Poetry here.

What is art? What is beauty?

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Beauty
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Beauty »

A God above and the word
And what the God could not write, using the word?
God could write everything and anything
God wrote us all and the things we see
And so, we are a word
Our name is also a word
Cleverly depicting our most inherent trait
Oh! What's in a name?
"A rose is a rose is a rose"
Meaning that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
But it was given the name rose for that particular fragrance
So yes by any other name it would smell as sweet, but it would not be called rose then
Because the rose has that name due to its characteristic smell
And so, "A rose is a rose is a rose"
Always
gaffo
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by gaffo »

Dubious wrote: Thu Mar 01, 2018 1:09 am Isn't rotten poetry the only kind being written these days? I
i think so.

not into poetry myself - but of the little i know, prefer the "old" stuff (Byron, Keats/etc...........) when rhyme was center (and a large vocab to find the words to make a rhyme).

but I'm 200 yrs out of style ;-/.


So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

Most modern poetry is fit for the landfill. There's no talent left to write it only clumsily expressed heaped-up cliches! Same with music.

...another poem by Byron who liked dogs better than humans; a sentiment I'm completely in tune with.

Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG
Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,
And died at Newstead, Nov 18th, 1808.

 
When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rest below:
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been:
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth:
While man, vain insect!  hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on --- it honours none you wish to mourn:
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one, --- and here he lies.
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-1-
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:04 am Most modern poetry is fit for the landfill. There's no talent left to write it only clumsily expressed heaped-up cliches! Same with music.
Old times did not have a better fare of poets and musicians.

The classics we read in school and at college were the distilled products of hundreds and thousands of years. In the English language, there were maximum 100 great writers / poets in the last three hundred years. That's three per decade. And that's out of billions of people.

So if you find no good poets in today's world, it's little wonder. Poets are born ten a century.

My absolute favourite of the moderns is Richard Tillinghast. Here's a poem by him:

TABLE


A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn't love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he placed there.

Now that's what I call a table!
It didn't complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.

--Richard Tillinghast
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:04 am Most modern poetry is fit for the landfill. There's no talent left to write it only clumsily expressed heaped-up cliches! Same with music.
Old times did not have a better fare of poets and musicians.

The classics we read in school and at college were the distilled products of hundreds and thousands of years. In the English language, there were maximum 100 great writers / poets in the last three hundred years. That's three per decade. And that's out of billions of people.

So if you find no good poets in today's world, it's little wonder. Poets are born ten a century.

My second favourite of the moderns is Andrew Szemeredy. Here's a poem by him:


Hot August Night

You sit on the porch if you’re over twelve
Or in a tree if you’re under sixteen.
You listen to the hum of the night.

The hazy heat embraces you.
It gives you the warmth
Your mother once breathed into you.

The night breathes... it breathes and lives.
It gives your skin the pleasure of a full stomach,
Your senses the pleasure of relaxed nothingness.

You talk to the darkness, without saying a word
And the trees and shrubs answer.
There’s a fizz in the grass, a scurrying nocturnal.


Your mind is lulled in the August night.
You think of molten memories: cherry-sweet lips, youth.
You play with your thoughts and let the night play along.

You trust the night. You release your feelings into it,
You let them enter the dark to be touched and felt by it
Before you’d retrieve them. You teach the night how to have feelings.

You breathe the warm air in,
And it breathes you into itself.
The unassuming disciple, confidante, soul mate.

You and the August night.


And another poem by Andrew Szemeredy, to quench your thirst for rhyming poetry:

Army Barracks Blues Syndrome

Monsoon rains beat on the tin roof of the shed
Where many a tear and uniform was shed
There stands a native girl, naked
Totally naked, beautiful, unabashed.

Moonsong, shine up from the depths
Hit the chords with despair and meth
There is no life in these army barracks
No caring, no bliss, no life, barring the rats.

I stand in disbelief. It is not true
That guys like me, like my sort, use
Your fear of our strength, our muscles ripped,
To tear your heart out then escape, unfettered.

We men remember that embrace too
Of the young native girl with the deep tattoo
In sickness, in health, in prosperity
We weep for you, girl, for all eternity.

