General Poetry Discussion

[Tharmas]

Sound and Sense is a classic. It was instrumental in building my love of poetry.

Also, have you dipped into Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass? It's not for everybody, but it's unique, and has inspired a few other unique poets, like Allen Ginsberg (see Howl and Kaddish).

 

[ideologyhunter]

I've read all of Leaves of Grass, I think, although Whitman issued so many amplified editions that it must be hard to publish a definitive edition today. When he's good, he's immortal, with a truly distinctive view of the world and fearless innovation in meter, line, and transported emotion. The lesser poems tend to be gassy, with repetitions that don't build to a satisfactory whole. Sometimes he gives so many parallels that his theme sags. At his best, he's as electric today as he was when people first read him, in Lincoln's day.

 

[WAB]

For a long time Edgar Allan Poe was my favorite poet. His poems are so melodic: when I read them aloud I often sing them as a song! He makes use of meter, rhyme, alliteration, etc. His subject matter — often his yearning for a dead mistress — appealed to my own nostalgia and bouts of gloom. I also love Poe's essays on poetry. Read "The Philosophy of Composition" in which he practically proves that "The Raven," in all its detail, is the inevitable result of a quest for writing a perfect poem!

I liked Poe so much that I was annoyed by the large majority who insist Robert Frost is the greatest American poet. But I've matured somewhat and now realize they are probably correct. Frost's poems have deep heart-moving messages, but even their more superficial aspects, like rhyme, are exquisite. The AABA/BBCB/CCDC/DDDD rhyme pattern of "Stopping by woods" is special (and unique?) but look at his less well-known "The Gum Gatherer". It almost reads like prose rather than poetry. But it does have a rhythm, albeit haphazard, and the line-ending words do rhyme, although in a haphazard fashion. The net effect is to turn a dullish story into a pleasant read.

I've occasionally dabbled in writing poetry myself: e.g. a villanelle about Donald Trump, and a line-palindrome in response to 2001-2003 terrorism; but you should be happy to know I do not intend to inflict these efforts on you.

I'd be interested in reading that villanelle. There's a thread called The New Poetry Thread where a bunch of us joyfully and shamelessly inflict our effusions on others. I even posted a few villanelles myself.

 

[rousseau]

if I were to pick at some of this from Amazon, are there any books you'd consider a must-have? The best of the lot, in your opinion? Considering a hard-copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets/Poems, but other than that..

Also, if you haven't hit on this yet, I just picked up this book by Rilke recently, a translation of his last two works. I know you'd said you aren't as familiar with the 20th century, I'd say he treads that line between classical and modern poetry pretty well. Very good work, although I haven't hit Sonnets to Orpheus yet.

Don't know Rilke except as a name cited by critics; I'll dip into him. My favorite poetry anthologies have been on my shelves for decades. They're probably out of print but easily available on alibris et al. Besides the collection by Aldington which I mentioned, I like Louis Untermeyer's The Book of Living Verse, which, like Aldington's, collects both British and U.S. poets. Laurence Perrine's Sound and Sense is set up as a student text, but has such striking selections that it's a keeper. Perrine's book is where I found "View of a Pig" by Ted Hughes, one of the oddest poems you'll ever read.
A modern poet who reminds me of Robert Frost is Virginia Hamilton Adair. Her collection Ants on the Melon is full of graceful and conversational poetry. The title refers to humankind on the earth -- what a metaphor. I should read more poetry, though. I am a dabbler and once read a lot more of the great poets. The best poets demonstrate the power of language when it is fully explored and unleashed.

Sound and Sense is a classic. It was instrumental in building my love of poetry.

Also, have you dipped into Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass? It's not for everybody, but it's unique, and has inspired a few other unique poets, like Allen Ginsberg (see Howl and Kaddish).

I've read all of Leaves of Grass, I think, although Whitman issued so many amplified editions that it must be hard to publish a definitive edition today. When he's good, he's immortal, with a truly distinctive view of the world and fearless innovation in meter, line, and transported emotion. The lesser poems tend to be gassy, with repetitions that don't build to a satisfactory whole. Sometimes he gives so many parallels that his theme sags. At his best, he's as electric today as he was when people first read him, in Lincoln's day.

