Why can't I understand poetry?
I'm reading Keats. This is supposed to be entry level shit written by a 20 year old.
And yet I feel nothing.
Novels are great, but poetry to me is nothing but incomprehensible prose with random line breaks.
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you have a low iq
Yes but many other low IQ people enjoy poetry so your explanation fails to offer a useful account of why some people enjoy poetry and others don't.
Just try other writers. Trakl, for example. Not anything that is conventionally claimed as good is necessary good from a personal perspective. Also, most of the poetry is very obsolete to appreciate from the modern perspective, both motive- and style-wise.
>Trakl
Well I read that he died from a cocaine overdose so at least I can relate
And he fricked his sister as well. Ring any bells?
Frick bro, did you die of cocaine od too?
I second this. We generally appreciate contemporary media as terrible, but the truth of it is that at least modernity which is a bit wider than just contemporary blows almost everything from before out of the park. The entertainment and depth distribution between modern media from let’s say the 20th century onwards to today weigh in overwhelmingly in favour of modernity just because of movies alone, let’s also not forget video games, and for more importantly the colours with which we‘re seeing old media in the first place to make it entertaining and that this here is also entertainment media which relies more on communication rather than concrete aesthetics, but that is just culture from which art is then made, Homer hardly could’ve written without his time and own contemporaries, but those people when going to prayer at the city deity temple or constructing genealogies would‘ve hardly imagined epic poetry to come of it.
Enjoying older texts for what they’re actually worth, committing to honest hermeneutics as well as an underlying philology without some narrative of this is to be read or classic or to be started with or otherwise generally worth anyone‘s admiration, is quite difficult and hardly anyone does it today, when many classics even by otherwise great authors are maybe interpreted a bit too much in forms and may have served a more common purpose before. I would say that although I enjoy older media I read it for the purpose of study, something a contemporary would not seek out with his literature, rather than simple enjoyment: do you read Dante for the Divine Comedy or the Divine Comedy for Dante, and how much can you know of the work before reading it without positing in a similar way to having read it before you‘ve yet turned a page?
Even with more people producing media and arts our consumption has also increased as has the backlog, we‘re at best left with a couple of good works of media in the various types each ever decade which often don’t stick given that we don’t read them the same as a Vergil or Dante, our perception will be very biased then towards a whole of hundreds of years of past works appearing monolithic in their greatness because we only seek out greats of the past commonly to preserve. It can of course ignorantly be the other way around, even progressives can be reactionary in spite when they perceive something as dominant and exklusive. That’s something dialectics doesn’t seem to consider, that perception of mastery in a plural and liberal society or democracy would involve a significant social power base next to the concrete civil one as both equal in defining what is and what is language for their followers, who rules where, there is no one to overcome only rotating relations that grease necessarily somewhere better and informally develop attention there next to the whole of society, state, power.
>moron cant understand Keats
>recommends Trakl
Let me guess, you just discovered him
You know like how there are songs with lyrics that resonate with you. It's just that.
People like lyrics because they like the music. WIthout the music the lyrics alone are empty.
But there's plenty of songs that you'll like where the lyrics are neither here nor there, only some lyrics or some songs stand out to you. These are the ones you consider to be "poetic".
Also, our appreciation of lines a poem are not disconnected with their musical quality.
I wish this would help but I only listen to classical unfortunately, mostly Liszt and Rach.
https://genius.com/Embrace-usa-do-not-consider-yourself-free-lyrics
I fricking hate this song,
But these lyrics are damned near Me.
I can't listen to the song because of their vocal delivery, it's musical accompaniment, nothing else but the lyrics resonate with me.
But I do appreciate them in spite of the song.
In the same way that I can appreciate an instrumental of Macklemore's Same Love.
Thanks bros.
Good fricking song man. That whole album is great lyrically shame you cant enjoy the music.
Really depends on the band the music and the lyrics, for example I try to shill a lot Greg brown’s work, where he sung a number of Blake’s poems. Obviously like that Blake is still the star! Not to mention historically musical accompanying a poem was normal. Lyric/lyrical as in lyrical poetry was poetry designed to be said while a lyre played, song and poems don’t have such a harsh divide.
Patently false. Music is just the conduit that brings the lyrics to people. They don't "like lyrics because they like the music."
>You know like how there are songs with lyrics that resonate with you. It's just that.
Based.
I have never felt that with a song
How is this even possible? Is skrillex all you listen too?
No I listen to a lot of music with lyrics, just nothing stands out in my mind and connects with me.
Then you must be very plain and boring
You can understand poetry that resonates on your same frequency.
Keats just doesn't jive with you.
We live in and are trained to operate in a world that attempts to conduct itself logically, in definitive constructs and empirical evidence and absolute fact.
Poetry, or any willful subterfuge of language, is narrative. Perhaps all the more real for being so. But it can only be felt, because it's not something which could be known or studied.
And yet it's all the more real than what could be quantified or qualified by science because again, you feel it.
Because it's beautiful.
Uh we're not in the age of enlightenment any more sweaty. Pathos is what dominates these days. Man you anti-science people are really weird. Like we live in the most anti-science period since 1700 and you're still doing you're "materialist, positivist, mechanistic" spiel routine.
It's almost as if postmodernism, born out of the aftermath of the first three atomic bombs, has no other idea for the future than a carefully maintained present of horror and suspense.
Because of the over-riding fact that since what little we now know could be erased in mere hours,
none of it has any inherent value.
(And then we wonder why everyone acts that way)
>20441746
Bet guy is having a scientific explanaition for those vibes.
> don't you?
What?
It takes time to learn. Keats is complicated and 200 years has changed the language and cultural sensibilities.
Here's my recommendation...
- get yourself an anthology of poetry. Don't get the massive norton one, but one that has a selection of standards and classics. It's out of print now, but William Harmon's The Top 500 Poems worked well for me.
- read through it at random. Find something familiar. then read poems around it.
- If you like a poem or it resonates with you, make a note of it.
- when you have a handful of poems that you like (not necessarily understand), try to work out what it is in each one that appeals to you. Is it emotional? Does it have a good rhythm? Is the language beautiful? Is there an image or symbol that captivates you? Does the poem have a message that appeals?
