Hey user answer me

The difference is simple, no one was trying to convince him to enjoy that existence. He created poetry in spite of it.

Its faggots like which is why I personally do despise poetry. McDonalds is exactly that alternative to canned food. I say there's nothing wrong with cans

i see what youre saying but i think we are thinking of different things. i dont just mean the words on paper that one reads and that would give pleasure to other people just by reading them.

poetry is an experience that engages the whole being, and that is what is valuable in it. that is shows the testimony of an experience to which one can relate, as one engages, not merely in reading, but in a similar experience accompanied by that reading. it is that experience that we are not allowed today. that is poetry.

if you are gonna speak of the lao tse be aware that that text is not just 'poetry' as we see it, it was conceived, though a long time, in the core of a group of people engaging in a whole experience of 'merging with the tao'.

there is nothing wrong with cans if they remain as cans. but not if they are to replace actual food in people's minds, to the point a pineapple would be thought of as a lesser form of a pineapple can.

I cherish a tiny hope that you would direct your resentment towards the man, not poetry as such; just like one wouldn't let a vandalising twat make him grow resentful of hockey, if you can pardon such a clumsy analogy.

That being said, I can see why you would feel that way; and also I am genuinely delighted at your feelings about Villon's motives; the irony! That you, who despise poetry, should see its merits more clearly than it's fanboy over there

Now we're getting to the core of the problem.
That is, indeed, the value of poetry.
So we can assume that we are now dealing with value systems; and those are individual, not universal.

Ah yes, you're right. Tao Te Ting does have much broader context.
I'm just thinking that maybe that is precisely why poetry seems to be "respected more" in their culture; it is more closely connected with said culture's pillars.
Then again, I have never been to these parts of the world, so I'm only making assumptions here, based on God knows what.

the value systems are the content. but the form remains universal and that is what allows us to get in contact with other human beings beyond our community. it is not about japanese haiku or middle age christian poets, nor about songs in the pentatonic scale of ancient china or our classic music, but about the action of building those forms through human imagination, which can only be done as one experiences a full integration with ones surroundings and reach a state of harmony. it is the human imagination that has been allowed to thrive in its context which is identifiable in all those forms and that makes them relatable.

now, if you say it seems it is more respected there it is simply because it is accepted as what it is: a part of human life in all its unity. on the other hand here we divide the human being arbitrarily and then think we can choose this and discard that.

I must confess that I have never considered the value systems as the content, and will need some time to process it if we are to continue this discussion.

However, my first impression: it seems to me that, if that were your stance, then poetry would be but one of many mediums, a means to an end; the end being the universal unity.
If that's the case, than the unity itself is of value, not poetry per se; aren't you going a tad against yourself by setting yourself apart from people without inclinations towards poetry?
Isn't that a division?

>mfw superego=form

well i was just answering to your saying that the values are an individual thing.

but answering to your impression: yes of course what matters is the unity, not the means to reach it. the thing is that what is being called poetry here is not just one among other mediums, but it is the one and only medium, the rest are nothing but degenerated poetry. why? because we humans relate to our surroundings in terms of metaphor, that is the language of imagination, which is the way the mind builds the models that allow us to adapt to our surroundings and thus live life.

now, you are framing the thing in a way that your statement wont be false and will at the same time support your conclusion. because it is not simply that people dont have 'an inclination' towards poetry, it is not a thing of choice. it is our world that prevents them from getting in touch with their own human condition and so makes them live starved in many aspects of human life. in that way it is not me who is dividing but our world that prevents unity.

>the rest are nothing but degenerated poetry. why? because we humans relate to our surroundings in terms of metaphor, that is the language of imagination, which is the way the mind builds the models that allow us to adapt to our surroundings and thus live life.

What a load of unsubstanciated bollocks

Now we are getting into waters of opinions and impressions that cannot be rationally judged, and will probably drown our discourse there, but...

