Poetry Thread

[Anonymous No.21569119]

Been over a year since I've been here - is Anslem still posting?

Give feedback before posting.

[Anonymous No.21569128]

Took you inside
a couple hours after we met;
out of the December cold.

I didn't know a thing about you
or where abouts you came from,
did that really matter?

We played honeymoon,
I paraded you with flowers
and perfume.

I played scholar
and told you about the bother
I’d been in around the world.

I played scribe
and birthed poetry and prose
about the way her golden hair flowed.

You played wife,
you laid it all out,
kept talking about the ocean in my eyes,

I never got that.
We got so tired in each other's arms,
flowers discarded about us.

I whispered sand
and beaches, and dunes.

You wouldn't stop about my eyes
and the sea. My love,
what did we know?

I made up my mind only the next morning,
agreeing we should wed.

You married me by the greenhouse
surrounded by vines and botanicas.

A couple months later you called me
from Denver about our vows.

I picked you up
the way only I could
and unloaded missed opportunities,
misunderstandings and not meant to bes.

I heard you nodding your head
and thought you whispered:
'the ocean is too much like the sky'.

[Anonymous No.21569143]

We danced over flora tiles
under dim light
to slow piano.

I picked a flower
from my smokey coat,
unearthed for you.

We shared petals;
mouth to mouth.

[Anonymous No.21569666]

CITY CENTER
a flicker of a thousand eyes
neon colors reflecting
like children painting
mixing into sad brown dyes
>>21569128
very nice

[Anonymous No.21569672]

>>21569128
>reddit spacing

[Anonymous No.21569679]

>>21569672
>what are stanzas
Fucking retard

[Anonymous No.21569681]

>>21569666
better version

[Anonymous No.21569870]

I've already had it in the last thread but im trying to get some opinions.
II was encouraged to archive my work so i will post a new poem every 2 weeks at the link:
> micz.substack.com/p/chalk-vandals
sub by email if you like.

[Anonymous No.21570116]

>>21569119
And come, anon, upon the face of mine!

[Anonymous No.21570121]

>>21569870
Insists upon itself a bit, doesn't it?

[Anonymous No.21570199]

Streetlights flickering
Sirens blosson from the quiet
I'm on the night shift

[Anonymous No.21570227]

>almost never post in these threads

I actually have written a fair amount of poetry for the last few years. But I dream of being a published poet so I don't put them on 4chan, because I know if some damned editor at a journal or website Googles my poem and finds it here, it's over for me.

But I admire everyone who posts in these threads. It warms my heart to know that the spirit of poetry is alive and well on /lit/.

[Anonymous No.21570252]

>>21570121
Really? im usually told my poetry is too light.
A guy in the other thread called it 'insignificant'

Do you mean it wraps-up a bit too cleanly?


>>21570227
Do what i do, just throw them up on a blog or substack or whatnot . I had some poems published a last year and not counting print i believe i had around 100 people have a look at them over a month or so. Just posting a link here i've had more then that already.

[Anonymous No.21570335]

she hides under her damaged veil
in a world thats dying
she wanders towards bethlehem
the wind follows her

god seeks judgment on a world
that has long forgot
the trees and the sea are dead
but god is not

[Ishmael No.21570387]

I recognize the absurdity found
When partaking in this futile game
I know less of where the wind blows
Then how does fall the rain.

I have read Pound Eliot Frost and yes the other names
And still I stand fore the rows of their bows, calmly aimed.

[Anonymous No.21570396]

I write poetry, but I don't post it because I want to try and get published. Anyone else in the same boat? I want feedback, but I don't want to waste any hard work here.

[Anonymous No.21570401]

>>21570227
Oh, lol. Didn't see this when I posted this >>21570396. Yes, I'm in the same boat as you.

[Anonymous No.21570409]

>>21570396
I post mainly shitposts here but I also have been published since 2020. I had a hiatus last year but that was because I was working my first proper job out of university.
If you don't know where to get published yet, then research journals that publish poetry. The first thing to do is scan a masthead and avoid anything like "LGBT" "black" "women" or "latinx". The second thing to do is read the journal and see if any of it aligns with your poetics; if it's all word vomit vers libre or concrete poetry, find somewhere better.
Scouting the field is a third of the job as a poet; the other two thirds are reading and writing. Feedback is okay but half the time retards on /lit/ will never read anyway (which is why you can bait them by posting famous works that they take to be your own, then critique it).
>t. dozen poems published

[Anonymous No.21570412]

>>21569870
Excellent stuff.
I don't really get rhyming poetry for the most part but this was nice.

[Anonymous No.21570418]

>>21570409
I'm >>21570227 and I actually AM a published poet. That's the whole reason I'm reluctant to put shit in these threads. I've built just the tiniest hint of a reputation and I worry about that. I'm happy being associated with 4chan some day, but not yet.

