Let be be finale of seem [Poetry Discussion]

[Sarco_Phage]

I somehow doubt this thread will get many replies, but the hell with it.

Let's talk about poetry, Playground, let's talk about poets.

Are you for form, or free verse?

Do you prefer someone like Gertrude Stein, or Gerard Hopkins?

If you want to talk about dull sublunary lover's love, come on in!

If you want to talk about how every angel is terrifying, come on in!

If you want to know what happens to a dream deferred, come on in!

Hell, if you think think that you shall never see / a poem as lovely as a tree, come on in, the water's perfectly fine.

Tell us about your poetics.

[Ozymandias]

I didn't particularly like "free verse" when the modernists used it in incredibly intelligent ways, and I absolutely despise the fact that it's basically the default form of contemporary poetry.

If you're not going to make it beautiful, why make it in the first place?

[Sarco_Phage]

It depends. See, "free verse" is beautiful in different ways than formulaic verse, more given to beauty of image and statement than musicality.

However a poet that can do all three, like Donne (for his time) is amazing.

[Ozymandias]

I don't think free verse is inherently better at representing images or statements than metered verse, while it is inherently worse at sounding beautiful.

The metaphysical poets were good at images, not just "for their time" but for all time. Myself I tend to prefer the more philosophical romantics (Keats, and especially Coleridge) for this. I can't stand Wordsworth, though.

I agree that there are times when free verse can represent something that metered lines cannot (can you imagine "The Waste Land" in iambic pentameter?), but I think that if that isn't the case (which it usually isn't) a poet should write something that is technically beautiful as well as profound.

Basically, to my mind, at least half of modern poetry is prose (albeit often quite good prose) with line breaks in it.
E.g. William Carlos Williams:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I cannot bring myself to like or, moreover, respect that poem, even though I'm supposed to.

[Dienekes]

If you're not going to make it beautiful, why make it in the first place?

To make it dark and ugly of course. Believe it or not, not everyone is as interested in making art beautiful, some like scary, dark, disturbing, funny, or sorrowful.

On that note, my favorite poem (not including poem-stories such as the Iliad) is The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot, but admittedly I've only dabbled in reading poetry in school and never had much a taste for it.

[Sarco_Phage]

-snippets-

WCW isn't exactly exemplar, though he was Laureate for a time. You know who my favorite modernist poet is? Wallace Stevens. His verse is amazing, his concepts are very strong, and his experimentation is interesting without being too out there (I'm looking at you, Gertrude Stein).

Gerard Manley Hopkins is also pretty damn incredible. If you want someone who can make a really emotionally charged poem, Hopkins is your man.

Concept, execution, and mood are usually far more important to a good poem than adhering to metrics and rhyme - else "Trees" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" would be inherently better poems than, say, almost anything written in the past 20 years. :smallbiggrin:

Behold:

The Idea of Order at Key West
Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

[Flickerdart]

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

That one's probably my favourite. I'm also not a fan of free verse - why would you set it like a traditional poem if it isn't? The whole point of setting it as a narrow column is so the lines line up with the rhymes. One of my old classmates, who went into English, once said that metered poetry sounds archaic, but I vastly prefer it nevertheless. A work of art that stands the test of time is impressive by that virtue alone.

[Sarco_Phage]

Line cuts nowadays serve a far different function than they did before. Changing the line cut changes the emphasis on the word - normally, nowadays, you don't just cut arbitrarily so that the poem fits the metrical scheme. Like the comma poem, the line cut today is used for emphasis.

Also? Yeah, I've got a lot of love for that one. It's pretty damn good, if a bit overexposed.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'll admit I'm more a fan of old fashioned poetry. Like, Homeric old. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, The Odyssey and The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles, were some of the best things I've read recently, along with Tolkein's translations of poems like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun.

Everything I know about modern poetry, I learned from one of my other heroes, Garrison Keillor, on the Writer's Almanac:

"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

It always makes me feel warm and fuzzy when he says that. :smallsmile:

[Trog]

Boy, I don't know if I know enough about poets to say anything of worth here, really but a considerable amount of college exposure got me to enjoy and appreciate poetry at least. And on occasion I've written some though I very much doubt it'd be considered good by any means.

