Poetry

[luka]

yeah i know

 

[luka]

its impossible for me to slow down. thats why i like drugs cos they show me how to slow down. but i cant do it in real life.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I have to read things like this over and over again but I usually get there in the end. Getting into poetry has definitely taught me patience. I find most poetry really really difficult tbh but I don't want to let it defeat me so if I get an inkling that it's worth it I'll keep at it. The main problem I have is my memory is quite shit, I'd like to improve that.

 

[Benny Bunter]

From first impressions I don't think Donne is much more difficult or knotty than say Shakespeares sonnets or something. Had a quick look at some of his sermons as well, prompted by Prynne quoting one in the Prynne/Oliver letters, and they look well good. Plus I think he's got a witty sense of humour about him that I like.

 

[woops]

Just read some John Donne for the first time, I'd had the impression it would be really hard and boring but I couldn't have been more wrong

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string

look, you've summoned him to the lrb

 

[Corpsey]

Donne's the monne

Been reading Auden "Look, Stranger", some great stuff in there, you can see how he must have been exciting to read in the 30s. Also, how disgusting to be so insouciantly talented at so young an age.

 

[martin]

I was going to say my favourite Donne lines are

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me and drink as I:
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up

But I just looked it up and it was William Oldys. Read it first in Fungus the Bogeyman, anyway.

 

[Corpsey]

Guessing you were thinking of?

The Flea by John Donne | Poetry Foundation

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

www.poetryfoundation.org

 

[woops]

Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one!

 

[Corpsey]

The first bit that grabbed me in the Donne poem above is

'Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;'

Because it's such a vivid, cartoon-ish, even faintly grotesque, image.

Then I liked

'This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;'

As a statement on love, but also as a statement on anything that makes you happy. It seems, at least temporarily, to 'unperplex', and simplify existence.

'When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.'

Again, the phrase 'Defects of loneliness' for me has a more general application than in connection with romantic love.

Proof of my prior engagement with Donne, for which I received a pat on the head from no less than @craner himself!

 

[craner]

Proof of my prior engagement with Donne, for which I received a pat on the head from no less than @craner himself!

You're welcome.

 

[jenks]

Not read it yet but the most recent biog of Donne has got a lot of good reviews. For a long time he was my favourite poet - his sense of the audacious was frankly thrilling. Now i find him a little brash - trying a little too hard to push the metaphysical conceit to its extreme. I still love many of his poems and the fact that i can still quote chunks attests to his memorability. Over the years i have come to respect and admire Herbert more - he's often compared unfavourably with Donne but i think there's a hard won simplicity in there and he too can be just as startling at times.

 

[craner]

Over the years i have come to respect and admire Herbert more - he's often compared unfavourably with Donne but i think there's a hard won simplicity in there and he too can be just as startling at times.

Plus he's Welsh.

Luke isn't wrong exactly: "like fiddling with a knot in your shoelaces" is quite a good description of trying to read a Donne poem.

 

[Corpsey]

dont understand it. donne is too convulted for me. cant be bothered with it. like fiddling with a knot in your shoelaces. fuck that.

this is hilarious considering you allegedly love jh prynne

 

[craner]

allegedly

Absolutely vicious

 

[Benny Bunter]

Over the years i have come to respect and admire Herbert more - he's often compared unfavourably with Donne but i think there's a hard won simplicity in there and he too can be just as startling at times.

Just read The Collar for the first time and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I read the last two lines. Love the immediacy of it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Wow, Prayer 1 is great too - "The soul in paraphrase" "reversed thunder" "exalted manna" etc

 

[Benny Bunter]

The opening of Narcissus by Delmore Schwartz

The mind is a city like London,
Smoky and populous: it is a capital
Like Rome, ruined and eternal,
Marked by the monuments which no one
Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains
Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,
Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.

Reminds me a little bit of @woops
poem/novel LIGHTS this

 

[entertainment]

Reminds me a little bit of @woops
poem/novel LIGHTS this

Where can one secure a copy of this book by our very own @woops ?

 

[Benny Bunter]

I said this when I read it

Three chapters in, this is great writing. I love the melding and merging of the cityscape's buildings, signs and lights with the anatomy, and the imagery of ancient and mysterious buildings - temples, ossuaries, necrópolis, megaliths and so on. It gives it a visionary, poetic feel - well, you can tell a poet wrote it rather than a 'novelist':