I've got about a dozen poems published. My biggest claim to fame is that I got published in an interesting Catholic journal called First Things. I got a poem placed there and it was very great, they even paid me for it. The only time I've ever been paid for getting ANYTHING published.

[Anonymous No.21570427]

>>21570418
If you already have experience, maybe join a circle of poets at a university, or the usual writing groups advertised at libraries or universities. Well done on the paid publication!

[Anonymous No.21570444]

>>21570409
>>21570418
Awesome. I'm not published, but I have a poetic dream. What steps did you take to hone your craft?

[Anonymous No.21570451]

>>21570444
>What steps did you take to hone your craft?
I read prosodies and forced myself to read lots of old Oxford editions of collected poetical works; the latter of which you can pick up at nearly any second hand book store for peanuts. Look out for the blue hardbacks with the Oxford Uni symbol on them. After you read this stuff, you'll eventually have some sense of English rhythm; it becomes easier to parse. Surprisingly, you can think in meter all you like when in the groove. I also stopped worrying about being a novelist, which I might do down the line, but I definitely have way less skills as a prose writer (and I fucking hate thinking about muh character development and 'story logic', which normies won't shut up about).
Poetry is way easier to get published too, compared to prose, due to the fact it takes up less space and one can redraft and edit it fairly easily within a short amount of time. Also, editors only ever get me to change a line or two if I get accepted, if at all, which is way less than a short story got edited when I had one prose piece out.

[Anonymous No.21570460]

>>21570444
Read and take classes. But I've been honing my craft since I was young. I've been writing poetry since I was very small, actually.

What got me back into poetry in a serious way was two classes I took in graduate schol: a class on the English Romantics, and a class on pastoral poetry. Studying great poetry in an academic setting rekindled my love of writing poems. Because I was getting exposed to poets I would not have known about beforehand. I knew the Romantics but I would not have read the specific poems I read, like Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" or "La Belle Dame sans Merci," or all of Blake's very great long poems. And in the pastoral tradition I was getting introduced to a poetic tradition I'd previously known nothing about, but which immediately fascinated me. It was also my first direct exposure to Spenser, who has since become one of my favorite English poets.

Basically you need something or someone to take you out of your comfort zone. Expand your mind. You will write better poetry if you are being tugged in places you did not expect.

[Anonymous No.21570469]

Normally write coomer poetry so this is a bit of a new direction for me.

[Anonymous No.21570475]

>>21570469
The mix of rhythm and archaisms with the lazy contemporary voice seems unusual to me. It gives off a psychotic poetics...

[Anonymous No.21570483]

>>21570475
I'm assuming that's not a good thing... Which bits in particular did you find the contemporary voice? That's something I'd like to stamp out early on if possible.

[Anonymous No.21570492]

>>21570483
If you're going to the point of using "transfix'd" and "project'd" seemingly with no rhyme nor reason, then you might as well use "thy/thine" instead of "your," but maybe you're going for a Blakean poetics, which itself is psychotic. The same goes with "you" which just feels out of place; it would be more interesting with "thee," "thou," or plural "ye," etc.
You often end the stress on an unstressed word like "with," "-mic," "-er," "-ing," "-os," "the," to name a few.
You frequently put "your" in the first and second positions of an iamb, which is odd. Most poets of yore would not do that.
You also misspell "elixr" and "radient" ... I'm not sure if that is intentional. It just seems like random stuff put together, improperly.

[Anonymous No.21570498]

>>21570409
>which is why you can bait them by posting famous works that they take to be your own, then critique it
To be fair, this could be interpreted in other ways. It could be that /lit/ is dumb and can't recognize the intrinsic greatness of certain authors and poets... it could also be that people feel more free to genuinely form their own opinions on a work when it is viewed as a peer's work rather than that of the established greats. Either way, discounting the opinion of someone who simply hasn't read enough to know the minor short stories of Beckett is disingenuous, and primarily appeals to authority. I'm sure it feels gratifying to pull one over on others, but there are some rational exceptions that could be raised in response.

[Anonymous No.21570501]

>>21570498
But I didn't post the minor short stories of Beckett. I posted Turn of the Screw, some Balzac, and Call of Cthulhu. Things that will always be generally known if you have a passing interest in reading, at least just in terms of style alone.

