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/lit/ - Literature

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18477298 No.18477298 [Reply] [Original]

Is writing poetry anachronistic? Does a fixed meter have a place in this day and age?

Pic unrelated.

>> No.18477341

>>18477298
>Pic unrelated.
Then why did you fucking choose it?

>> No.18477378

>>18477298
>Does a fixed meter have a place in this day and age?
Does anything literary? Who cares whether it's anachronistic if you like it.

>> No.18477586

>>18477341
Because it vaguely fits the subject, but I don't want to start a poetry vs prose debate with it. It's just a funny image.

>>18477378
I don't care about it on a personal level. I will write metric poetry because I love metric poetry. But I have talked with some fellow students about it, and some of them said that it is somewhat antiquated. Now I'm curious if other people share that sentiment, or if it's just the typical literature students who don't really care about poetry but feel like they can have an opinion about it. Most modern poetry is not metric, which makes me not care about modern poetry a whole lot, as free verse poetry doesn't read like a poem, but rather like notes for a poem. Still, I'm curious if "antiquated meter" is actually a thing.

>> No.18477779

>>18477298
>Is writing poetry anachronistic?
Somewhat. Firstly, the more poetry is written, the harder it gets to say things that are fundamental, universal and original. Secondly, there are other modes of expression these days.

>Does a fixed meter have a place in this day and age?
Yes. The appeal of fixed meter is timeless in the same way that rhythm in music is timeless. It corresponds to something in the universe and something in ourselves.

>> No.18477969

>>18477298
What is rap music?(you didn’t say good poetry)

>> No.18477976

Read Ezra Pound

>> No.18478043

>>18477969
No, it was poetry. And if /lit/ from a few years ago is to be believed, it was quite good. (Not posting it again, took me a while to get it deleted from the archives.)

>>18477976
What does that add to the question?

>> No.18478164

>>18477298
>Is writing poetry anachronistic
To a certain degree. I very much subscribe to the theory that the proliferation of poetry as an art independent from music stems from the oral tradition of story telling. It's that much easier for humans to memorize poetry than plain prose. Probably because the fixed metre, the rules of rhyme, etc give our brains additional hints which word we should expect next in a poem when we try to recall it. Therefore if you are illiterate, or a member of an illiterate society, or even just a society where books are hard to come by, you will default to poetry as a story teller.

But as times have changed, technology has progressed, and most people have become literate, prose has naturally become the dominant form for the task of story telling. Poetry is not needed as a crutch for our memory anymore because we all have ready access to books containing the information we seek to relay. And it goes even further than that. Theatre used to be a bastion of poetry, because, again, it helps actors to memorise their lines. But movies and television, arguably the successors of traditional theatre, default to prose/naturalistic speech, because technology enables you to film as many takes of the same scene as needed until you got it right the way you want it. The restrictions of live theatre are gone and with it the poetry, except for special occassions.

That all said, poetry retains its aesthetic value, and can therefore never be truly anachronistic. It's just that the role of poetry has become more specialized in modern times, usually to accompany music, when it was applied far more widely in pre-modern times.

>> No.18478250

>>18478164
I understand (and agree with) your explanation of meter disappearing from dramatic and epic literature. But that does not explain why meter would disappear from lyric literature aka poetry.

>> No.18478294

>>18477298
OP observes the /lit/ throughout the ages
He watches as the fashions rise and fall
The old becomes consigned to dusty pages
Can anything be made to last at all?
The problem is that structure is required
To rise above the vulgar prose and grime
And write a work by all to be admired
Transcending arbitrariness of time
The wiser knows to always value form
The systems tried and true he can recall
From this he loses no creative storm
You have to learn the rules to break them all
The nobler souls will see the worth you had
The poet is eternally a chad

>> No.18478343

>>18478250
It's probably synergistic effects at work here. In a society where metre is used across all literature, it's that much easer to recruit new artists into learning it. If they want to tell a story, they have to use metre and once they are familiar with it, they might as well write some poems themselves and appreciate the craft of other artists working with metre.

In a society where artists default to prose and never have to bother learning the use of metre at all if they don't want to, that foundation slowly crumbles away. Free verse is probably the direct consequence. "If literature can do without metre, then why shouldn't poems too?" Although personally I don't see the appeal or even point of free verse at all. It's like the worst of both worlds from prose and poetry combined.

But is poetry really in such a sorry state that free verse is dominant nowadays? I'm not very familiar with modern poetry. I can't imagine that free verse will subsist as anything other than a niche phenomenon. If you don't want to bother with metre, ryhmes etc, then you should just write prose instead of prose clumsily aping poetry. And if you do like the aesthetics of traditional poetry and its use of metre, what would compel you to write free verse unless you are in a highly experimental mood? It doesn't seem to serve any broad audience very well.

