There are never technique and theory threads. Metre, form,...and exercises, things like that. Why?
The trained and skilled among you should be making those threads. Instead, you use the board as a means of escaping literature in a way that is "still about literature." Like a Chef at a McDonalds.
The tendency now is to have discussion involve as much personal experience as possible. The word autistic gains relevance in its etymological sense, deriving from αὐτός, (autos, "self"). But what can one, that isn't you, do with your personal experience?
It is a paradoxical consequence of this probing of the self that we become utterly without identity. Because we get used to treating the personal and subjective as an art form, we share, and host, experience to a highly mimetic degree.
You were great up until you started psuedo-philosophizing about memes
Veeky Forums posters don't post about technique and theory because they fell for the vers libre meme hard
Jeremiah Russell
judging by the critique threads around here very few Veeky Forumsizens actually have an ear for metre. I gave up sharing anything on here a while ago because very few know how to provide genuinely useful critique. When I would share something ambitious in its metrical and formal nuances, people would dismiss it as pretentious garbage. When I wrote in the most basic iambic modes, people would claim I'm too good to be posting here. It simply isn't worth the time.
Jason Garcia
How do you get critique of your own work then?
Dominic Carter
I share with tutors, coursemates, and my writing group. Sometimes it pays not to be an autist who can only present his art anonymously online.
Colton Cruz
we have Haiku threads from time to time
Anthony Lopez
How do I get Veeky Forums friends? I'm not in college anymore and I'm not particularly charismatic or handsome, but I have decent social skills. Is there any chance I can meet people who take writing seriously? How did you do it?
Aaron Powell
Still I will say that that is not enough...
Eli Murphy
according to pound only published poets gets a say in these matters
David Torres
I'm a literature student, so it wasn't hard to find people who were as engaged in writing as I was. Still, it isn't hard to find writing workshops/groups outside of college - you do have the internet at your fingertips after all! Even I have a natural revulsion towards sharing my work with others, and people can be very cutting, but it wasn't until I felt comfortable openly discussing it that I actually started to improve. Talking through the barriers which prevent you from expressing what you really want to say can do wonders for both your writing and your humility
Blake Scott
Quoth where? And I would think his mind would change where he to see Veeky Forums's horror here.
Jaxon Harris
Pound also hated Jews
Parker Davis
In what ways did you improve when people started critiquing your work?
I'm not sure how comfortable I would be in sharing my work but I guess it's good to try.
Ryder Bailey
I had it slightly misremembered. He wrote >Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. which makes more sense for him to say. Still presumably disqualifies everyone here.
Mostly it forced me to stop maintaining some kind of ostentatious pretence about being a writer. Its good when people let you bounce ideas off them, but I've always had a large vocabulary and it isn't fun when people call you out on your purple prose or ridiculous verbosity. Sincerity and simplicity is so much more effective than people are willing to give credit for, and when I embraced that I found myself coming up with stronger ideas at a far more rapid pace.
Zachary Lee
>unpublished whiner bitching about Pound's unique politics I'm sorry, but I have to direct my attention to more important ideas and figures
Ryder Ramirez
>Metre, form,...and exercises, things like that. Why?
Carter Bennett
what are some good books to read to learn about metre and other technical aspects of poetry?
Jose Adams
I don't understand you image thinkers. You mean it is because you are brain-dead, or in a coma?
I say read Pound's ABC of Reading, and re-read Shakespeare, Milton, and the poets with the formal aspects in mind. The point is to see it in action.
Kayden Ramirez
Because formalism is garbage for pseuds looking to feel sophisticated for recognising patterns.
William Watson
Formal technique is the domain of pseuds. It relies on an exclusive language to explain incredibly simple concepts and an interior discourse which holds extremely little relevance to people's experience of texts. Hence why so few people are interested in investing intellectually in the theory which the pseuds claim is a mark of an elite status.
Small pond for small fish.
Juan Rogers
Because It's fucking boring
Grayson Lewis
You're the psued here. You need to learn the rules to be able to break them effectively, and knowing how to construct pleasing and musical verse is the only way to be a good poet. Otherwise you're just writing random bullshit with line breaks.
Luis Phillips
>You're the psued here. >[immediate cliche platitude]
Jack Rivera
Citation?
Justin Long
It's cliche because it's true. You don't understand poetry.
Easton Sullivan
For example, how can bearing this >-/-/-/-/-/ in mind mean "investing intellectually in theory."
I don't ask much. Shakespeare's constancy helps the actor memorize and deliver, helps the audience tune in to the voice's rhythm as if it were music, and the writer organize his ideas.
If it holds "extremely little relevance to people's experience of texts" it is because literary and poetic attention is in decline.
Xavier Torres
>You don't understand poetry.
You're basing this on what?
Camden Howard
have you considered that this is an anonymous board, and that this is the reason everyone is devoid of identity? have you considered the possibility that your diagnosis of autism is a transferential projection of your own selfish, masturbatory personality onto the blank face of the anonymous Other?
Grayson Clark
On your dismissal of formal rules. You think Ezra Pound just said "fuck it" and wrote musical, effective free verse without deeply studying the classics and poetic theory?
Ayden Clark
Oh no I get it, I'm Literature gradute, I just don't care
Asher Fisher
Nah, you're obviously a teenager
Blake Jackson
What do you want a photo of my degree? Get outta here
Kevin Lewis
You think contemporary poets are trying to write reflexive poetry playing with the medium itself? Did you miss the whole latter half of the 20th century where conceptualism and post-modernism eclipsed formalism because it was inadequate for our times? Poetry doesn't need musicality, even if it is in its 'origins'. There's not much that poetry needs at all. Formalism is garbage for pseuds, etc.