I like formulaic verse for the constraints it puts upon you. It fosters more creativity than if you can just write anything, I find. Struggling to say something specific or paint a certain kind of picture with your words and still fit within certain constraints makes you rethink what you are going to say and look for a more fresh and new way to express yourself. Which of course is also more interesting to read, of course. Though some might find the form trite. Haikus feel that way to me most of the time and it's only really the old zen ones that spark anything in me at all. Still, they can be fun to crank out now and then just for the heck of it.

The other thing I like about poetry is putting a train of thought into the verses that runs counter to the way one would normal think or read such that it shocks one into slowing down and rereading and considering the intent and reading into the poem further. The really good ones spark this need to explore their words while still having a profound feel to them that defines the poem as a whole and holds it together and still remains graspable on first read.

[Sarco_Phage]

You have any particular favorite poets or poems? :smallbiggrin:

[Trog]

You have any particular favorite poets or poems? :smallbiggrin:

Well as I said I'd have a hard time pulling names out because:
1. The stuff I've read I rarely retain
2. I have a serious problem remembering names.
3. Most of the stuff I do remember is probably pretty mainstream.

But I'll give it a shot since you asked. So here's a few good ones that leap to mind:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

- William Carlos Williams
that stone Buddha deserves all the bird**** it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind

- Ikkyu

Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

EDIT: Like I said, pretty mainstream, really. But I've always loved that poem by Poe for it's theme and imagery and for the idea that this man might have grown mad with grief and is hallucinating this. The line "And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting" seems to give the hint of a man raving at some vision that won't go away. Either way it is an excellent poem on grief and loss and the questions one poses to oneself in one's dark bedchamber.

And for the sheer hell of it, here's one of mine:
There's no more venomous pill to swallow
Than love gone rotten - a heart grown hollow.
It will beat not today, nor tomorrow
Nor 'til I find another's to borrow.
Then to that new pulse I will fain obey
'Til love wanes once more into slow decay.

[SaintRidley]

Meter is good. Rhyme is often a crutch. If you're going to go for a visual or verbal pattern to help control the meter, alliteration is the superior choice. (Can you guess what period I enjoy?)

Notice in poems like Paradise Lost or Shakespeare's blank verse he used for his plays - very structured, no rhyming. Many of the great Spanish poems, from a language rich with rhymes, do not use rhymes because there is no challenge or beauty in doing so.

If you are enjambing your poems to make the rhymes fit, you are more likely to run into very forced, very contrived, very bad rhymes. That means, as far as rhyming goes, you're doing it wrong.

[Trog]

Notice in poems like Paradise Lost or Shakespeare's blank verse he used for his plays - very structured, no rhyming.
Actually there's a good deal of rhyming in Shakespeare's works, usually in the form of couplets. *shrug*

[SaintRidley]

Actually there's a good deal of rhyming in Shakespeare's works, usually in the form of couplets. *shrug*

Point. Counterpoint: The rhyming is not controlling the meter nor is it present in every line of his longer verse. The sonnets? Sure. Can you imagine if every line of Macbeth contained a rhyme?

[Trog]

Point. Counterpoint: The rhyming is not controlling the meter nor is it present in every line of his longer verse. The sonnets? Sure. Can you imagine if every line of Macbeth contained a rhyme?
Oh certainly not. And especially for something of such length it'd get old fast. You just seemed to be knocking rhyming altogether and I think it's just one of the many tools in the poet's toolbox. And certainly one that lends itself to sticking in one's memory if done well. All rhyme all the time though would indeed be very limiting.

[SaintRidley]

Oh certainly not. And especially for something of such length it'd get old fast. You just seemed to be knocking rhyming altogether and I think it's just one of the many tools in the poet's toolbox. And certainly one that lends itself to sticking in one's memory if done well. All rhyme all the time though would indeed be very limiting.

It's useful, but I'm very much against it as a controlling element in the poetry. And while I love many poems that do use it as a controlling element, they make up for it by doing it right. It takes a lot of work to make a rhyme come out naturally and unforced. When that happens, I respect it.

This is part of why I like to study pre-Conquest and Middle English poetry. The poetry in the former is very different from most later English poetry while the latter is in a language with such a different sound to it that the rhymes work much better.

[Trog]

It's useful, but I'm very much against it as a controlling element in the poetry. And while I love many poems that do use it as a controlling element, they make up for it by doing it right. It takes a lot of work to make a rhyme come out naturally and unforced. When that happens, I respect it.