Thanks for the tips - I'll have to put some of these books / names on the backlog as I've got quite a few on the go already.

I've actually been reading through some of Cohen's earlier books a second time over the past few weeks. While I was on paternity leave I whipped through them all, but over the past three weeks did a careful reading of Death of a Lady's Man. This week I went through The Energy of Slaves again which is a quick read. And over the past few nights have been reading The Spice-Box of Earth.

The former two titles came from Cohen's mid-life when he was becoming dissatisfied and jaded with the world. Death of a Lady's Man, released when he was 44, comes across as a kind of seal to his youth - recognizing that it's time to become modest and old. Might be why it's resonating.

The Spice-Box of Earth is his second title, released when he was 27. It's still very tied to the roots of classic poetry / imagery, but Cohen achieved a kind of simplicity and sensuality that I enjoyed much more than I expected to after reading his first title. Very different than his later work, much more flowery, but you can tell that the guy knew how to marshal language.

I've read a bit of Ginsberg but find him a little more polarizing. I enjoy his writing, but find it hard to believe in his vision. He gets the status of a seer from people like him, but imo doesn't really see the world for what it is. The dream of a perfect world sounds great, and lets him claim moral righteousness, but it's a standard that can't really be met.

 

[Politesse]

Sorry, I keep forgetting that this thread exists! I love poetry, and have since my adolescent days. When I was in high school, we were assigned a textbook on "100 Best Loved Poems", and I gradually fell in love with several of its entries, going through many phases of favorite authors. Early on, it was Emily Dickinson and Edna St Vincent Millay, their isolation, depression, and incongruous optimism speaking to the issues I was facing down myself in those days. Later on, Robbie Burns and Robert Frost captured my interest, and I still know many of the poems of all four of the above by heart. As I started to butt against adulthood, I discovered most of those poets who remain my favorites today: Catullus, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, Lillian Vallee, C.P. Cavafy, Czeslaw Milosz, Immortal Technique, Zbigniew Herbert, Scott Matthews. I love poets who know how to tell a story, especially a story that illuminates both place and human personality with equal effectiveness. I love old forms of poetry like villanelles and sonnets, but only when they are used to advantage, not simply being replicated for form's sake.

I write poetry as well, though not as much as I read and even less often for public consumption. I was nineteen when I first started taking the writing of poetry seriously, starting with limericks I would use to close out diary entries. These began as a joke (as limericks are wont to be) but deepened in complexity and seriousness as time went on, and I started experimenting with more involved forms by the end of a year. When I was a senior in college, I took a liberal arts type course on religion and ecology, one assignment for which was to create an artistic work relevant to the subject. I had been privately experiementing more and more with poetry, and decided to produce a poetry collection, my first, as my contribution. Some of my favorite poems produced by my hand came from that endeavor, which uses traditional forms much more heavily than anything I produced later. The urge has come and gone in occasional waves since then. I like writing historical poems and story poems, like those of my favorite poets, though usually in a more abstracted and obscure fashion than Cavafy or McDaniel might do. I like theological topics as well, and often blend religious perspectives and metaphors from East, West, and the indigenous Americas evenly throughout my work. I wouldn't call myself a good poet, but that isn't really the point, is it? The poems I'm happiest with are those that managed to express exactly what I meant them to at the time, and some of these populate my subconscious at all times, just as do the works of the greats. So they are good enough for my purposes.

