what are you reading now?

[Corpsey]

Best book for understanding poetry is not fucking Fry but Karl Shapiro and Robert Beum's 'A Prosody Handbook', which you can probably pick up from Amazon Marketplace for 1 pence.

I knew mentioning Fry on here would go down like a bucket of sick.

 

[Mr. Tea]

ELEGY
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung;
The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves be green,
My youth is gone and yet I am but young,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I am but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Death row - what a brother know?

That is amazing, thanks jenks.

 

[luka]

here's another capital [punishment one i've just read

http://internationaltimes.it/meeting-the-hangman/

 

[droid]

I need more titles. Stuff I can easily search for. I am inconscient and easily distracted.

 

[droid]

And sorry to derail the poetry but...

FUCKING BLOOMSDAY

 

[Corpsey]

No different from reading Energy Flash to 'understand' jungle

The thing is, poetry isn't something you necessarily CAN fully understand without some technical knowledge. I think when I wasn't aware of metre poetry just seemed like some sort of free for all of words. With no rules, it could be as self indulgent as possible. This is why I think rhyming poetry tends to be better understood and enjoyed by laymen, because it makes its structure very clear.

Let's drag Orwell into another thread and link his essay on Poetry and the Microphone, which is to do with how poetry went from being a widely practiced to almost universally derided art formL http://orwell.ru/library/articles/poetry/english/e_poetry

BTW droid this book of poetry, compiled by Alan Bennet, might be up your street:
Thomas Hardy, AE Housman, John Betjeman, WH Auden, Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin

Here's another poem I like, by Rudyard Kipling:

"Cities and Thrones
and Powers"

(Puck of Pook's Hill)



CITIES and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil,
She never hears,
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance
To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

 

[luka]

before you get started the essential purchase is the first two poems for the millenium anthologies

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/millennium.html

i found these early on in my poetry reading and i still discover new things in them all the time. its easily the best field guide to modern poetry

 

[luka]

corpsey your taste in poetry is well square []

 

[Corpsey]

Yes, I have the taste of an octogenarian. (Probably should shower more lol)

The same goes for art, too, actually: give me michelangelo and rembrandt over abstract expressionism any day.

Though tbf I haven't even read any more experimental poets, probably because I presume they're difficult.

 

[droid]

Sorry, should've said, I need digital.

 

[luka]

im not convinced you can get into poetry reading from a screen. i also suspect youre too lazy or literal a reader to ever get much out of it. (this should be read as goad and challenge, and risen to)

 

[droid]

lol, Get back to me when youve actually finished some Joyce you troglodyte.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Looks like Benny Hill as reimagined by The Chap magazine.

 

[luka]

lol, Get back to me when youve actually finished some Joyce you troglodyte.

well, we shall see. Invest in those anthologies you cheapskate.

 

[droid]

I cant do it. My attic is bowing with books, all of my shelves are full, I have boxes and piles of books in every cranny and crevice. I literally(!) give the things away at every opportunity.

Meanwhile Ive got about thousands upon thousands on my ereader.

 

[jenks]

If you like Hardy (and therefore Larkin) then Houseman and Edward Thomas would fit right in there as well - generally miserable, tight sense of form, on the traditional side of the battleground and mostly short...

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5720/5720-h/5720-h.htm
http://www.poemhunter.com/edward-thomas/poems/

 

[droid]

Y'see, Jenks is an educator, he understands the workings of a young mid, yearning for knowledge.

 

[luka]

Y'see, Jenks is an educator, he understands the workings of a young mid, yearning for knowledge.

yes, he is and he does.

 

[CrowleyHead]

Finished "A Brief History of Seven Killings". Oddly funny in its dark content, a lot of unanswered tangents that has me wondering why what's missing is missing. Decent if you like hyper modernist conspiracy fiction, Jamaica, guns, narrative play, etc.

Gonna try to read more Lispector and then some more wrestling books, then who knows. Gotta really parse through the personal library a ton.

 

[empty mirror]

before you get started the essential purchase is the first two poems for the millenium anthologies

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/millennium.html

i found these early on in my poetry reading and i still discover new things in them all the time. its easily the best field guide to modern poetry

YES! me too
logged a lot of hours buried in those

how's the third? i've never looked at it