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Post a passage from your favorite written work, or the whole thing if its short, and meet fellow pretentious people. You should feel encouraged to post your own work if you have any. Feel free to also discuss literature here if you so desire.

>ASL
>about you
>favorite author/novel/poem/etc
>what you're looking for
>contact

>your selected passage (or post as an image)
>>
>>34871301
Small-m modern poetry is so ass

Here's a poem I just made up:
Wheeling wobbling blueberry fruit
Inflated girls that make me toot
The more I coom the better I feel
Erotic expansion is my deal

Where do I pick up my literary award
>>
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There is a certain beauty in russian yearning, it is a more brutal expression of love, more used to the constancy of loss. I sometimes feel afraid that the love I hold within me will make me too much of a coward to put it out there for someone. Which is why I am forever a yearner for my daisy lady, wishing I was a bee amongst her pretty flowers
>>
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>>34871323
You're focusing on the rhyme scheme more than the actual content - modern poetry has largely moved past rhyming. You can disagree with that, it's a matter of personal taste, but I think you're misunderstanding what the work is trying to accomplish.
The OP poem is certainly not my favorite, I selected it because it was short enough to be semi-legible in the thumbnail, but it uses the mantis to represent the relationship. Neither of them want the bug/relationship to suffer, but the suffering is beyond their control. The woman decides to snuff the bug/relationship, while the man would prefer to keep it limping along. Neither is presented as a wrong answer, though the enjambment does show the woman's inner thoughts (blaming the man for the pain) before rejecting them as incorrect.
The poem you've written has some interesting imagery, but ultimately doesn't feel cohesive. The farting is brought up only once and doesn't seem to have anything to do with the inflation fetish or cooming, for example. You only used "toot" because you needed to rhyme "fruit", or that's how it feels reading it anyway. The OP poem has a central metaphor that persists throughout and also works on the literal level. Every description of the mantis applies also to the relationship. It's not a bad poem at all, in my opinion, though obviously there's no objectivity to taste.
>>
>>34871345
I'm gonna take a stand in favor of shtipoetring Anon: his berries are blue so he has to toot his own horn.
That said, great thread idea, love it. I'll have to dig around for the really cringe stuff that I like.
>>
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>>34871301
My favorite poem from Sen no Rikyu:

右の手を扱ふ時はわが心
左の方にあると知るべし

When using your right hand,
Your heart resides in the left.

This is my favorite because my teacher (not professor, tea ceremony teacher) brought it up when we were discussing 心 shin / kokoro. It means "heart", but Westerners often prefer "mind", which I believe misses a lot of nuance.

discord: haecceity.org
>>
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>>34871344
I need to read Russian literature some time. You're right about the brutality of their expression, it's very beautiful.
>>34871541
I prefer the idea of the blueberry girls being a momentary distraction from a depressing life. Happy poems never appealed to me much. Glad you like the thread, post the cringe please.
>>
i have a personal piece i'll share with the class

i am a gooner, this is true
i went to 4chan, the sky was blue
i came upon a post placed there
it was a post about lit in soc, not fair
i''m an autistic weeb neet gooner and i'm mad

hope you like it
>>
>>34871345
Modern poems are literally just short stories with line breaks. It's idiotic. People say it's thematic intent, okay, well there are many stories and books that aren't supposed to be poetry, but have thematic intent and show us rather than tell us, things that modern poetry insists are what make a poem a poem. By that vague definition, any book can be a poem. So what? Length is what dictates if something is a poem? What about Dante's inferno? Modern poetry just feels like someone writes down a colorful shower thought, adds line breaks, then says it's poetry. Not to say I can't appreciate the thoughts or ideas, but I think it's stupid to call it poetry.
>>
>>34871753
Poetry is using the writing itself as a medium, the line breaks aren't random but are meant to convey some form of information. If you look at
>You can't tell when an insect is in pain
>but he must have been and you put him
>in the grass so softly
The enjambment after "you put him" breaks the line up in such a way that at first it reads that the man put the insect into pain, then the next line clarifies that he actually treated the insect with kindness. The insect being a metaphor for the relationship, this produces a sort of feeling that the speaker is blaming her partner and then realizing it's not his fault.

