Modernist Poetry

I made a thread recently about Fernando Pessoa where I said that he was a far greater poet than T. S. Eliot. It was a poor thread because I put no effort into the OP.

I don't make the comparison to T. S. Eliot arbitrarily: it's because Eliot is taken to be the foremost Modernist poet, whereas I am convinced that Pessoa is the greatest Modernist poet who embodied in his poetry everything that was truly valid, and of lasting value, in Modernism. I think that if Eliot had written in a more obscure language like Portuguese, and Pessoa had written in English - the latter would be held up today as the Homer of Modernism, and Eliot relegated to the relatively obscure position he deserves (and I hope will eventually receive) as a very talented 2nd rate poet plagued with many infelicities of style.

Eliot wrote an excellent essay on John Milton (he was very intelligent and a better critic than poet) in which his main thesis is that Milton, while undoubtedly a "great" poet, was certainly not a GOOD poet: as Milton had a very idiosyncratic style which constricted rather than expanded the English language, making him a poet impossible to imitate and a bad influence on any poet that would try to imitate him.
pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot.htm

This criticism of Milton applies a 100 times over to Eliot himself. He may be a "great" poet (though I think mostly undeservedly), but he is CERTAINLY not a GOOD poet: and his poetry has had an enormously BAD influence on modern poetry, on everything that came after him. That is to say that he is a bad and flawed poet, but whose flaws were so great that they attracted admiration. The main admirers of Eliot are academics who are infatuated with the vapid pretentiousness of his style, and these fanatic adherents of is are the ones entirely responsible for his inflated reputation, and also for the ruination of modern poetry as an exercise in pretentious intellectual obscurity and pseudo-profundity. Eliot's influence on modern poetry is nearly omnipresent, burdening what would otherwise be decent poetry with the need of imitating Eliot in his tedious impenetrability; apart from those few modern poets with the literary good taste to stay entirely clear of Eliot. Whenever you read Eliot you have to strain your eyes and your ears, because he's too high-and-mighty to give the unliterary plebs anything without excessive labour, except for the odd "deep" sounding catchphrase like: "Do I dare. Disturb the universe?" / "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" / "Son of man . . . you know only / A heap of broken images" / "O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—" / "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." Perhaps without sprinkling these more lucid and accessible lines in, he feared that the reader would not recognise his profundity, and think that he was being obscure to lend his poetry a profundity it didn't really have . . .

Let me quote from Eliot's essay on Milton, and I'll let anyone familiar enough with Eliot's work to see how much they apply to Eliot himself:

"Many people will agree that a man may be a great artist, and yet have a bad influence. There is more of Milton's influence in the badness of the bad verse of the eighteenth century than of anybody's else: he certainly did more harm than Dryden and Pope, and perhaps a good deal of the obloquy which has fallen on these two poets, especially the latter, because of their influence, ought to be transferred to Milton. But to put the matter simply in terms of 'bad influence' is not necessarily to bring a serious charge: because a good deal of the responsibility, when we state the problem in these terms, may devolve on the eighteenth-century poets themselves for being such bad poets that they were incapable of being influenced except for ill."

"There is a large class of persons, including some who appear in print as critics, who regard any censure upon a 'great' poet as a breach of the peace, as an act of wanton iconoclasm, or even hoodlumism. The kind of derogatory criticism that I have to make upon Milton is not intended for such persons, who cannot understand that it is more important, in some vital respects, to be a good poet than to be a great poet; and of what I have to say I consider that the only jury of judgment is that of the ablest poetical practitioners of my own time."
(Thank you Eliot for vindicating me.)

"Thus it is not so unfair, as it might at first appear, to say that Milton writes English like a dead language. The criticism has been made with regard to his involved syntax. But a tortuous style, when its peculiarity is aimed at pretension (as with Henry James), is not necessarily a dead one; only when the complication is dictated by a demand of verbal music, instead of by any demand of sense."

"Now Shakespeare, or Dante, will bear innumerable readings, but at each reading all the elements of appreciation can be present. There is no interruption between the surface that these poets present to you and the core."
(As opposed to Eliot's poetry, where there is an enormous interruption between the 'surface' and the 'core' of his poetry.)

