/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21525148]

Poetry OC Thread
it's been a few months so you should have something new to share

[Anonymous No.21525151]

Will get us started with a reading of some OC btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FI6xJNEiYw

[Anonymous No.21525154]

>>21525151
There’s already a thread up, you shill.

[Anonymous No.21525188]

>>21525154
this is the OC thread for original poems not just discussing any poetry
ya big dumb dumb

[Anonymous No.21525204]

>>21525188
Tranny school teacher grooms kids and makes shit poetry. What else is new?

[Anonymous No.21525283]

>>21525148
Tomorrow was everything
Today, nothing
Tomorrow, who knows
Yesterday, gay

[Anonymous No.21525378]

>>21525148
Among the shadows of the night
a silent spirit will distress me.
For when the end of day is nigh,
the call of pooping will caress me.

[Anonymous No.21526174]

This is the first quatrain from a sonnet that I intended to write but gave up on. I think I have lost interest in aestheticism.

The early hours bring me sleek albescent light
and the primal thrush warbles lush, sound waves
Pink mem'ry floods, and effulgent therein fight
Images of you to be the happiest sav'd

Here is a brief accentual poem, which is my first. I shared this in another thread

All the gods have died, but chipmunks remain.
Dandelion, sunlight and shattercane,
The gilded months all swell and wane.
Nonetheless, the Leonids disperse their sparking mane.

From Alpha down, the gods withstanding not,
Welk, and from their high estate are blot.
Mountain girls and river girls now sought,
Will succor the beasts who snort, wallow, and squat.

Owl screech and black moorhen cluck
Chuck a cacophonous scrapyard truck
All gods damned in quagmire muck
Scraped off like gum-bark stuck.

[Anonymous No.21526317]

>>21526174
Why didn’t you throw more cuck in there?

[Anonymous No.21526341]

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I am reborn!
I grappled with the night and revelled in the dawn.
And whilst I returned from that forest’s dank mire
Beneath a cold and frightful moon,
There I felt a robust desire—
To live each day as if I’d madly die at noon.

[Anonymous No.21526376]

>>21525148
Wound up tight
I'll spend the night
I never wanna think again
I never wanna see it play
When, the kids on the carpet have to go their separate ways
The heart ache that you're feeling has been filling up the place
If you never drink the poison then you're never gonna cry
If you don't believe in magic then you shouldn't even try

You look nice babe
Don't think twice maybe
The world is a really scary place
But I know from the look that's on your face
Your life has been over way before it began
If you don't want to be lonely then I can be your man
I know that your mommy has been getting underneath your skin
Girl it's all a fucking joke so just live it while you can

[Anonymous No.21526380]

>>21526317
You are correct. Cuck would be fitting with some of the ideas of this poem. I did not make that connection with the word alpha. It is a pretty lazy problem honestly. I like the imagery with the Leonids and the scrapyard truck but I'm lazy.

[Anonymous No.21526951]

Little birdies tell me things
About what the day will bring
And everything the neighbours think
Little birdies tell me things

Little birdies tell me things
About when the damn will break
And all the pain they think I'll take
Little birdies tell me things

The earth is shaking
The waves are breaking
The grapevines electrified
There's a song on the wire
Full of blue fire
Says "I've known you all along"
I've known you all along

Little birdies tell me things
Was that just a phone that rang?
Or just the distant echoing?
Little birdies tell me things

The mail's in the air
The wind took the stairs
Their lips can touch the sky
For all the flying banners
Taken to the sails
The mind behind the matter's
Just a comet tail
And you're waiting
And you're waiting
With the wings of the angels
Stirred with fright
And you're waiting
And you're waiting
As the shadows are stirring
And the lines are blurring
As you slip into the night
You slither through the wire

Little birdies tell me things
About what the letters mean
And what they think I should dream
Little birdies tell me things

[Anonymous No.21527680]

>>21525151
Stop posting plagiarized poems as your own.

[Anonymous No.21527698]

>>21526951
This sound like a song. So much so it reminds me of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRwH77b3GLY
I hope you like it.

[Anonymous No.21527704]

>>21527698
It is a song I wrote. I just posted the lyrics

[Anonymous No.21527823]

her lips speak of the end of the world
the night rushes in and all the stars are dead
ghosts haunt the ruins, filling the streets with dread
packs of stray dogs howl above the horizon

she speaks once more through chapped lips
she speaks of a veil lifting and all that is to come
when machine and man break down and succumb
to the rot, mold and decay of the grave

a murder filled the sky
flying across the bible black pre dawn
she bind her mouth
and we walked into the darkness

[Anonymous No.21527901]

Here we go again: a universe
that can't be stuffed with words.
Hungry endless space between
apple, orange, meal, meal, food
food, the low throat rumble
promising enough to fill the night
with beasts of fur and teeth
the moon and reason to lick away
saliva in anticipation that tonight
deamons have fled the woods
to darkness beyond the heavens
And there'll be food enough
and light in which to feast

[Anonymous No.21528535]

>Ode on a Troll: A Fragment of a Shitpost
Beneath a Troll's Sock mask lay all art’s sad
Abandoned projects rotting there on high,
Upon the mount where dreams doth deathly lie,
And from all his flung dung and ramblings mad,
There are no more things to ponder nor ask,
Only this awful sweet silence at night;
O Troll! Another skin, another flask!
Get drunk, as drunk as Bacchus' ocean flight,
With revelling mad wine, beneath ghostly starlight!
>Notes
*As in the masks of comedy and tragedy, or "Sock and Buskin"

[Anonymous No.21528881]

Beyond the storm a light
A beacon so smug and gay
Mongolian bookworms fight
Frog turns night to day

[Anonymous No.21528887]

>>21528881
Bravo! Magnifique! Monsieur, I must say, that is a dastardly devilish poem.

[Anonymous No.21528950]

I rise like the break of dawn with my dick in my hand
silence fills the empty corners of the room.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I have become a giant bug!
- Kafka

[Anonymous No.21529093]

>https://zerobin
>.net/?cf57ba3aaf0d46e2#QQN199mnFSNmgOewJSsUNXLKGR+Q7phhDNDmG9mlGU8=
Could use another set of eyes on this. It's an unfinished frame narrative in the middle of an unfinished novel.

[Anonymous No.21530091]

bampu

[Anonymous No.21530476]

You roar in the silence of massive empty places
You whisper above in the pattering feet of commuting stars
You press men into conversations between massive tracts of stone
You howl from the fissures of the earth
And yet when you are near, I fall sleep with all your noises, and all I know is peace

[Anonymous No.21530646]

>>21530476
I’d take out all instances of “the” because it’s messing up the rhythm for me. Also “asleep” would sound better.

[Anonymous No.21530648]

>>21530476
Third line seems odd, but I like this poem overall. Commuting sticks out well.

[Anonymous No.21530932]

>>21525148
strange berries....

[Anonymous No.21531674]

The Descent

I am slowly crushed by a mocking featherweight and a mountain of quiet anxiety, taken aback by a bored god, that original deadbeat, and each day a volley of killing-jokes is fired through my head; poisoning silences worse to touch-on than matters of lead.

A forgotten black banner hangs Lowe, a reminder of the father who never was, draping my prison windows unexpected with despair dedication, mind-annihilation, insanities of latteral absolute truths to embrace me as no other formerly would.

I commit righteous kamikaze, a wave of self-destruction and self-detest.

Yet I am left here, drowning in novel directions still.

Each burning vessel and every hill-to-die-on; so many priceless distractions now rejected by my own 'humanity' --
-- until the fingers are made as crimson and broken as the heart; a radical's workman-ship to ride the waves sent by false Poseidons as Rome burns and memories shift into night-mares.

