What's the purpose of writing poems in 2015?
I think this is just ridiculous.
>>7461098
Memes? Memes.
It's a completely dead medium.
Like literature desu, but if you say you read oboks then peole give you respect. If you say you read / wrtie poetry, they automatically see you as trainspotter tier. I wonder if literature will soon be seen that way
>>7461098
What do you think "the purpose" was a hundred years ago? What was three thousand years ago?
Pls respond.
Great thread senpai
>>7461098
>purpose
Somebody's not an artist...
>>7461139
>be me
>read oboks
>make litatature
>feel happy
>>7461222
>be me, American
>read books
>get shot
>>7461142
not all poems have been thought of then and they just had less things to entertain themselves with
>>7461237
>not all poems have been thought
That's exactly my point. When you read a poem in 2015, it looks the same as what has been written before.
There's nothing intesresting in new poems anymore.
>>7461263
/thread
>>7461263
>every permutation of words has been created
>>7461263
>There's nothing intesresting in new poems anymore.
I would disagree. I think the problem is that the internet makes it so easy to share your creative works that loads more people are writing poems, and most of it is mediocre as fuck. Just plain terrible. But because most of it is relatable relationshit it is praised by crowds of emo tweens on facebook and it makes the writers lazy.
There are still people out there writing good poetry. You have to search harder than the kind of shit that gets quoted on dumblr.
>>7461293
First one I see:
Fifteen I got a job at Leggett's, stock
boy, fifty cents an hour. Moved up—I come
from that kind of people—to toys at Christmas,
then Menswear and finally Shoes.
Quit to go
to college, never worked retail again, but
I still really like stores, savor merchandise
neatly stacked on tables, sweaters wanting
my gliding palm as I walk by, mannequins
weirdly sexy behind big glass windows,
shoes shiny and just waiting for the right feet.
So why in my seventies do Target, Lowes,
and Home Depot spin me dizzy and lost,
wanting my mother to find me, wipe my eyes,
hold my hand all the way out to the car?
>mfw
Seriously, what's the point of writing this shit? You know what I think? Nowadays, poetry is only meant for lazy writers who can't write more than a hundred quality words.
>>7461279
every meter and lack of meter has been overdone
>>7461319
>why in my seventies do Target, Lowes,
>and Home Depot spin me dizzy and lost
gag
>>7461098
Threadly reminder that the novelist in the margins does fight terrorism.
>>7461283
>dumblr
Are you thirteen?
>>7461263
It's not that poetry is dead so much as it's that it doesn't attract talented people anymore for the most part because talented people want an audience. People used to be steeped in poetry from their early education onward - it used to be printed in mainstream newspapers or heard every Sunday in church. Nowadays the only people who really write poetry are incompetent, semi-educated dabblers and bland careerist MFAs, all of whom write for tiny, unrepresentative, insignificant audiences.
dipshits who don't actually read poetry ITT
>>7461619
Fine. Give me some good poetry then.
>>7461098
Why? To be identified as a poet and have some paper attesting it.
I rise from my crypt to see a speckle
My flesh torn from time spotted through my tomb like freckles
I speak with a wisp of nothing but passion
Nosferatu, nigga imma assassin
R8 my poem guise
>>7461671
I like it.
>>7461623
"give me, feed me, Im an autistic retard"
- u
go read something hard, go read something you don't understand and keep at it until you find something interesting
>>7461671
Sounds like some kind of surrealist rap
>>7461733
That's what I thought.
>hurr durr u a retard so i wont give you any good poem xD
All you had to do to prove me wrong was to copy and paste what you call "good poetry".
>>7461671
i started to farted and realized i sharted
since we're committing rhyme crimes can
i tell you the time i started to farted and
realized i sharted.
THE END.
>>7461841
I let a willow of gas bellow beneath me
Such sudden sounds squealed and shook me
A whiff of the bowels of a beast so familiar
Not even a mirror could reveal such evil
>>7461098
what's the purpose of doing anything in any time period?
stop projecting your depression onto everything you sad motherfucker.
>>7461893
I'm just saying, writing a novel or even a short story is more revelant than writing poetry.
>>7461937
So what's the purpose of writing a novel or short story?
it's
the calendar year
>>7461937
But that's not true.
