whats the direction of contemporary and future poetry? what will define it? will anything define it at all? has there even been a single unified trend in it since modernism?
>>23552687Less dead white men and more marginalized trans BIPOC voices
>>23552687I'm reading Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell right now and he talks about the historical progression of meter over the course of English history. At least as far as meter goes, he expect poets to mostly stick to accentual and accentual-syllabic meters. He mentioned how the experiments of the 1900s were mostly doomed to fail to be long term developments because English itself has not radically changed, so the experiments were sort of contrived, even if they were interesting. I'm not really up to date with what modern poetry is up to so I'm not sure how well his prediction holds up but I was reading that minutes before seeing this post so I just wanted to share. It seems strange to me because Charles Bukowski and Beat generation free-verse kind of stuff seems relatable to a lot of people. I can only imagine these tamer kind of free verse will continue. Some post-modern stuff I've read like The Kingfishers By Charles Olson seems fucking insane and I can't imagine that ever sticking. Maybe it will click with me in the future and I'll get it, but just seems too avant garde and "free" to actually have meaningful room for development and craft in form.
>>23552687And TS Eliot's collage approach of combining multiple traditional forms into a single poem seemed like an intuitive way to synthesize post-modern relativism with the benefits of actual formal discipline so it doesn't just become chaos. Did poets not adopt this? I'd think rhythm and meter are one of the satisfying parts of poetry you wouldn't want to remove. Rhymes might seem a little cheesy to constantly do though
>>23552847Try Robert Lowell
>>23552687the future is electronic stuff like thishttp://openingsources.com
>>23552705so poetry will become a low IQ and low status interest?
>>23552834>He mentioned how the experiments of the 1900s were mostly doomed to fail to be long term developments because English itself has not radically changed, so the experiments were sort of contrived, even if they were interestingOn Thomson's The Seasons>Blank verse had been considered more of an interesting toy than anything useful to poetry, despite John Milton's epic-scale Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained half a century earlier.Blank verse wasn't considered "useful to poetry" until at least 1726(when "Winter" was published); I wouldn't take Fussell's claim that seriously, at least based on that argument alone.
>>23552687I don't think there's been a true reaction to modernism yet; I would assume this reaction would stress order/rhythm in reaction against the chaos/freedom of modernist works. I would also expect it to focus more on the collective as modernism tended to be concerned with the individual. Not sure when this will happen.
On a somewhat related note, what's the difference between poets and songwriters who write lyrics also? It seems like they're the same except the poet should ostensibly be a better writer.
>>23554850most songwriters fit lyrics to music; poets create music from lyrics
bump
>>23552687>whats the direction of contemporary and future poetry? >Less dead white men and more marginalized trans BIPOC voicesThis, but let's be plain: it's only because of sociological trends, not because there's a consensus among the best and brightest in poetry today about where to go. The consensus among the worst and dimmest is to deconstruct and smear everything prior, ie everything ever written by whites, men, straights and non-Jews, and to stifle anyone working in that majestic tradition. This is why Pound and Eliot are constantly attacked while laughable shit like Amanda Gorman is featured at Barnes & Noble.The truth is, democracy, egalitarian thinking, and technology have all combined to wreck the notion, not merely of high standards, but of any standards at all. The Renaissance, the Founders, the Victorians, all looked back to classical Greece for models. Keats' Odes were considered masterpieces because they were judged in the light of Pindar's, and not found wanting. Nowadays anything goes, and even black rappers rip off things like rhyme and meter, it's only to use those remnants of form to push the subject matter of butt-fucking a white ho to death. White Western culture is no longer allowed to be an explicit culture with explicit forms, and since most people are rudderless NPC sheep, it's unleashed a tide of self-centered drivel that overwhelms the NPC-driven media that disseminates it. Hence the contemporary poet is like the post-Roman collapse poet or the Soviet poet, writing alone and hiding his work in a jar or a desk drawer, in hopes that a future, more aristocratic, society will recover them one day after the modern worlld ends. One can still strive for individual excellence, but only in silence.
>>23556343Good post
>>23552687>contemporary and future poetry>contemporary and>future poetry>contemporary>and>future>poetryIt's over anon, just accept it.
>>23556343Pound is talentless
>>23556343I think practically any intelligent individual feels this way today.
>>23552834There's an anon on /pg/ who reminds me of Charles Olson in his use of form, but he is much more readable
>>23556343>>23556366>>23556418Stupid fucking post and dumb npc replies. None of you read contemporary poetry. Just ignorant. You are no different from le rong generation fags complaining that modern music doesn't sound like AC/DC and Queen
>>23552687>whats the direction of contemporary and future poetry?Moving from mere irrelevance into the grave.
>>23556430The pic guy? He's good and he does have something Olson about his work, too bad nobody here actually reads, let alone reads poetry.
>>23556513If you don't think we are in the biggest artistic 'slump' since, like, five thousand years, probably more, then you're simply a retard who knows nothing about culture. There is not a single individual alive today comparable to the greatest poets, painters, composers, philosophers etc. of the last century.
>>23556513>Stupid fucking post and dumb npc replies. None of you read contemporary poetry. Just ignorant. You are no different from le rong generation fags complaining that modern music doesn't sound like AC/DC and QueenDo AC/DC and Queen eclipse Wagner's Ring, Bach's Cantatas, the Eroica, Art of the Fugue? The answer is no, and if you were as familiar with your cultural heritage as you are with the F word, you would know that. You might even know that AC/DC are not 'contemporary' but geriatric codgers, and that Freddy Mercury is long dead.If you know of a contemporary poem that puts the Iliad, Dante and Paradise Lost in the shade, by all means awe us with a sample. Otherwise spare us.
