Poetry

luka

luka

Well-known member
You have to connect your mental ears with your inner eye and the whole range of your emotional response. This is literally how to read. Very very few people can do it. A tiny, tiny number of people. Corpse is teaching himself how to read. It's a worthwhile endeavour.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
It's not a poem I would choose to introduce someone to poetry but corpsey is obsessed with ageing.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
luka said:
You're not demanding enough of yourself. You're being lazy. You're not using the whole of your apparatus. It's not linked up.
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why use yeets at all then? if i'm brilliant and the poem needs me to pretend it's good for it to work, why don't i just cut the dead weight and be amazing without it?

why couldn't i do the same thing with a health and safety pamflet?
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
luka said:
It's not a poem I would choose to introduce someone to poetry but corpsey is obsessed with ageing.
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if you admit the poem's a hunk of shit we can move on. i'm sure there's brilliant poetry out there and i'm looking forward to learning all about it, but that was fucking terrible.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
if you admit the poem's a hunk of shit we can move on. i'm sure there's brilliant poetry out there and i'm looking forward to learning all about it, but that was fucking terrible.
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I don't think it is shit. It's a very small thing. But it's not shit. But all poetry depends on using the imagination. It's sort of the point of it. You don't read poetry for information per se.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Have a go on the only poet Reynolds enjoys. He's from Stratford.

The Windhover

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

To Christ our Lord


I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i'll do it tomorrow.

but do answer the question about the pamflet.

what makes that poem more aesthetically rewarding than a health and safety pamflet?
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
you could do this to a health and safety pamflet:

luka said:
So you have, first of all, in your mind, old men, watching their reflections in the water. You have to see it. This is what it means to read. Now In and of itself I find that quite affecting. When I look in the mirror now I see signs of aging. My skin is coarser. The pores are growing wider on my cheeks. I'm red and windblown. I've got grey in my beard. I'm bald. I've crossed a threshold. I'm starting to decay. I'll never be beautiful again. So I can perhaps relate more easily to these old men admiring themselves in the water.

And you have to hear their voices, and you have to allow them to be real. You have to let the old men talk to you. They are real. In Alan Moore's way of telling it they reside in the immateria.
One by one we drop away
You have to be willing to invite death into your thoughts. Not to skip over it, yeah yeah everyone dies whatever mate but actually take the time to let the reality of death, the death of those you love, your death, to enter you. And let it settle. How do you conceive of life? What does it mean to you, this dropping away?

And then we visualise these men, these gnarled, knotted, twisted, woody old men. These nature spirits. Broken by labour and by time. Bodies used up and broken by toil. Becoming a part of the landscape. Trees among trees by the water.

All the beautiful girls they knew, all the beautiful boys, dead or wizened. What is this? Why does this happen? What is time? The moving image of eternity.
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https://circadianstore.com/media/ca...8d6e5fb8d27136e95/w/o/working-nights-pamp.gif


So with the above link I can imagine a shift worker. The tiredness in my body. The courseness of the clothes against my skin. The sense of complete confusion and apathy. Where's my life going? Will I make the rent this week? The sense of shame for not getting a proper job.

"24 hours" and I think about a clock. it's a big grandfather clock. so much history. It's brass cogs exposed. i can smell the varnish. etc.

"The sleep wake cycle": all sorts of connotations and images I could cujur

"body temperature", "digestion" likewise.


is the yeets poem more aesthetically valid than that pamflet?

is the problem not with the pamflet, but with your imagination?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
You're all puffed up and prickly! Bolshie and bristling! It's like someone demanding I tell them why Billie Jean is better than the sound of insects in a summer meadow. Or why Ghostbusters is better than watching a pedestrian crossing. I don't know. I've got no idea. If you enjoy reading instruction manuals, if they set your imagination on fire then that's great. I dunno.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be prickly. It’s just my way of trying to figure it out.

I can explain why Billie Jean and Ghostbusters are better than insects and passers by, whereas I couldn’t do so for the Yeets poem. That's is why I need help.


As far as I can tell the poem:

1) doesn’t have any stylistic intrigue. There’s nothing rhythmically or phonetically enticing about it.

2) doesn’t offer anything novel thematically. It says some redundant things about ageing.

3) doesn’t evoke any particularly potent imagery. The water isn’t described, the men’s faces aren’t described. Their hands and knees are, but again, not in novel terms; you always hear hands and old people described in those terms.


I might be wrong about all that, which is what I need explained to me.

Otherwise Yeets has presented something pretty devoid of any stimuli and you’re suggesting that I use my imagination to make something worthwhile out of it. To compensate essentially. That’s why I asked the question about the pamphlet.

What’s Yeets giving me that the pamphlet isn’t?

I’m not trying to be difficult.
 
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