This is part of why I like to study pre-Conquest and Middle English poetry. The poetry in the former is very different from most later English poetry while the latter is in a language with such a different sound to it that the rhymes work much better.
So you don't like, say, Shakespearean sonnets then due to the rhyming?

Also, do you have an example of the other poems you're talking about? *is curious*

[Weezer]

I don't really have a preferred style, both blank verse and metered verse work for me, it really depends on the poem itself. Some metered poems feel forced and constrained while some blank verse seems like broken up prose. Also I haven't found a poet that I've fallen in love with, there are a number of poets who have individual poems that I love but none have a body of work that has caught my eye.
But saying that here are some of my favorite poems:


"Where the Bastard is God" Dambudzo Marechera

One night downtown
I had this breakdown
Not scary like horror
Not boring like nerves
Just this one-night downtown
Breakdown.


Not filthy quiet
Like the death of a whore
Not flesh torn by bicycle chains
Like inner city riots after football
Defeats
Not greasy blinking Loss
Crying into beer cursing the boss
Just this one-night downtown
Breakdown


My mind refused to cuff and kick
Bolted down manholes to licksick laughs
Out of the mess masquerading under my name
The candle of darkness was at midnight pitch
Only black cindersparks where I used to holler
Curses at the dark ghosts of history's bicycle
Race
Not sneaking out of her life
Not holding out on her a revolution spin-
ning back-wards
and O just this one-night downtown
Breakdown


"Margaritae Sorori" William Ernest Henley

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city 5
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley 10
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—
Night with her train of stars 15
And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing, 20
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

And for some non-western poetry some short poems by Rumi:

The breeze of the morn
Scatters musk in its train,
Fragrance borne
From my fair love's lane.

Ere the world wastes,
Sleep no more: arise!
The caravan hastes,
The sweet scent dies.



Happy was I
In the pearl's heart to lie;
Till, lashed by life's hurricane,
Like a tossed wave I ran.

The secret of the sea
I uttered thunderously;
Like a spent cloud on the shore
I slept, and stirred no more.



THE SHIP SUNK IN LOVE

Should Love's heart rejoice unless I burn?
For my heart is Love's dwelling.
If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love!
Who will say, 'It's not allowed'?
Burn this house thoroughly!
The lover's house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
From now on I will make burning my aim,
for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
Abandon sleep tonight; traverse fro one night
the region of the sleepless.
Look upon these lovers who have become distraught
and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved.
Look upon this ship of God's creatures
and see how it is sunk in Love.

[Thufir]

I have to ask... why the title? "Let be be finale of seem"? :smallconfused:

[Sarco_Phage]

I have to ask... why the title? "Let be be finale of seem"? :smallconfused:

It's a line from an excellent Wallace Stevens poem, although I prefer Gubbinal.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

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.

[Trog]

Ooo, Rumi! :smallsmile: My favorite of bit of his is:

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!
Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

[SaintRidley]

So you don't like, say, Shakespearean sonnets then due to the rhyming?

Also, do you have an example of the other poems you're talking about? *is curious*

I'm not against Shakespeare's sonnets. Many of them are quite good. Shakespeare was a writer who knew how to use rhyme well. I am, however, not part of the cult of Shakespeare (I hope my capstone professor next semester isn't reading this and doesn't know who I am here). He was great. Not, I think, the greatest.

Pre-Conquest literature is pretty cool. Here's a segment of The Seafarer, for an example.

Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,
siþas secgan, hu ic geswincdagum
earfoðhwile oft þrowade,
bitre breostceare gebiden hæbbe,
gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela,
atol yþa gewealc, þær mec oft bigeat
nearo nihtwaco æt nacan stefnan,
þonne he be clifum cnossað. Calde geþrungen
wæron mine fet, forste gebunden
caldum clommum, þær þa ceare seofedun
hat ymb heortan; hungor innan slat
merewerges mod. Þæt se mon ne wat
þe him on foldan fægrost limpeð,
hu ic earmcearig iscealdne sæ
winter wunade wræccan lastum,
winemægum bidroren,
bihongen hrimgicelum; hægl scurum fleag.
þær ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sæ,
iscaldne wæg.

And a translation of that (not mine. I'm still touching mine up.