 

[rousseau]

I write poetry as well, though not as much as I read and even less often for public consumption. I was nineteen when I first started taking the writing of poetry seriously, starting with limericks I would use to close out diary entries. These began as a joke (as limericks are wont to be) but deepened in complexity and seriousness as time went on, and I started experimenting with more involved forms by the end of a year. When I was a senior in college, I took a liberal arts type course on religion and ecology, one assignment for which was to create an artistic work relevant to the subject. I had been privately experiementing more and more with poetry, and decided to produce a poetry collection, my first, as my contribution. Some of my favorite poems produced by my hand came from that endeavor, which uses traditional forms much more heavily than anything I produced later. The urge has come and gone in occasional waves since then. I like writing historical poems and story poems, like those of my favorite poets, though usually in a more abstracted and obscure fashion than Cavafy or McDaniel might do. I like theological topics as well, and often blend religious perspectives and metaphors from East, West, and the indigenous Americas evenly throughout my work. I wouldn't call myself a good poet, but that isn't really the point, is it? The poems I'm happiest with are those that managed to express exactly what I meant them to at the time, and some of these populate my subconscious at all times, just as do the works of the greats. So they are good enough for my purposes.

That's how I feel about what I write too. I look at the poetry as written by others and sometimes think - my poetry doesn't read like that - but then remember that I write exactly how I want to. The idea of trying to go public or sell anything I've written is foreign to me - I'm writing for myself, not for others and that's how I profit from it.

Poetry critiques seem strange to me because what are they being based on? What makes good poetry? Can there be an answer to that? Some poets who are considered strong I find impenetrable and uninteresting. I like poets who say something, and who say something that resonates. And that's largely how I approach my writing - it's about ideas, story-telling, rather than abstract imagery that can be interpreted in any number of ways. In a lot of ways similar to Cavafy, even though I prefer Cohen as a reader.

Above all I'm a writer at heart, I enjoy playing with language, and how limitless what one can express is. What's a better past time for an introvert than to sit in a basement, alone, messing around on a word processor?

 

[ideologyhunter]

An unusual Walt Whitman poem from 1860:

Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it is so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?

 

[rousseau]

I was reading through Shakespeare's sonnets and thought it'd make for an interesting experiment to run them through a text analyzer. Here are the top ten words that are either a noun or adjective:

1) love
2) sweet
3) time
4) eyes
5) beauty
6) heart
7) self
8) fair
9) true
10) eye

The top 2 word phrase - my love.

It's something I noticed going through so much of Cohen's poetry recently as well - a preoccupation with love and relationships. Makes one wonder why? Maybe it's that it's the only topic that universally invokes feeling, and the core of what we wish to express. While reading through Cohen's stuff it inspired me to write a bunch of poetry with the theme 'beyond love'.

 

[Horatio Parker]

No e.e. cummings fans?

and what were roses. Perfume?for i do
forget…or mere Music mounting unsurely

twilight
but here were something more maturely
childish,more beautiful almost than you.

Yet if not flower,tell me softly who

be these haunters of dreams always demurely
halfsmiling from cool faces,moving purely
with muted steps,yet somewhat proudly too—

are they not ladies,ladies of my dreams
justly touching roses their fingers whitely
live by?
or better,
queens,queens laughing lightly
crowned with far colors,

thinking very much
of nothing and whom dawn loves most to touch

wishing by willows,bending upon streams?

 

[WAB]

No e.e. cummings fans?

and what were roses. Perfume?for i do
forget…or mere Music mounting unsurely

twilight
but here were something more maturely
childish,more beautiful almost than you.

Yet if not flower,tell me softly who

be these haunters of dreams always demurely
halfsmiling from cool faces,moving purely
with muted steps,yet somewhat proudly too—

are they not ladies,ladies of my dreams
justly touching roses their fingers whitely
live by?
or better,
queens,queens laughing lightly
crowned with far colors,

thinking very much
of nothing and whom dawn loves most to touch

wishing by willows,bending upon streams?

I love him. I read his Complete Poems many years ago. A lot of people don't know he started out as a formalist - in fact his earliest poems are even rife with archaisms, like the classical thee, thy, thou. Same with Ginsberg - his first poems were archaic and styled somewhat like Donne and the Elisabethans.

The Cummings you posted is in fact a Petrarchan (aka Italian) sonnet, formatted unconventionally, which you probably know.