- looK for patterns in the aspects of the poem that appeal to you. Find out more about that aspect of poetry, and then hopefully find more poems that you can like.
[For me, it was Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins that were like gateway drugs. Hard to understand, but such incredible language!]
And then, read the poems that you like again. The appeal can be aesthetic, linguistic, aural, rhythmic, or the message that the poet gives. There can be pleasure without understanding... once you learn more about poetry and its history, you'll find it easier to "get" and understand.
it’s because you’re going into this with a number of misconceptions OP.
1= while it’s not essential, it would certainly help your appreciation if you learned the basics of poetry from a book like poetic meter and form, so you can divide metrical from non-metrical forms, the usages of different length lines and that sort of thing, this isn’t essential because if a poem is good it’ll make use of these things whether you know it or not, but being equipped with the knowledge of what’s going on can certainly help.
2=feeling, who told you you’re supposed to feel anything? Whether you’re supposed to feel anything is a question dependent on the particular poem in question. Poetry, verse, is ultimately just a mode of expression and it isn’t inherently more sentimental than prose, in fact a lot of poetry throughout history has desired to not be emotional, to be coldly beautiful, someone like Keats sometimes is directly trying to hit your emotions sure but for the most part he’s trying to create an aesthetic, a whole world of corresponding colors, beauties and so forth with corresponding sounds. The point is the sheer beauty of it and the beauty of the expression, if that is necessarily emotional, that’s a circumstantial question.
3= poetry, you said Keats is entry level so you should get it, wrong! Bad approach! Poetry is just like any other art, it has differing genres, different types of artists, different flavors inside it. If you hate metal music it won’t matter if it’s a common or easy metal artist; you just might hate metal music, or if it was films maybe you just don’t like dumb comedy movies, likewise with poetry, maybe you just don’t like Romantic poetry or his brand of romantic poetry. This is why it’s good to start instead with an anthology of English verse with a wide spread of years and movements, so you can get an idea of the various kinds of poetry. Discover what your taste is you know?
I recommend OP to make this easier on yourself, either recite the poems yourself or listen to them recited on YouTube, a poem is best when actually said, and there’s no shame in listening to them because the traditional mode of consuming poetry for most people, in a traditional context, was hearing it recited. Like you’re doing an absolutely normal thing if you decide “let me here the odes of Keats instead of reading them.”
Good luck OP! I hope you find which works you like.
Fair enough. Thanks for the insight.
I heard Blake was a good introduction to allegorical poetry, such as Dante, Spenser, Milton (i think?), who constitute the least accessible class of authors for modern readers, who are unable to understand that poetry is not simply about understanding its meanings (as Frye says, this would make discursive writing ideal). Is this true? Is reading poetry about understanding it? Or what?
>I heard Blake was a good introduction to allegorical poetry, such as Dante, Spenser, Milton (i think?),
Yes and no, Blake in certain poetry such as like songs of innocence is some of the most easily accessible poems you could find, but Blake is actually a genius and I don’t mean in terms of just poetry, but his Philosophical conception and his constructed religion are very very ornate and because of this his longer poems, his epics, they’re absolutely some of the most difficult of the allegorical and symbolic poetry that is considered canon for the common reader. Songs of innocence and experience as a whole is pretty easy though. I would recommend highly that you listen to these, they’re a fellow singing Blake’s poems and he does them very well.
>who constitute the least accessible class of authors for modern readers,
They’re actually not in the top bracket of complexity, they’re just in the top bracket of what’s considered widely read. Of that list you gave, Spenser isn’t that difficult in allegory and Milton if we go to his shorter works isn’t either, though the real beauty of Milton is how many inversions he does, taking quotes from ancient and contemporary authors and the Bible and tweaking or inverting their meaning, Dante’s divine comedy is of the list (other than Blake) the most complex but at the same time in paradiso he literally gives you a list of theological and mystical writers you should read to understand him, but if we really count his shorter works, I would say his shorter works are comparable and sometimes very much less obscure compared to say, nerval, what I’ve read of holderlin, mallarme, and other such.
>who are unable to understand that poetry is not simply about understanding its meanings (as Frye says, this would make discursive writing ideal). Is this true? Is reading poetry about understanding it? Or what?
The point of poetry first and foremost is beauty, which is harmony among the senses and the concepts/artifice. Wagner has a nice way of framing it, that art is like an idea being folded in and upon itself through images and beauty so that at once the idea may expand and at once, we may perceive and consume the idea in a more sensual manner.
Cont
Goethe and Schiller more or less give us three phases by which art may target to work on us and these will define the quality of the art and the type. A poem may work on the most outer aspect of you, so that it is like a flash of light, a firework, something shocking immediately, gets the thoughts pumping. This is the reason why a lot of medieval writers wrote and we see the widespread usage/sharing of emblems for this purpose, someone like Catullus actually had surviving critique of people shitting on his poetry due to him just trying to come off big brained and impressive. And this is a fine rhetorical tool. In this regard the reader doesn’t have to necessarily understand it, it may be a purely empty aesthetical choice, just there because by making it an allegory you’ve added that much more to it.
The next level where art may target likewise can also have a usage for the allegory, the second level is to strike at the emotions of a person and no deeper, think the generic chick flick, think the sentimental shit that a lot of anime does, allegory may be used here to result in a more emotional result, think for example of the kind of Christian films we see today, where they’re not designed for non Christians to consume and Will reframe the storied in a urban contemporary setting in order to make the viewer connect with the content, by doing this the allegory and content have a more purposeful relationship and may result in more emotional manipulation. When the person on the screen is allegorical for Christ, when they suffer, that makes the viewer care more. Poetry does the same exact thing, if a Chinese poem alludes to the moon princess or the white snake beauty this is to allude to the host of emotions they’ve felt when reading those and thus may build upon it when you read it.