So is this 'The Test'?

I beat and claw the flesh of my identity, starving my shell-entity over and again, and so I am carried by red waves to the shore to discover my raped spirit, the first buried 'treasure' found of many more.

That vast, flowing stain onto a strained mindset reinforcibly made queer with a soul redshift of the blackest tunnel visions in prose for thee, becomes a set of sole precious candlelights whispering unorthodox gospel at night for me:

Light blinds just as darkness does.

[Anonymous No.21531811]

I always come up with an idea, write the first part of it, then feel like I can't properly articulate the feeling and give up. Here's the most recent example:

This heart of mine, how shall I describe
Those fulgurs and swoons which you create
Sometimes to placate, sometimes to aggravate
Always to culminate in this sadness of mine.

[Anonymous No.21531842]

>>21530646
>>21530648
Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated

[Anonymous No.21531849]

>>21531811
It's cute anon

[Anonymous No.21531873]

pushed out of Eden
falling through the sky
endless suffering
till the day we die

=============================

My heart was beating cowardly
Dreaming of the past
It started beating fast
imagining Saturn devouring me

===============================

at night there is no one in the street
the lights dotting the horizon
are stars in the darkness
under which stray dogs meet

[Anonymous No.21531936]

>>21531873
I like the feeling this invokes. It is a good description of emotion which I think is the purpose of poetry
>>21531849
Thanks. I feel like my incessant use of internal rhyme is what demotivates me because it's hard to maintain. I have another fragment of it but I don't know yet how to incorporate it.

But alas it begs, then
Pulls till it rends and flays.
Those redolent teeth sequestered beneath however many quotidian reliefs

[Anonymous No.21532098]

Reminder

(you)'s do not determine the objective quality of your work, anons

keep writing and keep posting your beauty

[Anonymous No.21532257]

>>21525283
Too many tomorrows. Are you a reformed homo? Got any tips on sucking dick?

>>21525378
Nice, the anal theme seems to be continuing strong. You know if you have a really bad diet your constipation will be so bad that you get some prostate stimulation when you poo

>>21526174
I can see why you stopped writing the sonnet. That last line is a real strangle hold. It chokes the rest, which is lovely.

>>21526341
Nice. Are you dead yet? Lines 3 and 4 didn't read too well, maybe it was the change in rhythm, or the altering of rhyme structure, I don't know. Otherwise, live you beast

>>21526376
Enjoyable, but the thoughts are all a little incoherent. You are writing for someone specific, it seems, and all the details are within them, and not me, unfortunately.

>>21526951
Nice I like the idea that there are imitations of birds' calls everywhere. I agree with the other anon, very much like a song.

>>21527823
Same problem, a recurring problem with a lot of poets - there is little or not coherence between lines. In the type of poem you wrote it should be possible to remove the line breaks and read it coherently, yours doesn't. Otherwise, very grim. I liked it

>>21527901
This is me to be ignored. Though it seems in theme of the thread so far.

>>21528535
Very nice. Enjoyed reading. I assume it is part of a longer piece. Seems like it could be

>>21528881
I'm only here for the basket weaving

>>21528950
Kafka was indeed a writer beyond imagination

>>21529093
Is this the ramblings if a mad man? It starts off talking about God, then moves onto Zeus. I didn't get to the end. It spiralled off too sharply into a tirade upon society. Do you want to write it with rhyme? Because at times it seems like you do, then you just stop.

As a specific you put in a lone break on line 4(?) and started the new line with "me" and it was really jarring.

I seems like you want some considered editorial critique, and I am probably not going to engage with you much more. Find an editor irl to talk to

>>21530476
Line one and two contradict each other. Otherwise I enjoyed reading. Very grand

>>21530932
>then the men turned inside out
Nice story. Lots I could suggest stylistically, but why interfere?

>>21531674
I'm not sure how poetic I find this, but who am I to judge where that boundary lies? The strict formal language in the middle detracted from bothe the beginning and end

>>21531811
I hope the next stanzas are concrete evidence of what you presented here. Line 3 was a bit drawn out

>>21531873
Nice. Nice (thought line 4 could do with another look). Nice

>>21532098
Love you

[Anonymous No.21532411]

>>21532257
>Nice story. Lots I could suggest stylistically, but why interfere?

Well what do you think would be some nice stylistic choices my good man?

[Anonymous No.21532541]

>>21532257
>started the new line with "me" and it was really jarring
why is it jarring? it's just enjambment...

[Anonymous No.21532667]

[Anonymous No.21532682]

>>21525148
Just finished the rough draft of the longest poem I've done yet. "12" stanzas of twelve lines each, except for the eleventh stanza being only four lines to both embody what happens in it and fit the main theme being addressed in the story.

First two stanzas are polished, and now I'm dreading polishing the rest of it. But I'm excited for it to be properly complete. It is long. But it tells a relatable story with whirlwind moments of poetic imagery, and I believe it stays uniquely fresh and engaging so that it doesn't feel long when it's read.

[Anonymous No.21532693]

>>21532667
Why so trochaic? It gives it a sense of harshness to me.

[Anonymous No.21532698]

>>21532682
Good on ya, anon. Progress on my own long piece has stalled as I realize more and more that I need to do additional research to represent the topic properly.
This started with a nice little schizopoem warmup piece and now I'm grinding my way through a textbook on Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic.

[Anonymous No.21532713]

>>21532693
Is it not harsh or jarring to wake into a half-dream world, only for it to slip away from you in the span of a blink?

[Anonymous No.21532777]

>>21532713
It’s up to you how to represent it but the whole thing is irregular, to the point the last line swaps tense on “is”. Studying a prosody helps to convey what you want to say.

[Anonymous No.21532790]

>>21532777
Swaps stress*
Sorry, I’m coming down from DXM

[Anonymous No.21533105]

>>21532541
Just enjambment that has made for janky reading.

[Anonymous No.21533191]

>>21533105
i'm not trying to argue with you, but I don't understand. there is effectively no break in the flow — from my perspective it doesn't matter at all what word the next line happens to start with. the metre is strictly decasyllabic in order to encourage the reader to intuit elision. i'm genuinely struggling to understand why you think an enjambed line break is somehow janky.

[Anonymous No.21533210]

>>21533191
Well don't understand. No skin off my nose, you twat

captcha: RAMON says fuck you

[Anonymous No.21533213]

>>21533210
well, that's not very helpful or constructive. i guess i have to throw out your opinion entirely.

[Anonymous No.21533218]

>>21533213
You did anyway, didn't you?

[Anonymous No.21533219]

>>21533218
why would i engage with you if i didn't think there was something to be learned?

[Anonymous No.21533238]

>>21533219
OK, well here is something. It doesn't matter if your poem subscribes to a specific syllabic count, if it still reads junky. I thought that was obvious originally. All that is to be learned here is that you were fixated on the syllables so much that it didn't matter at all what a reader said.

Everyone can count to 10 dozy cunt
so why would a poem be so special
if all it does is show a poet can
count. Shit now look what you made me do

[Anonymous No.21533244]

>>21533238
can you just explain what you meant by the line starting with "me," and how that relates to enjambment? how is it jarring for an enjambed line to start that way? that's the part i don't understand. the fact that you think it's clunky is coming through loud and clear

[Anonymous No.21533288]

History repeats nothing is new
Look what you made her do
An ancient debt is due
Taylor Swift is coming for you

[Anonymous No.21533596]

>>21525204
Rent free

154. The Winters of Insomnia

Swirls of unsought memory accost peripheral thought
They knock on frosted window panes so soft, but I cannot
Ignore the cyclic impulse to peer beyond the rime,
I have to claw the frost and see them, each and every time.
That crystal cold veneer, its velvet melts before it peels.
Too slow. My palm-print alchemizes truth and then reveals
Glimpses of the haunting beings which come to press the glass,
Refracting and condensing in the dark with every pass.

