Looking to get into poetry, no idea where to start.
I've read some Bukowski, but I wasn't really into it. Would appreciate some recommendations very much!
Pic not really related.
Wait until a year from now where you say, "Holy fuck, I can't believe I was going to kill myself before I etcetera'd...before I went skinny dipping in Tennessee, made my own IPA, tried out for a game show, rode a camel drunk, skydived alone, learned to waltz with clumsy old people, photographed electric jellyfish, built a sailboat from trash, taught someone how to read, etc. etc. etc."
The red washing down the bathrub can't change the color of the sea at all.
>>7890968
To be fair, the last stanza worked pretty well, except for the "at all". Aside from that, it ain't good.
what a piece of shit poem
Yeats, Whitman, Coleridge.
Wordsworth senpai
Based Chesterton has a lot of comfy poems
start by leaving /lit/
>>7891787
Yeah, /lit/ is pretty much garbage when it comes to poetry recs. I think there's a chart floating around somewhere but it's just "the collected works of x" instead of giving good entry points on poets.
>>7890957
I find Bukowski's poetry pretty dumb personally, not sure why it gets so much praise.
My suggestion is a book called 'measure for measure' which is an anthology of different poetic metres, compiled by Annie Finch. That should give you a basic idea of some cool forms and great poets from the cannon.
I really like the 'Best Austrlian Poems' books released each year but if you aren't an ausfag that might not be relevant.
Some nice poets to get to know are Ted Hughes, Robert Frost, Rainer Maria Rilke, Langston Hughes
People that write poems like the one in the OP don't even understand what depression is.
>>7890957
That last stanza was a good poem on it's own.
I feel like all of that was just filler.
try some:
dylan thomas
billy collins
ted hughes
>>7891884
>Yeah, /lit/ is pretty much garbage when it comes to poetry recs.
the ones with better taste tend to lurk instead.
and i fully understand why.
Philip Larkin is respectable entry level
Norton Anthology. Get a taste for all the flavors.
>>7890957
Is that Bukowski? Good Lord! Imagine if he lived now, imagine his fb page, his twitter feed.
>>7890957
4chanlit.wikia.com/poetry
start and end here
>>7891787
also this
>>7890957
That poem is actually making me angry wow.
Anyway I know nothing about poetry but you can listen to Billy Collins - The Best Cigarette on Spotify. About as painless an entry to poetry as I can imagine.
I also enjoyed reading through http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Poems%20Ever%20Greatest%20Poetry%20of%20All%20Time.htm. There's a bunch of different poets/styles and the guy gives some interesting background on most of them. Reckon you could find something you liked and explore from there.
>>7891779
Wow, it's literally OP's poem but done well without arbitrary line breaks and a lack of any composition or style.
John Berryman
>>7890957
guys post poems instead of just saying x is good. even x is really good it's daunting to jump straight into a poet. although having said that: shakespeare.
then i'll follow up on my own advice and post some lovely steven wallace
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Wallace Stevens, 1879 - 1955
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
>>7890957
OP, I recommend looking for a book called the Top 500 Poems, edited by William Harmon. It contains, in chronological order, the 500 most frequently anthologized poems in English. This is great for learning your way through poetry, since it contains the familiar and the more obscure, but all of it possesses some qualities that deserve reprinting. There's a short discussion of each poem, pointing out the more notable features and providing a helpful entry to each.
Get this book and just flip through it and explore. It gives you a sense of the development of the form in English, but remains accessible and does not intimidate.
Get a copy of Western Wind by Nims. It explains techniques used in poetry and provides lots of great poems as examples.
It is used as a textbook so it isn't cheap but you can find less expensive older versions.
