/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6720180]

What's your favorite poem, /lit/? Something which you feel is heartfelt.

[Anonymous No.6720187]

mister youse needn't be so spry
concerning questions arty

each has his tastes, but as for i
i likes a certain party

give me the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues
I recited this to a girl on our first tinder date, shit was cash.

[Anonymous No.6720215]

I think of a tiger. The fading light enhances
the vast complexities of the Library
and seems to set the bookshelves at a distance;
powerful, innocent, bloodstained, and new-made,
it will prowl through its jungle and its morning
and leave its footprint on the muddy edge
of a river with a name unknown to it
(in its world, there are no names, nor past, nor future,
only the sureness of the present moment)
and it will cross the wilderness of distance
and sniff out in the woven labyrinth
of smells the smell peculiar to morning
and the scent on the air of deer, delectable.
Behind the lattice of bamboo, I notice
its stripes, and I sense its skeleton
under the magnificence of the quivering skin.
In vain the convex oceans and the deserts
spread themselves across the earth between us;
from this one house in a far-off seaport
in South America, I dream you, follow you,
oh tiger on the fringes of the Ganges.

Evening spreads in my spirit and I keep thinking
that the tiger I am calling up in my poem
is a tiger made of symbols and of shadows,
a set of literary images,
scraps remembered from encyclopedias,
and not the deadly tiger, the fateful jewel
that in the sun or the deceptive moonlight
follows its paths, in Bengal or Sumatra,
of love, of indolence, of dying.
Against the tiger of symbols I have set
the real one, the hot-blooded one
that savages a herd of buffalo,
and today the third of August, ’59,
its patient shadow moves across the plain,
but yet, the act of naming it, of guessing
what is its nature and its circumstance
creates a fiction, not a living creature,
not one of those that prowl on the earth.

Let us look for a third tiger. This one
will be a form in my dream like all the others,
a system, an arrangement of human language
and not the flesh-and-bone tiger
that, out of reach of all mythologies,
paces the earth. I know all this; yet something
drives me to this ancient, perverse adventure,
foolish and vague, yet still I keep on looking
throughout the evening for the other tiger,
the other tiger, the one not in this poem.

[Anonymous No.6720217]

>>6720180

[Anonymous No.6720239]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uELdV3oyXQ

This is the best poem
anyone who disagrees is pleb

[Anonymous No.6720252]

>What's your favorite poem, /lit/?

>Something which you feel is heartfelt.

This is mutually exclusive.

I don't like mystifications.

Why do Americans believe all poetry has got to be confessional?

[Anonymous No.6720255]

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side

And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And now we ride the circus wheel
With your dark brother wrapped in white
Says it was good to be alive
But now he rides a comet's flame
And won't be coming back again

The earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are
He didn't mean to make you cry
With sparks that ring and bullets fly
On empty rings around your heart
The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

[Anonymous No.6720274]

>>6720252
>americans
That's romantism and its legacy, actually.

[Beautiful words No.6720446]

>>6720252
It doesn't have to be confessional but it does have to be some real shit because ain't nobody got the time to read a bunch of 2obfuscated4u garbage. Don't be a pendant.

[Anonymous No.6720471]

Sonnet XII by Olavo Bilac. The Portuguese original is unmatched of course, but this is a good translation.

"Oh come now (you will say) hear stars! It's clear
You've lost your mind!" I´ll tell you anyway,
I often wake to hear what they will say,
I push my windows open, pale with tear ...

And we converse throughout the night, while high
The Milky Way, like outspread robes, appears
To shine. At dawn, with longing and in tears,
I seek them still throughout the empty sky.

And next you'll say: "My poor, demented friend
What do you say to them? And tell me, pray,
What do they say when they your ears do bend?

I tell you: "You must love to comprehend!
For only one who loves has ears which may
Perceive and grasp the messages stars send."

[Anonymous No.6720472]

>>6720471
*Sonnet XIII

[Anonymous No.6720481]

>>6720255
Two Headed Boy 1 & 2 are at that.

[Anonymous No.6720483]

>>6720255
thank you /mu/crossposter
ITAOTS is beautiful
Sorry if this derails the thread, but what do you guys on /lit/ think of the validity of song lyrics as poetry.
Are some musicians capable of being considered great poets, or is it all just trite bullshit that is completely separate from contemporary poetry movements.

