/lit/ - Literature

Let's start off strong with some Adonis

The Solitary Land

I inhabit these fugitive words,
I live, my face my face’s lone companion,
And my face is my path,

In your name, my land
That stands tall, enchanted and solitary;
In your name, death, my friend.

had this stuck in my head all week

lourd = heaviness
neist = next

>>19391948
Isn't that from last thread?
Whose is it? I'm having a really hard time appreciating the dialect.

>>19391961
repost... wanted to fix the file...
it's by Hugh MacDiarmid, I've posted him a few times

>>19391962
The more I read it, the more I get it. It's kinda funny, too

>>19391962
lourd = heaviness
hert = heart
aye = always
noo - now
guid = good
licht = light
maun = must
a' = all
reist = should be neist = next
brackin' = breaking
mair = more

here's how it sounds aloud:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5il8xFgJJk

>Can meaningful epic poetry be written today?
In the sense of a "legend" Maybe in Afghanistan or North Korea. Current West lacks the "content" or need to incentivize a great man or action, most likely for good

oh, and "the day" = today

>>19391729
Now come, o Autumn,
I embrace you.
Gracefully a leaf descends.
Gloomy days shouded by fogs
Embrace as wind the bare trees bends.
Rain falling.

>>19391962
filthy jock

Here's a poem from Brazilian autist, Fernando Pessoa:

>Fernando Pessoa / Alberto Caeiro: VIII. One midday in late spring

One midday in late spring
I had a dream that was like a photograph. I saw Jesus Christ come down to earth.

He came down a hillside
As a child again,
Running and tumbling through the grass, Pulling up flowers to throw them back down, And laughing loud enough to be heard far away.

He had run away from heaven.
He was too much like us to fake
Being the second person of the Trinity.
In heaven everything was false and in disagreement With flowers and trees and stones.
In heaven he always had to be serious
And now and then had to become man again
And get up on the cross, and be forever dying
With a crown full of thorns on his head,
A huge nail piercing his feet,
And even a rag around his waist
Like on black Africans in illustrated books.
He wasn’t even allowed a mother and father
Like other children.
His father was two different people—
An old man named Joseph who was a carpenter And who wasn’t his father,
And an idiotic dove:The only ugly dove in the world,
Because it wasn’t of the world and wasn’t a dove.
And his mother gave birth to him without ever having loved. She wasn’t a woman: she was a suitcase
In which he was sent from heaven.
And they wanted him, born only of a mother
And with no father he could love and honor,
To preach goodness and justice!

One day when God was sleeping
And the Holy Spirit was flying about,
He went to the chest of miracles and stole three.
He used the first to make everyone blind to his escape.
He used the second to make himself eternally human and a
child.
He used the third to make an eternally crucified Christ Whom he left nailed to the cross that’s in heaven
And serves as the model for all the others.
Then he fled to the sun
And descended on the first ray he could catch.
Today he lives with me in my village.
He’s a simple child with a pretty laugh.
He wipes his nose with his right arm,
Splashes about in puddles,
Plucks flowers and loves them and forgets them.
He throws stones at the donkeys,
Steals fruit from the orchards,
And runs away crying and screaming from the dogs. And because he knows that they don’t like it
And that everyone thinks it’s funny,
He runs after the girls
Who walk in groups along the roads
Carrying jugs on their heads,
And he lifts up their skirts.

He taught me all I know.
He taught me to look at things.

>>19391989
Why "for good"?
>>19392109
>One day when God was sleeping
>And the Holy Spirit was flying about
I love these images, the poem is great, thank you, anon!

>>19392330
np

Anne Carson does confessional the right way, I think. It's a lot more technically complex and fulfilling to read than most confessional poetry which tackles big ideas in small ways and ends up sucking ass.


