/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6978695]

Name your favourite poet.

Mine is WB Yeats.

I am too drunk to discuss, but hopefully there will be a decent thread in the morning.

[Anonymous No.6978702]

>>6978695
Mine too anon! great taste. The interesting thing is I absolutely hate a third of his poetry, especially his early works (when you are old, all that shit about Maude) but his later poetry (second coming) is fantastic

[Anonymous No.6978703]

>>6978695
Probably either Yeats or Eliot, which says a lot for Eliot because I pretty much only like his major works, and I find much of his body of work to be obnoxious and inane.

[Anonymous No.6978710]

>>6978703
Also Hart Crane, but I've not read as much of him.

[Anonymous No.6978768]

>>6978695
My favorite poet in english is Conrad Aiken. Him and TS Eliot were bros back in their harvard days and they stayed friends throughout their lives. For non-english I have really been into Rimbaud and Valery lately.

[Anonymous No.6978783]

Big fan of Yeats and Thomas. I also really like a few of O'Hara's poems.

[Anonymous No.6978807]

>too drunk to discuss poetry
Step it up nigga

[Anonymous No.6978809]

Keats
Eliot
Donne
Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.6978838]

Ezra Pound

>>6978768

>Eliot
>Rimbaud
>Valery

I like your taste anon! Do you read Rimbaud in french?

Anyway, I'll look into Aiken. I love Eliot, 'The Wasteland' is easily among my favorite works of literature; if their style is similar, then I'll love Aiken.

[Anonymous No.6978857]

>>6978838
my french is not too great, i can sound out the words so i get the meter and rhymes nicely but i still need work on the definitions. So I read him in both.

Aiken is a more Romantically styled poet, so if you prefer the stacks of allusions and modernist aesthetic you may not like Aiken as much but I have a definite soft spot for it.

[Anonymous No.6978862]

Robert Frost

[Anonymous No.6978894]

>>6978768
>>6978809
>>6978838
Loving the Eliot fans here. Any preference between Waste Land and Four Quartets? Anyone who prefers the earlier works? Who the fuck is Sweeney?

[Anonymous No.6978909]

TRIUMPHAL ODE

By the painful light of the factory’s huge electric lamps
I write in a fever.
I write gnashing my teeth, rabid for the beauty of all this,
For this beauty completely unknown to the ancients.

O wheels, O gears, eternal r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
Bridled convulsiveness of raging mechanisms!
Raging in me and outside me,
Through all my dissected nerves,
Through all the papillae of everything I feel with!
My lips are parched, O great modern noises,
From hearing you at too close a range,
And my head burns with the desire to proclaim you
In an explosive song telling my every sensation,
An explosiveness contemporaneous with you, O machines!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHydP4cL89k

Alley-oop, alley-oop, alley-oop-la, alley-oop!
Hey-ya, hi-ya! Ho-o-o-o-o!
Whir-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!

Ah if only I could be all people and all places!

[Anonymous No.6978927]

>>6978909
Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
Of being green and bushy and having branches
And of giving fruit in their own time, which doesn’t make us think,
To us, who don’t know how to pay attention to them.
But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing what they live for
Not even knowing they don’t know?
“Inner constitution of things...”
“Inner meaning of the Universe...”
All that stuff is false, all that stuff means nothing.
It’s incredible that someone could think about things that way.
It’s like thinking reasons and purposes
When morning starts shining, and by the trees over there
A vague lustrous gold is driving the darkness away.

[Anonymous No.6978937]

Wallace Stevens

"The Course of a Particular"

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry... One holds off and merely hears the cry.
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else,
And though one says that one is part of everything,

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;
And being part is an exertion that declines;
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention,
Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.

[Anonymous No.6978939]

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.

[Anonymous No.6978947]

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

[Anonymous No.6978958]

>>6978937

Oh god this poem is so good. If I write one thing in my life this good, I can die happy.

My favourite poet is Rumi though.

[Anonymous No.6978981]

1.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

*

This should to be read axiomatically:
"what I assume you shall assume",
"Nature without check with original energy."

[Anonymous No.6978995]

>>6978981
walt truly is brilliant

[Anonymous No.6979112]

Charles Bukowski

[Anonymous No.6979141]

>>6978939
This poem was quoted in Hyperion yes?

[Anonymous No.6979356]

>>6979112

[Anonymous No.6979358]

César Vallejo

[Anonymous No.6979361]

>>6979356
>wahh someone likes something different to me

[Anonymous No.6979378]

Personally partial to Pushkin.