The final tier of art is the inmost art, I say inmost because the higher you go, the more interior the art operates, and so the outermost layers are still effected, the inmost art which is high art is those which operate on the ideas you hold, your conception of self and the world. A piece of high art in order to do this needs more than just the desire to be here, but to actually also have the ability to pass the other levels, being completely able to entertain you and move you emotionally, this is why we do not consider any generic philosophers novel good, because it may be shit otherwise even if it says something good.
In the case of the high art, allegory exists to directly infuse every single step and portion of the idea into the story and sense, and while it is better to know the idea infusing the work, the best allegorical work of the high art is didactic in nature, by this I mean to say,
Cont
by contemplating the allegory and the hidden meaning through the art piece, you come to penetrate the idea and allegory hidden. So the high art will effect you directly by the more gross aspects of the writing such as a soliloquy a character may say, but the allegorical aspect, the subtle aspect, will illuminate and be illuminated as you slowly read it and consider it.
For example, in mandaean poetry due to wordplay in Aramaic and mandaic, garment and mind/soul are equivalent, light and truth, and king and priest and worshipper are made equivalent also, so with these symbolic concepts fused I’ll write something up real quick and ugly which I’m sure you can see immediately has more beauty when the symbolic meanings are considered.
My garments were given to me stained,
My garments made filthy by my birth,
And I a king was cast into filth,
And I a king cast into dirt,
But then lord you opened your garment,
Then lord, the light of your garment shined,
And the effulgence of your garment made my garment resplendent,
And you returned to me my crown.
In this form, you can transmute any idea into so many different sensual forms which allows for a lot of potential beautiful results.
Why does every post that comes out from you has a pedantic tone? And your actual poetry reminds me too much of the 19th century, to the point that it feels like a poor imitation of Melville's . You're not living in the 1800 sweetie
>Why does every post that comes out from you has a pedantic tone?
Probably because I try to be detailed and I get a kick out of shilling the stuff I like.
>And your actual poetry reminds me too much of the 19th century,
Eh, if it does it’s not intentional, my poetry is all religious and I can point to where I am influenced ranging from contemporary rap to the ancients, though it’s probably because I personally dislike the majority of poetry and prose 1950s onward; with the dislike really starting in 1890s. I hate modernism, post modernism and so forth, both in terms of ideal (I am religious, I have no feeling of being wayward and without meaning, I don’t think sexuality is that big of a thing, And my culture is a very traditional one largely unaffected by the complaints you see tossed about all day.) and I just dislike it on a musical/enjoyment level. If I made movies I would want to make movies akin to the movies I enjoy, if I made music I would try to make music akin to the music I like, in this regard when I write, my poetry is in accordance with my ideal and aesthetic ideals.
>to the point that it feels like a poor imitation of Melville's .
I like his prose and verse but he’s not a model I use at all really, here’s a list of writers I actively imitate and ape.
Swinburne, AE Russell, MF DOOM, Black thought, Tech N9ne, Poe, Hopkins, Robert bridges, Baudelaire, blake, li-he, al-hallaj, angelus, Ovid, Petrarch, Horace, Edmund Spenser, john lyly, aloysius Bertrand, Tennyson, Shakespeare John Keats, Mallarme, Dunsany, huysman, Leon bloy, Nerval, Thomas brown, Blackwood, Dante, Clark Ashton Smith, Milton, Goethe, Machen, Robert Burton, Ben Jonson(especially the masques.) Richard Francis Burton, Virgil, John Dee-Edward Kelley, and abhinavagupta. There’s other authors but these are the ones that come to mind when I’m trying to ape. I feel no shame in saying this because all of the ancients said clearly if you want to write good you ought pick a group of writers and imitate and fuse them with your own spirit. If it’s good enough for Cicero why not me? And again, why would I want to write in a way that’s different from what I enjoy consuming?
>You're not living in the 1800
I’m living in my own world homie, ego’s huge homie.
I don’t really think something like this poem resembles Melville really.
Serpent moloch
Slithering, hithering, higher b’ing, tyre’s king,
Tearing up, twenty cut, torrents blood, thunder struck,
God barbarous, hot phosphorus, cant hiss cantrips
Flashes flame, bacchus named, serpent prince, hag and witch
Offer scents of myrrh mixed with hacked and slit
Heffer throat, sever both, lay the child, daggers lift,
Sacrifice, see me slice, like a dark savage,
Skin black as pitch my hand is swift to slay
For knowledge, I pay homage to God and pray
To the image immortal and immoral idol whose way
Is wrathful and rathe to war as a warrior grey,
Gelid as glaucous and great as the grim day
Of death the devil and darkness that flays
The sun light and drums the might
Of thundering night that utters to the height
The lustral rites of the subtle eye.
Frater is an ESL who spent all his time learning about poetry from the internet. He has no real expectation of what constitutes an actual discussion of literature outside of strangely glossing over details, and boiling everything down to "subjective taste". He also types like an undergrad so you know he never went to uni for lot:
>The metaphor is so beautiful
>Omg the splendor!! Milton and Spenser are highest poets because they sublime
>This grandiose poetry is the best because grandiose imagery is the best
>No I haven't read a single piece of literary criticism in my life, why do you ask?
> Frater is an ESL who spent all his time learning about poetry from the internet
Neither neither baybee, Brooklyn born and raised.
> Brooklyn born and raised
No wonder you are an insufferable moron
>Neither neither baybee, Brooklyn born and raised.
So an ESL
Kek
>No I haven't read a single piece of literary criticism in my life, why do you ask?
You forgot to post the gigachad.
exactly why hes less insufferable than you
Thank you for the detailed response. I've been wondering if reading theories pertaining to the study of literature, such as Frye's metacritical approach to literary criticism, could give me the ability to "stand back" from a poem or prose-work and recognize its unity and depth, without getting lost and confused in exegetical particulars and explication, which I assumed was the primary business of the critic (until I read Frye). I understand that, although direct experience of the primary texts is essential towards understanding literature as a whole (not in exhaustion of course), the cogent response you gave is mediated by the critical tradition you perhaps supplemented your reading with. You referenced Wagner, Goethe, Schiller, but is there anyone else you would recommend to understand western literature?
