/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3694859]

Imagine William Wordsworth was a contemporary writer, do you think he would've included references to the appurtenances of modern living in his poetry? Would, for example, 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality' have mentioned his iPad, or would Samuel Taylor Coleridge have made some allusion to Lady Gaga in 'Kubla Khan'?

I've been wrestling with the question of material change and its influence on poetic composition. Do technological advances necessarily entail some sort of nounal ramification in verse?

There are still daffodil-laden hills in the Lake District, I've seen them, but while I was there a pair of RAF jets flew over my head and startled a group of Korean tourists walking in the opposite direction. Yet it seems glib, or mawkish, for a poet to espouse the kind of Platonic idealism which both characterised the Romantic movement and which would - I reckon - allow one to overcome the profusion of particulars which I mentioned above.

Does one have a duty to poeticise the empty shelves of an IKEA warehouse at night? The sanitary habits of Hip Hop divas? The sigh of a fading LED light on a Playstation 3?

Can anyone still write Romantic poetry?

[Anonymous No.3694870]

can romantic poetry be tied into consumerism without seeming satirical?

[Virgin 20/m/UK !VIRGIN/FJM No.3694884]

these are the kind of questions you need to ask yourself.

Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, et al., were writing the voice of their times. Romanticism wasn't just about observing nature, it was a reaction to the rationalism of the enlightenment. It would seem "glib or mawkish" to idealize nature now because this reaction to the enlightenment and scientism isn't as present. You could do probably do it, but you wouldn't be able to do it in the same flowery language of their time without seeming stilted, and you would have to represent the antagonism of this ideal nature to the sprawling cities and technological revolution in your verse in order to be relevant.

[Anonymous No.3694888]

"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
a righteous pad inhabit, yo.
his crib he filled with chilled Korbel
his bathtubs with the finest blow.

And hos as white as mama's milk
did bounce their tits about his brow
so fine and firm and silky skinned
I wish I was suckin on one now.

But shit, comes down as shit jist does
and the mob moved in on kublai's hood
he ditched his dome, and pawned his bling
and bounced, while the bouncin was still good.

But sometimes when I'm feelin blue
I walk downtown where Xanadu
once reared it's dome up in the night.
and think"That Kublai was alright."
Some dude from Porlock bought it out
Not somethin I like to think about."

[Anonymous No.3694908]

>>3694859

Yeah, but you're not going find any decent discussion here. Hell, I dont think you'll find anything past the Modernist era here outside of Genre Fiction and DFW.

[Virgin 20/m/UK !VIRGIN/FJM No.3694937]

>iPad
>Gaga
>RAF jets
>daffodil-laden hills
>IKEA warehouse
>Hip Hop divas
>LED light
>Playstation 3

It sounds like you're really caught up on looking for physical things in the world to write about. Poets generally do not choose their subjects by thinking of whatever objects they happen to see or stumble upon in their daily lives. You don't need to traverse the world looking for objects to write about. You don't need to take stock of every object in society and write about whatever appears most often or whatever appears to be in the forefront.

I don't think the romantics wrote about a "sunless sea" or "cloudless climes and starry skies" or the "shady sadness of a vale" because they just happened to find themselves immersed in beautiful nature. Why didn't the Augustan or Elizabethan poets write these things? They lived with the same beautiful British countryside. The romantics wrote about those things because they were the objects that most suited their *greater aims*, the *main subject*, which was human passion and natural beauty in the face of overly rational thinking and modern industry.

"I need to write about something" - and then you go and look with your eyes for things to mention in your poetry. Don't think like this, think about what NEEDS TO BE WRITTEN - where does human passion lie today? where wisdom? what needs to be satirized? what championed? who are the heroes and who are the villains? Find a subject and then recruit those daily objects to your cause.

