poetry

[monolith94]

"Free verse is not poetry. Poetry is harmony between the rhyme and the sense."

Free verse has harmony between the rhyme and the sense. I think you're confusing purposeful dissonance with a creation that lacks thought in its creation.

[Al B. Sure!]

free verse has no harmony between the rhyme and the sense because it has no rhyme...

maybe a free verse 'poem' that uses another poetic device heavily (such as alliteration) has worth but otherwise, free verse is just laziness... a pretentious attempt at sounding intellectual when no real talent is shown.

[Verres]

I like a lot of poetry...but equally there is a lot i simply cannot stand. Self-indulgent females (a la Sylvia Plath) should burn in hell, for example.

I love Keats, everything he's written, even the early stuff that critics absolutely slated. I lack the language skills to read poetry in any other modern language....but Catullus is always fun when i feel like reading some Latin

I am absolutely rubbish at writing it myself - even humorous ones never turn out as id wish. Considering i am supposed to be able to write Latin poetry, this can sometimes be a problem.

[Al B. Sure!]

if you ask me, there was never a truly great poet until William Griffin introduced multiple syllable rhymes though there was still an occasionally great poem before then like Melvin Glover's "Message"

A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You'll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens
And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool
But then you wind up droppin' outta high school
Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover ***
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
'til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young so...

[Gangerolf]

I'm not a big fan of poetry. There's one poem I like though. It's got 43 stanzas and yes, I do know it by heart

[Japher]

I like Robert Service and EAPoe, but that's about it...

[Dis]

Originally posted by Gibsie
"Why is my horn so evil
You are my mangled, dripping heart
When you collapse of my satanic cloud my beautiful darkness ruptures
Where is the thorns of my heart ????
When I change, You consume.
whisper, suffocate, beat!!!"

Courtesy of the Gothic Poetry Generator!
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/bhoxi...th_poetry.html

hmm, satanic poetry. Now that's more interesting. much better than crap about flowers and such.

And what's up with that woman who wrote love poems in the 19th century. Didn't she die a virgin?

[Adalbertus]

The limericks posted here reminded me of something else: Goethe and Schiller used to follow a habit that was developped by ancient Romans (Martial, I think), which is to write mocking distychs about people they didn't like. A distych is a verse scheme, composed of two lines, a hexameter and a pentameter. It goes like
-..-..-..-..-.
-..-..--..-..-
(_ being a long/stressed syllabus, . being a short).

Anyway a reply for them was

In Weimar und in Jena macht man Hexameter, wie die da;
Aber die Pentameter sind noch viel schlechterer.

[Adalbertus]

Anyway, my favourite poem is something which I would view as "absolute poetry". It has only little connection to reality. It is not serious. It is not funny. It is - maybe - a little sad. It follows natural, spoken language much better than most other poems. I mean the "Mondschaf" by Christian Morgenstern:

Das Mondschaf steht auf weiter Flur.
Es harrt und harrt der großen Schur.
Das Mondschaf.

Das Mondschaf rupft sich einen Halm
Und geht dann heim auf seine Alm.
Das Mondschaf.

Das Mondschaf spricht zu sich im Traum:
»Ich bin des Weltalls dunkler Raum.«
Das Mondschaf.

Das Mondschaf liegt am Morgen tot.
Sein Leib ist weiß, die Sonn' ist rot.
Das Mondschaf.

[Asher]

Most poetry is utter ****.

Most poets are utter ****.

Most people who like most poetry are utter ****.

[Adalbertus]

Oh, I actually forgot to post a translation. It was kindly provided by the author:

Lunovis in planitie stat
Cultrumque magn' expectitat
Lunovis.

Lunovis herba rapta it
In montes, unde cucurrit.
Lunovis.

Lunovis habet somnium:
Se culmen rer' ess' omnium.
Lunovis.

Lunovis mane mortuumst.
Sol ruber atque ips' albumst.
Lunovis.

(The apostrophs follow the rules for spoken latin poetry)

[Adalbertus]

Asher, in this respect you're mostly right.
Mostly...

[molly bloom]

What Is Our Life

What is our life? A play of passion.
Our mirth the musicke of division,
Our mother's wombes the tyring houses be,
Where we are drest for this short Comedy,
Heaven the judicious sharpe spectator is,
That sits and markes still who doth act amisse,
Our graves that hide us from the searching Sun
Are like drawne curtaynes when the play is done,
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
Onely we dye in earnest, that's no Jest.

Sir Walter Raleigh


Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy deaths head there: tie up thy fears.

from 'The Collar' by George Herbert


O western wynd, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ! that my love were in my arms!
And I in my bed again!

Anon, English


W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). from 'The Wild Swans at Coole', 1919.

An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.


Whyfore I likes poetry and lotsa other examples too as well.

[monolith94]

Quite honestly, the vast majority of people who hate poems do so because they can't understand them, usually as the result of having either no patience or no critical faculty.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by monolith94
Quite honestly, the vast majority of people who hate poems do so because they can't understand them, usually as the result of having either no patience or no critical faculty.

Given the likes of Asher's 'scholarly' dismissal of some of the major works of world literature, I'm inclined to agree with you.

I'm of the opinion that most people called Asher who given opinions about art or literature couldn't tell a Pisan Canto from a deep dish pizza.

'Most poetry is utter ****.

Most poets are utter ****.

Most people who like most poetry are utter ****.'

Asher Bonnaduce Capote Taylor Coleridge, literary critic and cultural eminence grise, giving us the benefit of his inexperience.