People on this board talk about literature a lot, but I'm always wondering why they don't reference the critical tradition as often as they should, especially with the amount of threads lamenting the complexity and obscurity of some authors and their works, notwithstanding poetry and literature as a whole. It seems a mere direct-response is tangential to the literary experience, since those critics who responded for example to Moby Dick when it was published could say very little about it, until the literary landscape shifted and the criticism of him and his work began to develop. I'm not sure though. It's not like I'm looking for a one-size fits all exegetical key to understanding poetry, but I don't want to suffer from indigestion as many people do when they jump into poetry without consulting the critical sphere.
I would say first, that the reason you don’t see critical lit and secondary sources shilled is they’ve gotten a bad track record and reputation due to basically death of the author as a concept and there subsequent abuses of it resulting in people taking any work and just manipulating the text to mean basically nothing, or whatever you want it to mean. This absolutely destroys its reputation to the average person. As for me I’ve two approaches towards this, if I’m looking into a particular author’s body of work I will look through essays that I can find are considered respectable on the topic or are obscure but clearly passion projects, and read through a handful of those if not a few books on the topic if it’s something that’s actuality interesting, this usually means you’ll get the most scholarly works with little manipulation. Or and this is preferable, I will read the critical work/essays of authors who I enjoy for their own work. so Swinburne’s writings on Blake, Hugo and Shakespeare for example are great, the works of Matthew Arnold are great, blanchot is pretty cool, the essay we have from Lautréamont is very good, all of the prose essays of Walter pater on other authors and art in general are just beautiful and will echo a lot of the work Schiller wrote, abhinavagupta’s work especially relating to rasas is very important, I’d shill also Horace’s work on poetics along with Poe’s philosophy of composition, Nicholai Hartman’s work on aesthetics is also a valuable read. and I honestly think lovecraft’s essays on lit superior to his fiction, smith’s essays are fascinating for his take on imagination, machen’s hieroglyphics is a pretty interesting work on comparing high lit to low with good examples and his definition of ecstasy is definitely worth keeping in mind. Dunsany’s lectures are also worth reading.
In general i respect the artist who has produced art more than the essayist who has not, and while I may argue about Ezra pound I actually really like his prose writings for the most part on his ideas on art and writing.
Cont
> for example to Moby Dick
Moby dick is an excellent example of the failures of contemporary literary critique and how much abuse they will do. Time and time again Melville dedicates not just entire speeches but entire chapters explaining in detail the platonic and Gnostic allegory he’s set up with the ocean and so many writers will just ignore this for the most tepid interpretations relating to imperialism or sexuality, and I’ve seen such a small amount of critical work even mention the parallel the bed scene is supposed to draw with his childhood and how the relationship established is supposed to be multi-layered, demonstrating the harmony of mind with body, but also just the pleasure of having friendship.
Moby dick absolutely gets mangled, this is why imo the more dryer peculiar scholars who autistically work annotations and the like are of a better sort, for example while I think his translation of Dante is shit, I consider Hollander’s Dante to probably be the most valuable due to how well his notes are, Even if I have some disagreements with it.
Are you monolingual, Frater? Considering how opiniated you are on non-english authors, I assume you know French and the like.
I should also add Cicero’s writings on rhetoric.
I’m not but I do not speak French. I speak English and romani(gypo) fluently, if forced I can make translations of some Hebrew poetry, I used to be able to translate Latin but I let the knowledge atrophy, I can if I really dig my hair out also make basic translations of Sanskrit.
However when I’m studying a poet who I have really enjoyed, such as dante, I will for example first read the canto in English, then try my best to say it in the original, then if possible listen to a recording of a recitation of it, this way I get both the meaning and the sound quality.
Here’s a favorite dante reciter.
not to mention many poems are sung/put to music, which enables further enjoyment.
Something tells me you're autistic, Frater. You have that autistic writing tone, Am I wrong?
Haha, I’m not but I’ve been told that, nah it’s a mixture of being an obsessive, being a gypo (our usage of English is pretty disgusting) as well as having a considerably large ego and of course being pretentious, which I don’t feel shame about on either point, it’s enjoyable and being self aware of things purifies them in my opinion.
I enjoy my logorrhea, kek.
If you want some phenomenal actually mentally ill prose, please check out mp shiel, he was genuinely sick in the head and you can feel that crack in his head as you read his writings. Here’s an excerpt.
From his non fiction
“For, really, this reading-mania of the nations has an origin deeper in nature than any desire to “while away the time”, has an origin in the fact that progress is the law of Life, in the fact that the longer progress has gone on the greater has grown its rate, so that by the time it got to man its rate began to be great, and at modern man its rate is even eager. Nor is progress any more the law of Life in the gross than of the separate life, man or nag, though, because of its increasing speed, a modern man will do anything, will be gnawing an end of straw, will be perusing football gossip, sooner than sprawl all torpid, while a horse, its girth once gorged with herbage, will long bulge dead-still with a lubberlip in his meadow-plot, bitterly meditating upon nothing.”
From his fiction.
“Albrecht Dürer — artium lumen, sol artificum-pictor-calcographus-sculptor-sine exemplo — one day sent, as we know, a black-and-white wash of his face, untouched by pencil, to his friend, a certain Raphaelo Santi at Rome: a piece of work said to have been much admired of the Master. Two years later, Dürer despatched just such another to the morganatic Gräfin von Hohenschwangau — a great lover of Art, herself an artist — and it was the burning of this portrait that was the undoing of the Lord of Schwangau himself and so of all that branch of the race of the Herzogs of Swabia, till now.”
“THREE DAYS AGO! by heaven, it seems an age. But I am shaken — my reason is debauched. A while since, I fell into a momentary coma precisely resembling an attack of petit mal. “Tombs, and worms, and epitaphs” — that is my dream. At my age, with my physique, to walk staggery, like a man stricken! But all that will pass: I must collect myself — my reason is debauched.”
Your enthusiasm makes me jealous. How old are you? How long have you been reading literature? I want to read more and to feel the converging lines of significance within literature and poetry manifest themselves, but my zeal is waning, causing me to get more for my time by simply reading critical literature without reading the primary works. What is your advice?
>How old are you?