Writing poetry is one of the more simpler and more complex points of literature. A poem can be what we've done ahead through simple rhyme scheme or it in itself can be a short story. You can write a poem about a man that sees himself a monster, then expand the poem to a more detailed short story, and then after you spend time revising you craft you can turn it into a novel. Every great story starts as a whisper in the night, whether or not you choose to find meaning in such simple words is up to you.
When you see a coffee shop filled with hipsters trying to write poetry then yes, it's going to be terrible pretentious poetry. If you're going to call yourself a poet, you're going to have to challenge yourself with writing something like a verse novel. You have to work as twice as hard as any other writer if you want to call yourself a poet. You have to take your time with it, and actually practice.
The new poetry is music. I mean, we have songs.
>>7461283
I definitely don't envy future historians having to wade through all the horseshit.
>>7462431
>implying historians will ever gave a shit about modern poetry
>>7462437
That's certainly possible, unless 1 or a few discernible greats start showing up.
>>7462445
Can you name one yourself?
Yeah. Me neither.
>>7461806
for you to shit on
4chan attacks but never defends
>>7462437
>implying historians will ever gave a shit about modern poetry
>will ever gave a shit
>will ever gave
>>7462392
>writing a novel is good because it gives job when it's adapted in a movie
>>7462451
I know. I was agreeing with you.
If I can't name a single contemporary poet that, even if I don't necessarily like it, I can recognize and acknowledge their originality and influence, then it's an art form in dire straits. That being said, we could just be in a down period. I'm not willing to say it's gone forever.
>>7462488
>If I can't name a single contemporary poet that, even if I don't necessarily like it, I can recognize and acknowledge their originality and influence, then it's an art form in dire straits
>an artform's vitality is based on how much of a pleb i am
lmao
>>7462487
Yes it does.
>>7462487
>filename
Are you really from /lit/? It seems like you are just some kid or crazy ass bitch.
>>7462496
Well I wasn't saying that I'm the end all be all of taste or anything like that.
When it comes to poetry, I don't actively look for it or seek it out or anything. I like poetry and I have some favorite poems, but it's just not my first interest or first love, so to speak. With poetry, I'm like the person that's just into food enough that they like eating at great restaurants and can see and appreciate the difference between a bad meal and a good meal and a great meal, but wouldn't call themselves a "foodie." So if I hear about a restaurant from a friend, I'm not going to rush out and make a reservation, but if I hear about it from another friend, I might look the place up. Then if I hear about it from a few more friends and a few more friends, and I start hearing about it elsewhere and everyone is saying how great it is, I'm going to make a reservation and go check it out.
I'm saying I haven't had that experience with any poets in quite a long time.
>>7462553
Does it matter? I have a point.
I don't have to be "part of the community" to post here. Faggot.
>>7462583
>I have a point.
it's so cute you think that
>>7461237
>less things to entertain themselves with
>less
fewer*. You don't read much of anything, yeah?
>>7462583
Look at captain lame-O over here making a fool of himself
>>7462591
What are you waiting for? Just give me good modern poetry and I'll end my thread.
>>7462603
hello 1960's
I write poetry. I just like rhythm and words so naturally I just like making my own.
Its all been downhill since Milton.
tbqh IA with the criticism of poetry's irrelevance. when the size of your audience is limited to just your fellow practitioners, then you might as well be writing in an echochamber.
It's not like literary novels have a very wide audience.
By that logic everyone should be writing schlocky romance and sci-fi.
>>7462707
so this is why legacy of totalitarianism
>>7462723
Someone smarter than me could actually give that train of thought a valid argument.
>>7462392
You're being ignorant though. Poetry is just as emotional as books and just as films. Your tone changed from before as well. Before you asked what was the point but now you emphasize an utilitarian aspect to your question. Why do you hold film and television to a higher scale than poetry? If you are judging the purpose of something based on the ability to appease the impotent masses then you yourself are apart of that mass.
>>7462583
Except you do. You wouldn't go to /tv/ to talk about the polar ice caps and then demand that the arctic is just as valuable to discussion as a tv show. While both are something to talk about, you should look for a different group.
So's living t b h
>>7462748
What the fuck are you talking about? You guys talk all the time about poetry.
>>7462792
You have to be part of the community that speaks about literature to post on /lit/. The community is formed of people with an interest in literature. Any person interested in literature is fit to post on /lit//
>>7462821
Well, I'm interested in literature. I read The Catcher in the Rye recently.
