>But from this moving opening she falls almost immediately into the common trap of any public defence of the humanities: slightly condescending waffle which ignores the simple fact that high art is difficult. Poetry has left people’s lives because it got harder just as people’s lives got easier, and the 20th century taught the West to value ease.
Do you agree with this statement?
I am literally the only person I know irl that appreciates poetry. I'm in a fucking liberal arts college and the children here read Shakespeare - which is very easy to read - all in one fucking breath as quickly as they can.
There is no appreciation for the stage anymore either.
Oh yes, poetry is the last thing I think about.
I personally never had an interest in it, it's amusing to play with words for something nearing ten minutes before it grows really dull.
confirmed for never having read a poem and uncovering all the hidden meanings embedded in its wonderful arrangement of words
Literally no one reads poetry except English professors and pseudo intellectuals going through a phase. It's sad because the upper classes would commonly read poetry prior to the modern era - not anymore. Now no one gives a shit.
>Literally no one reads poetry except English professors and pseudo intellectuals going through a phase
Where did you get your statistics from?
Poetry thread?
>Though I than He - may longer live
>He longer must - than I -
>For I have but the power to kill,
>Without - the power to die -
Is this stanza not dope beyond all belief, homies?
The way media is reported and all the pop listicles and what have you means people take everything at face value
even though poetry is perfect for the amount of text our attention spans in the 21st century digital age, nobody knows how to actually "read" a poem
i frankly find it terrible that schools teach Shakespeare in the method of "themes" and "ideas" rather than studying the language used
close reading is a spook
I still read Rilke sometimes. But yes, he's obviously correct.
The problem is that high art clearly was the go-to entertainment for the bourgeoisie and the upper-classes prior to the invention of cinema and other forms of entertainment that are more instantly gratifying.
It really doesn't surprise me that visual arts for example have usurped literature in some ways, because humans are very visual creatures.
>someone tells me they're a huge "theatre geek"
>ask them who they're favorite playwrites are
>"uhh...not that type of theatre lol I meant like Wicked and Hamilton :)"
and it's always a fucking woman
is that Dickenson?
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
>uncovering all the hidden meanings
stop talking like this. poetry doesnt have "hidden meanings." it has allusions, scansion, metaphors, allegories, enjambments, stanzas, structures, functions, but no "hidden meanings." as long as prosyletize poetry as some kind of rubiks cube and tout interpretation as its solving, no one would ever be more interested in it than they are in the fucking daily crossword. poetry should be marketed as a master class in the flexibility of language, in the polyvocality of seemingly simple enunciations, and the effect of small adjustments in syntax on the mind. it should be billed as it originally was by the Greeks, as RHETORIC, as persuasive speech made more persuasive by masterful use of a set of devices. then maybe, in a culture of cultural capital, you could convince people to give a shit about it. but as long as you think of it as a puzzle or worse a riddle, you will only get the attention of people entertained by things like that: children.
poetry reading is close reading you dickhead
hidden meanings was meant to refer to things you wouldnt pick up if you just read a poem as fast as prose
what a stupid, high school english teacher way to approach poetry, you nigger fucker
do you think i am advocating prose reading style for poetry?
I'd say that it's partially true. There probably has been some effect attributable to consumerism that ease has become more valued, but I don't think it can entirely explain the decline of poetry.
Some other factors I can think of:
1. The invention of the novel. It's a more popular format and it can also be just as difficult.
2. Modernist writers wanting to "make it new" threw off the restraints of poetry for prose, as they favored more experimental and free forms over stifled classical forms. Even Whitman adopted free verse.
>2. Modernist writers wanting to "make it new" threw off the restraints of poetry for prose, as they favored more experimental and free forms over stifled classical forms. Even Whitman adopted free verse.
Even still, free verse and other experimental forms of poetry and nothing like prose
The formal vocabulary of poetry, and the intellectual-referential apparatus in which it's founded, is no longer native or efficient for people today.
But it's a function of modernity and NOT of a change in poetry itself.
Poetry is dying because hacks like Rupi Kaur are getting published and sad little girls who don't wanna feel like they're in the wrong eat it up.