Won’t say due to wanting some anonymity, but I’ll say I’m married and have kids.
>How long have you been reading literature? I
Been serious at religious lit since about 12.
>simply reading critical literature without reading the primary works. What is your advice?
Ask yourself if you enjoy literature or the idea of literature, and ask yourself what is your taste, and then read what you enjoy, not what you even find the best. For example dunsany is the prose writer who hits basically every flavor note I love, I’ve read his complete works three or four times and he was very prolific. If you find those authors you really really love it’s no more a job to read them then it is to listen to a song you like or watch a director you like. But I would also say you’re dividing lit up too harshly, Walter pater IS fine literature, here’s a very famous excerpt from one of his books where he’s talking about the Mona Lisa and other renaissance art/poetry.
“The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea.”
of this “she is older …eyelids and the hands” is so esteemed, yeats even compiled an anthology of contemporary verse and put that section (with his own enjambment) as the very first poem.
>that excerpt
Damn... that was good eats. Your advice is good as well. By critical literature, I meant contemporary academic papers. Reading such works has actually been pretty exhausting; I regret the time I spent, sort of, as the works I read on Don Quixote gave me not even half the pleasure I got from reading it... but pleasure isn't everything. There are objective structural principles to literature (rudimentary grammatical forms) which serve as axioms to good criticism (criticism rests on radical awareness of language). But if you don't enjoy literature, what's the point of reading criticism of it?
>Ask yourself if you enjoy literature or the idea of literature
This question provides good perspective. Ironically, the question I was asking myself ran sort of like this: Do you love literature, or do you love the feelings literature gives you? I thought that simply reading literature wasn't enough, since I could never directly communicate or translate my positive reaction into academic terms unless I engaged with material of that nature on a regular basis. Unless I could justify why I would read authors like Montaigne, Cervantes, and Shakespeare over some of the slop that's being published now in critical terminology, my enjoyment of those writers didn't seem to amount to much. Perhaps I'm just overthinking it.
>I meant contemporary academic papers.
Once more, I’d read these once I’ve read the primary text. For me it only makes sense to go to commentary after I’ve read what the commentary is commentating on, and ultimately that’s all these essays and papers do, commentating on the contents themes and contexts.
>but pleasure isn't everything.
Imo bad perspective, the further study on the lit should further your pleasure on the primary source, but eh, i like structures and analysis in itself so perhaps we differ in taste.
>There are objective structural principles to literature (rudimentary grammatical forms) which serve as axioms to good criticism (criticism rests on radical awareness of language). But if you don't enjoy literature, what's the point of reading criticism of it?
I agree, I would also say lit has both objective and subjective aspects, if you desire, here’s an essay I wrote concerning aesthetics and lit in general defining what I believe would be an objective aesthetic, it’s actually the intro for a poetry book so apologies for any reference to that in it.
https://pastebin.com/un9sgQab
> Perhaps I'm just overthinking it.
Imo, your problem isn’t one of needing to study secondary sources, it’s one of sitting down, introspecting on what are your values and aesthetics, and sitting down and breaking down why you have so enjoyed the works you love and why you hate those which you hate.
For example, I consider king Lear Shakespeare’s best and consider this the best line in king Lear.
“Do not abuse me”
And this is best because not in any specific power in that particular line, but because of the image and person of Lear as this mighty monarch, the gradual eradication of his will and sovereignty, the loathing and fear he gains towards his daughters, all of this coalescing in the scene of him before coredelia his good daughter, and begging just to not be harmed any further, in that moment all of the person, the mind, the meaning of Lear is destroyed and he is alienated even from his own identity, the contextual power of this verse, which I’ve never seen anyone else address at length, to me is easily the mightiest moment of verse in Shakespeare.
I know that because it made me cry! And I had to think why did it do so, it’s a simple process. You don’t need anything but the text to wonder what is glorious or good about it that you enjoyed.
Gypsy, huh? You're most likely skinny fat or overweight and have a grotesque Roman nose.
> You're most likely skinny fat or overweight and
You know it’s funny, I’m not and growing up I felt like I didn’t fit in bodily because of it, I remember my mother screaming at me as a kid that “only homosexuals take small bites and don’t eat all their food” and I eventually tried to get big but my metabolism was always too fast to really allow it, I keep decently active and am at a good weight, but I eat like an absolute monster, both in how much I eat and the range of what I’m willing to eat. Absolutely disgusting the way I eat really.
>have a grotesque Roman nose.
Ehhhh wasn’t sure but looking at a few diagrams looks between the Roman and Greek, I often get mistaken for some type of Mediterranean.
I should stress this, basically every member of the male side of my family other than myself is like, 6’2-6’4 and around 300 pounds give or take 40 depending.
On the topic of theological and philosophical allegorizing being put to the wayside in favor of critique concerning wordly issues, entertainment, or critique about critique, what's your two cents on this being applicable to Don Quixote? I tried to read the text without reading anything into it (reading it as "the funny book" like a lot of people as well as reading it as a book about books) yet I can't help but shake the feeling that some allegorizing is going on, whether it's what Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent (I've speculated that they represent Folly/Heresy and Epicureanism respectively in the vein of Medieval morality plays) to certain episodes such as the one with the rich man whipping the shepherd boy. Do you think I'm on to something or am I chasing windmills?
There’s nothing wrong with interpreting or even finding your own allegory in the text that wasn’t intended, I’m simply against the argument that such is inherent to the text if it’s not clearly so and the ignoring of authorial intention.
Obviously the two men can be interpreted as a dichotomy for that is their character relationship, explore the idea map it out see if you get pleasure out of it or more of the story unfolds to you. Do not ignore the aesthetic value of the impression, even if it does not relate to the truth.
Try
>Dickinson
>Poe
>Whitman
>Kipling
>Frost
>Wordsworth
Keats is not entry level.
>but he was 20
Yes, he was an extremely talented 20 year old who read tonnes of poetry and grew up in a time when poetry was a very popular art form.
You're probably reading it wrong.
Read it out loud. Poetry isn't some midwit fiction book that you can skim through with your eyes. It has to be read out loud not only to get the proper rhythm, cadence, and meaning, but also to be enjoyed. Read it out loud and then it will make sense.