About myself I can utter a truth-song,
tell journeys--how I in toil-days
torment-time often endured,
abode and still do bitter breast-care,
sought in my ship many a care-hall,
horrible waves' rolling, where narrow night-watch
often has kept me at the ship's stem
when it dashes by cliffs. Pinched by the cold
were my feet, bound by frost's
frozen fetters, where those cares sighed
hot about heart; hunger within tore
the mind of the sea-weary one. That man knows not,
to whom on earth fairest falls,
how I, care-wretched, ice-cold sea
dwelt on in winter along the exile-tracks,
bereaved both of friend and of kin,
behung with rime-crystals. Hail showers flew.
I heard nothing there but the sea's sounding,
ice-cold wave.


For Middle English I'd recommend Chaucer's The Parliament of Fowles (http://omacl.org/Parliament/) (Fowles rhymes with fools but means fowls, it's pre-vowel shift) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/gawaintx.htm) (you'll want to check out the translations, too, as it's a different dialect of Middle English and much harder to get the meaning out of the words untrained than Chaucer is). It also features sort of a pinwheel stanza where every stanza ended in a short quatrain of alliterative verse. Very cool stuff mixing the French and Anglo-Saxon traditions.


For one of the coolest things ever to use rhyme, though, I recommend Spenser's Faerie Queene. It's much more modern than the previous, but Spenser then goes and deliberately makes it look archaic by tossing in forms that aren't used any longer at that point (much like anybody today who tries to use thee and thou and conjugate verbs with that, and for the added realism of it, a lot of that stuff didn't work the way he used them).

[Asthix]

I'd like to talk about Iowa Blackie. I've got a soft spot for trains and irreverence and that seems to be exemplified in the 'Hobo King.'

I really hope I can find the book of his poetry I have since I just discovered he died on February 24th of this year. RIP Iowa Blackie. Here's an excerpt from one of his poems. Has anyone else heard of him?

REMINISCENCE
A blaring air horn beckoned and
I hurried to get there in time
To catch a sight so big and grand
The stuff of literature rhyme

Around the bend that rumbling roar
Announced a speeding south bound freight
Excitement louder more and more
To stimulation penetrate

It rumbled past with blaring horn
Soon followed by the rattling crash
Loud railroad cars which seemed to warn
Beware the danger hurtling dash

Then too soon a maroon caboose
Expectedly was rolling past
Around another bend vamoose
Though gone the memories to last
__________________

[Sarco_Phage]

I googled him, and yup, he's dead. What is it about his poetry that is so attractive to you? Any particular favorites?:smallsmile:

[Innis Cabal]

I don't think free verse is inherently better at representing images or statements than metered verse, while it is inherently worse at sounding beautiful.

The metaphysical poets were good at images, not just "for their time" but for all time. Myself I tend to prefer the more philosophical romantics (Keats, and especially Coleridge) for this. I can't stand Wordsworth, though.

I agree that there are times when free verse can represent something that metered lines cannot (can you imagine "The Waste Land" in iambic pentameter?), but I think that if that isn't the case (which it usually isn't) a poet should write something that is technically beautiful as well as profound.

Basically, to my mind, at least half of modern poetry is prose (albeit often quite good prose) with line breaks in it.
E.g. William Carlos Williams:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I cannot bring myself to like or, moreover, respect that poem, even though I'm supposed to.

I would not call the namesake poem of your forum name "beautiful" either.

[Nerocite]

Haiku is quite good
The best form of poetry
Simple, yet quite fun.

[Sarco_Phage]

Oooh, that's true. WCW in This is just to say works by highlighting certain visual elements; Shelley in Ozymandias worked by creating an ironic juxtaposition of a statement of eternal grandeur with a barren, destroyed waste.

Ozymandias is ugly by intention, just like The Wasteland.

[Innis Cabal]

Haiku is quite good
The best form of poetry
Simple, yet quite fun.

As always when people try this. That's not haiku.

[Sarco_Phage]

As always when people try this. That's not haiku.

Now now, don't be mean, ahaha.

[JabberwockySupafly]

The idea of something being 'beautiful' is subjective and simply boils down to what the reader, listener, ect perceives it to be and whether or not it fits their tastes. Saying something isn't beautiful simply because you don't like it, doesn't mean it is ugly to the rest of the world (otherwise all these poodle-mixed dogs wouldn't be in such bloody high demand).


