Random Poetry Talk?

[silverchris9]

Hey, I love poetry, obsessively and compulsively, so I'm just wondering if we have any other poets/poetry lovers on the board who wanted to strike up random conversation about poets and poetry. We could even play type the poets! (Unless... you know... there was already an entire thread about that or something... )

I'll start:

I'm a huge Walt Whitman fan. I think Song of Myself is probably the best poem ever written by an American. The sheer intricate variety of the things that Whitman has come up with in the poem, from representing himself as a friend to the reader on some hypothetical journey, to the amazing bit (in section 37, I think) when he says "I troop forth, replished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession," just after he cries "enough! enough! Stand back. Somehow I have been stunn'd." And it's really ironic that I love Whitman so much now, because reading over him in school, I was totally turned off (O Captain My Captain seems like very boring, simple allegory at first glance), partially by his constant self-assertion, like someone trying to sell me on something. But now the constant self-assertion is the awesome part.

But anyway, any discussion of poetry is welcome on this thread, not just that which relates obviously to MBTI. I'm just into talking about literature.

 

[Salomé]

Searching. I thought poets were good at it....

 

[silverchris9]

Searching. I thought poets were good at it....

Point taken, and no, just some of them/us.

I thought the other thread (the one on page 3, right?) was kinda old, so I though it was OK to start a new one, but I don't know forum rules around here. I'd be glad to delete this topic and post on the one on pg. 3 if that's more appropriate (I'm assuming that is at least one of the ones you're referring to?)

 

[Salomé]

Sorry, I was thinking more of the typing threads, actually. In the pop culture section

 

[silverchris9]

Ah. Meh, I don't really intend to start a whole typing thread (although that's fun). I just figured that if I wanted to get discussion started, I might as well do some discussing myself, and that's what came out. But, I might port that over to the thread you're talking about, edit my above posts, and sort of rewind the thread. Thanks.

 

[ragashree]

Oh, no, not ANOTHER poetry thread!

If someone doesn't quickly put it out of its misery in a humane manner I see myself and blue are going to have no choice but to smother it to death with yet more of our perverted and unfathomable effusions

Actually I think it's fine to post on the other thread if you like, though it's getting a bit lengthy now! Threads last posted on in 2007 get resurrected on this site without anyone batting an eyelid most of the time, so I really wouldn't worry too much... There are quite a few other more specific threads devoted to poetry too (mostly but not all in this section). I would look a few up but I'm feeling too lazy right now so maybe another time if you haven't found them for yourself by then. There are also several people who post their own poetry on their blogs.

You look like you might want this thread to be more of a literary discussion thread devoted to poetry than a place for posting it though - which is fine by me, though I don't know how many other people will be interested. I'm pretty sure there's no poetry discussion thread already

I'd go for ENFP for Shakespeare, by the way, though he is usually given as an example of an INFP. But just because something is the general assumption doesn't make it beyond question, at least not for me! If you're interested i could elaborate some time, here or elsewhere!

Edit: Bad person, I see you removed the stuff about typing and Shakespeare while I was posting this and wandered off to do something else for a while. I hope it went elsewhere, as I think there could be an interesting discussion or two about that too...

Anyway, welcome to the forum :hi:

 

[Anentropic IxTx]

My current favorite poem, I think, is "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. It's very expressive of my thoughts at times, and I'm trying to translate it into an invented language of mine...

 

[ragashree]

My current favorite poem, I think, is "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. It's very expressive of my thoughts at times, and I'm trying to translate it into an invented language of mine...

Please do share

Actually, that sounds quite appropriate treatment for Thomas...

 

[Anentropic IxTx]

Please do share

Actually, that sounds quite appropriate treatment for Thomas...

Ah, well... I'm really not much of a professional in this, and it could definitely do with some reduction, and the vocabulary's limited - yet here it is:
View attachment 3054
It's called Quren

 

[ragashree]

Drat, what happened to this thread? It got off to such a promising start. Come back Chris, we need you!

I'm afraid I haven't read enough of Whitman to have anything particularly intelligent to say on the subject. I take your point about being put off stuff by reading it in school - having it rammed down my throat on the grounds of it being *good for me* and being pushed into making conclusions about it to fit their preconcieved premises. That kind of stuff put me off Shakespeare (among others) for years afterwards. I can't tolerate "A midsummer night's dream" to this day. Though, admittedly, the chances are that I wouldn't be able to anyway

 

[Salomé]

Actually, that sounds quite appropriate treatment for Thomas...

You really don't like Dylan, huh?

I'd go for ENFP for Shakespeare, by the way, though he is usually given as an example of an INFP. But just because something is the general assumption doesn't make it beyond question, at least not for me! If you're interested i could elaborate some time, here or elsewhere!

There is a thread on Shakey's type - elaborate, do!

 

[ragashree]

You really don't like Dylan, huh?

There is a thread on Shakey's type - elaborate, do!

I only meant that he liked to take some rather extreme liberties with grammar and, to be quite honest, sometimes ended up making no sense in conseqence This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the poem though. In Fern Hill, for example, he got away with it as the poem appeared to have meaning which was given extra layers and evocative shadings by the treatment. The ones which didn't seem to mean that much at all (except maybe something so subjective that no-one but Thomas is ever likely to have understood them properly to begin with) seem more to have been obscured even further by having their grammar disintegrated. He wrote an awful lot of these, none of them very memorable, so I can't be bothered to research an example as I don't have a Thomas anthology handy

Oh, could you direct me to the Shakespeare thread? I imagined there would be one, but I didn't see one when I looked and didn't want to have to search the whole list right through. I may find something semi-intelligible to say on the subject if it hasn't been said already by someone...

 

[LadyJaye]

"The Panther" by Rilke is one of my favorites. Kind of dark material, but it really speaks to the way I feel most of the time.

Also, "Women and Roses" by Robert Browning. His love for his wife was so amazing.

 

[Salomé]

Oh, could you direct me to the Shakespeare thread? I imagined there would be one, but I didn't see one when I looked and didn't want to have to search the whole list right through. I may find something semi-intelligible to say on the subject if it hasn't been said already by someone...

Here you go.
Popped my forum cherry in that thread.

 

[ragashree]

^ Wow, what a fluffy thread. I think Ol' Will deserves better, really. Let's see if I can come up with a suitably heavyweight argument to squash that frivolity once and for all!

*Looks deeply into avatar for a while, hoping to find inspiration, or at least hypnotise self into thinking has found inspiration*

 

[silverchris9]

Oooh, I just read that Rilke poem. It's really excellent. I'm interested in how a sight dies in his heart. What does that imply for a caged will? At the center of a great will is abyss/nonexistence, or just some great destructive force, like hatred or rage? But then, I don't even know what the metaphor of sight is in Rilke. Is it, like in Whitman, a trope for poetic insight, or does it mean something wholly unrelated. Either way, it's properly discomfiting.