[Anonymous No.6720492]

>>6720483
Sure it's poetry. But aside from a select few in the industry most lyric writers are shit. Most of the time it's just to match with the song.

[Anonymous No.6720494]

>>6720255
fuck off retard songs aren't poetry
fuck you and your meme band

[The cat's meow No.6720502]

I don't read very much poetry as yet but The Waste Land really struck me

[Anonymous No.6720503]

Pomegranates sliced in half spill out
their blood-red seeds, while those uncut
conceal their trove in darkness: great
discoveries yet to be made.

But if the red-gold skin appears
desirable, look to the rind:
pale pulp that bears our deepest fears,

the architecture of the mind—
What is mere flesh compared to this?
A fleeting glance, the briefest kiss….

Still, someone must admit the sun
that ripens them…. Their rubies bleed—
A gentle knife-thrust spills the seed
revealed, at last, to everyone.

[Anonymous No.6720510]

>>6720502
FUCK OFF

[The cat's meow No.6720513]

>>6720510
:^)

[Anonymous No.6720516]

>>6720252
this is possibly the least intelligent post i have seen on /lit/, congrats

[Anonymous No.6720522]

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

[Anonymous No.6720670]

>>6720522
Is that from Iron Maiden?

[Anonymous No.6720672]

>>6720239

that was pretty badass

[Anonymous No.6720676]

>>6720239
>walt whitman
lol ultra pleb here

[Anonymous No.6721095]

>>6720522
Joyce. Nice.

Palace in smoky light,
Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary stones,
ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!
Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows!
The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare,
Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light;
Dew-haze blurs, in the grass, pale ankles moving.
Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf
under the apple trees,
Choros nympharum, goat-foot, with the pale foot alternate;
Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows,
A black cock crows in the sea-foam;

And by the curved, carved foot of the couch,
claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated
Speaking in the low drone…:
Ityn!
Et ter flebiliter, Ityn, Ityn!
And she went toward the window and cast her down,
“All the while, the while, swallows crying:
Ityn!
“It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.”
“It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish?”
“No other taste shall change this.”
And she went toward the window,
the slim white stone bar
Making a double arch;
Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone;
Swung for a moment,
and the wind out of Rhodez
Caught in the full of her sleeve.
. . . the swallows crying:
‘Tis. ‘Tis. ‘Ytis!

[Anonymous No.6721108]

It was dark and cold
It was April cold
The very beginning of day
I was just about twelve years old
Long ago and far away
But it's one of the things I remember still
I always have and I always will
The sun coming up like a dazzling cup
Just over Saunderton Hill
Then there was...
Breakfast at Bradenham Woods
In the airs of the morning
Mornings at seven
To borrow what Browning would say
Heaven could never lay on
Such a clamour of birdsong
The larch, the primrose
Sunlight slanting and gay
Breakfast at Bradenham Woods
And without any warning
A magic was made that has stayed
For the whole of my life
I could never go back
Without breaking the spell
Well then, I'll never try
For breakfast at Bradenham Woods
I must keep til I die.

[Anonymous No.6721111]

"that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind"

[Anonymous No.6721114]

>>6721111
dope af tbh

imo tho

[Anonymous No.6721175]

>>6721114
Ikkyu is great and "crow with no mouth" is a great collection/translation. Best Zen master tbh.

>all koans just lead you on
>but not the delicious pussy of the young girls I go down on

[Anonymous No.6721277]

To a Waterfowl

[Anonymous No.6721320]

No Keats in this thread?

To Autumn

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

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

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

[Anonymous No.6721341]

My professor, to whom I send my prose periodically when I want some reliable feedback, told me to try writing poetry. Keeping a rhythm and meter is really difficult, especially when you're trying to express a point. But after doing it for a while, and going back to prose, I feel a new sort of control. Or awareness. Something where each word bars a new significance, where the gaps in my writing don't seem like missing details but where you trust the reader will fill in. My writing's become a little more streamlined.

TL;DR Anyone else write poetry so their prose doesnt get stale? Just use it as a purely literary exercise, a means to an end, rather than an act in itself?

