"the poet must not close his eyes"
luka
Well-known member
there's a bit of tension between on the one hand wanting to be immersed in life as it's lived so you understand what is happening and why it is happening and the forces acting on people,
and on the other, needing distance from it
i remember when i first got a smartphone, very late, and it felt like accessing modern life, and it excited me, and gave me new ideas etc
but then not long after i got rid of it.
and on the other, needing distance from it
i remember when i first got a smartphone, very late, and it felt like accessing modern life, and it excited me, and gave me new ideas etc
but then not long after i got rid of it.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
The smartphone thing's interesting because I don't use one, but I'm online a lot anyway so I'm curious how much I'm missing in terms of interfacing with the device itself. There's another level of convenience/integration when the internet's in your pocket.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
I think if you can't enjoy at least some things on their own level then you're fucked, doomed to be perpetually on the outside like some sort of ethnologist. You need to be able to feel the excitement in UFC or whatever rather than just sitting there at a remove, taking mental notes.
Are you genuinely getting into anything or are you just collecting specimens for the lab?
Are you genuinely getting into anything or are you just collecting specimens for the lab?
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
shakahislop
Well-known member
when poets close thier eyes I psuh them into the river
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Is it only worth opening your eyes if you're going to write poetry or make a painting about it? Or is this a question of the worthiness of your existence?
I often feel bad for having my head in the sand, esp when it comes to political/world events. I suppose this is immoral of me. It's an unreflecting selfishness mostly, but probably I'm also just avoiding having to even think about doing anything about it (if anything about it can be done).
I remember in pollans book he quotes Bertrand Russell as saying the key to happiness is immersing yourself in something bigger than yourself.
But I don't suppose that's what this thread is about, it's more about having the ability to write good poetry that absolutely nobody will read.
I often feel bad for having my head in the sand, esp when it comes to political/world events. I suppose this is immoral of me. It's an unreflecting selfishness mostly, but probably I'm also just avoiding having to even think about doing anything about it (if anything about it can be done).
I remember in pollans book he quotes Bertrand Russell as saying the key to happiness is immersing yourself in something bigger than yourself.
But I don't suppose that's what this thread is about, it's more about having the ability to write good poetry that absolutely nobody will read.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
I think it's good be somewhat aware of your time and place, whoever you are.
I'd say you're possibly the person most in tune with the current age. Remote work, VR porn, Spotify playlists, SSRIs, Netflix, fleshlight, Deliveroo. You couldn't live the way you do at any other point in history. You're on the cutting edge of the 21st century.
The thread's about being sensitive to your environment, how engaged you are with the present.
the opening from The Road imprinted itself on me when i read it ages ago, i often get the last phrase rolling through my head
Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
cold glaucoma, dimming away the world... dimming away the world...
the eyes are open, they look but do not see
it's that Thoreau poem again
My life has been the poem i would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
The poem is written in the living of it? Or it remains unwritten, because it is lived?
Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
cold glaucoma, dimming away the world... dimming away the world...
the eyes are open, they look but do not see
it's that Thoreau poem again
My life has been the poem i would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.
The poem is written in the living of it? Or it remains unwritten, because it is lived?
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Some imp in me makes me want to react churlishly to this thread for some reason but I basically agree that artists "should" observe and reflect the time they live in
But also that the artist should react AGAINST the times in some ways
Think (to use a thoroughly contemporary example) of "Ulysses" -- incorporating the media of the day, capturing the increasingly fractured consciousness, the influence of advertising on the mind and so on. But at the same time standing as a sort of rebuke or antidote to the chaotic vulgarity it reflected. A huge perversely hard book to read in an age where mass consciousness was already becoming too fractured to cope with such books... Let alone where things stand in 2024.
Similarly, it's important perhaps to know about social media and VR and AI and so on but this is all at best ambivalent stuff, and you see all these counter-movements to it, attempts to wrestle free from the matrix.
But also that the artist should react AGAINST the times in some ways
Think (to use a thoroughly contemporary example) of "Ulysses" -- incorporating the media of the day, capturing the increasingly fractured consciousness, the influence of advertising on the mind and so on. But at the same time standing as a sort of rebuke or antidote to the chaotic vulgarity it reflected. A huge perversely hard book to read in an age where mass consciousness was already becoming too fractured to cope with such books... Let alone where things stand in 2024.
Similarly, it's important perhaps to know about social media and VR and AI and so on but this is all at best ambivalent stuff, and you see all these counter-movements to it, attempts to wrestle free from the matrix.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Mind that article where the author compared Tolkien to Joyce and how Joyce's stuff while completely wrapped up in itself also points outwards to a whole world, the contemporary world and the world 20 years ago and the ancient world--whereas LOTR was this totally enclosed world that didn't really relate to our world at all, and only pointed to Norse / Saxon mythology.
And yet LOTR is the best book ever written so what's that all about
And yet LOTR is the best book ever written so what's that all about
sufi
lala
Jenny Turner · Reasons for Liking Tolkien: The Hobbit Habit
I am not interested in slumming, in showing off about my naughty hobbit habit. The idea of slumming is an attempt to...
www.lrb.co.uk
Last weekend I went to warhammer world nottingham
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
Yeah, this is the balancing act Luke and I were talking about. How to be both inside and outside.
I suppose in one sense you can't be anything but as whatever you write will be a response to the world around you, whether you're leaning in or attempting to escape from it. It's there whatever you do. See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end. Someone like Joyce is someone very much with their eyes open and working with the world around them though.
"Writers must oppose systems. It's important to write against power, corporations, the state, and the whole system of consumption and of debilitating entertainments . . . I think writers, by nature, must oppose things, oppose whatever power tries to impose on us. You know, in America and in western Europe we live in very wealthy democracies, we can do virtually anything we want, I'm able to write whatever I want to write. But I can't be part of this culture of simulation, in the sense of the culture's absorbing of everything . . . "
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
How did it go?
sufi
lala
It was an experience
mixed_biscuits
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mixed_biscuits
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Luka is the CEO of Poet for Hire and boasts of making up to £1000 a day.