[Anonymous No.6979385]

>>6978695
Mine is Paul Valery

[Anonymous No.6979980]

Frost
Yeats
Keats
Burns
Homer
Virgil

[Anonymous No.6979993]

Donne, Wordsworth, Whitman and Pound tbh
finna get deep into some Thomas Hardy

handsomest poet: WBY

[Anonymous No.6979996]

Stevenson
Orlov
Carroll

[Anonymous No.6980168]

Favourite poet is Percy Bysshe Shelley. Man is god. My absolute hero.

Spenser, Hardy, Pound are others.

[Anonymous No.6980318]

>>6978894
>who the fuck is Sweeney?
/r9k/

[Anonymous No.6980340]

>>6979993
>this geeky ass motherfucker
>handsome
?????

[Anonymous No.6980410]

>>6979980
Homer? Why? Do you love epithets or something?

>>6980318
Really? Seems more like Chad tbh.

[Anonymous No.6980544]

>>6980340
That is a photograph of him when he was very young.

He grew into his features.

Pound is the most handsome poet though.

[Anonymous No.6980546]

>>6980544
>Pound
There you go, now you have the correct answer.

[Anonymous No.6980549]

Bill Waterson.

[Anonymous No.6980555]

Boileau probably

[Anonymous No.6980557]

>>6978695
Hart Crane

thanks for asking, this will no doubt be a productive and useful thread with a lot of discussion with substance

[Anonymous No.6980564]

>>6980555
>that subtle middle finger

[Anonymous No.6980569]

Yeats and Eluard are my main jams.

[Anonymous No.6980572]

>>6980557
Where to start with Crane?

[Anonymous No.6980573]

Interesting to see how /lit/ really likes Eliot and Yeats, I mean, this is very different from this boards taste in literature for example.

My favourite is probably Ashbery nowdays. It used to be Shakespeare for years, though.

[Anonymous No.6980583]

>>6980557
Well, I like Yeats because of his fixations on matters such as the conflict between thought and action. I have quite ascetic sensibilities and find the inherent conflict in his verse rewarding.
Make discussion, I think people are way too worried about appearing shallow.

I also appreciate the poets who are aware of tradition, rather than trying to be novel. I always find restrained experiments much more interesting.

It was results day here and I was very happy with my results and I had about 11 pints of Ale. I struggled to even make the thread. Even if there is no discussion there will at least be interesting name-drops which I will put in my notebook.

[Anonymous No.6980588]

>>6980572
"White Buildings". If you enjoyed the poems in that book get The Bridge, it's his only attempt at longer poetry. Alternatively, you could just get his collected works and browse through it. I have a pdf if you want it.

>>6980573
>Ashbery
mein neger

[Anonymous No.6980595]

>>6980583
How do you feel about his poem "Ephemera"?

[Anonymous No.6980599]

Emily Dickinson

[Anonymous No.6980604]

>>6980595
I like it a lot, this is my favourite little section

'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:

I cannot believe the claims that he was tone deaf, because his stuff is inherently musical. How he can be so tender and then apocalyptic is both impressive and annoying, but I am still young and hopefully I will write something worth reading one day.

[Anonymous No.6980618]

>>6980604
I think his tin ear wasn't exactly an inability to hear music in something, it was an /alternative/ music he was hearing. His taste for rhythm was something a little more personal, introspective, which would explain why despite being "tone deaf" a lot of his pieces seem to have an air of musicality to them even if said musicality isn't exactly as tangible as it would be in someone like, say, Campion. Also he was an irish bastard and there's something inherently sing songy about the irish.

[Anonymous No.6980619]

>romanticism
>alcohol
why is /lit/ so degenerate?

[Anonymous No.6980629]

>>6980557
This thread > your chart tbh. But since you seem to know a lot about poetry, what are your thoughts on Eliot? Specifically the Four Quartets?

[Anonymous No.6980631]

>>6980619
Is Yeats a Romantic?

[Anonymous No.6980652]

>>6980629
Four Quartets is a nice collection. It's usually a love it or hate it type thing, considering it's rather different from early Eliot. Personally I think if you're a fan of Eliot and what he believed in regarding poetry you can't dislike the Four Quartets poems; there's a lot of "him" within them.