I catch them through the outline of my hand's imprinted form,
Which creeps already at its edge. I retransmute it. Warm
Meets chill, its frigid shade and recollected twin,
And at that limpid juncture, outside eyes are gazing in.
Who are you, ghostly visitor? What iris do you bear?
What depth within my spirit lent the face with which you stare?
Do you come in accusation? Do you reach for my lament?
What reminiscence coalesces in your revenant?

A dozen guises in a flash, its features blur and shift,
While the phantom's sad expression stops the snowflakes as they drift.
Cat eyes fade to hazel; green blends blue; the colours run
With their spectrums all entreating, "Was there more you could have done?"
I let cold night reclaim the view, the frost devour my hand,
Collapse into the waiting seat, too mortified to stand.
Yet, gently and insistently, they rap the pane once more.
I rise again, again, again, whenever they implore.

These sorry hands must wipe away an all-encroaching glaze,
A veil upon my vision, clouding ignorance to daze
My moral senses, so I might forget and find surcease.
But these spectres are my penance and I don't deserve release.
For I, I froze my saintly hands and robbed them of their good.
It's only just I greet my shame, come floating from the wood;
On winds, dark from the forest at the boundaries of mind.
In life, I left them for myself. My soul must look behind.

cont.

[Anonymous No.21533603]

>>21533596

(This section is italicized)

Look you, upon your double, strapped into a metal chair,
Crucified by velcro, saved by music on the Air.
Look you, at the gnarled guitarist, his mother in the mists,
Made Guernican by palsy, dying in his knots and twists.
Look you, see the widow, a bloated starfish on a sheet,
With agonies unwhispered. Somehow grateful. Sweet
Look and hear, you never stopped your ears to others' woe!
The Brandon Training School and its abuse. You had to know.

Recall you to yourself, old man, invoke that younger you!
Feel the tremor shake a child you'd just said sorry to;
Her silent hug a seismograph of short life made over-long,
Who'd never felt the gratitude of hearing "I was wrong."
And God! How that same trembling felt in your own younger years,
When dad's sincere apology brought love through needed tears.
Yet thought recoils from "father" in an anguished total whirl:
"I'm mad my father killed my mom." Another little girl.

See again uplifted eyes beneath November rain.
Her "thank you, sir." Three syllables. A universe's pain.
That blue, so blue. The deepest blue, a second time displayed
How can a hue so beautiful in one life be remade?
The friends who saw you give the food, an act you'd tried to hide,
Gave "good person" as an accolade the first eyes would deride
Turning, staring through the glass, my camper's little shade.
"I won't be back next summer". Two oceans full betrayed.

(End italics)

I watch the child etherealize, her translucent visage break.
Wisps spiral towards the treeline, trailing snowfall in their wake.
I take the time to study patterns scribing in the frost,
Winter's stylized glyphs, calligraphy on glass embossed.
Soon the mystery grows opaque: the window is resealed.
I drop into the seat of thought and let it stay concealed.
I hang my head into my hands and hope sleep will restore.
But my hands are damp and freezing.

And they've come to knock once more.

[Anonymous No.21533616]

>>21533596
>>21533603

These are about experiences I had working with the disabled in my old job which I left in March of 2022, as well as children I used to work with at a camp program for kids who had incarcerated parents, with one errant memory of a homeless woman I gave food to in Philadelphia on a rainy November day.

This one is about my brother's recent relapse, after 2 years sober (the longest he's gone) and the resurgent emotions of the 8 years (from when I was 22 to 30) where his alcoholism ran my family. I had to help my dad pull his car out of a ditch at midnight on the day after Christmas.

165. More Chains from the Silverado

I cast and leave the puzzle pieces on the floor.
I love the image, but it won't fit anymore.
I clean my wounds; the jigsaw's lacerating jags
Have rendered all the patterns on my fingerprints to rags.

Red fresh on ancient scars. The water's safe, you think;
But there are butcher's knives still in the kitchen sink.
You reach too quickly through the bubbles for an urn,
Then hack some digits off. What does it take to learn?

I'm out of bed at midnight and then I'm back at 1:15,
Looking out the window at a moonlit backyard scene.
Glass opens on the grass where children used to play;
Like the playhouse and the sandbox, we too have passed away.

Look at the scenery! Look past the memories!
Concrete where a trailer burned, the tombstone stumps of trees.
Our picnic box is lost, its meadow overgrows.
At least the woods are there. At least the brook still flows.

I face the kitchen sink. I'm not up to the task.
I can't turn 'round again and keep the practiced mask.
Three separate faces sum the product of their age:
A weariness of centuries. Our sadness swallows rage.

Who knew that thirty years could ever be so long?
Who knew a timid, gentle boy could grow a soul so strong?
I'm glad I have the strength to write it down instead of break.
I only wish I also had the power to remake.

[Anonymous No.21533624]

>>21533616

Last one, I won't clutter the thread anymore and will set to the business of responding to others. This one is a poem of gratitude to two of the deckhands on the schooner I worked on last season, who really engaged with me about my poetry and ended up writing a poem each themselves as inspired by my opening up.

164. Saplings

I wrote and I learned as a tree in solitude,
Watered by prose and by verse.
I've grown in the light of that aptitude,
But a blessing unshared is a curse.
Casting your soul out on barren stone;
What good is a language that's spoken alone?

When I flowered, yes: some might admire
The hues or the sweetness in air.
But my blossoms breathe so they can inspire,
And aspire to see others as fair.
Let the wind spread a grove with my poetry!
What good is a seed when it's thrown in the sea?

Then a season came where, by my own roots,
Sprung a sight so kind to my eyes:
In a small patch of sunlight, two little shoots
Had emerged and were starting to rise.
And I, as an alder, had readied that soil,
Enriched and made welcome by my poetic toil.

Now I, forever, can smile and look down
At the saplings my language had sought;
Each with a bright leaf, like the sheaf in my crown;
A poem that my sharing poems taught.
I wrote and I spoke and I helped them to grow,
And, for me, there's not anything better to know.

[Anonymous No.21533854]

>>21533624
This is the best one you shared in this thread. I think my main issue with your other problems is that you mix your diction, imagery, and style too much. T.S. Eliot subordinates everything under an aesthetic ideal, but you go from spoken to song with multisyllabic flourishes which neither impress nor delight me. I would like you to cut down on your modernist tendencies and focus on rhythm and diction.

[Anonymous No.21533973]

Úlfur eltir börn manna
Gamlir guðir liggja
Rísa úr eldi og gnístri tanna
Í höfðum höfðingja byggja

[Anonymous No.21534210]

>>21532698
That sounds much more daunting than what I am attempting. That actually helps mine feel less overwhelming.
Best of luck anon, i hope the commitment pays off.

[Anonymous No.21534381]

PATRIOT PRAYER
columbia my mother
america my home
who draped the skin
upon my bone
and listened to my every whim
my every moan
oh god bless this land of my mine
its progenitors, its offspring
until the end of time

[Anonymous No.21534388]

we who walk in the presence of our god, shitting and pissing, truly walk in the shadow of our ancestors. holy shade, as they are now

[Anonymous No.21534391]

>>21533854
>subvert your art for ME
selfish faggot

[Anonymous No.21534394]

>>21534381
"Bone" singular is forced and makes me think you're talking about your pecker. "It's progenitors, its offspring" seems like it's one syllable too many. "Moan" is sexual. Maybe the piece is supposed to be sexual, since you're talking about moaning and your bone and begetting.