"His style is not a classic style, in that it is not the elevation of a common style, by the final touch of genius, to greatness. It is, from the foundation, and in every particular, a personal style, not based upon common speech, or common prose, or direct communication of meaning. Of some great poetry one has difficulty in pronouncing just what it is, what infinitesimal touch, that has made all the difference from a plain statement which anyone could make; the slight transformation which, while it leaves a plain statement a plain statement, has always the maximal, never the minimal, alteration of ordinary language. Every distortion of construction, the foreign idiom, the use of a word in a foreign way or with the meaning of the foreign word from which it is derived rather than the accepted meaning in English, every idiosyncrasy is a particular act of violence which Milton has been the first to commit. There is no cliché, no poetic diction in the derogatory sense, but a perpetual sequence of original acts of lawlessness."
(This quote is so apt a description of Eliot's own poetry that it is uncanny. I do not know if Eliot was too blind to recognise this in his own poetry, or whether he recognised that he did not have the talent to be a truly classic poetry - as later I will argue that Pessoa was - and so had to invent his own particular genius instead).


"Paradise Lost, like Finnegans Wake (for I can think of no work which provides a more interesting parallel: two books by great blind musicians, each writing a language of his own based upon English) makes this peculiar demand for a readjustment of the reader’s mode of apprehension. The emphasis is on the sound, not the vision, upon the word, not the idea; and in the end it is the unique versification that is the most certain sign of Milton’s intellectual mastership."

"And it must be said that Milton’s diction is not a poetic diction in the sense of being a debased currency: when he violates the English language he is imitating nobody, and he is inimitable."

Now I want to move on to Pessoa, who was I think the true giant of Modernist poetry, and whose reading I highly recommended for anyone who wants to write poetry that is both good and contemporary (he will have a much better influence on your style than Eliot, and will help you to be a better poet; whereas Eliot will almost certainly cause you to be a worse poet, as he has caused many to be already). Much of modern poetry is bad or worthless because it has followed the barren and degenerate Eliot-line of Modernism, rather than the healthy and fertile Pessoa-line of Modernism. They are both at the head of two substantially different conceptions of Modern poetry.
The key difference in their approach to Modernism in poetry is how they each conceived of poetry to begin with. Here I need more scholarship than I have (I have barely any, I'm relying mostly on my good judgement here) to be able to demonstrate exactly how each of them conceived the art of poetry, and how their different conceptions diverged. But I will go ahead and give my impression:

Eliot's view of poetry is historicist and sociological. He views poetry as a long tradition going back to the likes of Homer and Virgil. He understands his task as a poet (and of modern poets in general) as being to place himself within this line of historical development, while consciously (and this is very key - consciously) reflecting upon his own place within this tradition, and upon the characteristics and peculiarities of modern society and modern poetry as opposed to past societies and past periods of literature. Therefore, he studies the whole of poetry stretching back over centuries and tries to synthesise what he has learned, while providing a distinctively modern twist that would make his poetry relevant to modern readers, and an authentic artefact of modern society. He shares this conception of poetry, to a great extent, with Ezra Pound (although Pound attempted an entirely different conception of modern poetry with Imagism - which is much closer to Pessoa's conception than Eliot's - as Pound was mainly a great experimenter who never really found his own voice). If you think that the task of the poet is to read all the greats of the literary canon, and to provide a commentary on their work while also reflecting upon contemporary society - then you share Eliot's understanding of poetry.

This poor and debased notion of poetry is largely responsible for the poverty of Eliot's poetry and his crippled style. This understanding of poetry is simply unworthy of a poet, and prevents one from developing into a genuine poet. Why? Because the poet is not a mere literary historian or museum curator whose task it is to arrange what past poets have done in a new way; rather, the task of the poet is to rediscover what is truly and eternally poetic, which all good poets of the past also happened to discover. As Goethe put it: "All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again." Similarly, all good poetry has already been written; what is necessary is only to try and write it again. But am I contradicting myself? Didn't I just criticise Eliot for trying to rehash the work of past poets? No; because Eliot is not concerned primarily with that eternally poetic ideal that I am speaking of, and which all great poets of the past embodied in their own way; rather, he is concerned with the more outward, historical, and accidental parts of poetry like literary style, classical motifs and allusions, and above all their historical development. Eliot was essentially a critic who happened to be a poet; not a poet who happened to engage in criticism - it is not accidental then that his greatest adherents are mere critics, who since Eliot have taken the art of poetry unto themselves and have scowled at anyone who would try to wrest it from them. We had a decent thread here recently about an article written by poet and Oxford graduate Rebacca Watts, where she decries the vulgarity, faux-sincerity, reverse-snobbishness of hack poets like Rupi Kaur and others. While much of her criticism is true, what I think she fails to grasp is that these bad poets like Rupi Kaur are very much reacting against the crippled style and elitist arrogance of post-Eliot academic poetry which makes it repulsive to pretty much any audience outside of academia; or rather, what she fails to grasp is that this reaction against the post-Eliot poets (Rebecca Watts herself happening to be one of them) is a VALID reaction or renunciation, even if Rupi Kaur & co. have gone about it a contemptible way. Poets are rightly sick-to-death of having to put on haughty airs of profundity and erudition, just to write damned poetry that wouldn't be sneered at by the damned academic snobs.