I would say that unity is achieved through shared experiences (which tend to go far beyond our rational, conscious ideology and prejudice and whatnot), and that in all the world has to offer, poetry -while valuable if indeed shared- is but one of the many ways of achieving that.
Consider dance! Consider travel!

"It is our world that prevents them from getting in touch with their own human condition" - that is a tricky statement.
Define "the world" in this sentence; and if you go along the lines of society, keep in mind that society is by and of people, not something aside them.
But my main point was that, while you claim to be an advocate for unity, you seem positively hostile towards those who choose different means of transcending loneliness, and in doing so, divide yourself from the rest of people. Possibly looking down on them.

add: Actually, lemme rephrase that.

Definitely looking down on them.
While you may insist on being "compassionate", since you give them the benefit of not being villains per se, but rather victims of world that prevents them from reaching your intellectual and spiritual heights; in that alone, you express your feelings of superiority, since you refuse to acknowledge the possibility that somebody might genuinely achieve the same by different means, and imply that whoever seeks and applies different means has been driven mad by "our times".

I have no doubt that you genuinely do feel that division, but it is, to this or that degree, of your own device.

>Now we're getting
>Now we are getting

Both of you are saying nothing, absolutely nothing. What you're doing here is intellectual ping pong, just a pathetic empty self contained game in which nothing can come out.

This is why poetry is dead as artform, why nobody cares to read it except those who do so for the sake of a fashion statement. Why slam poetry is predominant because its the noise of its dying fart bursting out of its bloated festering corpse.

People don't read it because there is no "intellectual and spiritual heights", its a dishonest fantasy that just sticks your head firmer into the sand. If you want to see poetry today look at the latest Apple conference, thats the worth of poetry today.

If you've read through that properly, you'd recognize the "intellectual and spiritual heights" as bitter sarcasm.

But while at it, do enlighten me on the value of the latest Apple conference.
I'm genuinely curious about things that you deem valuable and worthwhile. No irony here. Your worldview differs drastically from mine, and mine is rather stale, so please, do go ahead.

you know, im actually a pretty prosaic intellectually oriented person, but just found what the mind is like. poetry is not my opinion of the best way to reach unity, it is just what it is.

what im saying is something like this: the human cells need sugar as fuel, and the best content for this is fruits. in a word: to a need theres an optimal way of fulfillment. you can of course have refined or complex sugars, but that will be a lesser but not impossible way to feed the bodys need for simple sugars. thats not an opinion but simply the way the human body is made.

i have spent a lot of time in non fiction and prose only to find that a couple of poems make, not just a stronger, but a better impression if one engages in its reading as defined earlier.

now, answering to your division and superiority thing... im not sure what to say cause i didnt say what i said from that 'transcending loneliness' point of view. the unity i mean is not of a human community but of the world itself in every aspect, of which we humans are just one component. trying to keep in your perspective, the unity is not of fact but has to be built or at least allowed to develop, so intentionally preventing it will of course keep those who are not allowed to achieve it outside of it. but why call them 'inferior'? those are your terms. it would e like calling a chrysalis an inferior butterfly. it is just in a previous state. but now imagine a scientist forcing that chrysalis to remain in that state. it will be an unfullfilled butterfly. if we take it out of that sick mans lab it will join the rest of their kind by entering in harmony with, not just the butterflies, but the whole ecosystem.

thats the same guy speaking. read before you post.

The analogy with "unfulfilled butterflies" is exactly where I get the feeling of your superiority; in that analogy, you are the next stage to the ordinary people.
While you allow them the potential to become like you, they are not so yet, and possibly never will, because of unseen forces that wish to hinder their development for whatever reason.

My view is that we have no sense of values or the worthwhile if there is any, we've been stripped off them long ago and got a big firm cock up our arse from our political parties, our media and our advertizements that shot a sticky load of white hot cum in us until we were chocking it out.
I think to state our values is to immediate corrupt them, to commodify them, to brandize them. Keep them to yourself like you keep your anus to yourself and no one will mess with it.