And if you are self-conscious and don't live alone, then mouth the words silently.
Also to add to this, never ever ever start with a poet's most famous poems first. They are usually more complex and longer. Start with their sonnets or shorter poems. This is especially true with Keats.
I have the same problem and at this point I'm pretty sure it's autism on my part. I can't hear beats or rhythm or any of that bullshit regardless of reading it on paper or out loud. I'm also annoyed that I went to uni and the English teacher failed to teach me how to enjoy it. Total waste of my time and her time.
Anyway I just don't read poetry anymore.
most likely this same for me, it doesnt really click with male autists
On the contrary, while we may lack an understanding of rhythm inherently, by approaching it mechanically, we the more autistically inclined may appreciate it more. I would also recommend you anons and I know this will sound silly, listen to the drum beat pattern on a rap sound ideally in a 4/4 beat pattern, which is to say, when you count “1, 2, 3, 4” you’ll hear a heavy snare/heavy sound on the second and fourth second which relates continuously in that counting, it is interesting to examine rappers flowing to this since they have to match their pronunciation and words up with this pattern, either off center or directly on point, if off center they will always begin their sentences in the same position off center, regularity will in most cases always be there. Watching them or even watching an intro to how to flow on a beat can actually mechanically teach you rhythm (in an animal way) fairly effectively, once you understand rhythm with your body you’ll appreciate music and poetry as a whole more so.
Isn't it just stressed syllables?
I can teach you my dude, right here and right now.
Meter is, as the other anon says, a question of regulating stressed and unstressed syllables into “feet” the most common feet having 2 syllable, 3 less common and 4 the least common, though due to their nature a grounding of two 2 syllables can be read as a four, but how do we determine stress?
We simply listen closely to what words sound the loudest, is given the most emphasis in any word. For example a lot of curse words are trochaic (meaning stress followed by an unstressed.)
So,
NIG-ger
gay-goth
MUH-dur/FRICK-er
Now the question of meter is the question of what kind of sounds and rhythms you desire your poem to have, for example iambic and trochaic are gonna be the most common when you’re talking normally, for example I earlier wrote without any desire to write it metrically
“We simply listen closely”
Which is written “we SIMP-lee LIST-en CLOSE-ly” which is an iambic pattern, now iambic and trochaic if listened to closely can be linked to ascending sounds and descending, trochaic naturally has a kind of pounding heavy sound to it, whereas iambic sounds very graceful and light. other meters can be used such as
“this the sound of the horses is galloping, passing by quickly as hooves” which is to say, the sound of anapestic, those syllables/words which have no real content and just point to other things while they can be stressed, are most often naturally unstressed, so the above is written “ this the SOUND of the HORSE-es is GALL-op-ing, PASS-ing by QUICK-lee as HOOVES”
Naturally this rhythm by making the content more scare makes the imagery go by more quickly and makes you put less emphasis on a syllable to syllable level due to there being less important words, note all single syllable words may be stressed or unstressed by content, for example, “the rose” is the ROSE, whereas “the red rose leaf” is “the RED rose LEAF” by smashing it between two heavy sounds and making it no longer the key term in the sentence, it loses its weight and becomes unstressed, note when a foot contains a stressed word of one syllable followed by a stressed word of two syllables that begins with a stress, the stressed syllable will become unstressed, example.
Cont
“great lightning” “dark Black person” “blue ocean”
in all of these when you say them, the first monosyllabic word becomes unstressed due to the word with multiple syllables necessarily having its rhythmic pattern in tact.
the other big meter is dactylic which is written like
“ daggers of death from the endlessness”
Which is “DAGG-ers of DEATH from the END-less-ness”
This meter is understood to be best for war since it has a pounding heaviness to it but also a kind of speed, it’s difficult in English due to requiring the two unstressed syllables at the end, this is usually worked around via substitutions and mixed meters.
For substitutions, we haven’t talked about what happens if you want two heavy syllables next to each other, or what if you just want two unstressed syllables next to each other, well this is doable also but is most often done in substitution, so say for example you’re writing a poem and want to say “Great Light” but don’t want to smash the syllables in between like the above examples, and you want to keep the pattern of sounds you already established?
You can write it “is the great light” which is to say “is the GREAT LIGHT” by placing two syllables without stress and following them with two syllables with stress, you effectively keep the same amount of sounds you’re emphasizing throughout the poem’s line without harming the rhythm, likewise the pattern you chose is following the general iambic pattern of the poem, for example. You can also do this with the trochee, for example from Keats.
“Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook“
Which is said “DROWS’d with the FUME of POP-pees, WHILE thy HOOK” and this is allowable because the amount of emphasized/stressed syllables is still ultimately five, this opening is known to create a thumping sound which can be used to imply panic, or sudden force or can just be used to create a bit of energy at the beginning. It’s used very much in Milton for example.
Finally, you can always just mix any sequence of sounds you want, a lot of folk songs and even contemporary songs will do this,
Cont
a lot of modernist poetry onwards is very interested in playing around with mixing the types of feet you use for specific usages though doing this is also an ancient practice, even used in prose writings. It should be understood that monotony is not musicality, playing with sounds and using sounds appropriately is more important than staying in a pattern, so you’ll see Shakespeare for example break his pattern if he feels like it, you’ll see prose in Shakespeare if he feels like it. There are other arrangements of syllables but for the most part you don’t need to know of them due to their rarity and how they’re composed from smaller ones, as a final thing to keep in mind, the length of your words, as in, how many syllables/sounds you say will also determine how what you’re saying sounds.
For example, the majority of songs are gonna be found with 5-8 syllables with 7 syllables being very common in Blake, Shakespeare’s songs and folk songs, the less syllables in a line, the lighter and more musical it’ll sound, and the opposite is true also, the more syllables in a light, the more heavier and forceful it’ll sound, thus a line with 23 syllables will sound a lot more dignified and harsh and stately than a line with only 7.