Now I will begin my outline of Pessoa's concept of poetry by giving you one of his poems. This is the entire poem, written under one of his "heteronyms", Alberto Caeiro:

Virgil’s shepherds played the pipes and other things
And they sang about love literarily.
(So they say—I’ve never read Virgil.
Why should I read him?)

Virgil’s shepherds, poor guys, are Virgil,
And Nature is beautiful and ancient.

Reading this, you might think that it is juvenile or asinine; but this is because in order to appreciate its full genius you have to read it in the context of Pessoa's corpus, and specifically in what he was trying to accomplish under his heteronym "Alberto Caeiro". I posted some of "Caeiro's" work before, and it was not well-received here. I think partly because many of you have been coloured by post-Eliot expectations of what poetry should be, but also because you don't have the literary context in which his work is best appreciated. If you go here:
alberto hyphen caeiro dot blogspot dot co dot uk/
You will see a commentary by Ricardo Reis - another one of Pessoa's personalities - on Caeiro's work, at the top and bottom of the page. Caeiro is the least accessible to post-Eliot readers of poetry because he is the most anti-Eliot in his conception of poetry (really, each of Pessoa's heteronyms have their own distinct conception of poetry). In particular, Caeiro is utterly indifferent to what past poets may have accomplished in their poetry (totally contrary to Eliot and his descendants) - "So they say—I’ve never read Virgil / Why should I read him?" - and is focused entirely on something he believes to be poetically interesting or valid regardless of how it may have been treated of by past poets - "And Nature is beautiful and ancient."

In the case of Caeiro, what he is preoccupied with is his own individual sensations and immediate apprehension of reality as manifest in the physical world:

All the opinions there are about nature
Never made a weed grow or a flower bloom.
All the wisdom regarding things
Was never a thing I could hold like a thing;
If science wants to be truthful,
What science is more truthful than the science of things without science?
I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying
Has a reality so real even my back feels it.
I don’t need reason — I have shoulderblades.

The fact that Caeiro employs such a childish literary style is just a function of his own childlike approach to reality:

When I look, I see clear as a sunflower.
I’m always walking the roads
Looking right and left,
And sometimes looking behind...
And what I see every second
Is something I’ve never seen before,
And I know how to do this very well...
I know how to have the essential astonishment
That a child would have if it could really see
It was being born when it was being born...
I feel myself being born in each moment,
In the eternal newness of the world...

I'm taking Caeiro as my example - whereas I could take the poetry of the far more intellectual heteronym, and therefore more familiar to post-Eliot readers, Ricardo Reis - precisely because Caeiro is utterly unlike Eliot in his poetry, and represents a completely new line of poetry that is authentically modern (or even postmodern) while containing within itself genuinely poetic sentiments that are beautiful and accessible to all with a sensitivity to poetry. Each of Pessoa's heteronyms has their own distinct literary style, but this does not indicate his preoccupation with mere style, but rather his practical indifference to it (indifference, by the way, is one of the main themes of Pessoa's writing; much like one writer might speak of love or another of war). Whereas Eliot (and Pound too) is completely and cripplingly conscious of his literary style, agonisingly so seeing as he seems himself as an inheritor of a great tradition going back to the likes of Homer and Virgil - Pessoa cares about style so little that he bounces back and forth between different styles to the extent of letting them become their own distinct personalities independent of himself, while he searches for that which is truly poetical and above mere style. It's not that Pessoa himself was not unread (unlike his heteronym Caeiro, who was an ignorant shepherd), but that he wanted to explore poetry anew (in his own peculiarly modern fashion) without mere reference or allusion to the past.

