paragraph this was pretty easy to trace. The second paragraph suddenly gets all abstact and metaphorical though which throws me off, granted my vocabulary is also evidently too limited for that specific paragraph, so that is also a factor.
If I recall correctly, some of the Imagist poems were pretty fun. I think the first 2-3 poems in the Anthology that Pound compilled were pretty fresh. They had their meaning and also the Imagist emphasis on clear images helped a lot. Some things tripped me up even with those poems, though.