X. Dance of the Western Union Envelope How the Heart Leaps Up More Eager Than Plant or Beast

"Devil's share" is the portion of one's goods that cannot be usefully spent
and so gets sacrificed.
But what if the devil is not so stupid.
What if a devil long after sacrifice
starts coming and going on the borderland—
just a crease in daylight.
Disappearance was a game to him,
my mother
unsurprised

when he did not appear for the wedding
and she was careful of my feelings—care
like a prong.
The wedding cake (stored in the pantry) I ate myself
piece by piece
all of it
in the months that followed, sitting
in the living room late at night with all the lights on, chewing.
His telegram (day after) said
But please don't cry—
that's all.
Five words for a dollar.

>>19393106
Not poetry. You will never be a woman.

>>19393113
That's not mine, that's Anne Carson's who I was talking about above the poem.

>>19393113
You wake up. You sit on your computer. It is today. It is yesterday. It is tomorrow. Life is a still-image.

You open 4chan. You go on /lit/. It is all autopilot. There are no synapses firing in your mind. You see a post. You don't even see the point of the thread. "Reviving lit", what a fucking idiot. You see something vaguely female. Your monkey brain fires a single synapse. You know only one response.

Such is life. Life is misery.

>>19393480
Based

The first poem written in the invented style of hermestrismetricus

Agleam the heavens are devoid of darkness,
contain the caverns naught confused nor heinous,
arcane light, austere night, immense a bezel
bedight with rainbow light circles the temple.

First poem written in the invented hermestrismetricus style

Agleam the heavens are devoid of darkness,
Contain the caverns naught confused nor heinous,
Arcane and ancient, an immense eld bezel
Bedight with rainbow light circles the temple.

>>19391729
I wrote this a few days ago. I've written a lot of devotional poems, of varying length and complexity, and been fortunate enough to be able to bring out a small collection this Christmas.

Great is the mass,
This eventide
In song, liturgy proved.

How rich His word,
How stark His truth,
Doubts by His art, removed.

When faith degrades,
And reason clogs
Poets alone reveal.

Though clerics stress
To truss the faith,
At song alone, I yield.

Psalm 88


I have reached the stage, my failures observing for full accountability, the negligence of foresight I have brought to those who had trusted my beliefs.

Saqqara
The shining sands stretch forever and ever,
Across acres and aeons from Earth to nether
As silent stars shine alone in that archaic tomb,
Beaming beautiful and blue upon the kings room
That violet vast vaulted sky long before potter Khnum,
Manufactured much of mankind and their women on loom
That barren, brimming, bestial and bold, free mysterious space,
Still shines studded, sapphire, and silver, even far from that place
Upon the mountains, meadows, metropolis’, lake and ocean waters blue,
Enduring elevations to eternity the lights are, but as so can souls exist too?
Pharaohs, princes and printers, do their energies still sing and sigh within Amun,
Or do kas, cripple, crumble into ashes, no certainly this is not true because of the Moon
He presented to poet and painter, paints, pens, photographs, and keys, shells for thought and vision,
Golden and glorious gifts of guidance, so that Promethean minds were armed on the eternal mission
Tools that tether, tie, and twist time, sometimes something strange, a small whisper that allows me to know,
Murky memories, maybe molded in a magazine, a message from Hathor you were in Western sands, centuries ago

>>19392109
>Fernando Pessoa
He's portuguese, silly goose

>>19395757
Yeah I looked it up after posting. I always thought he was a weird Brazilian.

>>19395015
I like it, anon.

>>19393849
was the hermestrimetricus style that thing where you progress through the vowels to reach towards God or something?
The poem has a ring to it, good soundscape, but I'm not sure what else it has going for it. I have no idea what it's talking about.

>>19391729
too brainlet to understand the poem

>>19391924
shit

>>19391962
Amazing

>>19392109
not poetry, just prose with line breaks, and pretty bad prose at that. And yes I know that Pessoa is a pretty good writer, just not a poet.

>>19393106
not poetry. horrible prose.

>>19393849
that anon said it perfectly
>>19397406

>>19395015
pretty decent

>>19395303
not poetry

>>19397488
bad post rhymesbro

spiritual
miracle
lyrical
individual

>>19393480
No I was calling anon a tranny for being into bad poetry. You too will never be a woman. Touch grass immediately.
>>19397488
Patrician taste.