[Anonymous No.21534405]

>>21534391
I'm the guy that anon is responding to. My mixed diction and imagery is a complaint I get fairly regularly here, but peoples' opinions on that front are varied, so it's difficult to know how much is objective v. subjective. But yeah, "neither impress nor delight me" is a little egocentric. And "modernist tendencies" is taste based, since I get it the other way, "address your archaisms."

He's not wrong though at the core, the piece he highlights as the best is definitely the most thematically coherent. I'm just not sure where the diction is strange in "Chains". Overall, I'm not going to change either of them based on that one comment, but I will keep the critique in mind for the future, as always.

[Anonymous No.21534430]

>>21534405
you're a good sport. just disgusting to see someone put their heart on a plate and have some fussy douchebag pick at it and demand it be remade in their own image. you're a better man than i am, gunga din.

[Anonymous No.21534480]

>>21534405
Modernist poets use archaic words. I did not mean contemporary when I said modernist. The second poem has more of the rhythmic problems and the first poem has the diction problems.

[Anonymous No.21534507]

>>21534405
draped the skin upon my bone was the first line i had everything is built around that, maybe your coom brained or I am.

[Anonymous No.21534516]

>>21534507
oops this was meant for >>21534394

[Anonymous No.21534522]

>>21534430
Incongruities lead to boredom, confusion, and the audience judging the poet as lazy. Incongruity is best compressed and shocking. I gave good criticisms.

[Anonymous No.21534538]

>>21534522
you would shape all poets into derivatives of your own form. others might be pleased with your "contributions", i am not.
>but i'm published! i've studied poetry for years!
i don't care a fig for what you've done. you don't help anyone.

[Anonymous No.21534564]

>>21534538
You are making a lot of assumptions, none of which are true. I gave him advice on how to remove the sloppiness from his poetry. I never said anything about how others are pleased with my own work, that I have published, or that I have studied poetry for years. You made all of that up. You are just complaining about something that had nothing to do with you nor should be offensive.

[Anonymous No.21534583]

>>21534564
nah, you're a bottom feeder, picking at other people's creativity. you are a shoddy critic, lazier than any poet, and your worthlessness in this ecosystem cannot be understated. you're shit on the shoe, the vile of boot. were you to stand under the sun of any lofty genius, you'd shrivel and turn white. you feed a false sense of self-importance by leaving your stain like graffiti on the brave triumphs of others.

[Anonymous No.21534591]

>>21534564
>>21534538
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=386GACcAmJc

Be more specific in your criticism for my sake please, address the Insomnia poem if you have to choose one, or the Chains poem if you want a shorter one.

[Anonymous No.21534596]

>>21534583
>>21534391
Who hurt you? Why are you so sensitive? It's okay anon, I'm here.

[Anonymous No.21534601]

>>21534591
Specificity is impossible for most people. I asked earlier for some as well (>>21533244); whoever the critic was just disappeared.

[Anonymous No.21534638]

>>21534596
This takes a page straight out of the slimy cunt handbook. At like a gigantic twat, try to turn the tables when called out by snidely implying that your being called out has something to do with the person calling you out instead of the fact that you're acting like a gigantic, seeping vagina.

[Anonymous No.21534642]

>>21534596
i don't like the culture that surrounds poetry now. if you share a poem it's already the ultimate vulnerability, and horrible enough when someone dislikes it, but there is an alarming culture that has risen, to do one's best to find something in a given poem that rankles, to display an intellectual flair by some facile process of identifying aberrations, divergences from some poorly internalized sense of perfection.
No other art has this tier of disrespect. Imagine you were at your gallery and some moron took out some oils and 'finished' your painting, or if a singer came to your concert and hit the notes he felt you missed -while you were performing-. It's just ridiculous, and it's far uglier to me than any supposed misstep in someone's shared poetry.

[Anonymous No.21534666]

>really great poem about your dead mother, anon. it captures the ephemeral mood of losing a loved one, but hey, next time make sure you take into account the fact that you want to be consistent in meter and not be anachronistic in your phrasing!

[Anonymous No.21534801]

>>21534601
Okay, are you a different anon or are you the guy that I was asking for specificity?

>>21534642
I'm the anon of the poetry in contention again. In principle, you're not wrong about this board. There is a lot of self-aggrandizement and self-fellating based on the smug satisfaction derived from tearing someone else down, absent any kind of constructive feedback. That anon you're arguing with (in my defense, thank you) is only guilty of a slightly arrogant tone and a lack of specificity. But that is by no means the most vitriolic thing I've seen on this board or even about my own works. And on the other end of your spectrum, there's also a tendency of the sharer to recoil into a shell unnecessarily and not be able to face ANY criticism. That's something I used to be guilty of myself and it's a marker of personal growth to bear your vulnerability and have it withstand a blunt assault. If you can't do that, it's not measured vulnerability, it's just weakness. Like this >>21534666. I get the sentiment that a heartfelt piece of self-revealing poetry is a painful thing to share and have criticized. But the language you use should be aspirational, in that you want to improve your failings and find the universalizing creative wavelengths that make poetry and language a transcendent thing worth pursuing. Otherwise, you're just Rupi Kaur or some Twitterati spewing out your thoughts ad hoc with zero eye on growth. There's nothing wrong in that greentext's example. If I'm trying to expunge my pain by sharing experiences with death, sickness, the addiction of others... well, shouldn't I want to be better at it? Shouldn't I be able of hearing that my diction or inconsistent imagery needs to be addressed to better move the audience? If I'm trying to paint a landscape and all of my greens are too brown to translate the forest, I would want to know that.

We can all dial down the cuntishness and the egoish, both the perpetually aggrieved at being criticized and the eternally shocked at being called out on their snideness. In all mediums, there is a happy medium (if you'll excuse my drollness).

[Anonymous No.21534868]

>>21534801
You have been measured in this, but fail, i think, to see my central issue. I am not against *requested criticism*. If a poet goes and opens himself up, and says publicly "i am not finished with this poem, i have been working on it, but i sense some problems that i'm not sure i can fix alone", and someone comes to them and provides the service of effective criticism, then i am overjoyed at that person's growth and the critic's service rendered. What I am absolutely against is a person whose work is finished being dismantled as an exercise to please the audience of the forum, or chatroom, or what have you. It's rude and inevitably going to fill arteries with acid. I do see something infinitely wrong with the greentext in this instance, there is a clear disconnect there, namely the idea that the expression or mood was ephemeral, and that the critic is trying to help them for "next time". as if one's mother dies every week. the point being that such poetry often involves -striking while the iron is hot-.
I do think criticism can be a vehicle for personal growth, but the ridiculous notion that anyone who shares a poem opens themselves up to the attack of every stumpfuck who glances at it is a rot at the root of the culture.
The fact that the general poet has been made to feel comfortable dismantled, his voice vitiated, and made to believe he is being assisted, to me is the worst of it.
I understand that I seem unreasonable, but I do not concede to the foundations of this wretched abuse, and cannot stand beside you as you would have me. again, you're a better man than i am, gunga din.

[Anonymous No.21534910]

>>21534868
Maybe you're righter than I am, friend. I can acknowledge that perhaps what I am offering as a "happy medium" is unconsciously just a reaction to the atmosphere of toxicity in your view. If you're seeing me as trying to make the best of it, naively, I can accept that point of view too. I mean, if what you're saying is
>We really need to get some of this poisonous gas out of the forum.
And I am reading like
>Nah, it's all right man. The respirator I wear is comfortable enough and it's always been part and parcel of critique
Without considering there was a time or a possibility that the forum WASN'T FILLED WITH POISONOUS GAS... well, point taken.