As an authentic and truly classic poet, then, Pessoa in his poetry tries to embody in his poetry themes, sentiments, images, etc., which are eternally and poetically valid. And as a modern poet in particular, Pessoa explores Modernism not in an historicist or sociological fashion like Eliot - looking back on past literary eras and providing a mere running commentary - but rather as a collection of fractured personalities each experiencing their world in their own way through their own unique sensations. This is what elevates Pessoa to a literary giant in the movement of Modernism, and what earns him the title of its most accomplished genius and practitioner (as opposed to Eliot who holds that title undeservedly). True, Eliot himself did something similar in The Waste Land, but not nearly to the same extent or as well as Pessoa did, and that was not the emphasis or primary element of Eliot's poetry, but a mere device he used to carry it out.

Pessoa rightly holds first place as the greatest of modern poets and is included among the greatest poets of all time. I shall not try to demonstrate this further because this is already tl;dr seven times over; but what I say here will eventually be proven when the poets like Rupi Kaur (but with more talent than her) who are reacting against the post-Eliot influence in poetry, will instead take up Pessoa as their model and use his influence to craft a poetry which is both good and contemporary. A few years back DFW was the biggest meme on here. DFW was a victim (literally, he may have killed himself over it) of the post-Eliot influence in literature, in that he was trying so hard to appear deep and profound to impress the academics, when in his heart of heart he just wanted to write something that was true; DFW spoke of a "New Sincerity", i.e. the end of post-Eliot insincerity and return to actual poetry / literature. Pessoa is actually the "New Sincerity"; if we had gotten Pessoa instead of Eliot, we would never have needed a "New Sincerity", we would never have had to hear about Rupi Kaur and maybe DFW wouldn't have killed himself.

Esto es el fin.

tl;dr
Stevens is the best modernist poet

...

Do you honestly believe rupi kaur has read, understood and is reacting against Eliot??

Against his influence at least.

i'm sort of dumbfounded by all the effort you put into some very pointless claims. pitting two artists' work against each other and declaring a "winner" is literally high school cafeteria talk.

good thread op

>T.S. Eliot
>t. can't Latin

>Why? Because the poet is not a mere literary historian or museum curator whose task it is to arrange what past poets have done in a new way; rather, the task of the poet is to rediscover what is truly and eternally poetic, which all good poets of the past also happened to discover. As Goethe put it: "All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again."
You're misreading this quote, read again.
>Poets are rightly sick-to-death of having to put on haughty airs of profundity and erudition, just to write damned poetry that wouldn't be sneered at by the damned academic snobs.
I quite like it and write like it. You're making the base assumption that you A, understand poetry -while admitting shortcomings in your research-, and B that you can then evaluate others on this self-evident paradigm.

Don't be a pussy-bitch, Pessoa user wrote a good essay.

It's true that Eliot's hermeticism comes from his referential style and it does, indeed, make some of his poetry impenetrable for people who have not yet developed the kind of canonical awareness required to decode every allusion. It's still an interesting hypothetical game to play. I definitely think you're right about the current Watts essay controversy - the post-Eliot style that led to the construction of poetry as a kind of academic discipline, or institution, leaves it open to exactly the same criticism as other western institutions ("my authentic woman of colour experience will take down ebil white male poetry").

This poem is dumpster fire. The people that keep poetry alive are academics, almost all have read snippets of Virgil. I'd respect it if his poem were well written.
>If science wants to be truthful,
What science is more truthful than the science of things without science?
Did he die from a curable disease? Golly i hope so
>valid.
>implying you know valid in a schema that is trying to disrupt conceptions of valis

Modernism is fucking over clichés. Let's provide the terminal logic to this:
>Write poetry about not reading poetry
>encourage others to do the same
>they do and write their own and ignore yours
>Writer's are trash and think their "genius (lol)" is unique
The modern poetry is for idiots that get to feel coddled in their unintelligence by the nascent accessibility of their own vindication through tumblr and insta

I'm glad you put so much effort into this thread OP.

Stopped reading when you said that his works are pretentious. That's a word used by intellectuals who like to think their knowledge of a certain subject is limitless and so feel insecure when they come across acclaimed artwork they either don't like or simply don't get.

Oh bullshit of course Eliot is pretentious. That doesn't mean it isn't good or that the quality debases it in any way. It just is what it is.

Good and pretentious>good
Because one I enjoy, the other I enjoy and am impressed

If you think you can find something pretentious but also enjoyable and impressive, you don't really understand what "pretentious" means.

You might think something is pretentious which SOMEONE ELSE finds impressive, but that's not the same thing.

Pretentious things are not, by definition, impressive - they're TRYING to be impressive.

This is a good thread; I think you make good points.