>>19397488
checked
but retard
you actually know nothing about poetry
>>19397539
what I said above

When walking through my city's center
Or strolling cross the yearly fair
No peaceful moment wants to greet me.
Niggers! Niggers, everywhere!
I go home and try to relax, turning on my TV.
But not a second to calm down
Cause on the cursed screen I see
A fat lipped ape talk ebonics
And acting all round niggardly.
I scream and shout, throw the remote
At the projected beast.
But like lightning it hits me
I'll never be free.
Cause we live in a nigger society.

>>19397568
denied
this is a wholesome thread

>>19397406
>>19397488

No I’ve rather constructed a second, easier and imo more sonically apparent quantitative meter, by this I mean to say, contemplating how vowel length and syllable lengths don’t really exist in English, I wondered where do we find length, it then hit me that all mono-syllabic words are roughly the same speed but, strangely, I would say most multi-syllabics in common speech have around the same quantity length because, when we speak, we don’t try to spread the syllables out normally but rather try to just finish the sentence, thus, imo, words like odious and eternal and diamond and thunder in actual speech would have around the same quantity even if thunder and diamond have one less syllable, due to the tendency to try to keep a unitary length in normative speech. So with this in mind I realized we could simply constrain the pattern of monosyllables to multisyllabics to create

Iambic
“The glory of eternity will never fade”
Dactylic
“Sovereign of life, ruler of light, master of time”
Anapestic
“Flame of fire, bolt of anger, red hate demonic.”
And thus we could produce pretty much any classical meter and easily with no consideration of accentual stress pattern. I would argue for example that the test iambic line above clearly sounds iambic even though it is not, thus demonstrating the regulation works.

Hermetrismetricus (Hermes-thrice metered) meter would be using quantitative meter WITH accentual-syllabic, thus producing a threefold metrical system. In this regard the above quatrain in quantity is trochaic (AGLEAM the HEAVENS are DEVOID of DARKNESS) but in accent it is iambic with a feminine ending. (a-GLEAM the HEAV-ens ARE deVOID of DARK-ness.)

I am highly interested in this meter and hope to master it, the first line simply expresses the purity of heaven, the second like the order of the earth, the third and fourth line simply speak of the rainbow which encircles God in heaven.

An old one

His bubbling blood red-gushing from his breast.
Three times Cairbar flung his spear;
Three times grasped his beard in his hand.
Often he stayed his hurried step,
And tossed on high his deadly arm.
The mighty chief was like a cloud of the desert,
Changing its form under stormy wind,
While the glens by the mountain are sad,
As by turns they dread the coming showers.

In midnight mirage mingle I my mind,
With briars of desires of blithe I bind,
Transvoke I the phantasmagoria
great delirium of theoria.

Cry the psalm!
Eye on palm!

Magnify i demon dementia
Of kadmon adam adamantia,
Bled from stones of hexecontalic kind,
behold the obelisk of my design!

Vault of night!
Bolt of light!


Square on square the cube of typhonius,
the leper Leap of Leo Nemeaeus,
Mouths like horeb mount but made to utter
The songs of foreign name and many color.

Death in strife!
Breath of life!

Damaru and kangling melodious
Above and below the skulls odious,
Bhairava Sunyata the twofold wrath,
I am the nameless one whose name is ATh.

Wenn ich am Morgen aufsteh
Hab ich nicht viel Zeit.
Was frisches zum Anziehn
Liegt bereits bereit.
Ich putze mir die Zähne,
Kämme mir das Haar,
Wasche mein Gesicht
Und schon bin ich ansprechbar.
Doch was hab ich vergessen?
Ich brauch noch was zu Essen!
Mutti, Mutti, Mutti,
Bitte, bitte, bitte,
Schmier mir eine Schnitte.
Schmier mir eine Schnitte.
Mutti, Mutti, Mutti,
Bitte, bitte, bitte,
Schmier mir eine Schnitte
Und teil sie in der Mitte.

