It appears that pretty much 90% of the poems I read is indulgement in emotions, nothing more. It seems that any artform that is the celebration or manifestation of emotion is pointless to me. I think the best poetry is strictly intellectual, but even that is shit. Poetry is the lowest art form I would say unless, and only unless, it is strictly a celebration of intellectual hubris. That is all.


This is the only poetry that I see that has point. A poetry that disses all poetry.


Insert Completely Meaningless Title Here
Ashokan

Lets put arbitrary
1
line breaks and
2
pointless
3
white
4
space
5
and we'll call it
6
poetry.
7


We have no rhythm
8
and a lack of beat
9
we make it all up
10
by acting smarter than you.
11


You
12
don't
13
get it,
14
do you?
15


Are the bewildering confabulating pompous references
16
toomuchforyoutobear?
17
Does your mind sound too much like a drum?
18
Do you not grasp my metaphorical cleverness?
19


We spasmodically tap tap tap the TAB
20
while pounding
21
the
22
return
23
button
24
to make our
25
meaning
26
a little more... shall we say....
27
intellectual?
28


If we could write good poetry
29
we'd be
30
songwriters (!)
31
but instead we
32
pat ourselves
33
(pat, pat)
34
on the back for our
35
remarkable, obvious talents
36
and our
37
supremely
38
supreme
39
supremacy!
40


For all you (eugh) republicans
41
out there,
42
that was an alliteration.
43

http://poetry.tetto.org/read/10771/

My English teacher gave this analogy: writing a novel is like taking a house apart brick by brick; poets achieve the same by placing dynamite at each corner.

You're right though - poems are rubbish, and their authors deservedly get bullied in school.

Apart from Sylvia Plath, obviously - but then you knew that.

In America at least, more people write poetry than read it. Your job then as a consumer is to find the poetry that has already been read and recommended by people whose judgment you trust, rather than simply poems that are well marketed. If even after doing that you find that the poems everyone else likes are the ones you find artless, then you're probably just living in the wrong country.

I think I'm a pretty typical American in that I simply don't understand poetry. My favorite poets are Doctor Seuss, Ogden Nash, and A. A. Milne, because they entertain me. The poetry in the lyrics of popular music is similarly accessible and moreover, far more entertaining as a package deal. Anything "deeper" than that is paradoxically "over my head." I'm hopelessly unable to interpret "serious" prose and "serious" poetry is even harder, almost by definition.

You're making fun of blank verse and beat and all the artsy-fartsy avant-garde stuff, and much of it is indeed written as an inside joke with the twist that the poet is often not in on the joke. But to the extent that you find even traditional, respected poetry to be indulgence in emotions... Well duh, isn't one of the primary purposes of art to help connect us with our emotions and understand them? That's certainly true of instrumental music and all non-verbal art like sculpture. It doesn't tell us anything, it evokes a reaction. Verbal art is unique in that it has a high informational bandwidth, but that doesn't mean that all authors and poets have to use all of it. It's okay to write a song that does little more than make us laugh or cry, and a song is just a poem with a melody.

I don't appreciate poetry (with the exceptions noted) so I'm not trying to sell you on it. And I'm a fellow caveman who thinks something without meter and rhyme is not a poem. But I don't think you're being fair in dismissing it, basically just because you get nothing out of it. It's not meant to be an artform with broad appeal.

T.S. Eliot is a fantastic poet.

His

words

like

mean stuf

I like Wendy Cope.


We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints --
That's why so many poets end up rich,
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets.
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?

Whereas the person who can write a sonnet
Has got it made. It's always been the way,
For everybody knows that we need poems
And everybody reads them every day.

Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering --
You're sure to need another job as well;
You'll have to plan your projects in the evenings
Instead of going out. It must be hell.

While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers,
You'll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust,
With no hope of a statue in the Abbey,
With no hope, even, of a modest bust.

No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets
And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train.
There's far too much encouragement for poets --
That's why this country's going down the drain.

"like, my 7th grade teacher taught me some good rhyme schemes, and now I'm a poet, but I haven't read anything other than a few greeting cards."
In America at least, more people write poetry than read it.
How very true.

I do have to say, for me, William Blake, Robinson Jeffers, Emily dickinson, Robert Frost, even Dante - all were incredibly talented writers.

T.S. Eliot... His words like mean stuf
And T.S. Eliot, may be the greatest of all.
I like Wendy Cope.
We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints --
That's why so many poets end up rich...
Nice.

"like, my 7th grade teacher taught me some good rhyme schemes, and now I'm a poet, but I haven't read anything other than a few greeting cards."

How very true.

I do have to say, for me, William Blake, Robinson Jeffers, Emily dickinson, Robert Frost, even Dante - all were incredibly talented writers.


And T.S. Eliot, may be the greatest of all.

Nice.

Dickinson rocks too:

Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.

My favourite poets:

Wilde, Ryokan, Blake, Tennyson, Keats, Poe, Ono no Komachi, and Izumi Shikibu.

As for poetry as a whole:

Most poetry is crap, specifically modern poetry. I especially hate free-verse.

Poem before seppuku/harakiri/suicide is commited, is very entertaining:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Death_poem_by_Kuroki_Hiroshi.jpg

Entertaing because, the meaning of life and failure within poem's words...are meaningless, noone cares but him who took his own life.

And yet that is what makes seppuku poetry so meaningful.