>>7461098
>all about that
>glorious
>green text
>new wave post-post-modernity
>>7461293
no, Poetry magazine only publishes garbage
>>7461623
Bad Sheep
By Hailey Leithauser
Midnight’s merely blue,
but me, me, me, I’m
through
and through
sloe, cracked soot-
on-a-boot,
nicotine spat, licorice whip.
You can scratch, scratch, scratch
but I stay underskin true
to ebony, ink, crowberry, pitch;
hoist me up by my hooves
and shake till I’m shook, I’m still
chock full of coke, fuliginous
murk.
O there’s swart in my soul,
coal by the bag,
cinders and slag,
scoriac grit, so please
come, comb
through my fleece with hands pallid
as snow and watch
how they grow tarry, raven,
stygian, ashed—
or, if you wish, clean me with bleach
I won’t
flinch, just char
down to a core of caliginous
marrow,
pure carbon, atramentous,
utterly piceous,
shadowed, and starless,
each clumpity clump
and eclipse of my heart raptly
re-burnishing
a woolgather dark.
>>7461623
Albion
On narrow roads twisting
between the farms, if farms
these were and not fallow
fields set off by stone walls
too low to keep anything
in or out. I’d been told
that when the west wind raged
local spirits—all the ghosts
of the unmourned—gathered
on the hilltops where no one
dared to go. We parked
in a little meadow shaded
by ancient birch and sycamore
going silver and gray under
the noon sun. Hand in hand
we climbed until the under-
growth separated us and she—
more nimble than I—took
the lead, and I followed until
the trees thinned out. The only
sound besides our breathing
was the silence. Beyond the first
clearing a stone wall stumbled
up and over a steeper rise.
Once there we saw the land
itself became confused as to
where to go. What, I thought,
could possibly be waiting
beyond still another grove
of birch and sycamore?
That was forty years ago
or more. We were still
young or young enough,
and new to the adventure,
so of course we kept going,
not in the hope of finding
Celtic arrowheads or human
skulls purified by time
and weather, or bronze relics
of lives we knew nothing of,
or what was actually there:
the exhausted chalky soil
of this depleted island
my father fought for. High
above, the clouds moved
against a pure blue sky
or perhaps it was the sky
that moved and everything
else stopped, like the two
of us, listening. Listening
for what? I ask myself now.
Call and response from bird
to bird or the sough of wind
stuttering through the trees,
the voices of a forgotten past?
I can’t recall how long we
stood there nailed to the spot,
hand in hand, expectant,
as though anything
could tell us where we were.
—Philip Levine
>>7462867
This is so pretentious and unoriginal.
>>7462902
Writing a novel is a lot harder though. Like I said, poetry is good for lazy writers.
>>7462911
Then why haven't you said that writing scripts, songs, and music is for lazy writers? I mean to your subjective opine it easy. Why loosen grip of your emotions to allow them to cascade upon a mirror when you can just think of characters and make them interact? Why do you so carelessly hold poetry to such a minuscule level when you don't even feel the emotion of it? You keep going on about you hold television and movies to a higher scale but you don't speak about why. One could march to Hollywood and demand a show about the evolution of feces and you would hold it to a brighter candle than a poem about having your morals and personality striped from you simply because it is a show? Like I said before, "If you are judging the purpose of something based on the ability to appease the impotent masses then you yourself are apart of that mass."
>>7462911
Being a coal miner is harder than being an artist. Both jobs are honorable but why be a dumbass and call Picasso a lazy bum? It's not about what's harder, it's about what's valueable. Poetry has value and relevancy, even if it doesn't to you personally.
>>7463983
This. Medium shouldn't be used to aggregate or create a value ceiling/floor for any piece.
Kind of funny how many people on a literature board are complete philistines. Why don't you go play call of duty?
>>7461279
It has. Library of Babel
>>7461623
Paradife Loft
>>7462738
>impotent masses
i dont get the arrogance. there are plenty of emotional, artistic films being made - its not all star wars and jurassic park.
>>7461623
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 someone gently rapping; rapping at my chamber door.
'Tis some visitor, I murmured,
Merely this and nothing more.
Etc.
>>7461623
Home is so sad
Philip Larkin
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
>>7461623
Villanelle for DGB
Marilyn Hacker
Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate
we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate
us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate
when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate
routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;
wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.
>>7461139
Nothing is truly "dead." We just live in the Dark Ages.