However, I have to acknowledge, this might just be because I share your own taste.

I don't think much of Eliot either - he has some good lines, and he's an intelligent critic, but that's about it; I wouldn't read him for pleasure.

However, a lot of people I respect do rate him very highly, so I'm not at all sure the fault isn't mine.

This is true for SOME of his poetry. Prufrock or the Magi for example are very acccessible.

I will restate my original point
>and

Pessoa is the 2nd greatest writer of all time

But there have already been reactions against Eliot, namely Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara, fuck, even some of Ashbery's work (certain poems from Some Trees etc.) is very accessible.

Fernando "DUDE THERE ARE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS LIKE KANTS IN MY HEAD AND I COULD JUST PUT THEM DOWN ON THE PAPER BUT I WONT LOL" Pessoa might have sonorous qualities in his original, but in translation he is infanitle, pretentious, and bombastic.

Funny those are the exact same words I would use to describe your post

>Fernando "DUDE THERE ARE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS LIKE KANTS IN MY HEAD AND I COULD JUST PUT THEM DOWN ON THE PAPER BUT I WONT LOL" Pessoa

Read the poem again that's not what he's saying. He's saying that he's divorced from life and lives it as a passive spectator, and that while he is dreamt more accomplishments than Napoleon and thought up more philosophies than Kant, he never accomplished or defined a single one of them due to his general indifference and alienation.

>infanitle, pretentious, and bombastic.

You're just reacting to one of his personalities who he intentionally chose to embody these traits, although not to the degree you imagine.

who's the first?

Eliot

Don't forget that he went to England and larped as English at a time when they were desperate for a first rate writer. They touted his works while pretending that Joyce had no merit.

if this isn't recognized as the pinnacle of modernism within 100 years, i'll eat my cyber-hat

>Eliot's influence on modern poetry is nearly omnipresent, burdening what would otherwise be decent poetry with the need of imitating Eliot in his tedious impenetrability;

Is this your first thread about this? I remember posting in one like this about a year or two ago. You mentioned his influence on pop music.

Eh, it seems that you are prejudiced against Eliot because he is a poet diametrically different from Pessoa.

Your reading is flawed because you are either reading Eliot in Pessoa's terms or on your own terms, when a poet can only be read in their own terms. Eliot's obscurity, which is most evident in The Waste Land, is part of the poetic statement he is trying to make in the poem.

Really I don't see why you have to diminish Eliot to exalt Pessoa. You could clearly argue that Pessoa is the greatest Modernist poet just by analyzing his poems (or those of his heteronyms, though then Pessoa wouldn't be the greatest but instead Ceiro or de Campos). You could have argued that Eliot is a bad poet on the basis of his own output, though he had some three phases as a poet, so that wouldn't be as easy.

Not only that, but you are basing your diminishing of Eliot on the basis that he is a difficult poet, that his style cannot be imitated but still that his imitators have ruined poetry? Why Eliot, but not Pound or Joyce?

tl;dr check your bias and learn how to read poetry

Pound is the actual shit poet of modernism

fake news, conspiracy theory level shit

>Pound is the actual shit poet of modernism

Pound, for example, was pretentious in the Cantos, well, only in some parts of them. In others he really wrote excellent poetry. His shorter poems are also better, and his criticism is quite good.

Pound was more the Great Patron of the arts during Modernism. Without him, a lot of great Modernist writers wouldn't have written as well as they did, or wouldn't have been published as easily.

I chose Eliot as the foremost and most influential of Modernist poets, and whose influence on subsequent poetry has been the greatest and, I would argue, the most harmful. It's necessary to diminish Eliot in order to exalt Pessoa because, as you say, they are "diametrically different" and take opposite stances on key elements of modern poetry; in this sense, they are mutually exclusive and one most to a certain extent choose one and exclude the other.

>Not only that, but you are basing your diminishing of Eliot on the basis that he is a difficult poet, that his style cannot be imitated but still that his imitators have ruined poetry?

It's not that his style cannot be imitated, but that his style is too idiosyncratic and therefore that his imitators will not only fail to match him, but that they will fail to write good poetry because there is little of universal value in his poetry. He is a bad influence on poetry. If Pessoa was in Eliot's place, we would have had a lot more good poets and a lot less bad ones.

I'll agree that he was a hell of an agent, and Metro was a great poem, but that's as far as i'll go rn

Great threa, OP. I don't know much about Elliot, but you brought some valid point about Pessoa. I hardly see Pessoa discussed in depth here.