>>23556932>If you don't think we are in the biggest artistic 'slump' since, like, five thousand years, probably more, then you're simply a retard who knows nothing about culture. There is not a single individual alive today comparable to the greatest poets, painters, composers, philosophers etc. of the last century.There I disagree. I think we have plenty of writers who, in terms of sheer ability, could match some of the legendary greats. W. H Auden or Wallace Stevens had at least as much technical skill, if not more, than, say, Wordsworth or Whitman. The difference is, the contemporary poet gets processed and stupified through a university workshop system geared to stripping him of all respect or interest in dead white males, and then released into a world where writing poetry in the vein of Keats simply does not get published even if you are so fortunate to be black, and in which writing poetry is financial suicide. A handful of modern poets--Richard Wilbur, Peter Scupham, the early Thom Gunn--are quite good. But they're drowned out by a tidal wave of Woke-pandering virtue-signaling egomaniacal free verse that has all the formal rigor of decaying jello. Good, even great, poets and poetry are still possible. It's just not socially possible. Our potential great poets are asphyxiated in the cradle of a mind-corroding liberal education, and their great poems, were they somehow to get written at all, are unpublishable.
>>23557010The problem with your post is that every single poet you mentioned is dead. Only proving my point. And the particular problem with your comparison between Auden/Stevens and Wordsworth/Whitman is that the prior two, though indisputably great as they are, may compare with the latter two in technique, but in all the larger significances of poetry not at all. Wordsworth and Whitman are epochal, meanwhile Auden and Stevens are merely working within a modernist poetic culture. Their contribution is eternal, but their position is not supreme. We can still conceive of an Auden today, less and less likely as it is, but we cannot imagine anyone doing for today's poetry what Wordsworth did for his, though perhaps it's technically possible; and beyond all of that it is a sheer impossibility for a Shakespeare or Dante to arise in today's culture. Perhaps it's a metaphysical sensation, you can dismiss it as empty emotion, but the genius of Dante is equivalent to the voice of God, and in today's world God is dead.
>>23552687>whats the direction of contemporary and future poetry?political propaganda >what will define it?how much it aligns with the politics of phd lesbians>will anything define it at all?phd lesbians larping as social workers>has there even been a single unified trend in it since modernism?nagging in tumblr prose masked as verse
>>23557054Not that anon but I feel like things are going to go the way they did during late antiquity. Stiffening of both style and substance, everything is just a poorly blended, chunky mixture of things that came before rather than a true synthesis, originality is shunned. We are already seeing this by the way, just look at how many people still think ebin dadaist trolling is original and subversive still, after an entire century.You could analyse it all from a sociological standpoint, too. How both readers and writers are dumber than ever, how critics and publishers hamstring literature in the roughest ways possible, and so on.
>>23557138>I feel like things are going to go the way they did during late antiquityExcept we have no Northern tribes or new religion to revitalise our culture. Any change must from from within ourselves, otherwise this is the end.
>>23557176>Except we have no Northern tribes or new religion to revitalise our culture.Oh, but we do. Both sides of the pond, actually. Though I feel like high culture won't be impacted by demographics that much, literature is always the product of an intellectual and artistic elite, not the hoi polloi.
>>23552687Rupi Kaur
>>23552687>whats the direction of contemporary and future poetry? what will define it?me.
>>23557054>The problem with your post is that every single poet you mentioned is dead. Which doesn't spare them from the sorrow of being our contemporaries. All were alive through the majority of my life; Scupham (alas!) passed away in 2022. That doesn't place him among the ancients, unless you wish to restrict 'contemporary poetry' to the likes of Jewel.>>the particular problem with your comparison between Auden/Stevens and Wordsworth/Whitman is that the prior two, though indisputably great as they are, may compare with the latter two in technique, but in all the larger significances of poetry not at all. Wordsworth and Whitman are epochalIn your view. I find Auden vastly more readable, valuable and intelligent than the garrulous ramblings of the two gentlemen you find so 'epochal.' You say of Auden and Stevens that "their position is not supreme," but who exactly dictates that? We all have our private pantheons, and I wouldn't rank Auden and Stevens above Dante, but I wouldn't rank them so casually below Wordsworth either. Let us agree to disagree about how we feel deserves the Olympic Gold Medals. My point is only that a few (recently) modern poets _can_ stand in the winner's circles. The nearer we get to 2024, though, the worse the picture gets (iie, Amanda Gorman, Ocean Vuong, etc.) These poets are abysmal because the criteria by which press, publisher, critics and academia elevate them are not the criteria of Milton or Aeschylus but but by the non-white color of their skin or whether they've arrived illegally. Stevens (who could write an dazzling poem like "Like Decorations In A Nigger Cemetary" would be crucified today, and it's not because of the quality of the poem.) It's that knowledge prevents possible Stevenses from ever arising.>>it is a sheer impossibility for a Shakespeare or Dante to arise in today's culture.We agree.>>the genius of Dante is equivalent to the voice of God, and in today's world God is dead.God's existence is independent of our opinions of it, and Dante was not His voice, just an exceptionally gifted Christian poet. Others could follow, and create work quite (IMHO) as eminent--Milton, for instance. It may be that a revived metaphysics and social and institutional revolution is needed for that to happen again, to which I say--bring it on. What we have now is loathsome and unsustainable. Make Iambic Pentameter Great Again!
>>23557176>Any change must from from within ourselves, otherwise this is the end.This.
>>23557054>it is a sheer impossibility for a Shakespeare or Dante to arise in today's cultureNonsens.