That being said, I'm not as big of a fan of his verse as I am his essays and criticisms. I think, like Pound (but not as severe; Pound was undoubtedly a better critic than poet whereas Eliot was still a fine poet), he has an eloquence in his ideas that come out much better in his essays than his poems.

>>6980631
Early Yeats has distinct romantic qualities. As he got older and started dicking around with Pound he picked up a lot more "modernist" traits.

[Anonymous No.6982206]

>>6980410
nvm I was thinking of Prufrock, no idea who Sweeney could be.

[Anonymous No.6982213]

why is /lit/ so pleb with poetry? it's like poetry past 1950 doesn't exist.

[Anonymous No.6982227]

Dickinson. She's also my waifu

[Anonymous No.6982452]

>>6978695
I stumbled upon his poetry thanks to some youtube readings, and I liked most of what I've heard/read so far. It's not mind-bendingly good, but it's written competently and with heart; with rythm and rhyme, and that, in my opinion, while being a staple a Modernist poetry, is something that raises any kind of text to the category of "good".

Alas, IRL he was the beta-est of betas.

[Anonymous No.6982513]

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

[Anonymous No.6982530]

>>6982213

it doesn't

[Anonymous No.6982547]

Walt Whitman

[Anonymous No.6982548]

paul celan

[Anonymous No.6982681]

>>6982213
Because the biggest movement in postmodern poetry is the Language school, which is of dubious worth. Ashbery is nice though, I'll give you that much.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, /lit/ doesn't like contemporary writing of any kind, poetry or not.

[Anonymous No.6983901]

Lorca.

[Anonymous No.6983920]

>>6980588
>I have a pdf if you want it.
Yes, please!

[Anonymous No.6984318]

>>6978695
Jorge Luis Borges

[Anonymous No.6984420]

>>6978981
I love Walt, come at me. Only poet who has made me cry tears of joy.

[Anonymous No.6984421]

>>6984420
Iktf man

[Anonymous No.6984422]

William Blake

[Anonymous No.6984439]

>>6984420
Him, Yeats and Auden all got me.

[Anonymous No.6984444]

>>6984439
Aragon, Valery and Rilke (melancholy) for me

[Anonymous No.6984519]

>>6978894
Four quartets is leagues better than waste land.

Sweeney is redpill getting stabbed in the face

[Anonymous No.6984542]

>>6984519
I definitely agree that Four Quartets is better in almost every way, but I think Waste Land is a necessary balance - raw anger vs. perfect serenity. Also it has more than its fair share of indelible lines.

Elaborate on the Sweeney point though - I assume in the Nightingales, he's Agamemnon? But then how does he get fucked over in "Erect"?

[Anonymous No.6984701]

>>6984444
Check'd

[Anonymous No.6984703]

>>6984444
Nice taste.
Nice quads.

Rilke is too difficult for me. I liked his letters to Kappus though, transcendent shit, shook me.

[Anonymous No.6984728]

T.S. Eliot. There is something nice and haunting in most of his works, while not being too archaic

[Anonymous No.6984945]

Keats. His powers of depiction are astonishing.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

[Anonymous No.6985175]

>>6984728
Agreed. For me, Eliot, Pound, Tennyson, Whittier, and Whitman. I haven't gotten into Keats or Yeats yet - where to start?

[Anonymous No.6985197]

>>6982681
>postmodern poetry... which is of dubious worth
>Ashbery is nice though
this is some next level trolling

[Anonymous No.6985331]

>>6985197
Are you illiterate? Ashbery was part of the New York School, he didn't come anywhere close to being involved with the Language movement.

[Anonymous No.6985355]

Emile Nelligan from Quebec, Canada

[Anonymous No.6985428]

>>6985331
Are you illiterate? I didn't say he was part of the language movement. He is a postmodern poet and he is absolute garbage. Figures pomo plebs would love the most worthless one of the bunch.

[Anonymous No.6985876]

>There are TS Elliot fans ITT that haven't read Marina

[Anonymous No.6985900]

>>6985428
I really haven't read much of him so I can't speak with any authority, but you're saying the opposite of the person I originally replied to. I have no strong opinion on pomo one way or the other, sorry if it offends you though.

>>6985876
>There are TS Eliot fans that haven't read Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

[Anonymous No.6986005]

>>6980410
>epithets are all that is good about Homer
I don't know how to respond to this properly. Homer has the best characters, and some great stories, and he's got a richness few others can beat.

[Anonymous No.6986030]

>>6986005
Epithets aren't good, I find them annoying. And obviously Homer is important, but he's far too primitive for me to consider him anything like a favorite.