[Anonymous No.3694957]

>>3694888

10/10

[Virgin 20/m/UK !VIRGIN/FJM No.3694961]

and this is why poetry is hard, because it's not just about the apt description of things. To be a poet you also need to be a discoverer and somebody who takes a stance.
Homer didn't just choose to write about great heroes like Achilles because "great heroes just happened to be around back then, and so it was a poets job to write about them". No, Homer was great because he judged with his poet's eye what was beautiful and deified and immortalized it in his verse, and in doing so became Greece's teacher.

[Anonymous No.3694976]

>>3694937

I think you're absolutely correct. As it happens, I don't write poetry. I just don't think I have the 'gift'. Perhaps it's precisely because I can't see beyond the material. That kind of mentality, in my opinion, is only suited to penning satire. I can, I suppose, see a contemporary writer giving us a 'Don Juan', I just wonder whether 'they' (the imagined genius of our age) could give us a 'Manfred' too. I should been clearer, I meant to suggest that - as you rightly identified - Romanticism itself entailed an act of pointed selection. One simply couldn't sustain 'essentialist' (Platonic) ideals without ignoring a multitude of unpleasant specifics.

I just wondered whether our current writers would feel impelled to include these details in order to remain relevant (albeit very briefly, given the rate of technological progress). Whether it's Easton Ellis or Foster Wallace, there seems to be a need to catalogue, however ironic it may be. Though I appreciate that those two probably don't constitute a representative sample. Are we simply living in an 'Augustan' age?

- Thanks for the thoughtful responses so far.

[Virgin 20/m/UK !VIRGIN/FJM No.3695031]

>>3694976
>Are we simply living in an 'Augustan' age?

I think Augustan poetry was defined by its sublime manners, its high decorum, its technical style. If anything I would say our age is the opposite of Augustan poetry than the opposite of Romantic, in the sense that that the main qualities of the poetry of our age are the mirror opposite qualities of those I just mentioned. I think there is still plenty of Romanticism in 20th century poetry, it's just that the clouds and the hills aren't mentioned. There's much more Romantic feeling than there is the feeling for manners and decorum.
I bet you could find some sentimentalism in DFW. Perhaps that would be a better word for what occurs today though, sentimentalism - as opposed to romanticism, perhaps these are two different things.
Through all that modern nausea and postmodern irony you can find everywhere that sickly sentimentalism that feels itself trapped in the cage of widespread alienation.

Especially in these alt-lit people like Tao Lin and people that put their poetry on blogs. There's such more sentimentalism behind their "so alienated, so dehumanized" act.

[Anonymous No.3695093]

>>3695031

Those are certainly elements commonly associated with early eighteenth century poetry, especially in the major translated works and pastorals (in Pope, for example). However, my abiding impression of Augustan literature emerges from the age's satire. The historical connection with Caesar Augustus's reign - the Pax Romana, the writing of Horace and Juvenal - and Sciblerian works such as 'The Rape of the Lock' and 'The Beggar's Opera' gives me the impression that it was an age of niggling discontent - with specifics: persons, manners, places, metrical styles - accommodated by relative political stability (the Whig parliament, the reigns of the Georges) and technological advancement.

Obviously there was some fear of 'change' expressed in Romantic poetry, but they were held steadfast by their idealistic convictions. Blake, I think, is the only one of the major six to take those issues very seriously. With the Scriblerus lot, it seems a common and constant concern.

[Anonymous No.3696339]

>>3694888
Not bad.

[Anonymous No.3696548]

If only all threads on /lit/ were more like this one. Nice.

[Anonymous No.3696582]

Well, this isn't literature, but James Ferraro is all about making something beautiful out of our "technology". It's hard to explain. You might have to do some LSD while you listen. It is also important that you listen to his music from an iPad or your cellular phone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXHCv77IOAE&hd=1

[Anonymous No.3696601]

>>3694888
9/10

Would buy small book of

[Anonymous No.3698815]

>>3694937
>where does human passion lie today?

In those things, unfortunately.