Pure prose is much more literal and has a higher focus on using action to advance plot rather than manipulating language itself to describe feelings or ideas. There is no strong line delineating poetry versus prose, and prose poems straddle that line, but the writing style of any of poem is not at all similar to a typical novel or short story.
"I went to the grocery store, it was raining and I felt bad" is pure prose
"The rain carried me to the store
so grey the sky,
my heart" is (shitty) poetry.
Consider also things like:
https://borretti.me/fiction/julia
where the writing is very poetic in nature. Do you class that as a poem or a short story? There's a strong musicality to it and I would class that as a narrative prose poem despite its lack of consistent meter or rhyme scheme. All the same, if you don't want to call modern poetry "poetry", what do you want to call it?
>>
>>34871345
>he didn't get it
I instantly understood the point and I'm mocking it by elevating mediocre, absurd, nearly meaningless low effort nonsense above it. Mine has more layers than yours —because technically it includes this entire thread—which makes it better according to modern standards even as it reveals them as empty, contrived, and worthless.

2deep5u
>>
>>34871753
This
>>34871844
>Poetry is using the writing itself as a medium
Like fucking prose?

Good thread though, the other anon is right.
>>
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>>34871844
>>34871865
>>34871871
>>34871871
Poetry is writing that calls attention to itself as a writing. If you are thinking about things like word choice and order, meter, line breaks, and form in general, then it is poetry. Prose, on the other hand, communicates something "behind" the text -- narrative, technical information, and so on. This is my personal definition which describes my own practice, and how I define poetry when I teach new poets.

Poetry, however, is famously difficult to define. It may have originated in mnemonics meant to make it easier to transmit ancient narratives or knowledge without writing. The oldest poetry we have, like the Vedic hymns, seem to have served exactly this function. It was lost in Western poetry very early on with the invention of written word.

You can't actually define poetry in a way that captures its entire history. There is little in common between the Popol Vuh, which uses parallelism and chiasm to communicate sacred history and genealogy, and the sonnets of Shakespeare, which are highly-structured down to the individual line and exhibit accentual meter. Neither have practically anything in common with the short, morae-based poems of classical Japanese poetry that show not only tight, even rigid meter, but also strict use of seasonal imagery and "cuts" between images.

In my experience, not just with self-described poets on 4chan but also poets IRL, anyone who thinks that poetry needs meter or a rhyme scheme or a heavy structure is usually not nearly as well-read as they'd like you to think. Usually it means they're not sensitive enough to tease out the structure in postmodern poetry.

I've even had my own highly-structured, stringently-traditional poetry in 14th century style accused of being "pomo structureless slop with meaningless linebreaks" because the self-described erudite poet didn't know that English poetry was once alliterative.
>>
>>34871865
>2deep5u
In my defense, I am an idiot. Anything more complex than a Koontz novel goes over my head.
>>34871871
>Like fucking prose?
Prose isn't typically trying to manipulate the form of the writing to produce meaning. If you look at the poets that you'd likely agree are good, like Poe or Shakespeare, they're manipulating the writing to fit within their desired format, be that the meter or the rhyme scheme or what have you. Modern poetry does the same, but often eschews the meter and rhyme schemes in favor of other devices. It's still a manipulation of the writing that wouldn't typically be present in prose. I understand not enjoying it, but it's still operating within a set of norms and rules rather than just being short stories with random line breaks inserted as the other anon alleged.
>>34871965
This is a much better answer than anything I could come up with though
>>
I am currently obsessed with Dennis Cooper. I can't post my contact after saying this, though, as I dont want to be added by anyone who likes Dennis Cooper.
>>
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In my mid-thirties, an old aging man,
Living for now on the US East Coast.
Still finding myself stuck here on 4chan,
Endlessly baited on yet one more post.