Poetry should not be your excuse to be a shitty human.
This. Contemporary poets don't even know what meter is, and think that poetry is deep quotes broken up into verse.
You NEED to know meter to be able to write good free verse. How can you break the rules if you don't know them?
I don't think poetry has to be difficult at all. Learning is about repetition. If we heard even the 'difficult' poetry as often as we heard Gangnam Style or watched Family Guy, we'd know hundreds of poems by heart, instead of knowing hundreds of gibberish lyrics and Peter Griffin quotes.
>it's amusing to play with words for something nearing ten minutes before it grows really dull.
It's like the thing is emotionless... although it's the exact contrary, you robot.
yeah this is exactly what im saying is boneheaded and you do a disservice to poetry if you tell people this.
Why
Stealing that second line for some performance poetry. Thanks user.
Poetry is not as popular but more people have access to more music than ever before. Big friggin deal.
I want to get into poetry
Recomend me stuff (in english or spanish)
I dont get this equivalence
The more people say poetry is shit and stupid, the more I read and write poetry.
the popularity of a particular medium isn't a reflection of some flaw in the culture, it's about technological availability and relevance. just because people don't read sonnets anymore doesn't mean "the 20th century taught the West to value ease" or whatever
On Doomsday!
Ever since the womb ‘til I'm back where my brother went
That's what my tomb will say
Right above my government, Dumile
Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who's to say?
>I am pretty sure poetry is doing just fine
ITT: people actually complaining about poetry being nowadays dead and not realizing this has always been its status
(and that it's the reason why poetry is beautiful)
Explain poetry to me, Veeky Forums. What am I supposed to get out of a poem? It's been fifteen years or so since highschool english class made me hate them, and I haven't approached it since.
I dont think your point is substantial enough to have gravity
This might be a good point, actually.
For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted—better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,
Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,
And trust me but you should, though! How much more,
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,
It makes me mad to see what men shall do
And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
Poetry is actually more popular than ever...it's simply that with the invention of recording devices people have returned to its origin and paired the form with music again, as it was in the time of Homer. Why read the words of an artist on a page when you can instead hear the words recited by the artist?
Talk to anyone who doesn't like poetry and 9 times out of 10 they'll have a favourite song lyric they can repeat to you.
Thats barely poetry
user's wasn't saying that it is poetry, though... not the in the sense we want it to be, anyway. I think user was just stating that it looks as if there's been a shift back to poetry's roots, viz: music. Whether or not the contemporary lyric rises back to the level of "good" poetry in the sense of the artistic standard we're on the hunt for, is probably to be seen.
But then again, think of all the shit lyrics, and the few gems among them. I don't imagine for one iota of a moment that all poetry in greek, latin or middle english, everything famous preceding, etc, etc. that we love so much was the only calibre of poetry produced in their respective times. There was shit greek poetry, and the poetry that lasted.
People that claim poetry is dead are doing nothing but fetishizing an already fetishized history.
So poems should just be skimmed over, got it.
Protip sailor, the "hidden meanings" he was talking about are exactly what you listed: syntax, meter, meaningful structure. To the layperson, these things are nit self-evident, they are not even aware that such elements and devices exist in their language. So those elements are obscured, or "hidden" to them.
how can poetry be on the decline, when the greatest poet in the history of mankind, the illustrious Dan Schneider, is still alive and kicking in our current day and age?!
...
As a poet and student of poetry, these are some the elements I consider when making or reading a poem: music or sound work (rhythm, alliteration, assonance, sometimes rhyme), especially skillfully done so that it works synergistically with the propositional content, original figurative language/troping (in the simplest terms, to me this means making interesting and unusual connections) and irony, handling of the line (enjambment, fronting, effective use of white space to control the pace (speed at which the reader's eye/mind move) of the poem, line length which strengthens or works with the propositional content). Tone and voice, skillful arrangement of words or syntax which departs from ordinary expression, in order to produce or heighten an emotional effect, sometimes wit (word play, punning, sound-alikes) and rhetoric.
>posting the same shit in multiple threads about some girl who liked Hamilton
get over yourself cunt