>>7461623
Sonnet
Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
~Elizabeth Bishop
>>7464138
This this
>>7462582
So basically,
>I'm not well-read but I'm still gonna go shit up this thread with my uninformed opinions
I know you're not OP and therefore you're not the true faggot here but man you're a class act
>>7461623
The Illiterate
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
~William Meredith
Poetry turned into rap music. Classical, written poetry is just an echo that will fade away in a few hundred years, maybe even less.
>>7465111
you're a funny guy anon
>rap music
>on the scene for 30 or 40 years at most
>written poetry
>3000 years old
>"rap will succeed written poetry"
OH it's this memegument again, third time i've seen it this week
The point of writing poetry is obviously to become the next Rimbaud, desu-desu. I am shocked at your ignorance.
most poems sound pretentious
>memes and greentexts are the new poetry
"And that is why you fail."
>>7461623
Just read Keatsd-do I have to post a specific poem? wh-why are you all doing that
>>7462911
>Writing a novel is a lot harder though
I've done both. Poetry is a lot harder than it looks. Writing an 80,000 word novel is easier to me than writing a collection of 50 poems. I'm putting the final touches on a poetry collection for a contest now.
>>7465181
>most poems sound pretentious
>>memes and greentexts are the new poetry
>>>found poetry is a thing
>>7464868
I know that films with significant meaning are being made and have been made, but they are the ones you have to look for. Everywhere you look it's the same formula for scripting and films. You very seldom find one that sticks to its own vision when you do it happens to be a foreign film, or of a foreign director. The general consensus on most things is wrong in a sense. I like the Human Centipede movies because I understand that at a moment's notice life can turn from a wrong turn into despair. While unspeakable acts are done by and for unspeakable people those innocent often become entangled. "Normies" would become sickened by the thought of liking such a film because "it's gross" to them and then they don't bother to find the meaning behind it's gratuity. If a person were to always base their opinion with the crowd and never question the validity of said crowd, yet at the same time act as if they are above they don't see that they are still apart of that mass. One can be the best of the worst, but it's still the best of the worst.
>>7465111
i used to think something similar
but then i began writing poetry
it has cinematic qualities,
and in a sense it works well as a cinematic tool
i make films primarily, but instead of writing scripts i now write poems
they not only convey some cinematic concepts better than prose (montage, frame, duration) but often they do a better job of communicating my ideas to collaborators than a more traditional script would
though what i write is not classical poetry.
>>7465115
Those are lame and pretentious.
>>7466893
there's no hope for you anon
pic related
>>7461098
Now that poetry isn't mass media anymore it can finally begin developing as an art form again
Welcome to the dawn of a new poetic renaissance, soon slam poetry will be dead and Hegel will return from the choir invisible to make us all wizard bards.
>>7467336
>Now that poetry isn't mass media anymore it can finally begin developing as an art form again
I don't think this is true, but I like your optimism.
Poetry is culturally irrelevant. Poetry has no economic value. The best you can hope for is to land a teaching position.
But a new Shakespeare would be just as valid, we're just not likely to see it because that artist would be doing something else.
>>7461098
It is fun. Fun things are fun.
what are the best places to try to get your poetry published?
I only know of poetry foundation, is it acceptable?
>>7467383
>Fun things are fun.
Get out.
Wrote a quick humorous poem in class and read it out out today.
Everyone was impressed; they applauded and even the teacher was amused.
Comedic literary life is fun
>>7461098
What would you guys say has fallen harder in the past century, philosophy or poetry?
Both are in a contemptible state today
>>7462884
Deep criticism, bro
>>7467656
Nowadays people believe that studying philosophy will earn you a paper box and that haikus are the pinnacle of poetry. Both have fallen far but at least philosophy will be accepted when you die.
>>7467656
sure thing anon
sure thing
sure
>>7466893
>not even reading them
Nice bait, bro
>>7467673
Serious philosophy died with Nietzsche in 1900.
>>7461237
>implying that novelty is the primary source of value in art, instead of illumination
you fucking kids
>>7461237
>not all poems have been thought of then
>implying
>>7468854
i took a 400 level course on film theory that boiled down to "novelty is the source of value in cinema" (i'm paraphrasing my prof's last ONE HOUR lecture)
when i asked her if this was what she was saying, she responded
>this is a criticism you could level at this line of thinking, yes
there were other more contextual take-aways from that course, but the ultimate conclusion was so disheartening for me, especially when so many of my peers seemed to revel in it.
this is reflected in the work they do, which doesn't focus so much on actual novelty but simply on distancing themselves from any sincere association with any past work