Backlogged collection of books still unread,
Hundreds of ePubs clutter this hard drive.
Great slogs of long tomes to consume ahead,
Lacking Book Buddy with whom I could thrive.

Naively hopeful, my fanciful dream,
That from love of lit I'd find here a friend.
Comparing our lists we'd form us a team,
Tackling together backlogs without end.

Books are the basis for our first inbox,
Then on to hobbies we'd discuss by text.
Culture and learning all sustain our talks,
Extra long voice calls are what we'd try next.

On phone we share films, classics from all lands,
High art of theatre, low dumb comedies,
Board games like Scrabble can busy our hands,
Goofy fun nerdshit, co-op roleplay please.

How nice it would be if there's chemistry,
If we then somehow blossom a romance.
Potential futures I'd like to foresee,
That we develop from good-natured bants.

No guarantee of some romantic spark,
Just friends might we be, if no love we share.
Friendship would still serve as light in the dark,
If books are still read, then all is still fair.

Yet still I picture her with a warm heart,
Not just for with me, but kind to most all.
Children and elders not treated apart,
Strangers and servers alike get no gall.

Imagine her now with an open mind,
Constantly learning, seeking to see more.
Embracing the world, won't leave me behind,
Exploring as one, we'll see what's in store.

Envision it now that she too works hard,
Committed and true, her goals she pursues.
When going gets tough, no struggles discard,
Hardships overcome, forge onward we choose.

Our bodies healthy in shape and in size,
Workouts and diets sustain us in age.
As old as we grow she still lights my eyes,
Now it all starts as we turn this book's page.

Physical standards I have beyond that:
"Mid-twenties up to 'bout forty, not fat".


No contact, still thinking of
>her
.
>>
IT ALL STARTED WITH POLLOCK.
>>
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Virgin beautiful, vested with the sun
And crowned with stars, who pleased the Sun supreme
So much that within you He hid his light,
Love spurs me to speak words in your esteem,
But only with your aid are they begun,
And with his warmth, whose love in you gleamed bright.
Her I invoke who kindly will requite
__All offering their prayers through her.
__Virgin, if human woe can stir
Your mercy by its misery outright,
Hear me, and in my favor intervene;
__Give succor to my warfare’s dearth,
Though I am earth, and you are heaven’s Queen.
>>
"If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night."
>>
>>34872706
How long did that take to write anon? Nice poem
>>
Both of them on the run. That’s what she wants. But Slothrop only wants to lie still with her heartbeat awhile . . . isn’t that every paranoid’s wish? to perfect methods of immobility?
>>
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>ASL
19/F/EU
>about you
I'm a humanities student, and I work in a job related to literature. I've run book clubs in the past, and I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. A lot of my days and general thoughts revolve around books, and I'd like to connect with someone who has a similar appreciation for literature.
>favorite author/novel/poem/etc
Nabokov's 'Lolita'. I also enjoy a lot of Irish literature, with a particular focus on authors such as McGahern who write about pastoral settings. The attached passage is authored by Milan Kundera.
>what you're looking for
A pen-pal sort of connection where we can recommend literature to one another, share excerpts we enjoy, and have general long-form communication and connection. I also enjoy discussing technology, website maintenance, and retro horror games a lot. I'm open to potentially swapping to IRC or some kind of secure instant messaging platform eventually, but I don't want to stray away from anything FOSS if we do so.
>contact
canemcave@proton.me
>>
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4v53PBWq0E
>>
>>34879650
>m open to potentially swapping to IRC or some kind of secure instant messaging platform eventually, but I don't want to stray away from anything FOSS if we do so.
nice way to out yourself as trans. nothing to see here just a teenage girl with a deep passion for opsec
>>
>>34879650
>IRC
I remember downloading manga off IRC, what a time
>>
>>34882286
Based. This is what i call "manslop" where every man will just say "based". A similar entry in the genre is the entirety of Metal Gear.