As for poetry, I've read a bit here & there, but the only stuff I've ever gotten an appetite for is the Beat Movement, particularly the works of Allen Ginsberg. I used to read a lot of 18th to 19th Century (like Poe or Wilde) poetry back in High School as well, but for the most part if I want poetry (and no, this is not a joke) I listen to hip-hop music. Not Black Eye Pear or Lil' Wayne, mind you, but the likes of Aesop Rock, Busdriver, Haiku D'etat, Atmosphere, or Felt.

[Sarco_Phage]

Ahhh, Ginsberg is pretty intense, actually, and beat poetry was a very solid school (I believe it still is right now, but I'll have to check the local art bars).

Don't discard someone like Li'l Wayne right off the bat though. While I haven't heard his music, I can vouch for Eminem, Ludacris and Tupac as very skilled wordplayers. Eminem has a much stronger gift for imagery, though it is unfocused and possibly underdeveloped, but Ludacris is good for irreverent metaphor and Tupac sets the mood very well, independently of the music.

While they're not exactly strong poets, they do have a lot of skill with wordplay and rhyme.

[Asthix]

What is it about his poetry that is so attractive to you? Any particular favorites?:smallsmile:

Well, I can't find the book of his that I have, :smallconfused: so I won't be able to reference specifics, but like I said above, the trains and the irreverence is a recipe for consistency in my opinion. I can enjoy every poem in one of his books not because they are so similar, but because I envy the tone.

Speaking of free verse, (as per the beginning of the thread) I would submit the recent winning entry of Iron Poet as an example of beautiful free verse.

After Party (By Alarra (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=7141))
Salt scented night, ever calming,
failed to quell my anxious heart.
Though turned to sea, my mind remained
helpless, captivated by tendril conversation
wafting out to cross the deserted deck.

A focus. Cold metal rails, an indention
upon my middle as I bend to compare
the stars, mirrored and above.
My mind relives the night’s events
oblivious to cautions and desires.

Tears fall, wind whisking them away
to tango within the sea’s spray.
“Who invited her?”
Their derision burns my ears,
blossoming spots of color beneath
black mascara rivulets.

I curse my parents for their insistence
that I socialize, attend, conform.
My buffer shrinks as they invade my solitude,
bodies pressing into the night air,
music pulsing around me with each
crashing open of the door.

“Watcha doin, Mouse?”
They leer, the scent of alcohol
assaulting my senses, banishing the sea.
As always, I ignore, avoid, shrink within myself
with futile hope that they go away, let it lie.

“What’s down there, Mousy?”
“Maybe she’d like a closer look.”
Empty air replaces cool wooden planks
as they hoist me toward the top bar.
Screams, protests escape in a squeak
as they stumble and lose their grip.

And in falling, finally, I capture the calm
that eluded me through prom and after.
The icy void draws me to her bosom,
enveloping arms cocooning my form.
I am home at last.

[Sarco_Phage]

Ooh. Tempted to actually try and start a poetry workshop thread, haha, although ideally the moderator of a workshop should be a published poet.

[SaintRidley]

Ooh. Tempted to actually try and start a poetry workshop thread, haha, although ideally the moderator of a workshop should be a published poet.

I've had a few published, but not nearly enough to be comfortable moderating a workshop.

I do support the idea. Let's find someone else to be responsible.

[Sarco_Phage]

I've had a few published, but not nearly enough to be comfortable moderating a workshop.

I do support the idea. Let's find someone else to be responsible.

I do have a friend who does do regular workshops and has won a national award for poetry (the Palanca) but he's not really the type to workshop on an internet forum.

What about the other poetic playgrounders?

[Nerocite]

As always when people try this. That's not haiku.

While maybe not quite
a "proper" haiku, it's still
a five, seven, five.

[Sarco_Phage]

While maybe not quite
a "proper" haiku, it's still
a five, seven, five.

That's true, but there's more to the haiku form than the syllabic constraints. :smallsmile:

And while we're here, here's a poem by Eric Gamalinda.

Zero Gravity
The dry basin of the moon held either bones
of a race or something pure not yet beginning.
All summer we had waited for it to fill the screen,
In the hushed room our faces were radiant, off-blue

Eight children in our family gathered around
to observe two figures digging dirt in outer space,
mother repeating Neil Armstrong's words as though
she were learning a prayer, electronically conveyed.

The dunes gleamed like ancient silk, like crushed
pearls. In the constant lunar nights his luminescence
was everything. It was a creature unto itself.
It poured into the room like a gradual flood

of lightning, touching every object with the cool burn
of something not quite on fire. If we stepped out
Manila would be somewhere else. Already this was
limco, a state of abeyance, a final way-station.