[Anonymous No.21534947]

>>21534910
Yes, a thousand times yes. Sometimes I just get a little insane having to root through jerks just to speak with people, that the wickedness is expected, condoned.
I do respect your thick skin, feel it is admirable, since my ideal is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, at least one of us will come away without being beaten by the disappointment, and this instance was more the "straw that broke the camel's back" than the most grievous act i've ever seen.

I am deeply conflicted, to be sure. I have argued on the other side so long, that literature must have rigor lest it fall into the muck, but I have become more and more convinced that literature, poetry, has been replaced as an art by the critics themselves. The parasites have taken over the organism. That the worst of it has been passed on to the new generations, they don't see the ideal, just an echo of it, just the tool used to scrape away all the detritus.
Maybe I'm just the failed poet, and this is the frustration I deserve. If you can grow, keep growing. I'm nothing more than the mite on the back of the flea. The critic of the critic. A fractal failure.

[Anonymous No.21535261]

>>21534947
I hope you're still checking the thread.

Trite as this is: the point of any ideal (on a personal level) is just like the artistic impulse to write poetry, an aspirational impulse. You strive towards the ideal, even if it is unattainable. Since you're tossing "gunga dins" at me (coincidentally one of my favorite expressions and one I use often with the buddy I'm currently fixing a boat with) consider another Kipling's "If".

I can also understand a comparatively minor straw breaking the back (that's the point of the expression, I realize, so that hardly makes me a genius). Maybe what you see as casual contempt is more infuriating than intentional causticity. Certainly finding out that the average human being in my old profession, decent at home and good to their loved ones, was a creature capable of horrible neglect simple from overexposure to suffering has been something I've needed to wrestle with more than blatant abuse, which I've always known has existed and had steeled myself for.

Overall, your post here makes me think of DFW's essay about Dostoevsky. I've only read a few short essays by the man, but the point of modernity and postmodernity running on reflexive irony and cynicism for authentic expression of emotion seems like something that would resonate with you.

Why don't you critique my poems. And you can have another one, that I wasn't intending on sharing. It's complete and I have no need to revise it because I know the friend I am sending it to will love it. I've incorporated her diction and it's an apology about not being able to get an apartment with her in the timeframe she was looking for (due to events in my own pauper's life) and knowing she's feeling alone where she is, two thousand miles from New England where she would like to be.

[Anonymous No.21535276]

>>21534947
>>21535261
Might be good to actually fucking include it.

[Anonymous No.21535386]

>>21535261
we are aligned in many queer ways. I see the pursuit of the ideal as the process by which art is made manifest to begin with. i think that the only one who actually has any grasp on *the* ideal is God, so all mortal attempts at it fail. I am familiar enough with DFW to know of his New Sincerity, and it certainly resonates with me, being so wrapped in sardonic complexity, the modern age has left the core of art behind somewhere in its path towards progress, towards refinement. As to criticizing your poetry, I'm not in any position, though I can at the very least praise it. The emotion you capture in 165, it is the pressure of the family, the history of horror we all seem to bear, the mundane trust that next time we will be able to figure it out, that if we're careful we won't be cut again, the bleakness of backyard plans lay fallow, while relying on the pacifying beauty of nature. your clear resilience in our brief conversation is evident in 165, you have chosen to survive, to take what you can from life and love it, and to let the rough parts build calluses and you've committed to love them too, somehow. there is no shortage of the beauty of emotion in you, and whatever function of form you miss are made up for in an extended hand that touches the heart. I am not like you in that, I am sensitive to a fault, to unbearable degree, I'm the princess complaining of the pea. I pour the baby out with the bathwater. I'm the fault in every fable.

My grandpa used to belt out kipling, ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY, he'd cry, and a few years before he died he gave me a poster with the poem If on it. He wanted nothing more for me to be a good man, to overcome myself. I failed that too, and here I am barking at critics, missing loved ones I despised, being a mess of contradiction.
Because you have touched me so, I'll share something, against my better judgment. I rarely share anything anymore because I know it will get trashed, I know it deserves it, and I know people love to slice up a heart bared.

ode to if

when you find earth's gravity leaving you behind
and as you drift about in space if you feel inclined
to trace an orbit round a violet sun that's ill defined
be sure to make a mental note as your I goes past
though the marks upon your map may never seem so vast
trust, the model you've been given is a heady stew
of wroughten signs and fundaments celestials eschew
the paths to home are clear by now save some unpolished few
is it mad to slip away from that peerless you?
be unafraid to fly away from that haunted self
leave that bauble when it lands shattered from the shelf

[Anonymous No.21535456]

>>21535386
honestly, i feel bad, i gave that poem, thinking that it would do well to show my emotion, but it's all just dreck. Frankly, i have many poems i just never show anyone. I'm too afraid to, been too afraid to. I know that one is no good, it needs more space, more everything.

I'll post the only fucking poem i've ever written that has ever captured a shred of my emotion.
this is the best i got.

If Birds Were Men

Quiet is the dark persuaded
From dawning light to gloaming faded
Disperse from me, that chatter near,
Though yearn to touch my traitor ear
The songs of kith and kin alike
A wicked blow to peace does strike
With flippant sneer is thus derides
The comfort in which silence hides
No more, I should question me
Ask if imps within there be
With club Despair, I do now swing
My weary woes at they who sing

[Anonymous No.21535609]

>>21534596
Critic anon here, just want to let you know that I was not this poster.
>>21534591
Sure. I think there are so many abstractions in the first stanza that I find offputting. Cyclic impulse. Alchemizes truth. I'm not even sure what that means. Refracting and condensing in the dark with every pass. This has way too much of a jaunty rhythm. I retransmute it. Warm. This rhythm is totally jarring beside the one precedent. I'm not going to keep critiquing this since I think you get the point. Regardless of the content, the rhythms will seem unpleasant to the ear of the audience. Also, I do not understand why you guys got so upset with my blunt criticism. I'm not a girl and I am not your therapist. We are here to talk about poetry. I critique your poetry so you can get better. If you just want attention and to be praised then maybe you should say so.
>>21535276
Now this right here is one of the best poems I have read in these threads. My only criticism would be in the penultimate stanza's ultimate line I would cut the word for.

[Anonymous No.21536005]

I like your shoes
I like them because they’re out of season
I hate everything that moves
According to the eye of the great serpent

[Anonymous No.21536060]

>>21535609
Of those three specified criticisms:
>Warm
Absolutely agree. This is the weakest couplet in the entire thing and I have been beating my head against a wall trying to fix it.
>Abstractions that you find offputting
It's difficult to know what to take from that because the other person to comment on this liked both of those things specifically. Alchemizes truth refers to the heat of the hand melting the frost off the window. You not understanding it isn't objective grounds for my consideration, it's a matter of taste. I'm not being difficult here or giving you pushback per se. I'm just highlighting that, in taking critiques, part of the challenge is sifting different opinions.
>Refracting etc.
Again, "will seem unpleasant" was not the reception I have gotten. But thank you for the specificity.

As to the second poem, thank you. It's less ambitious but I enjoy it. "For" will stand because it's a poem with an audience of one, that's how she speaks, and she has specifically told me she admires my ability to capture her speech mannerisms in writing to her.