>thats the same guy speaking.
Who gives a fuck, I threw nothing mistakenly at nothing intead of your nothing.

you are the one framing the things in a hierarchical scale naming superiors and inferiors. think of it as a horizontal thing. those are just steps. a child is not an inferior adult, he is just a stage of human development and in itself is as complete at the adult. and actually the adult cant be a complete adult if as a child he was hindered.

so what you say is not false, but your terms miss the point of what im saying cause what is important is not who is better but a clarification of our own condition in order to allow it to reach its due development.

Stinky fucking arse bubbles, blah blah blah blah
Whenfore did my cock throb as such ahahaha hinder me child hinder me adult AROOOOOO
BRING YOUR MIND UP, THE LEVELS AWAIT HERE

That actually makes quite a lot of sense.
I can respect that.
Thanks for elaborating.

You're not "resisting" anything, you little bitch. You're just so full of prejudice that you can't see the insane things that happen right in front of your face because they have a brand. Oh, what does it matter that you're eating animals and plants from all around the world, what's so incredible about the incessant production of art and food that cycles around millions of hands every year, and who gives a shit that you're capable of communicating with people from any part of the planet almost instantly and access millenia of knowledge with a tap of your fingers! Bring back those magical golden years when everyone had a master and horses shat on the street, because then it was so EASY to believe in dragons and fairies!

You fucking breathing meme. For all your supposed philantropy you couldn't see a teenager flipping burgers as something more than some idiot, if you grant them the dignity to regard them as something other than furniture. Because you fucking know everything there is to be known about the world already. The world is already done with, why should you even try?!

>why should you even try?!

You're right why should I? None of those things are impressive. Nothing that ants haven't already mastered long before us.
What has been lost from me is a moment between me as a child and my mother that is corrupted and raped by the stupid leviathan it rested on.

You're the one who thinks they aren't impressive. Things aren't impressive by themselves. You're the one that lets that memory be "corrupted" by a name. You're no different from the people who couldn't stand God, or the State, or the Man, or whatever. You can't be at ease with your surroundings because that would hurt your pathetic sense of ego that tells you you need to be special and unique for whatever reason (hint: it's because you've been told to think like that all your life, you drone).

So what if ants had already made things like that? Praise be to the ants! Maybe we could learn something from those bugs! Maybe we could regard them as something that shouldn't just be stepped on!

That memory of yours could be something precious, if you let it be. The degree of accuracy you say it has is already enviable. It's you that makes it banal. That company wasn't using you more than you were using it. Your mother was just as responsible for your childishness as you were. And hell, you were a child! But now you won't let yourself be like you were then. You were happy then! What happened to you? To hell with the fucking clown! Take back your past!

Can't you see you're furthering everything that you say you hate?

>ending a line with a preposition
Your poetry is garbage!

I want a t-shirt that says "raped by the stupid leviathan"

>Can't you see you're furthering everything that you say you hate?

Yes I do, I agree with your criticisms and insults entirely. The issue is I see no solution at hand and acceotance and incorporation of what I have impulse to reject ala David Foster Wallace seems inadequate, especially since I have never seen him truly accomplish it nor anyone else.
Resistence is a dead end, embracing is a dead end. I see no path forward and if I do I have to keep it silent.

Then don't embrace them. Just let things be. The problem isn't that you don't have precious memories from your past or whatever, that isn't my point. That idealized childhood is just another fantasy society is selling you. It's your choice to buy into it or not. You don't have to make things more meaningful than they are. If you want to oppose some things then do--just understand that opposition is inherent to the relationship, that it makes you.

It doesn't matter that you're pushing one way or another so long as you are still pushing. So if you're tired of pushing then don't. Be banal some times. Let yourself be superficial on some subjects. You're only a man, you're not supposed to have the deepest knowledge of the universe about every atom.

