Suspended's Poetry Apprenticeship

[mixed_biscuits]

If there were 20 more Lukas they'd all be queuing up for his poems.

 

[luka]

in rap music you can twist words till they rhyme so theres a lot more freedom there

 

[luka]

you need to have a finely tuned aesthetic sense. you need to know what is in good taste, what is in bad taste, when something is too tasteful. you need to be able to communicate with directness and vividness. you need an image making capacity, to be able to present an image clearly and memorably.

 

[luka]

you need to be able to communicate anger, tenderness, loss etc etc not just say im angry

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The archaic forms seem to induce many poets into using archaic language (perhaps because those forms were initially evolved in an era of "whereto"s etc.).

I can see the appeal, too, since a huge chunk of the best poetry written was written in those forms. But the forms are exhausted.

Also it's very hard to write formally structured verse, especially spreading sentences out over stanzas, that don't use filler words/redundancies/clunky rhymes/convoluted grammar, etc.

English is rhyme poor, which is one of the factors that probably made free verse inevitable.

I wonder if something like this applies in the case of rap music, too, where the constriction of rhyming Line A with Line B meant rap had to evolve out of that straightforward "bars" mode?

Fact is most of the poets who put structure in the background do so because they're not technically able enough to be more formal, and then this lack of structure may itself be foregrounded ending in pure sloppiness

There is joy in pattern and pattern needn't involve full end rhyme; there are myriad ways to create sound correspondences...but they do require skill.

 

[sus]

Biscuits, Luke is making a lot of sense to me, you have yet to formulate an alternate set of values

 

[luka]

he doesnt have anything to say cos hes never thought about it or worked at it thats why pound says if you want to know about poetry ask a poet, don't ask biscuits

 

[mixed_biscuits]

he doesnt have anything to say cos hes never thought about it or worked at it thats why pound says if you want to know about poetry ask a poet, don't ask biscuits

So Luka is agreeing with me in saying that you should try to write it yourself.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I think his values boil down to 'you have to be Luka'

 

[luka]

I think his values boil down to 'you have to be Luka'

yeah that is actually the difficulty of giving advice cos often it boils down to be like me.

 

[sus]

In golden hills with hungry gulls, where stillness kills and weather lulls, and mission bells ring culture dull; on sunset’s coast a teacher’s son, our host my ghost your medium—Promethean, bohemian, chameleon (qué bien & some)—with happy heart, nor art, the eyes fixed singly on the mark, and swimming laps from dark to dark—suspended, sea-logged, racing barque—yet nagging deep was discontentment: all achievement that was lent him came at cost of such neglection: words forgotten, song unpracticed, “heart of mine so like a cactus.”

Til one morning in the mountains—clearings where a libr'y founded, He-Man Miller, generous fountain—were all his doubt and debt surmounted, romancing to find his Merlin, and thus announced his route would swerve then.

A violin, a pedal loop, a puff of pipe-weed, o'raggad group; his Lady came from Guadalupe, and waved her arms amnesiac fog so he forgot about the odds—forgot the math, the path, the bath, of standing up to west wind’s wrath; the cries of gulls too much to take; from ghouls of death, sought lemniscate. The motto that he drank like nectar, brandished though he were defector: “I am muscle, I am arrow, I am bone and I am vector.”

So if it pleases, you may hear—my song so human and so flawed—of Heman the Americanite, his journey prolonged, in a nutative rhythm with writing that nods, with bouquets of distinctions that add up to God. (A cooing, an evenness, assonance, warble. A raga of throat-sounds that cast away foibles—that open up portals, make singers immortal.)

But what use is a bower that has not its bird? Flowers sans pollen are wasteful, absurd. The power of beauty, our interest, for hours; the sweetness of nectar, abhorrence of sour, is nutriment promised for which we devour. So the function of flourish is moral inferred, the lessons embedded in words we have heard. The rhyme is the dangler attached to the angler, and if it betrays, then it earns reader rancor. But reader is gambler and writer is card; a critical ear is a ward against bards. So caveat emptor and hurry along.

 

[sus]

That is the first little section to a rhymed prose book I have been working on. It is about half done. It is modeled after the al-Andalusian golden age Maqamat format, with its characteristic rhymed prose and the boasting narrator. So you can see I am quite serious about tradition Biscuits and can observe formal constraints.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Has luka even worked the big rivers? The Niles, the Amazons, the Mississippis.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Whitman famously served up 500 bespoke limericks to an army of Native Americans making their way down the river, before reportedly falling fast asleep for 3 days - that's why he's regarded as a true great.

 

[sus]

What I am trying to do or find interesting about my own text
- enchanted autobiography
- self as woven of many others' strands; many of the phrases are paraphrases and quotes from contemporary bands I loved as a teenager, or writers I read
- it has a philosophy of storytelling, it gets into and discusses its own terms as a textual performance, it is trying to cast a spell and also explore how that spell works
- it is using traditional forms in an irreverent lighthearted way (at least in my mind), it isn't taking the rhymed stuff too seriously it's trying to have fun and be joyous with it

 

[sus]

Things I don't like
- I think the references and symbols and imagery, while very personal to me, might be hodgepodge to others, because they don't share my biography
- I think it can feel too archaic at points, not light enough; that caveat emptor at the end, IDK if it it feels stuffy pretentious or silly and irreverent. I wish I had more contemporary language

 

[sus]

I read the most brilliant thing by Honor Levy yesterday it changed my whole opinion of her, I thought she was alright but now I think she's a genius

> He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero, Haplogroup Rlb. She was giving damsel in distress, pill-popper pixie dream girl, Haplogroup K. He was in his fall of Rome era. She was serving sixth and final mass extinction event realness. His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other. If they could have, they would have blushed, pink pixels on a screen.

 

[sus]

Wow! Is that tradition & the individual talent or what! I think the last line could use some work but everything else.

 

[luka]

its a bit twee Gus.

 

[sus]

I think his values boil down to 'you have to be Luka'

IDK he seemed to have spent the last 20 minutes posting hundreds of words about what poetry should aspire to, and I haven't seen a single gesture from you, not even a trolling gesture, pretty weak IMO.