[Anonymous No.6721349]

>>6720180
My favorite poem is "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne, which in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful and sentimental love poems in the English language.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

[Anonymous No.6721368]

>>6721349
it may in fact be /the/ most beautiful poem in the english language

I would love for someone to prove me wrong, however

[Anonymous No.6721398]

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death - WB Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate,
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

[Anonymous No.6721461]

>>6721349
this poem is pride and bigotry
it is the pride and bigotry of the manichean intellectual who opposes mind and matter, who considers him above the common man because his love is spiritual or intellectual whereas the common man's is sensual
it's rooted in a Manichean hatred of matter

look at the Song of Songs in the Bible; Christians have always interpreted this as symbolizing the spiritual love that Christ has for his Church (his mystical bride), but it does not communicate this love in spiritual language but in the sensual language of marriage. This is because God did not create the sensual world evil as the Manicheans believe, and that sensual desire is not evil in itself.

[Anonymous No.6721473]

>>6721368
It's actually another poem by Donne: "The Ecstasy."

[Anonymous No.6721478]

The Idle Life I Lead by Robert Bridges

>The idle life I lead
>Is like a pleasant sleep,
>Wherein I rest and heed
>The dreams that by me sweep.

>And still of all my dreams
>In turn so swiftly past,
>Each in its fancy seems
>A nobler than the last.

>And every eve I say,
>Noting my step in bliss,
>That I have known no day
>In all my life like this.

[Anonymous No.6721482]

>>6721349
>'Twere profanation of our joys
>To tell the laity our love.

>Dull sublunary lovers' love

>But we by a love so much refined,

These are the words of bigotry. This metaphysical poet was able to conceive of sensual desire as being so abstract and passionless as he does in his poem, The Flea. The sexual passion is reduced to a mere abstract transmission of fluids:

>Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
>How little that which thou deniest me is;
>It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
>And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

This is a disgrace. This is why I hate metaphysical poetry. Not because of its anti-intellectualism but because of its anti-sensualism. The Romantics messed up with their anti-intellectualism while being pro-sensualist, but the Romantic poetry is better than the Metaphysical poetry because sensualism is more natural to poetry than intellectualism, which belongs principally to philosophy.

Compare this to the Song of Songs:

>How beautiful art thou, my love, how beautiful art thou! thy eyes are doves' eyes, besides what is hid within. Thy hair is as flocks of goats, which Come up from mount Galaad. Thy teeth as flocks of sheep, that are shorn which come up from the washing, all with twins, and there is none barren among them. Thy lips are as a scarlet lace: and thy speech sweet. Thy cheeks are as a piece of a pomegranate, besides that which lieth hid within. Thy neck, is as the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks: a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armour of valiant men. Thy two breasts like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

[Anonymous No.6721484]

>>6721482
this simple poem of Marlowe's is much better than the Metaphysical poetry

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,
With Coral clasps and Amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

[Anonymous No.6721491]

>>6721461
You're so fucking retarded it hurts.
Why do I even bother coming to this board? It's bursting at the seams with uneducated, pretentious pieces of shit like you have dedicated their life's purpose to shitposting.
If you honestly think that the poem "is pride and bigotry", you're going to have to do a lot better to back up your point than throwing around utterly irrelevant vocab-word-of-the-day terms.

[Anonymous No.6721494]

This is why I can't stand Shakespeare's Sonnets, btw, in which there is a constant intellectualizing of the sensual. Let the sensual be sensual for goodness' sake. There is no need to cast it into the form of the intellect.

[Anonymous No.6721500]

>>6721491
you are the one that is shouting and nothing else
I have expressed a thought: the poem contains a Manichean opposition between thought and matter, which makes thought to be good and matter to be evil. "Manichean" is not my "word of the day", it is the common word used for centuries to describe this hatred of the material world. I do not like the hyper-intellectualizing of the metaphysical poets which would go so far as to scorn all sensuality. Moreover, this attitude is ESPECIALLY inimical to poetry, because poetry excels in expressing the sensual more than anything else, whereas the intellectual is more properly suited to philosophy. For the poet to abandon the sensual is like for a philosopher to abandon the intellectual.

[Anonymous No.6721508]

>>6721482
Oh my god kill yourself.
Does your understanding of poetry come from skimming the foreward to an anthology compiled by Harold Bloom?
Based on the fact that you clearly know nothing about what you're talking about, yet you are so desperate to voice an opinion, I recommend that you remove yourself from the gene pool before you accidentally reproduce.

[Anonymous No.6721513]

Yo /lit/, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Bob Kaufman had one of the best poems of all time…one of the best poems of all time!

[Anonymous No.6721517]

>>6721500
>For the poet to abandon the sensual is like for a philosopher to abandon the intellectual.

Ok, stay in school kid.