What is it that you want, exactly? To be admired, respected, loved? Wealth, pleasure, power? Do you think you are a monster for having these commonplace desires? Can you honestly say you're that important?

Ultimately I don't know, things are so screwy I've just been laying down and letting time pass in misery. Im so scared of manipulation and failure I've come to be suspicious and rejecting of any emotion.

Manipulation by whom? Because you can always find another level in which those supposed manipulators were manipulated themselves. So it wasn't that the capitalists betrayed the proletariat, they were controlled by idealogy; but that's just a result of biology; and that's just a result of some Will or whatever. You can go on forever until things don't mean anything anymore. What does it matter, really? Is it really that important that you aren't tricked in some way and can see the great, tough truth? Aren't you tired of trying to appear tough? I am. I'd rather open up and be a bit vulnerable a bit than choke. At some point you're just going to have to trust people to not be terrible. They won't be if they're smart.

You made some really good points. I'm a STEM guy, cyber security, top in the US Air Force youth competitions last year, all that jazz. I've always loved music, and I play a lot of instruments. My first real honors English class in high school opened my eyes to the romantic poets, particularly Lord Byron, but it took another couple of years for me to really get it. I'm in a literature class for college credit that's only offered to seniors right now (inb4 underage b&; I just got back from voting today), and my professor made us read and discuss "Mahogany" by Marcus Amaker.

He's the Charleston poet laureate, which is why we read him, and he writes primarily free verse. Over the course of our discussion, everything clicked. Regardless of rhyme and meter and everything else, all poetry works (to me at least), just like a program, or a composition. I realized just how much skill it takes to write really good poetry, and why it's such a revered art form by educated folks.

I decided to try my hand at poetry that night. Now I'm constantly writing, and I spend hours upon hours on every piece. I've made a friend in the top of our class who is my "editor", along with my professor. We ended up making a "Live Poet Society", and got Marcus himself to speak at our first meeting. It's been a wonderful experience, and without the right push I never would have had the opportunity to understand and enjoy poetry the way I do now.

I'll occasionally let family or friends read my work, and most of the time they like it, but don't really grasp to what I'm conveying. My professor, the other professors in the LPS, and Marcus Amaker on the other hand, absolutely eat my poems up, as well as offer up really good advice on the regular. Their education and appreciation for poetry as a legitimate art form marks the difference between them and other people. They tell me regularly to get a manuscript together and submit to the Walt Whitman award next year, whereas other people just kind of go "huh, yeah man that's really good". I myself have even started giving advice and workshopping with other peers of mine. It's a completely different atmosphere and level of depth.

(I just realized after rereading this I sound kind of cocky and braggadocios. I swear I'm not, I didn't mean to come across that way.)

I wish more people appreciated poetry. It's honestly kind of sad that so many people are missing out on something so rich. Then again I experience the same thing with music and computer science. There's definitely things I'm missing out on too. That's just how things will be. I doubt poetry will die out in the public mind, but for now it's just lying dormant. Who knows? Maybe it will make a major resurgence.

I wish I could found a "society" like yours.
Sadly, I'm no longer attending school, and trying my hand at gathering like-minded romantics seems like a lost cause already.

>Maybe it will make a major resurgence

The most prominent form of "poetry" I see is the odd inspirational sentence pasted over a photograph of a landscape.
It seems to me that the effort in creating beauty with words is lost,
since these quotes from unknowns only consist of the ramblings in a moment of clarity, rather than an attempt at creating a whole from loose emotion, and they are prized for it.

I don't suppose my idea of good poetry would match anyone's, but I'm looking for more than 6 words of relative wisdom to ponder over.

Good luck in general, user.

Just look around in your area, maybe you'll find something similar to join. A lot of "poetry" these days, like you said, is more often than not a bunch of garbled nonsense. Even some of what gets written by members in my LPS. It does feel like as a society these days we put less emphasis on spending time to make quality bodies of intrigue and more on quick, easy to digest trinkets. Good luck to you too, user.