There’s always more of course, but I think what I’ve written is enough for enjoyment of and understanding of the basics of rhythm. If you need assistance in finding where the stress is in a word, most dictionaries will say this, google will say if asked, and you can just check other poems for context. I’ll stop myself from ranting further. Stuff like alliteration and rhyme should be known to you due to your studies of prose.
Good posts.
Keats is not entry-level poetry--he is the endpoint and conclusion of it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try out reading him, but it does mean you should have more patience in doing so. Furthermore, as I recall, his odes were written when he was 23 or 24 years old, and his less mature work when he was around 20. Spend more time with him, and, for more insight and context, read Shakespeare and Spenser along with him, as he was heavily influenced by them.
No, Swinburne is the end of poetry.
I started my interest in poetry after watching Wojaczek (1999), it has some poetry recitations it also tells how much poetry is about improvisation, you may try it OP
https://vod.tvp.pl/video/wojaczek,wojaczek,33063655
Getting into poetry reading Keats is a very bad idea. Read Eliot, specifically Prufrock. If that poem doesn't do anything for you, you're probably not going to enjoy any poetry. I've been reading poetry extensively for a year and Keats is the only acclaimed poet I just don't get.
That’s really a taste thing anon, I’ve seen anons on here even get into poetry through Keats.
Bump
>yet I feel nothing
Well then try thinking about literature instead of "feeling it" like a moron and maybe you'll be able to understand more
Keta sas beautiful imagry. Have you ever been on a walk and felt happy and melancholy at once? thats what arts about. Keats isn't the most thematically interesting poet ever, but his writing is very pretty and nice usually.
>Why can't I understand poetry?
What's not to understand?
It’s hard
Try other poets. I couldn't follow Keats as my first either. I found Baudelaire or Lord Byron to be much more enjoyable and easier to follow.
This man is on to something.
OP, no one's gonna like me saying this, but reading someone like Baudelaire, even if translated, will help you ease into poetry better than jumping into Keats.
Whether lit gays will like me saying this or not, our society can't really appreciate lyric poetry. Not because we're philistines (we are) but primarily because lyric poetry only makes sense within certain societies. It presupposes a certain relation to beauty, the divine, the muse, nature, etc. This is particularly true for Romanticism.
Baudelaire and Rimbaud for example, reading these will show you the "aftermath" of poetry, poetry in its decay, poetry in the process of becoming impossible to write. The themed treated are immensely modern and you'll be able to latch onto them easily.
Once you're familiar with the *themes* of Baudelaire and Rimbaud(and even Mallarmé, one of the first English translators of Mallarmé said that he only makes sense once translated into English. This shouldn't be taken too seriously, but don't shy away from translations just cause gays here will sperg), once you're familiar with their themes, which are basically the following : spleen and ideal contradicting themselves within society and making the poet's life unbearable, you'll be given the tools to go ahead and read someone like Keats, Wordsworth, even fricking Shakespeare and Milton.
A note about translation. Obviously it's so much better to read the original. However, if you sort of follow my cue and treat poetry thematically rather than formally (which again, is okay to do in a society where our relationship to poetry is very different than a school boy's in the 1800s) you can learn a lot from translations, as long as you do intend to eventually return to your maternal language's poetry.
Personally while I disagree with the take, I’m still gonna shill this recitation of Baudelaire as straight fire (fr fr, no cap cuh, etc.)
Shut the frick, pseud
Alright then I’ll elaborate precisely why I disagree with the take.
> our society can't really appreciate lyric poetry. Not because we're philistines (we are) but primarily because lyric poetry only makes sense within certain societies. It presupposes a certain relation to beauty, the divine, the muse, nature, etc. This is particularly true for Romanticism.
You say this but they’d be the first to tell you, the romantic poets that is, that the primary element needed is a capacity to experience the sublime, to enjoy nature and to experience the parts of yourself, every aspect of beauty we find in the lyrical poem (not to mention the primary aspect of it just sounding good.) can be found as still living within our music such as folk music, those songs with more narrative in general, the more beautiful prose and even those films and animations which focus on the beauty of it, for example Mononoke visually would be very equivalent to the experience desired in a group of lyrical poems.
Now add to this that Baudelaire will tell you he isn’t writing for the emotion or for you to relate, but that his writing is a purely cold emotionless task and then have list his sources of romantic and pre romantic writers which be believes does the same, chief of these being Poe who says this style of writing is simply what everyone does they just don’t admit it.
No rather, Baudelaire is not enjoyable because of his philosophical element, he’s enjoyable because his conceptions are beautiful as well his wordings, because he has a strange and vivid imagination, and because he’s unabashedly edgy and we do not in this society allow ourselves to take part of so much edge without covering it in over much self awareness.
I disagree especially with giving someone new to poetry mallarme, while they are a favorite poet they are genuinely too complex and will confuse the person who isn’t already into poetry, including in translation.
So let me reiterate, I do not believe it fair to say poetry’s values lie in the ideas for this is not philosophy, but rather in the execution and in the aesthetic, for this is art. and as it is art it does not matter if you share the philosophy and ideals, you will recognize beauty when you see it, just as a man who sees a temple can recognize the beauty of its construction but not believe the associated religion, or perhaps can see a painting of a classical subject and find it beautiful. (Which is what, basically the most generic art take that you can find, old renaissance master painting of classical subject good, new bad.)
The lyric poem survives on account of its sonic beauty and imagery, just because he did not enjoy the lyric poetry of one author does not necessarily mean he dislikes the genre as a whole, and it is also completely possible for someone just to not like the genre.
I think they’re fun they highlight the edge of the poems, though I can get why someone would dislike.
>I I I I I I I I I
>me me me me me me me me
Yeah, I can just go to goodreads and get the same analysis from a woman, m8.
>Now add to this that Baudelaire will tell you he isn’t writing for the emotion or for you to relate
He contradicts himself constantly in this regard, but it's so clear he is not creating poetry for "arts sake" and coldly. Just read the first poem from Les fleurs du mal(hypocrite lecture, mon semblable, mon frère)
In his own correspondence, year after year he goes between saying art has no purpose, to claiming it will always be didactic, to saying it has no purpose again.