[Anonymous No.21536092]

Late at night the stars rearranged, forming an angel

Only i am out at this hour

No one would believe me anyway

[Anonymous No.21536127]

>>21536060
>As to the second poem, thank you. It's less ambitious but I enjoy it. "For" will stand because it's a poem with an audience of one, that's how she speaks, and she has specifically told me she admires my ability to capture her speech mannerisms in writing to her.
This is a fair response. I can let that be. But I must say, Alchemizes truth, still does nothing for me. I understand that it refers to the hand melting the frost, but what does it mean to Alchemize the truth? And how does that accurately overlap with the heat of the Palm pressed upon the window thus melting off the frost? Are you comparing truth with frost or a window or a frosted window? I don't really care if people like your poems. They could just be projecting their feelings onto it. I think the presentation of your diction muddles the poetry. You sound like an insouciant gardener, but a master gardener can tame incongruities.

[Anonymous No.21536246]

What is going on here?

[Anonymous No.21536295]

>>21536246
Care to articulate your question a little more clearly?

[Anonymous No.21536340]

>>21536127
The hand is a motif within the narrative of the poem that reoccurs. What is the frost preventing me from doing? Seeing out the window at the accosting images of memory that I force myself to recollect. The next time the hands are mentioned, this is made clear "an all-encroaching glaze," "ignorance" "so that I might forget". I don't think it's as obtuse as you are making it seem, I think you just prefer a linear narrative to the poem. Plenty of poems are more esoteric and again your criticism just sounds like a matter of taste. It's fine for you not to care if people don't like my poems, I'm not bringing it up as a "nyeh, doo doo head, other people liked it". I'm saying your critique, in this instance (which is about 25% of your critique) smacks me as subjective.

[Anonymous No.21536377]

>>21536340
>>21536127
But! As I said, you're reiterating a critique I have occasionally heard before, so I will -even though I disagree with some of your examples - definitely take it into consideration.

[Anonymous No.21536388]

Me? Sick?
so ill it cut me to the quick
rapid dwindle now this wick
eyes they crusted bitter salt
thumping head a bloody fault
dreaming fever waking burn
in drenched bed o how i churn
come to me that cool relief
now winter breeze sustain belief
that will meander and decline
this wretched temperature of mine
out of this bed then will i leap
behind me leave this ruddy heap
and venture forth into the day
for warmth of sun no more delay!

[Anonymous No.21536412]

>>21533244
I thought I made it clear in >>21533238
you are toi close to your poem to understand how a reader comes to it cold. There is a natural breath space at the end of the line, followed by another prolonged in when moving onto the next line the reader is presented with "me" and a full stop. It breaks any rhythm sought by a strict syllable count, where the enjambment originated. It is counter-productive to your aim, because as a cold reader it broke any rhythmic hypnotism formed by strict styles, and I struggled to stay with the work following.

Satisfied?

Also, the state of this fucking thread is disgraceful. Everyone get your heads out of yours or each other's collective asses. It is embarrassing.


Nobody gives a shit about your feelings, and that is the beauty of anon. Who else is going to give it to you straight? And who else, concurrently, is fucking easy to ignore? Take all critisism with a grain of salt.

>>21534583
This cunt. Genius tends away from poetry.

>>21534642
>ultimate vunerability
There is so much preciousness in you fucking post. What vunerability is there in your poems? inb4 deepest soul. If you don't live every day scraping the depths of your soul you have no right picking up a pen with poetic intent. Go find yourself a nanny.
>gallery and some moron took out some oils and 'finished' your painting
by the time it is in a gallery it has been looked over and adjusted by peers. This is not a gallery, there is no curator here, there is no base level of quality before posting, it is a morass that your pasty ass can accept assessment from.

>>21534801
Most of the self-aggrandising comes from those who won't accept any form of criticism. How perfect is your work? How many time have other people told you it was prefect before you decided to come test it in this pit?


Fuck. I am making this thread even worse.

Somebody rate mine>>21527901

[Anonymous No.21536426]

>>21532411
I would suggest that you try to feed "soul" into the poem more lyrically. This reads a bit too formally and straight forward. If "soul" appeared more unpredictably, and forcefully, it would drive home the weight and significance as to what the people eating strange berries were searching for.

So far you are not giving weight to the story for the reader, you are expecting the reader to give their own weight, and readers won't do that.

[Anonymous No.21536432]

>>21525148
For Nero, my sweet


The Creation

The darkness before the Pharaohs bed,
The darkness the Queen stares before,
Before he shows her the way,
The blackness,
Like the Nun
As things should be done,
As they were done in the beginning.
A primordial conversion,
A spiritual experience
An act which imitates the creative act,
from which Cosmos sprang
She shall be the moisture, the water;
And he shall be the air, the spirit
He must totally stimulate her whole being, Body and soul,
Arousing all sorts of sensation all about it,
Mimicking the flickering nature of the matter in space as light and heat came about,
Remind their souls of such things
For as all are eternal beings we they surely were witnesses,
Of the time in which time came,
And invoke through the gift of Ra,
The depths of the Nun in which all was possible
The potential of chaos,
The unbounded infinity
Do it so,
Do it so as to feel like the deathless ones
Let the most mystical and magnificent of pleasure move upon her form as you touch and move upon her,
Fertilize the maiden with the Logos,
Time and space folding out from forever
That is,
All of beauty, earth, and life,
All of history, and all of experience,
Flowing out of eternity

[Anonymous No.21536453]

>>21536412
>ESL chastisement

[I promise this isn't a sage post No.21536470]

>>21536453
>Most of the self-aggrandising comes from those who won't accept any form of criticism. How perfect is your work? How many time have other people told you it was prefect before you decided to come test it in this pit?

[Anonymous No.21536486]

>>21536470
>the ESL repeats himself without embarrassment

[Anonymous No.21536513]

(a new thing, mostly unedited. it doesn't have a title yet.)

shudder, his whole face spilled
i couldn't catch up to the bones behind
eyewater bleeding through the bar napkin, clenched.
it folds into fist, wet evidence.

mistakes unplanning themselves (it cannot
eat without its leaves) and we would rather not
please no thank you we musn't really
make eye contact with the guts of it.

sink slightways into soundwaves
the only complete capture to which we cling.
nailing hammers to the wall, reject
the tools they gave us. we would rather build with our own hands.

and really where's the safety
in a room, sniffing out
security, we found it only under sky.
the open planet ripening.

you unboxed your brainmeat and i peered sideways,
through a rediscovery. matching parts, grinning wild.
i could become again and go unnoticed.
what is worth it will reveal itself. it never does miss, after all.

>>21527901
i really like this

[Anonymous No.21536516]

>>21536486
Oh no, my status

[Anonymous No.21536588]

>>21536516
Nihonjin?

[Anonymous No.21536816]

>>21536412
>There is a natural breath space at the end of the line, followed by another prolonged in when moving onto the next line the reader is presented with "me" and a full stop
Yeah, sure, except when enjambed. Consider the possibility that you are most likely reading a large amount of poetry incorrectly.

[Anonymous No.21536835]

>>21536816
Nice that you neglected tye next party of that paragraph that explained why your specific case was counter-productive to aim

Consider the fact that you are a cunt.

[Anonymous No.21536854]

>>21536835
It's not my job to tell a reader what an enjambment is. The rest of your post was predicated upon doubling down on your ultimately incorrect reading. There is, in fact, no breath point, natural or otherwise, at the end of an enjambed line. It would not be enjambed if there were. I did not ignore the rest of your post as much as I addressed the incorrect assumption from which the rest sprung.

[Anonymous No.21536859]

>>21536835
>ESL gibberish
you sure showed him

[Anonymous No.21537085]

>>21536859
Where's he from if not the land of poetry?

[Anonymous No.21537763]

I'm thinking of trying to write what I might call miniature poems. Poems with three or four syllables or two or three stresses. Here is something I just came up with.