[Anonymous No.21570505]

>>21570492
>If you're going to the point of using "transfix'd" and "project'd" seemingly with no rhyme nor reason
I was aiming to try and copy the patterns of speech and contractions you find in the New English Hymnal but you're right they do seem a bit absurd, left there by themselves
>You also misspell "elixr" and "radient"
No, not intentional I'm just a retard
>You often end the stress on an unstressed word like "with," "-mic," "-er," "-ing," "-os," "the," to name a few.
>You frequently put "your" in the first and second positions of an iamb, which is odd. Most poets of yore would not do that.
Very interesting, anon. I'm very much a novice so I appreciate the tips

[Anonymous No.21570512]

>>21570505
It did remind me of Blake so it's not "bad" per se; there just wasn't a coherent whole for me. And if you're going for hymnal stuff, or anything closer to a song, then the flow will have to be pretty good. Blake's poetry is supposed to be sung, so try read this aloud with a bit of a songlike rhythm to it. See which bits stick out.

[Anonymous No.21570518]

>>21570501
Someone else did. The point remains. That said, I do agree with you on a personal level. I think that, especially in the writers' corners of /lit/, people have poor taste. They wouldn't know good writing if it was driving rusty nails into their ballsack with a frozen carp. It's a cheap trick to fool people into showing the fact that they haven't read the entire oeuvre of Balzac, for example, but... not many people ever will. I would argue that the number of people who have read the entire work of Balzac and are also excellent writers is roughly commensurate with the overall demographics with respect to excellent writers. Excellent writing can come from close reading of a handful of authors just as easily as from a broad, postgraduate program of study.

[Anonymous No.21570537]

>>21570518
I don't think I'm an excellent writer, for what it's worth. I just wish people would care more about the art of writing to have some form of self-directed education.
>Excellent writing can come from close reading of a handful of authors just as easily as from a broad, postgraduate program of study.
I agree, but I don't really rate contemporary study very highly anyway. When I went, I was just forced to regurgitate the politicised criticism of my professors' choosing, ranging so diversely from one progressive liberal position to the next! I actually had to read on my own after I graduated to even get a semblance of education, sadly, but that is entirely due to my department; other universities are probably fantastic. Our resident "poets" just talked about gender and being a boomer who walked around, writing about "spatial studies" which hurt my head.
>no one ever will read Balzac
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket and Sarrasine are discussed here well enough; they're so famous they appear in many well known essays (Barthes' S/Z). But you're right that readership has plummeted relative to people who call themselves writers, which is just the sad state of self-publishing and a culture of "everyone can be a multi-millionaire like Stephen King." I don't think the majority of writers even care about writing at this point; it's just a desire to be published and read, not a desire to write back to the masters before you.
I probably posted those masters' stories out of frustration because people will tell you something is "grammatically incorrect" because their high school teacher told them some bullshit rule of thumb like "don't start a sentence with and," or "no connectives after a semi-colon," which shows neither those teachers nor those students read very widely. If I try to even vary sentence structure, people will try to make it the most bare bones linear sentence ever, for the whole story. It's like they need the entirety of the story to line up in a "X then Y then Z" fashion. But I do think parenthetical or elliptical writing to be much more pleasurable, and that may be my personal taste.

[Anonymous No.21570553]

>Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
>Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
>Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
>For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
>One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
>Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
>With shabby equipment always deteriorating
>In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
>Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
>By strength and submission, has already been discovered
>Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
>To emulate—but there is no competition—
>There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
>And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
>That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
>For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Thanks, T.S. I needed that.

[Anonymous No.21570570]

>>21569128
overly romantic and with stock imagery

>>21569870
Excellent! best lit poem in a while.
Try for publication rather then throwing it up here.

>>21570335
i like the idea of notes or epigraphs to pictures.
keep going

>>21570469
holly shit this reads jagged

[Anonymous No.21570634]

You forget too easily how
a man became a city, rolled
himself before the quiet sea
and under the endless skies
set about recreating the stars.

[Anonymous No.21571123]

>>21570570
>Excellent! best lit poem in a while.
>Try for publication rather then throwing it up here

Thanks. I have been published a few times and found it much less thrilling then you'd think.
I've decided to strike out on my own. Have a look at >>21569870 link.
i always feel rather scummy sending people offsite but i put alot of work into my poems and want them to stay up somewhere, and for a way of getting them to people who subscribed.

[Anonymous No.21571283]

>>21570335
>>21570387
>>21570634
pure kino, i love the fleeting sense of beauty evoked by short poems.

To pray for solace to be a puddle
of white paint on the mud there are
traces of walking away from the crushed
thorns only sting when held tight
enough to crush them would be a sin
is not forgiven through prayer but
with intention we rise above the blur
above the murkiness in her eyes is
chaste and is ever inviting alas
I'm held back by the sin of staining
the white puddle with the mud and
thorns on the soles of my shoes are
tearing up and choking as I see her
pray away from me pray with others
I'm not as calm as the thick paint
when it rains panes go blurry again
the pains forgotten about in muddy
plains are vast and lonely
except for the shepherd who reigns
with his mother feigns death
to be granted a moment of peace --

[Anonymous No.21571687]

Fog crushed red night
like bloody mist scattered
atop building spire
In all that gravel and low res sky,
like forum nights on lonely laptop
I exist between the
corporeal crimson of autumn
And I exist amongst nothing at all.