>Fernando "DUDE THERE ARE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS LIKE KANTS IN MY HEAD AND I COULD JUST PUT THEM DOWN ON THE PAPER BUT I WONT LOL" Pessoa might have sonorous qualities in his original, but in translation he is infanitle, pretentious, and bombastic.

This kind of "criticism" always appear on Pessoa threads. You probably didn't even read the Book of Disquiet( only book I see being brought up here) or, if you read, you could comprehend Bernado Soares logic or his personality. After all, as OP has pointed out, each heteronym is a different person with their own biography and style.

None of the things you've mentioned are poetic merits. The true measures of poetic skill are good music, talent for rhyme and rhythm,plan of progression apt metaphors and vivid imagery etc

Eliot does not possess a talent for any of those things. He writes verse, but not poetry.

what the fuck are you on? Eliot has arguably the most musical free-verse you'll ever read, with a clear talent for rhyme and rhythm

i honestly don't see how you could think any of the things you just said

>the most musical free-verse
That's not a very high bar to begin with lol
Post some of his music. I can think of many minor poets with better music- Swinburne, Landor, etc

>The true measures of poetic skill are good music, talent for rhyme and rhythm,plan of progression apt metaphors and vivid imagery etc
>Eliot does not possess a talent for any of those things. He writes verse, but not poetry.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

i'm not arguing with the type to disparage free verse as a whole, you guys are always larpers

The beginning is mediocre at best, the ending awful.
>Streets that follow like a tedious argument
>Of insidious intent
Worthless stuff.

Compare it with what Swinburne does in much harder verse

Out of Dindymus heavily laden
Her lions draw bound and unfed
A mother, a mortal, a maiden,
A queen over death and the dead.
She is cold, and her habit is lowly,
Her temple of branches and sods;
Most fruitful and virginal, holy,
A mother of gods.
She hath wasted with fire thine high places
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.

Personae is one of the top collections of poetry of Modernism, and his "translations" (more like free interpretations and rewritings) of Chinese poetry are some of the best. I think there you can clearly see Pound's merit as a poet. He basically introduced and explained by example Chinese and Japanese aesthetics to the Western literary scene.

>None of the things you've mentioned are poetic merits.

I didn't even mention anything, you imbecile. If you are thinking about his "obscurantism", I only said that it was not without purpose in the Waste Land. You have to be a very bad reader not to see what Eliot is doing there, since he goes to great pains to explain it in the poem itself. If you want music, rhythm and progression of imagery and metaphor, and on top of that an explanation of the obscure references he uses in his major poem, read it here:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Very stilted, but still better than his later work. It's no so much music and imagery, as jazzy noises and pompous phrases.

>a patient etherized upon a table
>certain half-deserted streets
>one-night cheap hotels
>sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells

These images are either incoherent or entirely conventional.

>Streets that follow like a tedious argument
>Of insidious intent

Pompous meaninglessness. Really, ask yourself what it means for a street to "follow" like a tedious argument of . . . insidious intent -?

>Let us go then, you and I,
>The muttering retreats
>Let us go and make our visit.

Padding phrases to jazz up the rhythm.

>To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
>Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Sums up Eliot's entire poetry kek.

I get it. You like meter and rhyme.
But as far as the criteria you listed (rhythm, progression, metaphor and vivid imagery) the Eliot poem is superior.
Even though the swinburn poem is in strict (not necessarily hard as you said) meter Eliot has better rhythm and musicality. Eliots metaphors are more original and the imagery is more vivid.

I like swinburn and don't believe in rating poetry, but in this case the objective criteria are met better by Eliot.

show me the swinburne you insist is better

nvm, i found the lady of pain poem you showed.

he's pretty clearly lesser based on these examples

>I didn't even mention anything, you imbecile
You said his shitty "statement" has something to do with the merit of his work, but it doesn't.

Anyway, the stanza you posted is not very good music. Compare it with that of this very minor writer:
Ah what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

>Son of man,
>You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
>A heap of broken images,

>I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Somehow Eliot manages to sound more emptily pretentious when he's writing clearly.

Look at this abomination from The Waste Land:

>By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
>Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
>Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
>But at my back in a cold blast I hear
>The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

The parody of the psalm "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept" must count as one of the most disgustingly pretentious lines in the history of poetry.