[Anonymous No.6721522]

>>6721500
alright now I know you're trolling. well done, you got me to reply

[Anonymous No.6721531]

>>6721349
I have read this poem in at least three classes, and I still don't understand it.

[Anonymous No.6721532]

>>6721508
>>6721517
>>6721522
how can any of you accuse me of shitposting? there is nothing of value in any of these posts

[Anonymous No.6721535]

>>6721500

>For the poet to abandon the sensual is like for a philosopher to abandon the intellectual.

lol what is this first year reader platitude time?

[Anonymous No.6721541]

>>6720670
Nah, it's Joyce.
Iron Maiden does have some good lyrics though. I like "Remember Tomorrow."

[Anonymous No.6721544]

Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne is a pretty indie/underground poem for guys who really live the life.
Also I love Yeats and Rimbaud since only really I know about them.
They're pretty hip still and I like to know about poems before they are cool.

[Anonymous No.6721545]

>>6721095
Is that poem you replied with by Joyce?

[Anonymous No.6721566]

>>6721535
No, because it's not at all uncommon for poets to scorn the sensual. You find this in the metaphysical poets, but it is revived in men like T. S. Eliot too.

since Eliot I have detected this hatred of the sensual in a LOT of modern poetry
they all prefer to use very abstract language, academic phrases; they describe their experiences in the most obscure academic language. There is a here a certain intellectual priggishness with a disgust of the body.

Philip Larkin, people would say that he wasn't anti-sensualist:

Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he’s taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.

Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element

but actually, these lines are VERY anti-sensualist. The way he describes with viciousness, "her breasts and cunt", this is really a reprobate mindset which reduces the sensual to the most blunt terms. Then he says, "Isolate rather this element" - his intellectualizing of the sensual. A typical academic prig.

[Anonymous No.6721591]

>>6721566
He just keeps going!

Nonsense upon nonsense but he doesn't seem to care. I actually can't tell if he's trolling or if he just doesn't realize how ridiculous he sounds.

Come on now kid, isn't it past your bedtime?

[Anonymous No.6721652]

>>6720215
I like this translation a lot, where is it from?

[Anonymous No.6721668]

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud! -- Death eddies near --
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time.
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.

[Anonymous No.6721693]

>>6721566
You've misunderstood Larkin's poem completely. He's not an anti-sensualist. In Love Again he imagines the woman he loves is with another man, and he's trying to subdue his anger and jealous between clenched teeth.

[Anonymous No.6721707]

>>6721566
You've misunderstood Larkin's poem completely. He's not an anti-sensualist. In Love Again he imagines the woman he loves is with another man, and his anger and jealousy is being subdued as between clenched teeth. He uses vulgar language to express the rage he's feeling.

[Anonymous No.6721712]

>>6721566
You've misunderstood Larkin's poem completely. He's not an anti-sensualist. In Love Again he imagines the woman he loves is with another man, and his anger and jealousy are being subdued as between clenched teeth. He uses vulgar language to express the rage he's feeling.

[Anonymous No.6721724]

>>6720180
If you see kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.

[Anonymous No.6721779]

>>6721566
I disagree with almost everything you say that was a great poem and gave me feels

[Anonymous No.6721786]

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

[Anonymous No.6721789]

I'm really happy for you, guys, and imma let you finish, but Kipling had one of the best poems of all time.

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[Anonymous No.6722857]

>>6721652
It's Alastair Reid's translation from "A Personal Anthology", Grove Press.

[Anonymous No.6722864]

>>6721789
this is awful lol

[Der Tod ist ein Meister aus De(...) No.6722929]

>>6720180
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne er pfeift seine Rüden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau
stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

read by celan himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwLqEHDCQE

[Anonymous No.6722960]

>>6722929
i don't even speak german, but just listening to Celan reading that, i can tell it is beautiful, the words not the meaning

[Anonymous No.6722967]

>>6722960
PLEB AS FUCK
the whole german poetry is in the meaning
fuck you americuck
learn german and read Rilke

[Anonymous No.6722978]

>>6722967
>implying german poetry doesn't naturally carry a sublime sound to it as well

[Anonymous No.6722985]

>>6722960
much of Celan's poetry is in the sound of it. He's been laughed out of a meeting of the Gruppe 47 for it.
>>6722967
idiot

[Anonymous No.6722989]

>>6722985
Wrong, read Celan
>>6722978
German language is naturally ugly. Read Rilke and find out why.