I really wish I could find "The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard". It's very rarely printed. 700 pages.

>>19391964
>>19391962
>>19392055
>>19397488
That's shite.
Hugh was a communist nutter who openly shown he knew nothing about the dialect at all other than occasionally vocabulary.

>>19397849
This meter wouldn't work if performed or read properly and not in normative speech, because the aural shortening of multisyllabic words is technically improper. Stage actors, for example, will be flogged and hung by the ankles if they try to perform verse in normative speech without hte explicit approval of the director; it's simply regarded as poor form.
However, it does raise the question, what would metered verse sound like if intentionally read normatively, a sort of mix between the high style of quasi-metered verse and 'everyday' speech tempo.
Regardless if it works or not, it's an outstanding post-modern approach to traditional poetry, and I like that you're experimenting in that direction.

>>19397488
>not poetry
>ABAB rhyme scheme
>occasional alliteration
>concrete as a bonus
Lol fuck off

>>19397944
Meds now. Ossian isn't real.

>>19398036
*looks at all the Ossianic placenames*
He seems to be very real.

>>19397862
Is this a newer version? I think I've seen it before, I think I like this one better. I very much like the sound gradations but I feel there's a whole lot of religious and esoteric symbolism that goes straight over my head and probably over the head of many anons on here.
Depending on what you want to achieve with your poetry, I'd say you would benefit from unfolding the symbolism within the body of the poem so that we don't need this much specific knowledge to get it, or alternatively you could dilute it some.

>Is this a newer version?

I don’t believe so, I posted it before but accidentally put a version that didn’t have “of” before theoria, that could be the difference.

>I think I've seen it before, I think I like this one better. I very much like the sound gradations

Great! For the more serious/esoteric poetry I’m posting really only for the musical/sonic aspects of it as I don’t really expect the esotericism to be known, as some of it is wide ranging and odd, others are highly idiosyncratic.

>but I feel there's a whole lot of religious and esoteric symbolism that goes straight over my head and probably over the head of many anons on here.

True, but honestly most of my poetry is written for the religious purpose of contemplation and prayer, I would actually argue all of the poems I’ve written like this are not worthy to be read (by most) because they are not built with broad appeal enjoyment in mind, so in these ways as pure art or entertainment I’d consider them defective if they didn’t have an alternative purpose.

>I'd say you would benefit from unfolding the symbolism within the body of the poem so that we don't need this much specific knowledge to get it, or alternatively you could dilute it some.

While this is completely fair, I think this would fill the poems with filler and length and prosaic aspects, and I think the only way I am able to produce an aesthetic all my own, is to conjoin all that I read. While I understand I am bias, I feel like finding a strain of poetry so fixated on the specific tones of esotericism/spirituality/philosophy I go for, well I don’t really know of anyone who would be using the same foundations, i am once more happier to hear the sound is good/fascinating as my major concern is the technical aspect of writing, do you have any writers you’d recommend I read to refine in that regard?

>>19399769
Charles Olson is deeply concerned with sound and analyzing his work even just for that is going to yield a lot of cool things (there are recordings of him reading his poetry on youtube and you can hear him play with sounds really well there). Hopkins no doubt you know, as well as Eliot, though for Eliot I'd recommend specifically Four Quartets. The Waste Land is the usual go-to, but I think in Four Quartets he really doubles down on building a unique soundscape for the poem, which you can see even in this excerpt:

If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde.

>>19399769
Charles Olson is deeply concerned with sound. I think you can find a lot of interesting and inspiring ideas in his work. There are recordings of him reading his poetry on youtube and you can hear him play with sound and breath.
Hopkins no doubt you know, as well as Eliot, though for Eliot I'd recommend specifically Four Quartets. The Waste Land is the usual go-to, but I think in Four Quartets he really doubles down on building a unique soundscape for the poem, which you can see even in this excerpt:

If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde.

>>19396844
Thank you fren.