Why don't I enjoy poetry? Why does it just seem like prose cut into pieces?
What poetry have you read?
You're stupid. That simple really.
I agree with you OP when I read a good novel I feel like I'm having a conversation with the author. Like I'm looking into their soul.
When I read poetry I have to reread every line 5 times and I feel like I'm trying to interpret a painting.
>>8172729
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Nelligan, mostly (all in French, of course). I have read some other poems here and there, but I'm hardly interested enough to read a lot of poetry.
>>8172788
>I'm hardly interested enough to read a lot of poetry.
That's your problem
>>8172788
Try non-french poetry
>>8172788
Yeah, what the fuck are you reading French poetry for?
CUT MY PROSE INTO PIECES
THIS IS MY LAST CHAPTER
>>8172869
haha
>>8172706
you have to want to sit on the same page for a long time lingering. it's like a small happy puzzle, even when it's a straightforward poem-- it's a much different reading experience than reading prose, you cannot read poems straight through and be done, it takes time, it's like reading Ulysses, you have to sit on certain things and brainchew them and then poof! you go "ohhhh" and it's delicious
>have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
peep the captcha
>>8172706
Possibly because you're reading it as you would the obituary.
>>8172706
The thing with prose is: you usually read it for information (for the story, for a description of a certain phenomenon or situation etc).
Poetry usually doesn't focus on informative value. In poetry, the language itself is the most important thing. Try reading an interpretation of the haiku of basho, for example. The usually deal with his view on language as a whole, and not what is written there.
>>8172706
you might just not enjoy certain poets. i don't care much for the ones you mentioned either. here are some random short pieces from poets I ABSOLUTELY LOVE (i'm going for accessible ones for your sake):
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
-Emily Dickinson
>>8173538
So many gods!
They’re like books—you can’t read everything, you never know anything.
Happy the man who knows but one god, and keeps him a secret.
Every day I have different beliefs—
Sometimes in the same day I have different beliefs—
And I wish I were the child now crossing
The view from my window of the street below.
He’s eating a cheap pastry (he’s poor) without efficient or final cause,
An animal uselessly raised above the other vertebrates,
And through his teeth he sings a ribald show tune . . .
Yes, there are many gods,
But I’d give anything to the one who’d take that child out of my sight.
-Fernando Pessoa
>>8173551
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
- John Keats
poetry is fucking gay and anyone who takes part in it that's male is a total faggot.
>>8173571
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
- Philip Larkin
>>8173579
Your troll comment could pass for some modern ernst jandl style anti-poetry
>>8173584
'Out, Out--'
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them 'Supper'. At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
He saw all spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!'
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then -- the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little -- less -- nothing! -- and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
- Robert Frost
>>8173579
the faggot is you
>>8173589
To a Steam Roller
The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.
Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
Were not 'impersonal judment in aesthetic
matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you
might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
of one's attending upon you, but to question
the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.
- Marianne Moore
>>8173595
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
- John Donne
>>8173612
Counting Sheep
A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He
wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture
for them.
They are like grains of rice.
He wonders if it is possible to shrink something
out of existence.
He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess,
if they have any sense of scale. Perhaps they think
the test tube is a glass barn ...
He wonders what he should do with them; they
certainly have less meat and wool than ordinary
sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
He wonders if they could be used as a substitute
for rice, a sort of wolly rice . . .
He wonders if he shouldn't rub them into a red paste
between his fingers.
He wonders if they are breeding, or if any of them
have died.
He puts them under a microscope, and falls asleep
counting them . . .
Russell Edson
>>8173629
‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’
Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
-A. E. Housman
>>8173641
"Gesture".
My arms were always quiet,
Close, and never freed.
I was furled like a banner,
Enfolded like a seed.
I thought, when Love shall strike me,
Each arm will start and spring,
Unloosen like a petal,
And open like a wing.
Oh Love -- my arms are lifted,
But not to sway and toss;
They strain out wide and wounded,
Like arms upon a cross.
- Winifred Welles
>>8173649
Garden Abstract
The apple on its bough is her desire,—
Shining suspension, mimic of the sun.
The bough has caught her breath up, and her voice,
Dumbly articulate in the slant and rise
Of branch on branch above her, blurs her eyes.
She is prisoner of the tree and its green fingers.
And so she comes to dream herself the tree,
The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,
Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,
Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.
She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope
Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.
- Hart Crane
>>8173673
well hopefully that will give an idea of other kinds of poets. take care!
>>8173677
good taste my man
>>8173677
Thanks anon, that's a great contribution. I was glad to see Marianne Moore in there!
Love in America—
Whatever it is, it's a passion—
a benign dementia that should be
engulfing America, fed in a way
the opposite of the way
in which the Minotaur was fed.
It's a Midas of tenderness;
from the heart;
nothing else. From one with ability
to bear being misunderstood—
take the blame, with “nobility
that is action,” identifying itself with
pioneer unperfunctoriness
without brazenness or
bigness of overgrown
undergrown shallowness.
Whatever it is, let it be without
affectation.
Yes, yes, yes, ''yes''.
>>8173551
>>8173584
This is exactly what I can't appreciate: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't follow any meter, it doesn't seem to accentuate any word in an interesting way (unlike "Counting Sheep"), it doesn't arouse any image or emotion - is there rhythm to it? I can't hear anything particular. The meaning doesn't seem that exceptional either and doesn't justify the rest.
Tell me, what is there to appreciate in this kind of poem? I simply cannot see it. I must be missing something.
>>8173798
the Larkin one is just sort of boring (although it has in fact got meter, it isn't strictly adhered to but it is roughly trochaic/iambic) and you're correct in seeing nothing there spectacular-- and the Pessoa poem is not only in translation, it is strange (bit kafka-ey, even) because Pessoa was a strange writer.
IMO poetry should not overwhelm with brilliant ideas (what you look for from Dostoevsky, Melville, etc.) but rather it should glow with a calm splendor.
poetry is a gentle kneading and spreading of consciousness-- for me-- good news is there's several poetries, you just have to decide what kind you like.
try writing a few poems, too, and try memorizing a couple that you really love, if you find any. after a while you'll just love poetry.
Also having a good brain for poetry helps with reading dense beautiful prose.