[Anonymous No.6722993]

>>6722960
The rythm is amazing. Originally, it was called Todestango (Death Tango, not Death Fugue), and it really does have something of a terrible dance.

[Anonymous No.6723011]

>>6721398
;_;

[Anonymous No.6723014]

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[Anonymous No.6723017]

>>6721398
the metre is off in the middle

[Anonymous No.6723021]

>>6720180

No more words.
In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower, so the nightbirds will start singing. - Rumi

I send this to my girlfriend when we were together for 1,5 years. We stayed together for 3,5 years and broke up recently.

[Anonymous No.6723024]

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

[Anonymous No.6723049]

>>6722989

Scheißepost über der memetischen Ödnis.
Ein baumhoher Scheißposthaufen greift sich den Lichtton:
Es ist nocht Scheiße zu postieren
jenseits von /lit/.

[Anonymous No.6723110]

>>6721368
It's actually Poe's Annabel Lee

[Anonymous No.6723113]

That the glass would melt in heat,
That the water would freeze in cold,
Shows that this object is merely a state,
One of many, between two poles. So,
In the metaphysical, there are these poles.

Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws

And in the water winding weeds move round.
And there and in another state – the refractions,
The metaphysica, the plastic parts of poems
Crash in the mind – But, fat Jocundus, worrying
About what stands here in the centre, not the glass,

But in the centre of our lives, this time, this day,
It is a state, this spring among the politicians
Playing cards. In a village of the indigenes,
One would have still to discover. Among the dogs and dung,
One would continue to contend with one’s ideas.

[Anonymous No.6723119]

>>6723113

I like it. Where from?

[Anonymous No.6723126]

I realize this is ultimate pleb tier, but I really like Gray's Elegy.

[Anonymous No.6723127]

>>6721482
What the fuck is bigoted about that?

[Anonymous No.6723134]

>>6723119
The Glass of Water by Wallace Stevens. Not sure what collection it first appeared in, but I read it in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, which has all of his published poetry. A lot of his poems are centered around philosophical topics and the affirmation of the mind even in states of physical turmoil.

[Anonymous No.6723145]

>>6721566
It's hard to blame someone for being anti-sensualist when Western culture has undertones against non-marital sex.

[Anonymous No.6723149]

Wait... do you people actually think poetry before or after modernism is actually good?

[Anonymous No.6723157]

>>6721786
Best in the thread

[Anonymous No.6723222]

>>6723149
>tfw i love modernist poetry but i can't even fucking begin to understand it until i read analyses

[Anonymous No.6723633]

>>6723110
>Poe
>anything other than meme poetry

Nice try, but everyone knows Poe wasn't actually a good writer. He was just good at spooks and creepy things.

[Anonymous No.6723670]

>>6721349
It's a poem written by a man to his wife.
He has to leave for a while to go on a trip, and doesn't want her to be sad while he's gone.
He explains that their love is greater than mere physical attraction. Some people only love each other for the sensual aspects, and once they are separated they fall out of love because the relationship was based entirely on physical contact- sex basically:
>Dull sublunary lovers' love/ (whose soul is sense) cannot admit/ absence, because it doth remove/ those things which elemented it.

But he assures his lover that their love is more than that.
>But we by a love so much refined,/ that our selves know not what it is/ inter-assured of the mind,/ care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

In fact they are so in love that it's as if their two souls are connected by a bond of love which no amount of physical separation can break. No matter how far apart they are from each other, they will always love each other.
>Our two souls therefore, which are one,/ though I must go, endure not yet/ a breach, but an expansion/ like gold to airy thinness beat.
Their souls are connected like a bar of gold which gets stretched out so much that it basically becomes like a thin wire, but it never breaks.

Then we get to the best part of this poem. I love this part. It's such a great conceit.
He describes their relationship like a compass- you know, that thing you use to draw circles?
He says that they are like the two parts of a compass: she is the center which keeps the pair steady, while he is the pencil that moves apart from her, though they are always still connected, and everything he does is influenced by her:
>Such wilt thou be to me, who must/ like th'other foot, obliquely run:/ thy firmness makes my circle just,/ and makes me end where I begun.

So basically: Don't cry sweetheart, I will always love you and I will always come back to you no matter how far apart we are. You and I are like two halves of a compass, and no matter how wide of a circle I make, I will always end up right where I started: at your side.