The third and fourth favorite poets OF MODERN TIMES are tied for third and fourth place. They are Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger.
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

The poem by Richard Tillinghast reads more like a thoughtful thought silhouette in broken lines of silent contemplation and memories than a real poem. There is far greater verbal power in the prose of certain writers. For me, nothing special here.
-1- wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 3:03 pm And another poem by Andrew Szemeredy, to quench your thirst for rhyming poetry....
I don' t get it! Where's the rhyme that's supposed to quench my thirst for rhyming poetry? The few that exist seem to be there by accident.

...as mentioned what now passes for poetry, once among the greatest of the arts, can be written on toilet paper and flushed.

Btw, poetry doesn't have to rhyme to be poetry.
Impenitent
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Impenitent »

Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:46 pm The poem by Richard Tillinghast reads more like a thoughtful thought silhouette in broken lines of silent contemplation and memories than a real poem. There is far greater verbal power in the prose of certain writers. For me, nothing special here.
-1- wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 3:03 pm And another poem by Andrew Szemeredy, to quench your thirst for rhyming poetry....
I don' t get it! Where's the rhyme that's supposed to quench my thirst for rhyming poetry? The few that exist seem to be there by accident.

...as mentioned what now passes for poetry, once among the greatest of the arts, can be written on toilet paper and flushed.

Btw, poetry doesn't have to rhyme to be poetry.
word

-Imp
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

Impenitent wrote: Mon May 07, 2018 12:33 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:46 pm The poem by Richard Tillinghast reads more like a thoughtful thought silhouette in broken lines of silent contemplation and memories than a real poem. There is far greater verbal power in the prose of certain writers. For me, nothing special here.
-1- wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 3:03 pm And another poem by Andrew Szemeredy, to quench your thirst for rhyming poetry....
I don' t get it! Where's the rhyme that's supposed to quench my thirst for rhyming poetry? The few that exist seem to be there by accident.

...as mentioned what now passes for poetry, once among the greatest of the arts, can be written on toilet paper and flushed.

Btw, poetry doesn't have to rhyme to be poetry.
word

-Imp
One too many words in your post.
iolo
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by iolo »

It's my own belief that poetry arises from verse that is marked off from normal speech in some way. I can learn about Greek or Latin verse till the cows come home and can't get the pattern clear, but they had a pattern, and the results work, particularly when they were experimenting, like Catullus ('Soles occidere et redire possunt/Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux/ Nox est perpetual, una, domienda') That's out of my head, and it wouldn't have got in in prose, even if I've made mistakes. In our own classical poetry, as somebody has said, a sonnet is free verse. Barnes makes a shot at it in English - 'While there for me, the apple tree/Do lean down low on Linden Lea' (Internal rhyme in the first bit, consonant repetition in the second -d,l,d,l,n,l,n l,n,d,n,l, if I got it right) Once you get used to it, that sort of patterning is hypnotic, and you learn all sorts without thinking about it, so that quite ordinary farmers like an uncle of mine can create englynion at the drop of a hat. So, really, just sympathising with a loose bit of rhetoric isn't really appreciating poetry much. Poetry is about making memorable. If we want to forget everything I think we should find a new word for the resulting verbal concoctions.
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

iolo wrote: Mon May 07, 2018 1:52 pmIf we want to forget everything I think we should find a new word for the resulting verbal concoctions.
True, and I misread your post at first, which made it even truer.

I read "world" instead of "word".

We should find a brand new world for the verbal concoctions. A new world, where the bad, often incomprehensible, mostly clicheed, absolutely void of beauty poetry becomes, without it changing an iota, becomes beautiful, meaningful, speaking to the soul.

If the poem does not fit the world, then either find a new poem, or a new world.
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:46 pm ...as mentioned what now passes for poetry, once among the greatest of the arts, can be written on toilet paper and flushed.
Well, maybe that's just it. No money in poetry, no glory; it was once a great art, now it is not.