Musicality =! Strict meter and rhymes my dude

the red rock parallel is the height of poetic music,

much better than that William Blake understudy

>But as far as the criteria you listed (rhythm, progression, metaphor and vivid imagery) the Eliot poem is superior
It really isn't. The rhythm is poor and faltering, none of the images are not interesting or vivid, the rhyme is standard. The metaphors may be more "original" but they are also awkward and ineffective.
>responds to the wrong person
>response is "lol ur wrong"
This fucking board is full of reddit

>It's necessary to diminish Eliot in order to exalt Pessoa

No, it's not. That's a very juvenile way of looking at things. I'm sure Pessoa wouldn't have wanted nor cared about being named the foremost poet of Modernism (Eliot certainly would have cared, and worked a lot to earn that title, deserved or underserved, that's frankly a matter of opinion and pretty much a teenager argument).

>they are mutually exclusive and one most to a certain extent choose one and exclude the other.

How come? Because they had different poetics? I like both Pessoa and Eliot. I'm not sure whether that makes me or you wrong.

>If Pessoa was in Eliot's place, we would have had a lot more good poets and a lot less bad ones.

That's only a suposition from which you distill your whole argument. It has no ground in reality. I could equally say "Pessoa's style is so diverse yet so idiosyncratic, that his imitators will not only fail to match him, but that they will fail to write good poetry because there is little of universal value in his poetry". And guess what? I'll be as correct as you are.

>good music
>pretentious

Somehow you seem to think that these subjective criteria form a good argument. What does "pretentious" even mean for you? That he sounds grand? Well, he is fucking writing the major poem of the first half of the 20th century. Not only that, but you make it sounds like if it's not mild, then it is pompous.

Eliot is not even my favorite poet, but you guys don't have anything against him.

>Musicality =! Strict meter and rhymes my dude
Did anyone say that it did?
>William Blake understudy
Do you mean classical influence? That poem has very little in common with Blake.

dawg, you're an idiot
faltering and jarring rhythms/rhymes are a consequential part of Eliots themes.

>Did anyone say that it did?
It's implied in that rigid poem

How is the rhyme in prufrock in any way standard?
The fragmentation (faltering/jarring) is intentional and contribute to the themes.

>The rhythm is poor and faltering
The stresses fall in the important words. It's not iambic pentameter, clearly, but it's not trying to be it either.

>none of the images are not interesting or vivid
So you are saying they are?

>the rhyme is standard
Agreed, but there are some interesting rhymes (streets/retreats, argument/intent), though they are not the best in the poem.

>it's shitty to illustrate le shittiness of his themes
I agree that it's rigid, that's why I chose that one and the swinburne one. They show that better music than Eliot's can be found in the confines of a constrictive verse.

>shitty=jarring
>le
dawg, you're an idiot

>if I don't like something, it's objectively shitty!

God I love poetry

Again, that's not a poetic merit. What he's writing is verse, but not poetry.
Moreover, jarring on purpose is still jarring. Even with a a simpleton theme for your audience of idiots. Pic related

>I'm sure Pessoa wouldn't have wanted nor cared . . .

Doesn't matter what he wanted. Kafka wanted his works burned but he still deserves his place as one of the greatest 20th century writers. This is not a mere battle of egos or trophies; it's a matter of literary criticism and artistic judgement, which is of greater importance than any poet's ego.

It's important to raise Pessoa's reputation and deflate Eliot's not just as a matter of personal justice to the persons involved, but in service of the art of poetry has suffered great detriment due to this hitherto false judgement.

>That's only a suposition from which you distill your whole argument. It has no ground in reality. I could equally say "Pessoa's style is so diverse yet so idiosyncratic, that his imitators will not only fail to match him, but that they will fail to write good poetry because there is little of universal value in his poetry". And guess what? I'll be as correct as you are.

Eliot himself wrote in his essay on Milton how Shakespeare's poetry has a good formative effect upon budding poets whereas Milton has a bad one. It's the same with Eliot, where in terms of modern poetry Eliot stands in for Milton and Pessoa for Shakespeare. Pessoa's style (or rather, styles) is much freer and equips the junior poet with a greater range of expression, whereas Eliot's style is crippling: a fact well attested to by the stunted nature of much of post-Eliot poetry.

>What does "pretentious" even mean for you?

Too concerned with showing off one's erudition at the expense of the work itself; an egotistical obsession with proving one's intelligence that gets in the way of the poetry.

It's not even particularly jarring except for argument with intent. It's just awkward verse.

>jarring on purpose is still jarring.