[Anonymous No.6986575]

>>6985175

The Cambridge Companion to Keats is a fine primer. Alternatively, dive right into the majesty that is Ode to a Nightingale:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173744

[Anonymous No.6987366]

Do not T.S. Eliot's famous lines about the typist of the jazz age capture the entire pathos of the age of Chaplin and the ragtime blues?

>When lovely woman stoops to folly and
>Paces about her room again, alone,
>She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
>And puts a record on the gramophone.

[Anonymous No.6987380]

Pound
Elliot
Plath

Kerouac is also a pretty decent poet. Mexico City Blues should be mandatory reading.

[Anonymous No.6987396]

>>6984703
>Rilke is too difficult
read his earlier poems "Book of Pictures", should be pretty easy to understand

[Anonymous No.6987403]

>>6982548
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken

[Anonymous No.6987404]

>>6987396
misread Rilke as Puke

[Anonymous No.6987423]

Any fans of E. E. Cummings?

[Anonymous No.6987432]

>>6987423
gimmicky shit

Typography is the death of poetry

[Anonymous No.6987484]

>>6980555
Mah nigga. Boileau is way underrated. Borges thought as well.
>>6978695
Favorite is Baudelaire, but he's by far the one I've read most. How do I go about diversifying my tastes ? I need to grow an ear for English poetry.

[Anonymous No.6987508]

>>6987432

Cummings was witty, I recommend you force yourself to enjoy and understand his work

pic not directly related

[Anonymous No.6987540]

>>6987508
anyone can be witty. zizek is witty. that's nothing to do with being a skilled poet.

pound once said that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music. because verse is sonorous, it is heard (where the form originated). cummings' typographic shtick is fossilised, it's dead. you can't read it as poetry.

[Anonymous No.6987545]

I'm Irish so growing up we're all taught about the greatness of Yeats, but the only one most of us know is his Easter 1916 poem because of the political historical significance. His romantic nationalism is considered a bit hokey but I only recently rediscovered him and he's work is so much more layered than I thought.

I also really like John Montague because he is from my area, he mentioned my father in one of his poems

[Anonymous No.6987546]

>>6978695
Blake, although I'm new to poetry. I've read some Yeats and I liked him as well.

[Anonymous No.6987604]

>>6987545
>His romantic nationalism is considered a bit hokey

As you say, I think that's far from the case. I mean in Easter, 1916 you have lines like "Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart". That poem wasn't considered nationalist enough by many.

[Anonymous No.6987609]

>>6987540
wot, it's meant to be heard, and its visual arragement a mere recognition that the VISUAL aspect of a poem is still relevant, especially with print that is so richly visual in nature.

Plus not everyone is a musician nor cares about the "musical" aspects of poetry, or Pound's "melopeia". I do like the sonority of music, but not everyone appreciates it to that extent.

Cummings suffers for being experimental and not having many poets like him, so it's hard to evaluate him: barely no one to compare him to, I guess.

Plus anyone can be witty? Heh. Plus, there are numerous kinds and forms of wit. Cummings as special charm

picrelated: a musical score, to rustle your jimmies. Dance!

[Anonymous No.6987623]

>>6987604
He was a student of John O'Leary who encouraged him to adapt the National myths of Celtic Ireland, modernism made that seem antiquated. Easter 1916 is recognised as ambivalent but poignant for many nationalists

[Anonymous No.6987683]

>>6987609
>wot, it's meant to be heard, and its visual arragement a mere recognition that the VISUAL aspect of a poem is still relevant, especially with print that is so richly visual in nature.

this is what I mean by fossilised. you can't extract that meaning or effect outside of viewing it on the printed page, and I don't want my poetry to be bound by that. my poetry lives inside my head, and I can recall it while experiencing my daily life. that's what gives it power. remembering Keats' Ode on Melancholy while taking a bus back from a night out, or charming a girl with Love's Philosophy by Shelley. if I need the book in my hand (or on the phone or internet or something) for the experimental effect cummings is trying to create, it's inherently limiting and deadens the poem. I think this is what Pound is getting at.

>Plus not everyone is a musician nor cares about the "musical" aspects of poetry, or Pound's "melopeia". I do like the sonority of music, but not everyone appreciates it to that extent.

poetry is musical in its origin and its effects. that's simply a fact. whether an individual appreciates it or not is besides the point.

>musical score
I don't see why that's relevant.