>> No.18478363
File: 29 KB, 286x355, first carjet photo.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18478363

>>18477976

the virgin (and schizophrenic) imagist vs the chad symbolist

>> No.18478403

>>18477586
>Because it vaguely fits the subject, but I don't want to start a poetry vs prose debate with it
Why would you? Especially when the answer is so obvious

>> No.18478426

>>18477586

Write what you want to write with an eye towards 3 things:

1. Personal truth
2. Universal truth
3. Improving

I write metrical poetry and free verse, as the inspiration comes to me. You will not be able to tell in our lifetime if these heritage poetic methods are simply fading out forever or will see renewed interest in time. But if we want them to potentially be links in a chain, you still have to make them. I get your concern, because choosing to write metric poetry feels like you're choosing Frisian or Manx as your second language.

>> No.18478445

>>18478294
That was good anon. Poetry chads win again.

>> No.18478486

>>18478343
>I'm not very familiar with modern poetry. I can't imagine that free verse will subsist as anything other than a niche phenomenon. If you don't want to bother with metre, ryhmes etc, then you should just write prose instead of prose clumsily aping poetry. And if you do like the aesthetics of traditional poetry and its use of metre, what would compel you to write free verse unless you are in a highly experimental mood? It doesn't seem to serve any broad audience very well.
From what I have glimpsed at, there is basically no metric poetry being written today. Everything is free verse with sometimes some metric intersections, but I can't recall a contemporary poem that has a consistent meter.

>>18478294
Nice. Consistent aswell. Most /lit/izens stumble here or there, but your meter is really firm.

>>18478426
>I get your concern, because choosing to write metric poetry feels like you're choosing Frisian or Manx as your second language.
Well, frisian is my second language. (If you ask my mom it's my mother language, but then she should have tought me better.)

>> No.18478551

>>18478164
>I very much subscribe to the theory that the proliferation of poetry as an art independent from music stems from the oral tradition of story telling. It's that much easier for humans to memorize poetry than plain prose.
Certainly to an extent but that is not the only reason for meter in poetry. The form is supposed the convey a message too, meter produces meaning, and different meters (including the absence of meter) produce different meanings.
If traditional meter feels antiquated then it is up to the modern poet to find the modern meter.

>> No.18478568

>>18478551
>The form is supposed the convey a message too

IIRC the poem Catullus wrote about his brother's death is written in an extremely rare meter that is supposedly very hard to write in Latin.

Just came to my mind when you mentioned that.

>> No.18478569

>>18478486
>but your meter is really firm.
Is this a fucking joke?

>> No.18478579

>>18478043
Idk i just felt like posting it ive never read him before

>> No.18478691

>>18478551
>The form is supposed the convey a message too, meter produces meaning
I think "message" or "meaning" is kind of the wrong term. But meter sets the scene. Meter adds to the poem, but not in the sense that it is a puzzle that you need to figure out, but in the sense that different meters make a poem feel different to read. For example, I always think a dactylic meter is much more hectic to read than a iambic, that in contrast feels rather idle and mellow.
Goethe in his Faust used different metric styles for different characters. The Greek Helena would speek in homeric hexameter, while the unpredictable Mephistopheles has a really recognizable meter where the amount of stressed syllables is alternating between lines, sometimes in an arbitrary fashion and without much of a pattern.

>>18478569
Is "firm meter" not something you say in English? My bad then.

>> No.18479629

>>18478294

I come to this board with little expectation
Most threads become a pseud's self-smug compartment
But here at last a rare cause for elation
The receiver rings and its the based department

>>18478486

What are the fucking odds that you actually speak Frisian. That's too funny.

>>18478691

That dudes being rather shallow and pedantic.

>> No.18480085

>>18478568
Catallus? I only ever read a single poem by him

>> No.18480468

>>18478568
That poem doesn't have a particularly interesting meter, but its general form is that of a love poem, which is unusual for a poetry mourning the dead.

>> No.18480727

The Reply Sonnet - by Anon
>>18478445
The poem chads will always win the thread
They are the best anons of finest make
And also pay respect to poets dead
From pure of soul to mad Byronic rake
>>18478486
In us consistent rhyme and metre meet
As easily as breathing I confess
No prose or free verse ever can compete
Or fags who write in stream of consciousness
>>18479629
Today I get more joy than pigs in shit
To see a based anon come join the clan
Of those who take the time to rhyme on /lit/
As well as one who speaks the Frisian
>>18478691
In English we would use a word like "tight"
But "firm" is just as good, so it's alright!

>> No.18480967

>>18480727
Fun stuff. Though a nitpick: Anon is stressed on the A, even though the word derives from "anónymous", it is not pronounced "Anón" but "Ánon".

>> No.18481011

>>18477298
I have a personal theory that increased access to music killed poetry.

>> No.18481408

>>18480967
Sauce? I've never heard it pronounced like that.

>> No.18483795

>>18481408
Well, that's the only way I have ever heard it pronounced. But it's not like there is a dictionary for this kind of stuff.