Parker Hernandez
So your goal is to make conceptual, post-modernist poetry?
wew
Thomas Gray
yeah post one faggot. with a timestamp
Henry Green
Am I a contemporary poet?
Not sure what your response had to do with my post though.
William Myers
Formalism isn't "irrelevant". Formalism isn't even a thing, it's just a label psueds put on all poetry that follows rules.
Rules are meant to be broken, but they can't be if you don't understand them. Half of poetry is in it's presentation and musicality, and you can be a pomo faggot who does away with all of it but you wouldn't be remembered. As I said, Ezra Pound had a deep understanding of poetry, that's why he was so good.
Joseph Campbell
>this is an anonymous board, and that this is the reason everyone is devoid of identity You aren't very subtle. And my diagnosis was from observation, of critique threads and the rest. And the word autism is not "mine", it's been used very often lately, remember?
Anonymity is different in different contexts. In a crowded city, you are anonymous by multiplication. You feel diminished, and feel exactly like all others, a fragment. But online anonymity is very different. My point is that of the dissolution of the personal into the virtual, it's no fragmentation, whilst the locus of what would be your own self is given the function of a sort of temporary and inconstant mimetic canvas, subservient to the virtual.
Aaron Jackson
Formalism is exactly what promotes conceptual bullshit. It guts the act of creation when poets are putting the vivisection of a work into abstracted components ahead of the poem as a single entity.
John Cooper
Didn't they also conclude literature and erudition themselves were inadequate for our times? etc.
Asher Sanchez
So you're talking about "formalism" in the 20th century sense? You can be a good poet who understands the art of poetry and not be a "soulless formalist". You can be mindful of both sides. You know, like every good poet up until about 1970.
Colton Miller
I speak of it as an intellectual ideology. Which is important given the insufferable pretense of the OP. Its intrinsic merits as a discipline I likewise think is wholly underwhelming
Ryan Baker
i've read ABC of Reading, and while it was great, i'm looking for something a with a bit more of a basic approach to this kind of analysis. any recs?
Hunter Morales
>it's just a label psueds put on all poetry that follows rules.
No, it has a meaning. Medium specificity. The concept in conceptualism is a 'rule' but isn't formalism.
>Rules are meant to be broken, but they can't be if you don't understand them.
Contemporary poetry isn't concerned with 'breaking the rules'. It has nothing to do with the medium, like I already said. It's not reflexive.
>but you wouldn't be remembered.
Wow it's almost like the Romantic myth of the hero artist is something that doesn't concern the contemporary poet!
> Half of poetry is in it's presentation and musicality
Evidently not. Restating your opinion doesn't really change the fact that contemporary concerns are different than what you conceive of poetry to be. Maybe you should read more poetry.
Grayson Parker
OP just wants us to understand the principles of form. Do you want to be in the dark or not?
Isaac Taylor
So you only conceive of poetry as conceptualism vs formalism? What are these "contemporary concerns"?
People like you are more interested in novelty than in artistry, you're using elaborate justifications for simply not putting the work or study in to get a feel and understanding of poetry, which is why pomo bullshit is so attractive to you.
Anthony Sanders
Nonsense, I think OP also wants to wave his over estimated cocklet around
Gabriel Taylor
In what way is formalism not entirely centered around novelty?
Joshua Brown
I'm not defending formalism.
Gabriel Garcia
I volunteer at my local library. Even without volunteering, often times libraries have writing clubs or lectures you can attend.
Jason Collins
>I don't understand you image thinkers. You mean it is because you are brain-dead, or in a coma? lol!!
Jack Foster
>formalism is bad! flew in from miami beach...
Evan Smith
>So you only conceive of poetry as conceptualism vs formalism?
No, they are just the most relevant to the discussion.
>People like you are more interested in novelty than in artistry
I don't know who you think you're talking to. I have an interest in formalism, but only historically. I can appreciate artistry.
>using elaborate justifications for simply not putting the work or study in to get a feel and understanding of poetry
I'm not the one who is trying to define poetry while ignoring anything that isn't formalist. Not very rigorous.
I wish I could tell you your hypocrisy here isn't exactly what I was alluding to when I said formalism is for pseuds looking to feel sophisticated. Formalism has its uses, sure -- different forms are commonly taught to writing students -- and certainly there are non-pseuds who are formalist. But the serious advocates for formalism I have seen on the internet all want to give the appearance of being knowledgeable without putting in the work; exactly what they're calling attention to in others.
Josiah Long
No, OP wants everyone else to do the work so he can associate with them.
>There are never technique and theory threads. >The trained and skilled among you should be making those threads
He's not talking about himself.
Juan Morris
OP here, I just mean it's an overlooked aspect.
When it is so, it is as if we're looking at a creature without a skeleton. Or a broken leg. Walks awkwardly and screams at every step—and doesn't even know its problem.
The point in technique is that it make the work articulate. But it's true that "formalism", in the sense employed by some ITT, can lead to a sort of arthritis.
Still it remains a fact that Veeky Forums is AWFULLY biased against technical aspects. The first post thinks the reason is "because they fell for the vers libre meme hard." But in many cases it is simple ignorance. Art will soon become a tiresome field if all agree, consciously or no, upon this amnesiac state.
Kayden Scott
>Art will soon become a tiresome field if all agree, consciously or no, upon this amnesiac state.
Cooper Morales
Again, I don't speak image
Ethan Anderson
>people actually upset because someone's asking why there isn't more discussion of form how disgusting
Andrew Clark
Oh it shows
Julian Young
Fuck you.
Mason Bailey
Form is digusting, my dick has a form, horrible
Eli Clark
truth, also realized that sometimes a poem is just a wank instead of a baby
you can need to write something to get it out quickly to focus on more important projects
Aiden Morales
straight-up retarded t. someone who actually reads poetry
William Murphy
>sometimes a poem is just a wank instead of a baby