New is true
Free and fresh
Trad is bad
Based is base
Old and sad

[Anonymous No.21538077]

>>21536412
>How perfect is your work?

I'm the anon you're responding to. I don't think someone's work has to be perfect or even better than yours for their opinion to still be work considering. A murderer could tell me not to murder, while he's in the act of murdering someone, and it's still generally good advice.

[Anonymous No.21538109]

Creation wins
This poem is perfect
No errors or sins
Critics wrecked

[Anonymous No.21538177]

>>21527901
Definitely not sufficient to evidence a level of skill justifying the tone you take with others. Some anons whose poetry you've panned is much better.

[Anonymous No.21538301]

>>21536412
What is your poem supposed to be about? "Here we go again" is totally stock and has no impact as an opener. The repetition of 'food" and "meal' is similarly without weight. If you're the same guy talking about people projecting their interpretation into a poem not being sufficient to show that it has objective merit (which I would agree with in general) what the fuck do you think people are going to get out of yours? You seem like you're also guilty of having your head up your ass.

>>21526951
This, however, uses repetition well.

[Anonymous No.21538351]

[Anonymous No.21538423]

>>21538351
The idea is okay but the elliptical vers libre might need some work. Overall, you'd benefit from more rhythm being used, although the enjambment was effective.

[Anonymous No.21539007]

>>21538301
>>21538177

My accusations towards people was not onto their poems directly, if you look at the initial post I made (filled with generally encouraging words, with a few minor points that didn't sit well) I did however tell people to get fucked when they became uppity, arrogant and overly defensive, as if they can do no wrong. Then i got to calling people cunts, because they were cunts, and i too became a gaping cunt, and the chans lived again. D'ya see?

What I wrote started off as one thing(a bored consiousness watching a universe happen again) , then changed to another (something happy with the prey in the night), so any dislocation from a reader is not surprising

[Anonymous No.21539362]

>>21539007
>I did however tell people to get fucked when they became uppity, arrogant and overly defensive, as if they can do no wrong. Then i got to calling people cunts, because they were cunts
Is that really how you see this (>>21533191) response? You can spin whatever narrative you want in your own head and no one can stop you, but what you said doesn't really fit with the facts, since your reply to that fairly reasonable post was:
>>21533210
>Well don't understand. No skin off my nose, you twat

[Anonymous No.21539482]

>>21539362
There was a break in flow, for someone stepping in cold, and if youre being reasonable. no flow, yo. Just some pig headed, brain deaded "you just read it wrong though" As explained, and also demonstrated, however, you are completely reasonable and unbiased person, like me.

>but enjambment
>the irony

[Anonymous No.21539749]

I won't repeat this
This won't be repeated
I won't say this again
Redundancies not tolerated

[Anonymous No.21539771]

this is exactly why it's bad to make the culture of poetic criticism stronger than poesy itself.

[Anonymous No.21539937]

Bravely I go on
In the arms of another
Not every goddess
Can be my lover

Yes and I shall try again
And again
The oracle is dead
My fate is mine
As is my pain

[Anonymous No.21539979]

>>21525148
discord.gg/Pf4ZJzHg

[Anonymous No.21540025]

deep in the trenches of the profane
plumbline undergirding
this home's undeniable architecture
swims a nameless face
affixed with body black and serrated
bulbous in searing mind

its hunger grows its own offspring
and as a pressure it finds a new light
peeking through the echoing drains
their percolating throatsongs sing blank songs

the number of rooms divides equally
among the lives that lie
in the bedframe cracks
no family here can ignore the urge
to dissolve away into the seamless recessions
blurred at the edges by screen static's
temporal yawn

and conspiracies don't explain the extent
to which archaeological blueprints predict
the needling green scents
of pine-room ecstasies labeled wine
vintage dated at a future location

granny's patchwork quilt
has no story to tell
until the dregs excavate
their own internal inconsistencies
stitched by cellular junctions
quizzling scientists call causality's reign

[Anonymous No.21540273]

[Anonymous No.21540373]

when i have to hear of self-mutilation
of bright razors and shower blood a draining
weak mind, limp hands and lead heart all complain

when electroconvulsive therapy
is said to treat and convert i get finicky
i cringe and stroke my face with afflictiony

a portmanteau of affliction and agony
shows its ugly head to describe plastic surgery
fake noses, carved faces, meat perforation

[Anonymous No.21540530]

>>21540273
i like the last stanza and first a little less. the middle not so awesome

[Anonymous No.21540729]

tied up at the stake
somewhat like christ
but nothing like christ
my blood spoils the earth

the laughter of children
the stares of women
the smell of beat flesh
under an oppresive sun

flames and smoke taste my feet
wails and screams carried on the wind
forgive me father for i have sinned
body a whirlwind of ashes and heat

[Anonymous No.21540735]

>>21540729
are you young?

[Anonymous No.21540753]

>>21540735
25

[Anonymous No.21540761]

>>21525148
another day browsing 4chins
pol before biz, tv before lit
interspersed with lifts, shrugs into curls, heavy sets
i write a poem now, then shower and head to bed

[Anonymous No.21541032]

[Anonymous No.21541034]

>>21539771
I don’t think either really read much poetry criticism.

[Anonymous No.21541052]

>>21541034
Recommend us some criticism of poetry that you think is best.

[Anonymous No.21541101]

>>21541052
I’ll just centre it around a particular theme: modernism that rejected and reacted to the past
>Pound
It’s not the best but How to Read is a good start for pedagogical reasons, followed by Spirit of Romance, which you can then read alongside The Cantos with the aid of Hugh Kenner’s Pound Era, which is partly biographical but criticism nonetheless. I think it’s a good idea to look at Terrell’s Companion to the Cantos.
>Milton (who Pound disliked and whose penty he arguably broke)
Bridges’ prosody of Milton is great.
>Romantics
The Rhetoric of Romanticism
>General for Rhythm
The Rhythms of English Poetry and Poetic Rhythm by Derek Attridge
>Essays that are important
Tradition and the Individual Talent by TS Eliot
“The news in the Odyssey is still news” Ezra Pound, W. H. D. Rouse, and a Modern Odyssey by Leah Flack

[Anonymous No.21541126]

>>21541101
>penty
I do not recognize this word.
>Bridges’ prosody of Milton is great.
Read this.
I just got the rest on your recommendation. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21541167]

>>21541126
Ezra Pound gave nicknames to things: penty just is shorthand for iambic pentameter
He used rhythm that was inspired by it but “hewed” it to make it into free verse informed by English meter

[Anonymous No.21541282]

Why is this not in the sticky? It would help beginners.

https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Poetry

[Anonymous No.21541285]

>>21532693
That's iambic bro what are you on about?

[Anonymous No.21541292]

It burns with a resounding ring
I breathe shallow for the thing
the tingling blister feeling crawls
up into my shaking jaws
and strikes me so
in such a way
I think I've
breathed
my last
today

[Anonymous No.21541619]

>>21541292
rip anon

[Anonymous No.21541638]

When no one is looking
The pyramid does nothing
Still and without thinking
Only kings hear it sing

[Anonymous No.21541674]

>>21541638
You have an idea: kings hearing pyramids sing. Now you just need to delete all of that and make a proper poem focused on that idea.

[Anonymous No.21541681]

>>21541292
Tfw the day after spicy wings

[Anonymous No.21541686]

>>21541674
no u

[Anonymous No.21541709]

>>21541674
You have nothing to offer
Chatter that means nothing to me
Fuck what is proper
The words that come are meant to be

[Anonymous No.21541739]

>>21541709
You're a terrible poet and a stupid person.

[Anonymous No.21541754]

>>21541739
How can you even talk about poetry when these are the words you choose to express yourself?