No shit, you just cracked open the mysteries of poetry.

Perhaps you are not aware of it, but there is a difference when something is done with purpose and contributes to the overall theme of a poem, and when something is done because the poet is incompetent.

found a Swinburne line to describe you

>Thou art noble and nude and antique;

>s done with purpose and contributes to the overall theme of a poem
If that's your point, you haven't even been following the discussion here. My whole point has been to separate actual poetic merits from shitty "big themes" for little brains.

You sound like those clowns who enjoy contemporary art lmao

>It's important to raise Pessoa's reputation and deflate Eliot's

Well, maybe in your little town nobody knows Pessoa, but outside of it, where it matters, everyone does. Pessoa is known as a major writer, despite Eliot's reputation. Believe me, neither of them need your assisstance in rising or deflating their merit, much less in a Singaporese 4D chess internet forum.

Now that I think about it, you are blaming Eliot for the incompetence of poets that came after him. Not only that, but you are using Eliot's own argument against himself. That's an intelligent move, I admit that, but it fails to demerit him, as it was your initial intention.

Pessoa ir arguably also guilty of this, except that he succeeds in inserting his erudition into his poetry. Not unlike what Eliot does.

>My whole point has been to separate actual poetic merits from shitty "big themes" for little brains.

That's the most brainlet thing you could have said.

>ugga ugga big ideas for little brayn

shit, you must HATE Shakespeare, he'd switch to anapests in the casual mention of a horse

Nigga, at least quote the correct guy.

and gives us plenty of great stuff in between, brainlet

>actually thinks breaking meter patterns is bad

You're a joke.

It really depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? When it's done poorly, it's bad. Eliot does so poorly and is bad, my little brainlet

why don't you like poetry user?

Haha was nice reking you Eliotards and your lame ears, but I've gtg. My gf is hosting a lit a party here in Manhattan and we'll be sampling fine wine and giving readings of Wordsworth and Housman and at the end we'll be presenting our joint disquisition on swinsburne's reinvention of a new type of verse so late in the existence of English poetry.

Have a nice fucking life brainlet nerds, see you soon lmao

based

bye!

Great essay. I appreciate the deep thought and effort- a rarity on this board.

Now that he's gone, Swinburne's not that bad.

This is a thorough write-up on the matter but that doesn't make it good or correct.

I personally prefer Pessoa over Eliot quite easily, but there is no reason for you to pit them against eachother in your argument. It is frankly absurd and it is troubling that you spent so much time on this and didn't realize that.

It is not Eliot's fault that nearly everyone after him wrote bad poetry. Just as it is not the fault of video games that some young males commit murder. Everyone reads Eliot everyone read Milton, thats all there is to it.

In my opinion Pessoa is the Shakespeare of the 20th century. Eliot is very good and one can easily learn very much from him but he is very limited in his viewpoint, something Pessoa could not relate to.

If Pessoa was famous everyone would misunderstand him too. We can see ample evidence of this in this very thread.

why do these threads always have to be a dick contest? why do we always pretend our opinions are Facts? how many times does the word "objective" get thrown around as if it had weight? why don't you admit you simply like one guy better than another and fill the blank space between them with all the cherry-picked criticism you could find on the subject?

you mad ahahah

Great thread

>In my opinion Pessoa is the Shakespeare of the 20th century.
Why you say so?

That would be boring desu
Plus, everyone know it's subjective so there's no use mentioning it

Lol

This thread may have saved me from writing anymore ego poetry. What you describe as elliot's conception of poetry is mine to a tee.

Question for you OP: I'm a Brazilian but I've lived in the US long enough that my English is much better than my Portuguese, which is actually pretty shit conversationally, although I can have a conversation fluently; my vocabulary is pretty limited though. I've been thinking about getting the Book of Disquiet in Portuguese, but I'm worried much of the Portuguese will go right over my head. Are there any other collections of Pessoa's work you think I'd be better off looking at, or would I be fine with The Book of Disquiet?

>tfw you're a robot autist but you were born in the right country so you get to read Pessoa untranslated

Not OP, but portuguese who has read The Book of Disquiet.

Not to discourage you, since it's a beautiful book which I wish you could read, but not only is the vocabulary very complex, it is also very reliant on complicated European grammar and syntax.
If you only have a limited knowledge of portuguese, brazillian at that, I'd recommend you get into some of his poetry and maybe some different, simpler portuguese prose for practice. You're not likely to need too much, but you definitely need to get some in.