>>34872706
The cover for "the brothers karamazov" should be made illegal and anyone in possesion of that edition brutally killed. I hope you'll get over that evil woman!

>>34871344
Russia has no real happiness source since it's cold and poor. Therefore they fallback to love, which generates happiness from the void.

>>34871301
excerpt 1:
I think that even a death mask would hold more of an expression, leave
more of a memory. That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to
which a horse’s head has been attached. Something ineffable makes the
beholder shudder in distaste. I have never seen such an inscrutable face on a
man.

excerpt 2:
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Everything passes.
That is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in the
society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
Everything passes.
This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people
would take me for over forty.
>>
>>34893761
That is the book I identified with most in my life. It is a very misunderstood book. Perhaps I will write something about it in this thread at a later date.
>>
>>34871611
>post the cringe please
My apologies for taking so long. Here it is, Anon:

Sometimes, when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where
I should have been. I cannot seem to imagine what that place might be, and if I can't even imagine it then how can I believe it exists? And yet the universe is so very, very wide, and perhaps it might exist anyway? But the stars are so very, very far away. It would take a long, long time to get there, even if I knew the way. And I wonder what I would dream about, if I slept for a long, long time...
>>
>>34894184
No need for an apology anon, thank you for posting it.
I like it, it's more hopeful than the stuff I typically enjoy but it's sad enough to get me. I wonder if there's some other place where I should have been too.
>>
>>34894619
>I like it
The full realization of the cringe would take weeks to learn if on a rush, months in a hurry.
If only you knew.
>>
The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.
The body count climbs through a series of globewars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace.

By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. Cloning, lateral genodata transfer, transversal replication, and cyberotics, flood in amongst a relapse onto bacterial sex.

Neo-China arrives from the future.

Hypersynthetic drugs click into digital voodoo.

Retro-disease.

Nanospasm.
>>
>>34896193
I have nothing but time and a desire to know
>>34896318
>Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off
I like your funny words schizo man, keep 'em coming
>>
>>34871301
42 m

We have joy, we have fun
Flicking boogers at the sun
When the sun gets too hot
All the boogers turn to snot
-anon (I don't remember the author)
>>
>>34897088
>I have nothing but time and a desire to know
If you've got time, start by looking up the quote.
That shows one of the ingredients outright. It is a full course-menu.
>>
>>34896318
CRINGE

Although it's amazing how prescient this was.


One of my favorite poems:

. . . Take a few steps and you’re on the Appia
or Tuscolana, where all is life
for all. But to be this life’s
accomplice, better to know
no style or history. Its meanings
deal in apathy and violence
in sordid peace. Under a sun
whose meaning is also unfolding,
thousands and thousands of people,
buffoons of a modern age of fire,
cross paths, teeming dark
along the blinding sidewalks, against
housing projects stretching to the sky.
I am a force of the Past.
My love lies only in tradition.
I come from the ruins, the churches,
the altarpieces, the villages
abandoned in the Apennines or foothills
of the Alps where my brothers once lived.
I wander like a madman down the Tuscolana,
down the Appia like a dog without a master.
Or I see the twilights, the mornings
over Rome, the Ciociaria, the world,
as the first acts of Posthistory
to which I bear witness, by arbitrary
birthright, from the outer edge
of some buried age. Monstrous is the man
born of a dead woman’s womb.
And I, a fetus now grown, roam about
more modern than any modern man,
in search of brothers no longer alive.
>>
>>34893761
>The cover for "the brothers karamazov"
Holy shit hahahaha.
>>
The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight,
And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fulness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their bright comradeship,
The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's belt and sworded hip
>>
>>34872706
I sincerely hope you find who/what you're looking for. There's a couple in your image that I haven't read yet, thanks for the inspiration.
>>
>>34897127
It's based on Seasos in the Sun by Terry Jacks of the Beach Boys, which itself is a cover of a French song
>>
Whatever happened to violence? My violence where did you retire? Can’t lay out my innards without you. Can't spread my arms open without mocking the son. Just look at pictures of the burnt up people. All holes where a wound should be. Crackled like something to be eaten. Death lain on the coals for too long. Whatever happened to martyr? The enemy, where has he gone? Our something to kill where are you concealed? I offer my only reward. He started as body; may well be object by now. Round it all up. I promised to unsheathe myself to death of him. HE, who blows up the trees. HE, that came from my head. Always against! Always blessed tanks! And always a baby survives.
>>
>>34871844
Shitty poetry. Or, bad short stories with flowery language.