[Anonymous No.21541777]

>>21541674
If a poem takes more than a few minutes it's not an authentic expression of the moment. Why are you so concerned with how bad my poetry is? Just write a poem, I won't punch you if it's bad.

[Anonymous No.21541781]

>>21541754
Thou art a loathsome versesmith and a three-inch fool!

[Anonymous No.21541788]

I'm illuminated
by my computer screen

[Anonymous No.21541845]

Illuminated words dance
The worm eats unwritten pages
Three-inch smith takes a chance
Where are the sages

[Anonymous No.21541918]

>>21541101
>The Rhythms of English Poetry
Enjoying this. I've expressed in this thread before my problems with scansion.

[Anonymous No.21541948]

>>21541285
Do you know how words even have stress? Just because he jammed it into 5 feet doesn’t mean it’s following iambic. Iambic can have trochaic variance anyway. Look at a prosody if you have never seen how words get stress. Also notice how he used “is” on both stressed and unstressed positions, meaning he’s just randomly putting words into feet.

[Anonymous No.21542072]

>>21541948
Are you retarded? That's iambic metre

[Anonymous No.21542208]

>>21525148
Can anyone recommend a good app that helps poets to compose their verse? I'm not talking about Apps that suggest words or subjects or things like that. I mean, an app that helps the user to set structuring parameters (number of stanzas/lines per stanza/rhyme scheme/word count) and does scansion analysis. Seems like most people just write in blank verse nowadays, but I still think of poetry as being more structured than that.

[Anonymous No.21542320]

>>21542208
See >>21541282

[Anonymous No.21542336]

As a flame in the night
Struggle engulfs your every sight
Never too ablaze, never too alight
The only path ahead is to burn and fight

So scald thy tears! Heed thy call!
Let fury by thy guide through summer and fall!
So bright you are, resplendent in twilight
Yet possessed are you by the throes of daylight

In its embrace, what do you see?
Only illusions, I say! An unreachable acme!
Thus you shall look neither low or high
For what could you find, lost in the sky?

I know of your longing to wander faraway
But this too, you must keep at bay
Escape is poison, only putrid, spiritual decay
For what could you gain, from looking away?

[Anonymous No.21542361]

>>21542072
I don't think you understand how words have stress. Tip: longer sound/higher pitch (stressed). Just because it has five feet doesn't mean shit.

[Anonymous No.21542372]

>>21542361
I think you're retarded

[Anonymous No.21542375]

>>21542372
To BE or NOT to BE
See how the stress works due to the sound length/pitch?

[Anonymous No.21542384]

>>21542375
... that's iambic

[Anonymous No.21542401]

>>21542384
Yes, which is obvious. I am trying to show you how iambic works.
Now look at the first lines of his poem, which is irregular:
>when SLOW / ly do / I STIR / from DREAM / ing DEPTH
>and a / LIGHT on / TO the / LImen / LIMNED so

[Anonymous No.21542414]

>>21542401
Both of these are iambic ad your stresse are wrong because you're a retard (Alight not aLIGHT)

[Anonymous No.21542419]

>>21542414
You are probably trolling, but for reference...

[Anonymous No.21542424]

>>21542419
It's /əˈlaJt/

[Anonymous No.21542425]

>>21542424
You have never read poetry, which is painfully obvious.

[Anonymous No.21542428]

>>21542425
You are a retard which was obvious from the start. The poem is in iambic metre. Doesn't ever have to be perfect metre, that's iambic, not trochaic.

[Anonymous No.21542437]

>>21542414
I read it like he did too

[Anonymous No.21542442]

>>21542437
Even if you do, the poem is still iambic. The first verse already sets the metre convincingly.

[Anonymous No.21542445]

>>21542428
Want to see someone use "alight" in a sentence? Here's John Milton:
>Satan / alight / ed walks: / A globe / far off
>>21542442
It's irregular throughout. Who cares what the line did?

[Anonymous No.21542447]

>>21542442
Agreed

[Anonymous No.21542456]

>>21542445
It's not irregular, it's standard iambic and you're retarded

[Anonymous No.21542459]

>>21542456
He can't even hold the meter for more than a line. I think you fail to understand how meter works. It needs to be consistent. You're wrong about "alight" as well. You have a tin ear.

[Anonymous No.21542466]

This is something I thought of in middle school that I’m writing down for the first time. I think they were meant to be my attempt to create a Cage the Elephant-type song rather than a poem, but nonetheless I post what I came up with from memory:

Backwards Man

I’m a backwards man, so ain’t that neat?
I got toes on my hands and fingers on my feet.
Everything I said sour came out awfully sweet,
And my obvious lies were surprisingly discreet.

I loved my mom even though I never listened to her.
When she said, “Stand up straight.” I stood up circular.

I became a mathematician even though I couldn’t count past four.
I won a nobel peace prize after I started a war.

I tried to be normal, I’ve practiced and rehearsed.
But if practice makes perfect, I became perfect at becoming worse.

‘Cause nothing moves forward for a backwards man,
I never do something once before I do it again.

[Anonymous No.21542495]

On the shore we gather
Under the gods sight
Under the eyes of the all-father
Sacrificial lamb alight

[Anonymous No.21542681]

>>21542401
"do" is stressed in the first line

[Anonymous No.21542716]

>>21542681
It could be either

[Anonymous No.21542813]

>>21542716
In that context, not really

[Anonymous No.21542823]

Sensory
----

Do you see it?

There; right before you--
The dim yet gleaming pond
under moonlight that you've found?
Lucky too, as cirrus clouds surround the
silver spoon dipping in the tarn.
Gentle may it be, still ripples form--
The stars among its welkin grip
dripping to their home.

Purple grasses cover blackened stones
lapping up the basin.
The susurrus breathing whispers
brushing gainst your skin.

Do you feel it?
The frigid mountain wind
slipping off of frozen peaks
which whisk the wispy clouds?
As distant air and eagle shrieks
prick the quiet with their sounds--
Do you hear it?

Kneel beneath the bristlecone,
between two blue bugles.
Dip your fingertips down, below
the icy water's black-crown hue,
strewn with star and studded moon.
Glide them through the lunar elixir--
superpositioned in mountainous fixture--
and suddenly smell Honesty's perfume.

Mountain air fills your lungs
as clouds soon cover moon,
and darkness resumes--

Did you see it?

[Anonymous No.21542837]

>>21525148

Just like that - the dog sleeping on the floor,
sipping their lattes
in their favourite little cafe
at a table by the door,

Just like that - a minor quarrel had ballooned
like a live thing, like an unfurling demon,
and grievances became confessions, as each said things to wound.
There was a euphoric, a cathartic, loss of reason.

Just like that - they had broken up.
He stared at the still-sleeping dog.
She simply sat, purged, aghast, numb.
But the thing had been done.

They both affected relief, ("we make more sense as friends"),
But their eyes met and they sorrowed, and then of course followed guilt,
and dismay at the life so quickly discarded,
that had been so lovingly built.

The dog woke, and looked from one to the other,
and it was then that she began to cry,
as he stared out at the leaves blustering past,
vertiginous with the still-telescoping enormity of it all.

[Anonymous No.21542843]

>>21542813
Regardless of the context, the actual stress lives in the performance. So yes, I can drop the stress from do.

[Anonymous No.21542878]

>>21542843
You can if you want to say it wrong

[Anonymous No.21542909]

>>21542878
It sounds just fine.

[Anonymous No.21543051]

so so so so
so so so much
—many many words
upon words upon words
upon words I'll never read

but to only have glanced
so much peripherally
I have gleaned
steeped in mean fiend-streams
keen to dream-peen