i'm literally perning in a gyre with excitement
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:06 (thirteen years ago) link
Mid-late-20th-Century:
Sceptr'd Isle
MacNeiceLarkinHill
God's Country
StevensMerrillBerrymanAmmons
― alimosina, Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:43 (thirteen years ago) link
My favorite Merrill poem. The last stanza kills me.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 30 May 2010 23:43 (thirteen years ago) link
I mean
you know
For Lear WS needed almost superhuman self-control. For all his gyres I don't think Yeats could go there.
― alimosina, Monday, 31 May 2010 02:11 (thirteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:01 (thirteen years ago) link
this is no country... for yeats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
― max, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:04 (thirteen years ago) link
^^^^ mods, plz change thread title
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 31 May 2010 23:05 (thirteen years ago) link
nu-Shakespeare could be posting to Tumblr rite now -- would we know it? O_O
― ksh, Monday, 31 May 2010 23:12 (thirteen years ago) link
They knew it then, we'd know it now.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 02:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Didn't vote but I followed the arguments and while I sensed a lot more affection for Yeats I knew (and so did everybody) that it wasn't going to be enough.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 08:59 (thirteen years ago) link
thread took moral high ground of recognising greatness of both rather than turning it into a flamewar contest.
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:34 (thirteen years ago) link
that was aerosmith's intention though
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:37 (thirteen years ago) link
Nah -- we used it as an excuse to post great poems.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:37 (thirteen years ago) link
well it transpired as Robert Frost Is Awesome but yeah, great thread
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:39 (thirteen years ago) link
I spent a fair amount of drive time today thinking about what to make heavy hitters poll #2 - what's anybody wanna do?
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:48 (thirteen years ago) link
dare we approach Virgil's rostrum
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
*I* would be down for something involving GMH but I'm aware I'm pretty much alone on that. Go with your gut, dude
Thomas Hardy vs D.H. Lawrence
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (thirteen years ago) link
virgil vs dante
or homer vs milton
― goole, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (thirteen years ago) link
Flaubert vs Nabokov
― every time i pull a j/k off the shelf (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (thirteen years ago) link
Albarn vs Gillespie
― bageled by dementeds (HI DERE), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:52 (thirteen years ago) link
oh wait I got it now
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 21:56 (thirteen years ago) link
dickinson vs whitman
― max, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:13 (thirteen years ago) link
oh you already started it
lets get some women up in these polls tho, and by women, i mean, emily dickinson
max OTM iirc
― ksh, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:14 (thirteen years ago) link
(that poll's impossible to answer, tho)
I was looking at elizabeth bishop & marianne moore this morning, but yeah dickinson is the business
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:19 (thirteen years ago) link
was lucky to have had a prof who was a Dickinson scholar tbh
― ksh, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:19 (thirteen years ago) link
or, if he didn't publish on Dickinson -- i don't know -- she was definitely one of his favorite poets, if not his favorite, and we did a lot of work on her stuff
― ksh, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:20 (thirteen years ago) link
I was looking at elizabeth bishop & marianne moore this morning
there's painful choosing. ow.
*I* would be down for something involving GMH
Dickinson v GMH! US/UK shut-ins of the 19th century. (another tough un).
― woof, Tuesday, 1 June 2010 23:29 (thirteen years ago) link
I would guess that Dickinson would be hard to beat by almost anyone - actually Dickinson vs. Donne might be a fair fight
― henceforth we eat truffle fries (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 00:12 (thirteen years ago) link
or Dickinson vs Herbert
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 00:14 (thirteen years ago) link
dickinson vs..... herself
― max, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:21 (thirteen years ago) link
this poll would be amazing and would probably lead to me reading some Dickinson, who like Frost is a massive black hole in British poetic education
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:23 (thirteen years ago) link
god you guys are missing out
― max, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:23 (thirteen years ago) link
i dont know if youd like dickinson tho louis? dont you like big epic type bros? maybe whitman would be more your style?
― max, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:24 (thirteen years ago) link
Um...more or less my favourite poetry (that 1930's modernist biz) is decidedly UN-epic! Or at least, doesn't really go on for more than 20 pages at a pop, and usually keeps to one or two pages. The epic form is delightful when done well, however, so I'm open-minded about who I read.
great modern female poets: Susan Howe anyone? Elizabeth Bishop did that poem about a fish didn't she - the one that got polled up against some other poems - it's GREAT and I voted for it
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:28 (thirteen years ago) link
*WHOM if we're being PERNICKETY
actually GMH is pretty much my favourite poetry fuck tha h8rs
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:29 (thirteen years ago) link
I want to love Hopkins, but the rhymes and rhythms jangle in an awkward way. Behind the rhetorical legerdemain is content that Donne and Herbert have approached more...delicately, let's say.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:40 (thirteen years ago) link
maybe GMH is a unique synthesis of anguished melodrama and infernal systemic-scattergun complexity, two things which have always defined my youthful thoughts
or he's just got an ear for cadence that I haven't heard the like of, ever else
it only deepens my affection, that he makes up compound-adjectives and expressions like 'inscape' and 'instress' to suit his wild purposes - he seems genuinely to be inventing and discovering a new poetic, one that in this pure moment of creation only he can compose - and this new poetic enables him to look within mystical processes in a manner that reveals the very structure of his sensual imagination - his entire comprehension of life is splattered manically onto the page as if attempting to chronicle the totality of God - observe how elongated I have become in response - it is silly but no poet has evinced such throes - such exquisite tortures
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:51 (thirteen years ago) link
'rollrock highroad roaring down' are seven of my favorite syllables of all time. the rest is hit or miss.
― max, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:54 (thirteen years ago) link
LJ OTM imo -- good post
― ksh, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:58 (thirteen years ago) link
'Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves' is the most perfect document of English language, IMO, but enough of this - I need sleep
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:59 (thirteen years ago) link
xpost
although, tbh, the only GMH i've encountered was a little bit here and there in college -- all scattershot
― ksh, Wednesday, 2 June 2010 01:59 (thirteen years ago) link
go on then, I've posted this to ILX like 3 times before but why not again
accents are for stress
Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves
EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, … stupendousEvening strains to be tíme’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the heightWaste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steedèd and páshed — qúiteDisremembering, dísmémbering ' áll now. Heart, you round me rightWith: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life windOff hér once skéined stained véined variety ' upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páckNow her áll in twó flocks, twó folds — black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mindBut thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rackWhere, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.
― some men enjoy the feeling of being owned (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 2 June 2010 02:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't know who did the seeding but there's just no way Yeats runs into the Shakespeare buzzsaw in round one. Shoulda tossed him a sacrificial Romantic or something.
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Saturday, 19 June 2010 23:47 (thirteen years ago) link
aw i missed this! i had such an embarrassing yeats obsession as a teenager that i couldn't read him for a while after that. also think he suffers because i know more about him as a dude than shakespeare and yeats was kind of silly.
i mean, shakespeare is the "i want you back" by the jackson 5 of polls, so i would have voted for him, but <3 yeats so ponderous.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 June 2010 02:08 (thirteen years ago) link
For me there is something about Shakespeare, Keats, and Yeats that places them above everyone else in the English language. Don't know if I'll feel this way in five years or not...
― jeevves, Monday, 22 November 2010 09:27 (thirteen years ago) link