So people like to be rich and recognized. Today's poets kill their talent to poe great poetry; they are instead buying and selling stocks, or being doctors, lawyers or architects or world-famous accountants; some become basketball players, or soccer stars or football- or hockey darlings. Some become beauty queens or else beauty queens. Some remain the same.

I think that's also the reason for the stagnation of breakthrough theories in physics. In the fifties the nuclear weapons program brought in a lot of money and fame and fortune and women for the nuclear physicists, also, the Nobel prize. What do physicists get the Nobel prize for these days? Realizing carbon atoms can form elastic, strong material, which has a very light specific gravity, or else discovering how to blow soap bubbles inside other soap bubbles. These hardly compare to blowing up the world or something. Hence, people are not attracted to nuclear physics, the talents rather become RAP singers or game show hosts. More money, more fame, more societal favours that way.
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

-1- wrote: Tue May 08, 2018 1:30 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 9:46 pm ...as mentioned what now passes for poetry, once among the greatest of the arts, can be written on toilet paper and flushed.
Well, maybe that's just it. No money in poetry, no glory; it was once a great art, now it is not.

So people like to be rich and recognized. Today's poets kill their talent to poe great poetry; they are instead buying and selling stocks, or being doctors, lawyers or architects or world-famous accountants; some become basketball players, or soccer stars or football- or hockey darlings. Some become beauty queens or else beauty queens. Some remain the same.

I think that's also the reason for the stagnation of breakthrough theories in physics. In the fifties the nuclear weapons program brought in a lot of money and fame and fortune and women for the nuclear physicists, also, the Nobel prize. What do physicists get the Nobel prize for these days? Realizing carbon atoms can form elastic, strong material, which has a very light specific gravity, or else discovering how to blow soap bubbles inside other soap bubbles. These hardly compare to blowing up the world or something. Hence, people are not attracted to nuclear physics, the talents rather become RAP singers or game show hosts. More money, more fame, more societal favours that way.
Yup! It's called "dumbing down" and I don't think we've reached bottom. Most of the highly educated are nothing more than walking functions as programmed by their training. Only a matter of time before so many of these "professionals" will be replaced with AI...a process already on the go, economics and technology guaranteeing the outcome.

Then perhaps humans will get back to the useless art of creating great art once again...or as Stephen Colbert would say upon stating an absurdity, just kidding! :lol: :lol:
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

Dubious wrote: Tue May 08, 2018 4:41 am
Yup! It's called "dumbing down" and I don't think we've reached bottom. Most of the highly educated are nothing more than walking functions as programmed by their training. Only a matter of time before so many of these "professionals" will be replaced with AI...a process already on the go, economics and technology guaranteeing the outcome.

Then perhaps humans will get back to the useless art of creating great art once again...or as Stephen Colbert would say upon stating an absurdity, just kidding! :lol: :lol:
The scary part to me is that AI machines will do humans' jobs, but with intelligence.

That difference alone will make a world of a difference.
iolo
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by iolo »

I think the real problem is that we have been desperately pretending to turn ourselves into machines that make money, and then thinking up real machines to do it better. That game has got extremely boring anyway, and it would be nice to kick capitalism out of the window and write some decent poetry instead!
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

iolo wrote: Wed May 09, 2018 2:06 pm I think the real problem is that we have been desperately pretending to turn ourselves into machines that make money, and then thinking up real machines to do it better.
That's already happened and continues to happen. Think of the stock market as an example where most of the trading is done by computers.
iolo wrote: Wed May 09, 2018 2:06 pmThat game has got extremely boring anyway, and it would be nice to kick capitalism out of the window and write some decent poetry instead!
Money and power means everything. That was always true but is especially entrenched now; you're only worth the balance on your bank statement regardless of how obtained or what you can produce for your company. Almost all waking hours are dedicated to that end. Sports, once played for its own sake, has also become a very large part of that paradigm already past the verge of distortion.

The whole point nowadays is NOT to think but perform; anything external to that demand is renounced as useless. Poetry has a special disadvantage by having $0 economic value unlike most of the other arts. It can only be read or at best, used as lyrics in any number of insipid songs. Aside from that what else can one do with it! Nada!
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