[Anonymous No.21572154]

I walk an empty street
Beneath a light-polluted sky
Not a star to be seen
When first I look up high

From a dark, lonely cloud
A red light does emerge
But when I place my hand to it
I feel no want nor urge

At night I do not dream—
The spark is all but dead
Of curiosity
That once beamed in my head

Beyond that man-made shroud
I swear the stars still live
But in my heart I fear
We’ve squandered God’s best gift

[Anonymous No.21572159]

>>21572154
You lose steam by the second stanza, in my opinion. But the last stanza picks it up again. Was this intentional? Feels like the stamping rhythm died off and came back.

[Nortron No.21572188]

>>21569128
God I hate poems about goirls
Likely because iman incelephmeral loiser.

Rhyming without purpose
Or swim like a poipose?

[Anonymous No.21572191]

>>21572159
I wrote it thirty minutes ago on a walk. It isn't very refined. But no it wasn't intentional. I'm relatively new to writing poetry.

[Anonymous No.21572208]

My tip would be to take out "from a" for "within" as "from a" is trochaic to me (/x).
Otherwise the poem is relatively okay, although you put some words like "light" and "beamed" in awkward places.
It's a bit strange that you put "my" and "high" in different stresses, since they obviously rhyme, but this is usually a consequence of grammar, I think, since it's hard to put "my" anywhere else.

[Anonymous No.21572219]

>>21572208
Oops, forgot to (you) >>21572191
I also think "that man" could be changed for "the man", as well as "that man-made" to "the man-made" but that doesn't really matter as much, just sounds a bit clearer.

[Anonymous No.21572232]

The flibbertigibbets danced on high
In the land of the goops so nigh
With their flummox and their fleep
They skipped and hopped without a peep

Until the moon came out to play
And chased them all away

The goops then sang a joyful tune
Of the flibbertigibbets' impending doom
For in the land of make-believe
Such fanciful creatures can't long grieve

[Anonymous No.21572233]

>>21572154
Second look:
>not a star to be seen
Seems really jumbled
It almost reads: /x /x //
It could just be reworded completely. For example:
Within the sky's no single star

[Anonymous No.21572278]

on a humid night
the moon shines its fragile light
on graves long forgotten
except to the stars above

below the surface
returned to the earth
now bones and dust
inside a casket that rusts

[Anonymous No.21572308]

>>21572233
Thanks for the feedback. I need to think a lot more about meter when writing but to be honest I find it difficult to spot in one syllable words.

[Anonymous No.21572414]

>>21572308
Well, we wouldn't be able to write much if we only made every word stressed or unstressed for all time; it comes from your own accent too. It can be relative to the other sounds of the words next to it. So try to think about how high pitched or long the sound is in either case.

[Anonymous No.21572493]

A poem I wrote for a friend whose lifelong alcoholic mother has reached a month of sobriety for the first time in my friend's entire life. The trillium is a special flower to their family and the references 3 stanzas, 3 rhymes, 3 rotating positions for the scheme.

170. A Trillium on Recovery (Version 2: Revised Perspective)

January brings home to me
A newness beyond just the time of the year.
Clouds have parted in ways I thought never to see;
Things are, in this moment, like they never could be.
A cardinal alights on a chair.
The world is transcendently fair.

She speaks. I speak. And we hear.
It's a novel dynamic that sings in the air.
I half expect God, full in light, to appear.
Yet I wonder inside: could I still shed a tear?
It's good, but it's strange to feel free
When I grew from that uncertainty.

There's no other time to compare
When Fate's coin spun with such possibility.
I know it must fall but I cannot know where.
But I'll muse on my hopes while I watch for the snare.
And for now: the car's off, not in gear.
I'll just talk with my mom and sit here.

[Anonymous No.21573565]

>>21571283
Thanks anon, very kind.

On the other hand. I think your poem is to burdened. Did you write it quickly just to post here?

Example line 3 - crushed
line 5 - crush

I understand and like what your tried - using verbs and nous to pivot the poem into new directions, them brining it back home through repetition of themes. The final line hints that you expected the result to be breathless and relenting to the reader, however i don't think you achieved this effectively.

Nice thing to work on

[Anonymous No.21574146]

A poem to the beautiful women and their beautiful voices and sad beautiful stories and how the universe can't be any more than that. Your lips are beautiful


I don't know what it is
but I just can't buy it
that beauty is authentic

[Anonymous No.21574860]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21575150]

WEEPING IN HALL B
Wander through the halls
Sterile white through bleated eyes
The air conditioning turned up to high

[Anonymous No.21576285]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21576525]