 

[rousseau]

Oddly enough I haven't actually read many names at this point. Odd because I've been writing poetry consistently for six years. A part of that might be access to a university library over the past while - other topics and books have taken my attention - and they're free. That and I have trouble choosing between alternatives without recommendations. Lots of poetry, absolutely nothing to go off of.

My collection - everything Cohen's done, some Irving Layton, Cavafy, Ginsberg, Corso, Burns, Ehrmann, Shakespeare, Lorca, Rilke, Trakl, a number of compilations both professional and amateur, and some ancient poetry. I've actually purchased quite a bit of it since the pandemic started and the library shut down.

 

[Horatio Parker]

William Blake can also be very intense,

...Thy fear has made me tremble thy terrors have surrounded me
All Love is lost Terror succeeds & Hatred instead of Love
And stern demands of Right & Duty instead of Liberty.
Once thou wast to Me the loveliest son of heaven--But now

Why art thou Terrible and yet I love thee in thy terror till
I am almost Extinct & soon shall be a Shadow in Oblivion
Unless some way can be found that I may look upon thee & live
Hide me some Shadowy semblance. secret whispring in my Ear
In secret of soft wings. in mazes of delusive beauty
I have lookd into the secret soul of him I lovd
And in the Dark recesses found Sin & cannot return

Unfortunately, I could never master the patience to study out the Four Zoas. I'm kinda indifferent to the purpose of the work, but love some of those bits.

 

[Politesse]

It's something I noticed going through so much of Cohen's poetry recently as well - a preoccupation with love and relationships. Makes one wonder why? Maybe it's that it's the only topic that universally invokes feeling, and the core of what we wish to express. While reading through Cohen's stuff it inspired me to write a bunch of poetry with the theme 'beyond love'.

Making love and making poetry are both personally transformative acts of creation... when everything goes right.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Fragment of a poem from the ancient Nahuatl (an Aztecan language, although its speakers were not always Aztecs)

Does one really live upon the earth?
Not forever on the earth, only a little while here.
Even jade shatters
Even gold breaks
Even quetzal plumes tear
Not forever on the earth, only a little while here.

 

[Politesse]

That was the work of Nezahualcoyotl, Tlatoani of Texcoco. He spoke a Nahuatl dialect, but certainly was not an Aztec, though he respected them and borrowed some of their legal and religious precepts for his own people's use. Fierce warrior, ball-player, philosopher, architect, poet, and statesman; a remarkable figure, akin in character and accomplishments to Marcus Aurelius in Italian history. He was both a poet himself and a patron of poets, and he built what may have been the largest library in Mesoamerica, though we will never really know as it was burned to the ground during the Conquista. Alas! As the man himself wrote:

The fleeting pomps of the world are like the green willow trees, which, aspiring to permanence, are consumed by a fire, fall before the axe, are upturned by the wind, or are scarred and saddened by age.

The grandeurs of life are like the flowers in color and in fate; the beauty of these remains so long as their chaste buds gather and store the rich pearls of the dawn and saving it, drop it in liquid dew; but scarcely has the Cause of All directed upon them the full rays of the sun, when their beauty and glory fail, and the brilliant gay colors which decked forth their pride wither and fade.

The delicious realms of flowers count their dynasties by short periods; those which in the morning revel proudly in beauty and strength, by evening weep for the sad destruction of their thrones, and for the mishaps which drive them to loss, to poverty, to death and to the grave. All things of earth have an end, and in the midst of the most joyous lives, the breath falters, they fall, they sink into the ground.

All the earth is a grave, and nought escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountains and waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That which was yesterday is not to-day; and let not that which is to-day trust to live to-morrow.​

 

[southernhybrid]

When I was a child and young adult, I loved poetry. I loved it so much that I took an entire course in poetry during my crazy years as a liberal arts major, specializing in English. But, I lost my love of poetry many years ago and now find it pretty worthless. When I liked it, Walt Whitman was a favorite as well as e. e. Cummings and some of the beat poets. Lost my love of Shakespeare by the time I was in my mid 30s, although there are a few good lines that I still quote.

