/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15122451]

I would like to get into poetry and write my own, but I frankly can't be bothered to learn such a technical form of writing. It's unbelievably dense and complicated for what it is and it honestly puts me off. Even mainstream books like Ode Less Travelled admit it's complex.

[Anonymous No.15122466]

>I want to write but I don't want to write

[Anonymous No.15122478]

>>15122466
I've written prose all of my life, but poetry just seems to be far too complex for just a few lines of text. It's frustrating.

[Anonymous No.15122499]

For those who were baited here, does anyone have any recommendations for beginner poetry writing?

[Anonymous No.15122504]

>Anapest imabic dactylic enjambment quatrain caesura trochee
Why?

[Anonymous No.15122514]

>>15122499
OP here. This was clearly what I was asking for. I wasn't making this to say how much I hate poetry... I'm looking for guidance.

[Anonymous No.15122525]

>>15122451

Most good writers of prose wrote poetry as well, at least when young. I tend to look a bit askance at any writer who didn't. (There are exceptions. Jane Austen for example. But it's mostly true.)

[Anonymous No.15122537]

>>15122504
If you don't like metre just don't write with metre it's not that fucking hard

[Anonymous No.15122583]

>>15122537
That's plebshit. Only plebs write in free form. Most normies think that poetry is just writing in flowery language for a few short lines. It's not, it's much more complicated. And I want to get into it... somehow.

[Anonymous No.15122697]

>>15122583

You want to start by training your ear. My advice: concentrate first on rock-solid traditional meter, and gradually get funkier. The further back you go the stricter it tends to be. Kipling is almost always very rhythmically direct (about as subtle as a nail-studded baseball bat, some would say). Pope is like a metronome, as is Swinburne. Emily Dickinson is elusive in some ways but not usually metrically. Robert Frost is mostly easy (but can be slippery). Of 20th-century writers, Larkin & Auden tended to write strictly most of the time; all Thom Gunn's early stuff and some of the later is. Houseman is technically straightforward. Dylan Thomas is a fantastic writer but not Baby's First Poet, rhythmically.

Here are the first few pieces that come to mind. Read 'em, and if you like 'em, read other stuff by the guy (or gal. Not forgotten you, Emily).

>'If', Rudyard Kipling
Read it, repeat it, learn it.

>'Nephilidia', A.C. Swinburne
He's just having fun, but check out that rhythm section. ('Nephilidia' means clouds.)

>Sonnet 73: 'That time of year thou may'st in me behold", William Shakespeare
Plus everything else he wrote.

>'Lines for a Book', Thom Gunn
Gunn is one of the few modern poets who pulled off the heroic couplet. This could be subtitled "Biff Tannen did nothing wrong".

>'The Fall Of Rome', W.H.Auden
Annoying (for us in England) that the pronunciation of "clerk" is influenced by Auden living in the USA at the time. Ah well. When Auden's on stroke he's really good. I'm tempted to recommend "Musee des Beaux Arts" but that's for later.

>'Essay on Criticism', Alexander Pope
You might find this gets tiresome fast. Never mind. A hundred thousand lines of iambic pentameter is the beginning of wisdom.

>'Ulysses', Alfred Tennyson
Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. This is what you can do with it. (Also see Shakespeare, William & Milton, John.)

>'As Imperceptibly as Grief', Emily Dickinson
Oh boy, those half-rhymes.

>'Ode to Autumn', John Keats
Is this a the best poem ever written about autumn, or is it the one above? They BOTH are.

>'Sonnet: 'On Westminster Bridge', William Wordsworth
Most poets have tried sonnets. Some have written good ones. Like this.

>'Ozymandius', Percy Shelley
Another sonnet, Romantic-style.

>'The Sick Rose', William Blake
This doesn't take long.

>'Nothing Gold Can Stay', Robert Frost
This doesn't take long either.

>'Aubade', Philip Larkin
Any time you want to be depressed AND tune your ear, just read this man.

>'Into my heart an air that kills', A.E.Houseman
There's a nice YouTube video where Peter Hitchens quotes this on a TV panel show and the audience say yes this is good. And it is.

>'In My Craft Or Sullen Art', Dylan Thomas
OK, I warned against Thomas, but I don't care. This is SYLLABIC - every line 7 syllables, regardless of stresses. Has a much more subtle feel to it.

[Anonymous No.15122936]

>>15122583
Most normies think that poetry is writing in meter and rhyme. It's not; it's much more complicated than that. Meter and rhyme are means to and end, not ends in themselves. They're valid poetic techniques, but neither is necessary.