I'm not at all saying Baudelaire is good for the "ideas", I'm saying that ideas is one means of reading poetry. There has always been, in poetic literary criticism, an analysis of ideas, an analysis of form.
And I think that, for someone approaching poetry for the first time, a study of a poet's though is a lot more important than studying form.
>In his own correspondence, year after year he goes between saying art has no purpose, to claiming it will always be didactic, to saying it has no purpose again.
For me I don’t think these are necessarily opposing views, for art for art’s sake means it is for the purpose of creation of beauty, but beauty is necessarily didactic insofar as beauty purifies and corrects the mind, can give catharsis and so forth. we see in the French decadent/symbolist writers a strong current of platonism I think their art take ultimately is an expression of this glorification of beauty as a means to the good itself. for example gautier shilled the beautiful is identical to freedom and mental-spiritual liberation, thus it cannot have a direct usage other than beauty or it could not be associated with liberation.
As for whether to study their form or ideas, While I get where you’re coming from and I’ve gotten people into poetry through Baudelaire, I think it’s best they don’t approach form or idea content first, but wet their whistle with a variety of types and writers so they can better get a grasp of what they like, then they can do the work associated with learning their ideas or their form.
Know what I mean? this is why I’m adamant on the lyric itself not necessarily being the problem.
> for art for art’s sake means it is for the purpose of creation of beauty, but beauty is necessarily didactic insofar as beauty purifies and corrects the mind, can give catharsis and so forth
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Do you believe there is no fruitful aspects for the mind in the consumption of beauty and contemplation of beauty? If so why not? Explain yourself.
Hahah frick off, you pseud. About as insightful as that first year who constantly raises their hand. 4ntsr
Aight you’re just seething then, I’ll leave you to it.
>Someone called me a pseudointellectual because I constantly spam my moronic opinions that invariably begin “i think this” “me that”
>he must be seething
Nah, you are just genuinely a dumbass who writes like a gay them tries to hide with moronic expressions, such as “know what I mean,” “I can teach you my dude”
This isn't
(this is me)
I actually agree with you on this. I'm too lazy to respond and unfortunately the autistic seething has ruined the mood, but I would basically wonder whether we can as easily reach that catharsis in works which are so distant to us, like a Wordsworth poem. That being said, poetry requires effort, and I have achieved great aesthetic bliss from Keats and Shelley and other "distant" authors, but that was, in my experience, only achieved after approaching poetry in terms of ideas. Once that happened I interested myself in form and poetry sort of magically opened itself to me, but it did have to go through the route of ideas first.
For me this is where the question of pure skill comes in, I think Wordsworth and Shelley are both overpraised in ability on average in comparison to contemporaries and past authors, and with them I believe they have very very good poems among the muck of their common. Walter pater writes concerning Wordsworth that often he is boring but he shines most when his mind harmonizes with nature, that he seems to imbue his aesthetic with the spirit of a place and you are taken to that natural zone, and in that regard when those poems do such he is successful and I think in those times he is not distant at all, for we have all enjoyed nature, for example I consider one of his finer poems to be Salisbury plain, here’s some random stanzas from it.
“And oft a night-fire mounting to the clouds
Reveals the desert and with dismal red
Clothes the black bodies of encircling crowds.
It is the sacrificial altar fed
With living men. How deep it groans—the dead
Thrilled in their yawning tombs their helms uprear;
The sword that slept beneath the warriour's head
Thunders in fiery air: red arms appear
Uplifted thro' the gloom and shake the rattling spear.”
“ Hurtle the rattling clouds together piled
By fiercer gales, and soon the storm must break.
He stood the only creature in the wild
On whom the elements their rage could wreak,
Save that the bustard of those limits bleak,
Shy tenant, seeing there a mortal wight
At that dread hour, outsent a mournful shriek
And half upon the ground, with strange affright.
Forced hard against the wind a thick unwieldy flight.”
“ Hard is the life when naked and unhouzed
And wasted by the long day's fruitless pains,
The hungry savage, 'mid deep forests, rouzed
By storms, lies down at night on unknown plains
And lifts his head in fear, while famished trains
Of boars along the crashing forests prowl,
And heard in darkness, as the rushing rains
Put out his watch-fire, bears contending growl
And round his fenceless bed gaunt wolves in armies howl.”
These savage bestial lines are so fine I think, that you don’t need any appreciation about the ideas or aspects of his poetry, but rather if you will like this you will like it, and need no coercion.
To quote at length pater on Wordsworth’s ability.
“ He has a power likewise of realizing and conveying to the consciousness of his reader abstract and elementary impressions, silence, darkness, absolute motionlessness, or, again, the whole complex sentiment of a particular place, the abstract expression of desolation in the long white road, of peacefulness in a particular folding of the hills.
Cont
That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact. To him every natural object seemed to possess something of moral or spiritual life, to be really capable of a companionship with man, full of fine intimacies. An emanation, a particular spirit, belonged not to the moving leaves or water only, but to the distant peak arising suddenly, by some change of perspective, above the nearer horizon of the hills, to the passing space of light across the plain, to the lichened Druidic stone even, for a certain weird fellowship in it with the moods of men. That he awakened “a sort of thought in sense” is Shelley’s just estimate of this element in Wordsworth’s Poetry.”
Because of these qualities, I feel the sensual excellency of the good poet need not study of form or idea, but simply to agree with the palette of the reader. i have never come across anyone for example who listened to Coleridge’s kubla khan being recited and didn’t find something enjoyable in it. and that is but an orgy of sensual phenomena.
idk what ur on about i just read shelley and wordsworth and have aesthetic and philisophical bliss
Based
Mister, this is no good......... respectfully
I like Wordsworth
hes one of my favorite writers personally. havent read the excursion yet though
think about your favorite lyrics from music/songs. Try to approach poetry like that, not like a novel
songs and poems are fairly different. Lyrics just give you some subject matter and set the "vibe", while the aesthetic bliss and true meaning is in the composition of the music itself. Poetry is completely different, the words are arranged more similar to how a song would be composed, and thus are far more ornate and systemic than a song lyric would be.
Try Gabbie Hanna then. You'll like it probably.