To me, poetry is a private expression of one's emotions. I've written poems as recently as a few years ago, despite not really liking poetry.

But yesterday, after my husband got off of the phone with his brother who did nothing but brag about himself during their phone call about how much money he has, an old poem came to mind. Not the best poem, but one that I remember from my childhood. It made me think of my brother in law.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Arlington Robinson

I've always wondered if my bro in law is really happy or if he just like to brag about his money and status.

 

[rousseau]

I'm now getting close to a final product on the fourth poetry book I've produced, which is going to be titled Selected Poems III. It's been fun as the last few books I produced were rushed over a couple weeks, where this one I'm taking my time on. I spent some time choosing the poems I wanted to include, and organized them into three sections - The One Heart, Beyond Love, and Sketches.

I put a rough draft of the book together, and am now slowly going through the poems and tearing them apart, re-writing them, playing with them until I like them more. So for the first time instead of producing more bulk, I'm spending significant time touching up old pieces.

The One Heart is loosely based off of a line at the end of Leonard Cohen's Death of a Lady's Man where he mentions the term. It refers to a kind of universal love beyond the drama of every-day relationships. Beyond Love is a self invented section, and contains a number of poems exploring who we are, and what we can be beyond normal conceptions of love and all that entails. Sketches includes a number of poems I liked with no clear theme, and wanted to put in the book. I then added an epilogue which concluded each section with a further, final poem. Everything in it was written between 2017 - 2020.

Selected Poems I was a book I put together as a gift for my partner in 2014 (age 28), which spanned everything I'd written in my life to date. The quality is meddling, but there are a few I like in it. Up to that point I hadn't had much time to commit to poetry, and it wasn't really a conscious hobby. Selected Poems II was produced in 2017, which is noticeably better, but there are many poems in it that could use some work. I gifted that one to my parents and then fiancee. Both books were chronological without any theme.

Now Selected Poems III I would consider pretty good, and most, if not all, of the poems fully realized. I don't know if I plan to gift it to anybody yet, from here on out I might just start printing these things and tacking them onto my collection. It's fun formalizing my work and putting it into a hard-copy that I can pick up and read. And I think this one in particular represents a kind of end-point on a certain type of exploration - about our natural instincts, transcendence, and free-will. So it leaves the future open ended as to what I write about next.

 

[ideologyhunter]

That was the work of Nezahualcoyotl, Tlatoani of Texcoco.

Very curious -- where have you read/read about Nezahualcoyotl? (I found the short passage I quoted in a student book on Aztec culture, but it had no attribution other than the Nahuatl language.)

 

[Politesse]

That was the work of Nezahualcoyotl, Tlatoani of Texcoco.

Very curious -- where have you read/read about Nezahualcoyotl? (I found the short passage I quoted in a student book on Aztec culture, but it had no attribution other than the Nahuatl language.)

I'm not sure where and when I first heard about Nezahualcoyotl, but the classic English collection of his works is in Ancient American Poets, edited and translated by John Curl. He also figures heavily in one of my favorite non-fiction works, Aztec Thought and Culture by Miguel Leon-Portilla, though in that case the focus is more on his philosophy than his poetry. Nezahualcoyotl was a cool guy. It is interesting to speculate on what he would have made of Cortez' invasion had he lived to see it. We might now be calling allthe Nahua peoples "the Texcos" instead of the "the Aztecs", haha.

 

[rousseau]

Starting to reflect as I consider self-publishing the book I just produced - I know maybe one or two people interested in poetry. I know this is the reality, and have no qualms with it, but it does cause some pause about how to promote the book, if at all. I recall reading in Cohen's biography in his early life, he was putting poetry out there that was considered some of the best in Canada, and even he was still starving until he became a musician.

At the end of the day I'm just happy to have produced something I'm proud of, and to be able to actually sell it online. Luckily I don't really care about the money.

For anybody interested in taking a look the cover and description can be found here. I wouldn't recommend buying this version, though, as I'm still proofing and editing. I just have it on public display already so I can show a few people.