[Anonymous No.6723675]

>>6723670
GHEY

[Anonymous No.6723681]

>>6723222
Well that's partly the point of Modernism. They wanted their poems to be hard work to understand.

[Anonymous No.6723703]

>>6723681

I bet they thought the effort spent to understand their works was worth it too lul

[Anonymous No.6723705]

>>6723149
>Modernism
>IT HAS TO BE A STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND OR ELSE IT'S WORTHLESS, JUST LIKE YOUR LIFE
>LOOK AT HOW CLEVER I AM HURR DURR

Fuck off.
Modernism has it's uses but It's too obtuse as a genre to be considered of any real literary value especially when compared with the source material so many modernist poems draw from or allude to.

[Anonymous No.6723713]

lord I have never seen such a foul misunderstanding of modernism, as if modernism itself even had one central objective. modernism existed beyond pound and eliot, you frumpy cans. to say a poet like yeats or crane wrote with the goal of being difficult to understand in mind is absurd and disrespectful to the poets.

[Anonymous No.6723719]

>>6723713

>disrespectful to a dead person
let me rephrase that for you:
>disrespectful to a spook i have created, if you don't respect it, then you are ____!

[Anonymous No.6723724]

>>6723713
Yeats is like a lovely mix of romanticism and modernism

[Anonymous No.6723735]

>>6720180

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

[Anonymous No.6723741]

>>6723724
yes, early yeats has clear romantic elements. his later works are profoundly modernist. there's middle ground in some of his poetry but he's typically categorized by his era

[Anonymous No.6723743]

>>6723735
My Nigger!
Love me some Browning.

My favorite of his is "My Last Duchess".
Although "Porphyria's Lover" is some good shit too. Thank you for having good taste.

[Anonymous No.6724021]

redfish
bluefish
fuck you

[Anonymous No.6724938]

PRIDE by sam sax

when i was young
i thought finding love
meant finding a man
i’d look good with dead

who doesn’t want
to grow up to be a mattress
stuffed with ballots?
who doesn’t want?

so i dyed my hair green
& dove into the lake
so i searched for my brothers
& only found a cavitation

they were too busy undrowning
driving water from lungs
sawing off limbs, felating atms,
buying back into privilege

the pride parade floats banks
down the boulevard.
channels white
into rainbow merchandise

makes us bear witness
to how many ways a life
can be made into a life-style
you pay for

how nice it must be to see this
& feel pride
to ride the curve of a dollar sign
into a dazzling casket

if a corporation really is a man
then let me take him like a man
in my mouth, let me watch him
twitch & cry out

to his lord under my labor,
let me die an ugly thing,
a diamond ring,
an offering in his arms

[Anonymous No.6725058]

I’ll push your shit in and stuff your face--
Aurelius, you cocksucker; Furius, you little bitch--
since you think that my little poems
have gone soft and I must not be too upright!
It’s true; the devoted poet should stand erect
in his values, but not necessarily in his little
poems, which are truly witty and charming
when they're a little soft, and not too stiff,
but can still cause a little tingling--
I don't just mean for youth, but for hairy men
who can't make their own loins stand upright!
You! You read about my "many kisses"
and doubt I'm fully a man?
I’ll push your shit in and stuff your face.

[Anonymous No.6725099]

>>6720471
Is there a good collection of his poems in English? I'd like to read more of this, but I doubt my mediocre Spanish could get through the Portuguese.


To contribute to the thread, here's some Larkin:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

[Anomalous No.6725132]

Thomas the Rhymer

It's a long one but this is my favorite excerpt:

See ye not yon narrow road, so thick beset with thorns and briars?
That is the Path of Righteousness, tho after it but few enquires;
And see ye not yon braid, braid road that lies across the lily-leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness, tho some call it the Road to Heaven;
And see ye not yon bonnie road that winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland, where thou and I this night maun gae

[Anonymous No.6725142]

bashō's last poem:

falling sick on a journey
my dream goes wandering
over a field of dried grass

[Anonymous No.6725154]

not my fave but first thing that came to mind

I Like My Body When It Is With Your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new
Book: 100 Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings

[Anonymous No.6725155]

>>6720180
Youth vs. The Man

[Anonymous No.6725469]

>>6721545
No, it's Pound's 4th canto, but I'm glad someone else is a Modernist fan.

[Anonymous No.6725493]

[Anonymous No.6725557]

>>6722929
I cannot stop listening to Celan read that, so gorgeous