Sorry, rhyming and rhyme schemes required mastery of the language and of the medium to produce coherent and moving works. Modern poets lack the talent or patience to do so, and rather than use the restrictions to produce timeless art, they just write bad short stories with like breaks. It's why the masses still think of the classics rather than the modern across basically every art form - abiding by rules isn't limiting, it lets genius break through.
>>
>>34900982
>rhyming and rhyme schemes required mastery of the language
Do it though? Imbecile children can make rhymes on the fly, I don't think there's anything difficult to it. I think most rhyming poetry has moved to being music now, taste has just changed in that way and the monetary incentives have shifted. Modern rap music especially seems very rhyme dense and can be narratively driven, would you consider that better than modern poetry?
Art is all subjective anyway, so calling anything timeless seems weird. 400 years from now they might be looking at Bukowski in the way we look at Shakespeare. The masses only think of the classics because that's what they're taught in school. Everyone knows the name "Shakespeare", how many people actually know the plot to any of his works? The average person is semi-literate at best.
>- abiding by rules isn't limiting, it lets genius break through.
ChatGPT? Modern poetry still has rules anyway, I don't get your argument here.
>>
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>>34871301
22m USA

I read a lot. Poetry, history, fiction. I also like to learn languages (I know French and Spanish). My favorite poem is in Spanish, my favorite in English would be the attached file.

disc: a7k9q2
>>
I had once screamed, gradually, I lost my voice.

I had once cried, gradually, I lost my tears.

I had once grieved, gradually, I became able to withstand everything.

I had once rejoiced, gradually, I became unmoved by the world.

And now!

All I have left is an expressionless face, my gaze is as tough as a monolith, only perseverance remains in my heart.

This is my own, an insignificant character - Perseverance!
>>
>>34899788
Beautiful
>>
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Through gates of ivory sounds the call
Forth from a horn of older day
My soul, past crest and trough, away
Climbs alabastine walls so tall

Thy verdant likeness, to me shown
Adorned thou art with mound 'pon mound
Thy fate is to be carrion-crowned
In bridal dress of wave and foam

And wave o'er wave have gone and come
And gone and marked thy windswept face,
Have drawn each line, each sign of race
In steady, bloody beat and hum

A hand now beats 'pon Drakè's drum;
Say, can you tell whose hand it is?
>>
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"The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving."
~ Oscar
>asl
22/m/near Toronto
>about
Into creating things; writing and songwriting especially. I'm rather lonely and a companion is something I haven't. I do other things like cook, listen to dusty old LPs, drink coffee, view old movies and artworks, thrift, walk around, contemplate, and pray to God.
>favourite author or poem
>author:
Impossible. Either Dostoievsky, Conrad or Melville.
>poem
Nativity poem: Emily Dickinson
"The Savior must have been
A docile Gentleman—
To come so far so cold a Day
For little Fellowmen—

The Road to Bethlehem
Since He and I were Boys
Was leveled, but for that ‘twould be
A rugged Billion Miles—"
>what are you looking for
In a lady: either a romantic partner or platonic friend, it's bad to blur the lines.
In a man: just a friend.
>telegram
t.me/uhmokaythen



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