And yet that is what makes seppuku poetry so meaningful.

meaningful to those who see beyond life, who dare cross the line, and take their life because they saw what was meant within the words of seppuku poetry...its like a self-annihilation code. Read the magic words, gaze into the truth, cold and pitifull, and die with no regret.

I admire these words, of an unknown poet in the early 1930s. They resonate.

Listen, listen
The cat is pissin'
Where? Where?
He's under the chair!
Quick! Quick! Get the gun!
Nev'r mind...he's done.

You'll notice I put the "nev'r" in there, which is very poetry-like.

I admire these words, of an unknown poet in the early 1930s. They resonate.

Listen, listen
The cat is pissin'
Where? Where?
He's under the chair!
Quick! Quick! Get the gun!
Nev'r mind...he's done.

You'll notice I put the "nev'r" in there, which is very poetry-like.

thats why he is unknown poet, noone whants to know him.

It appears that pretty much 90% of the poems I read is indulgement in emotions, nothing more. It seems that any artform that is the celebration or manifestation of emotion is pointless to me. I think the best poetry is strictly intellectual, but even that is shit. Poetry is the lowest art form I would say unless, and only unless, it is strictly a celebration of intellectual hubris. That is all.


This is the only poetry that I see that has point. A poetry that disses all poetry.


Insert Completely Meaningless Title Here
Ashokan

Lets put arbitrary
1
line breaks and
2
pointless
3
white
4
space
5
and we'll call it
6
poetry.
7


We have no rhythm
8
and a lack of beat
9
we make it all up
10
by acting smarter than you.
11


You
12
don't
13
get it,
14
do you?
15


Are the bewildering confabulating pompous references
16
toomuchforyoutobear?
17
Does your mind sound too much like a drum?
18
Do you not grasp my metaphorical cleverness?
19


We spasmodically tap tap tap the TAB
20
while pounding
21
the
22
return
23
button
24
to make our
25
meaning
26
a little more... shall we say....
27
intellectual?
28


If we could write good poetry
29
we'd be
30
songwriters (!)
31
but instead we
32
pat ourselves
33
(pat, pat)
34
on the back for our
35
remarkable, obvious talents
36
and our
37
supremely
38
supreme
39
supremacy!
40


For all you (eugh) republicans
41
out there,
42
that was an alliteration.
43

http://poetry.tetto.org/read/10771/


What a wonderfull exspresion of your emotions towards poetry and those that compose it. The irony, The emotion. It seemed to flow strait from your heart. I believe you demonstrated why poetry is written very well.

Bravo i say, Bravo.

Dickinson rocks too:

Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.

I really like this one. It takes a fresh, almost aloof look at death. Nice post.

Funny how this thread became a poetry thread.....lol

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
T.S. Elliot

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea. - Algernon Charles Swinburne

Poetry is great
Argue, you're a fool
But those who pen it still deserve
To get beat up in school.
Me.

thats why he is unknown poet, noone whants to know him.

They're merely frightened of his genius.

A one-L lama is a priest.
A two-L llama is a beast.
But I would bet a silk pajama:
There isn't any three-L lllama.

--Ogden Nash

Now that's poetry that is both understandable and entertaining. Not to mention short.

Poetry is great
Argue, you're a fool
But those who pen it still deserve
To get beat up in school
Me.

fantastic

A one-L lama is a priest.
A two-L llama is a beast.
But I would bet a silk pajama:
There isn't any three-L lllama.

--Ogden Nash

Now that's poetry that is both understandable and entertaining. Not to mention short.

Its even better when you read it out loud!

Face Lift
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/face-lift/

You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.

Sylvia Plath


More.. (http://www.poemhunter.com/sylvia-plath/poems/)

Poem Generator, anyone?

HHGTG presents:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml

This is mine....ehhem..excuse me...the vogon poetry:

See, see the caring sky
Marvel at its big brown depths.
Tell me, Alex do you
Wonder why the skinless cat ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel sleepy.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your indespicable facial growth
That looks like
A salmon.
What's more, it knows
Your bugeewogeee potting shed
Smells of emerald.
Everything under the big caring sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm chinchillas.

I like poetry. :)
It just so happens that I'm reading one poetry book. There are poems written in the medieval times and also those written by Alzbeth about medieval times.
This is about Atropa Belladonna or deadly nightshade by Alzbeth.
~~~

Come here, little soldier, come here,
Take your armour off
For me.

And lie close beside me
Here in the autumgrass
With me.

We'll fly to our mourning, fly
To another world
You see.

Your eyes are so black
Your lips are so dry
Your heart runs so fast, we fly
To another world, another world,
Another world.

Oh cherry so black
And violet
The underworld
You see.

Oh, don't leave me now, come back
From the other world
To me,
To me

- Alzbeth - ART III | 20

Is Poetry 100% Mastubatory?

wait a sec..

April is the...ah..ummm..cruelest....ohgodohgodohgod...mont h (drifting off to sleep).



yep.

Despite trying to write some poems myself, I have to agree with the original poster.

It seems as if some modern poets aim for arbitrary line breaks whether it helps the rhythm or not.

There are however, some really wonderful pieces and this is one of my favourites. Unsurprisingly, it is also about the Big E :*)

I'd also like to take this opportunity of wishing all forum members a really happy Christmas and an even better 2007.



The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


Euphrosene