Poetry anthology recommendations please

luka

Well-known member
Don't really understand the middle part of this one, can't quite unpack it, but I can relate to the cynicism of the first and last lines.

Can anyone help?
i cant understand a word of it and i cant see how woops got his answer either
 

luka

Well-known member
If you never do anything for anyone else
you are spared the tragedy of human relation-

ships.

OK I UNDERSTAND THIS. THIS IS FINE


If quietly and like another time
there is the passage of an unexpected thing:

WHAT

to look at it is more
than it was.

WHAT

God knows

nothing is competent nothing is
all there is.

OK ZEN DOGEARED PAPERBACK WISDOM


The unsure

egoist is not
good for himself.

EH?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I'll have another look at the poem again, thought I had it worked out more the other day but forgotten again - the first line is pretty clear.

I read it as a cynical,misanthropic sort of thing at first.
 

luka

Well-known member
i feel that it is this sort of thing that gives people their vague sense of what poetry
is and can be. something vague, that looks a bit like thought and perception but probably isn't.
something fundamentally irritating. lacking in vital energies. fuzzy. halting. a bit wet.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Maybe the last line is saying something like, if you're going to be an egoist, you should go the whole way and just fuck everybody off
 

luka

Well-known member
maybe. the eigner stuff is better, cleaner and more vivid but you wonder how that kind of writing can truly sustain a person
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Blown away by the Eigner stuff, I got Calligraphy Typewriters the selected poems off the back of the NAP anthology stuff . It's very slow and meditative.

Did you know anything about him before, that he had cerebral palsy, typed with one finger, and was a self-described shut-in, viewing the world mainly through his bedroom window or the porch of his house? I don't think it's essential to know all that stuff to enjoy the work, but it definitely sheds light on a few things. I think he was a genius.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
i feel that it is this sort of thing that gives people their vague sense of what poetry
is and can be. something vague, that looks a bit like thought and perception but probably isn't.
something fundamentally irritating. lacking in vital energies. fuzzy. halting. a bit wet.
You're saying Creeleys a fraud? What does @woops have to say about this?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I'm unsure about the Creeley stuff I've read too because of that vagueness you mentioned, but it's also like an itch you can't scratch or something you want to express that's on the tip of your tongue, it keeps you coming back to it too, which I like
 

version

Well-known member
i feel that it is this sort of thing that gives people their vague sense of what poetry
is and can be. something vague, that looks a bit like thought and perception but probably isn't.
something fundamentally irritating. lacking in vital energies. fuzzy. halting. a bit wet.
One of the things I find interesting about Pound/Kenner is that even if I'm not entirely sure what Kenner's talking about, as soon as he offers examples of other people's translations of a given poem followed by Pound's, I immediately recognise how much better he is. There are those sections where you get the same lines from a Chinese poem translated by various people and they're mostly flat and lifeless then he puts Pound's in and it just lights up, like someone cracking a safe.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm unsure about the Creeley stuff I've read too because of that vagueness you mentioned, but it's also like an itch you can't scratch or something you want to express that's on the tip of your tongue, it keeps you coming back to it too, which I like
i always, well not always, but often wwant to be proved wrong. you want it to reveal the side of itself that had remained hidden. ah ha! now i see where hes coming from! and with that you've learned a new trick a new way of perceiving and so on...
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I like how they just hang there. Couldn't be more simple, the opposite of vague, but they create a meditative space for the reader.
 
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