It didn't matter, at that moment, where our lives
would lead: one brother would disown another,
one sister was going to dies. Not yet unhappy,
we were ready to walk on the moon. Ready, also

to know this time there was no turning back.
It was black ether, in whose space we were no longer
the selves we had been, our bags already packed,
the future a religion we could believe in.

[Kneenibble]

Indeed, & especially in transliterating the form out of a language like Japanese you might say that the exact number of syllables is the least important aspect of the form.


Oh certainly not. And especially for something of such length it'd get old fast. You just seemed to be knocking rhyming altogether and I think it's just one of the many tools in the poet's toolbox. And certainly one that lends itself to sticking in one's memory if done well. All rhyme all the time though would indeed be very limiting.

Earlier plays like Richard II where the verse scenes are almost entirely rhyme jangle like a pocketful of cheap change. Even a play like the Tempest where rhyme is less but the metre is fairly regular sounds dull to me. This is why King Lear remains one of my favourite plays -- the metre is just a broken wreck. Much like the play's world. O, O, O, O, O.

But dramatic speech/text is not exactly poetry: it contains poetry sure, but as Trog says, to the degree that Shakespeare's earlier plays use it, it becomes plodding drudge.

[JonestheSpy]

My favorite poet is one of the lesser known Romantics, John Clare. I discovered him via an article in the New Yorker, and rather than paraphrase I'll just quote directly (spoilered for length):

We perhaps talk too easily about “struggling artists”; but there is no denying that Clare’s struggles with poverty were all-encompassing and lifelong. He was born in 1793, the son of Parker Clare, who was a casual farm laborer in Northamptonshire, a pretty but unspectacular patch of countryside in the Midlands. The family’s key asset was an apple tree outside their cottage which produced enough fruit to support them when Parker’s rheumatism prohibited steady work. In the intervals between helping his father in the fields, John, from the age of five to the age of eleven, went to the village school, and acquired a passion for reading which sparked, in his early teens, the desire to become a poet—an extraordinarily unlikely thing for an early-nineteenth-century English peasant to think he could manage to be.

As the son of a peasant, Clare was born to a life of manual labor. It may be that nobody is entirely suited to a life of manual labor, but, if there are degrees of unsuitedness, John Clare would rank high. Stunted by malnutrition, he was small—five feet—accident-prone, and sickly; an early employer described him as “weak but willing.” In his youth, he was put to work weeding and haymaking and stacking bales. He also worked for a pub landlord, plowing and looking after animals; as an apprentice gardener at the local mansion; as a militiaman (his company was known as the “Bum-Tools”); with fencing and hedging gangs; on a plantation; scouring out fish ponds; and in a lime works. He saw at first hand the transforming process of enclosure, in which common lands were taken over by rich landowners, and was appalled by its “lawless law.” And all this time his mind was racing, burning, with poetry:


I could not stop my thoughts and often failed to keep them till night, so when I fancied I had hit upon a good image or natural description I used to sneak into a corner of the garden and clap it down, but the appearance of my employers often put my fancies to flight and made me lose the thought and the muse together, for I have always felt anxious to conceal my scribbling and would as leave have confessed to be a robber as a rhymer.

No one else wrote in circumstances like these, and no one else, uncoincidentally, wrote like John Clare. Among the other Romantics, Wordsworth is a master at reflecting on nature, Coleridge an inspired thief of images from the natural world, and Keats a great sensualist of natural perceptions. But nobody knew nature as well as Clare, or put so much of it into poetry. Clare resisted turning nature into metaphor, or into a mask of the transcendent, and he was at his best saying something that the other Romantics never wanted to say: it is what it is. There are surges of emotion in his nature poetry—as Bate points out, one of his favorite phrases is “I love”—but their movement is consistently away from fantasy, back to the thing itself. At the same time, there is something desperately intense about the way Clare clings to details, anchoring himself in the particular.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/27/031027crbo_books#ixzz1JHmcHXRF

Here's one of his that I'm particularly fond of:

In Hilly-Wood


How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between.-
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

[TFT]

I'll occasionally read and write poetry. I'm much more of a fan of some kind of structured verse and rhyme scheme, especially Edger Allen Poe and the like. However, there seems to be one exception...

I quite honestly don't know the title of the poem, but I do know it was by Frank O'hara.

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up