Alfred Tennyson. Here's a couple of lines of his that I love. From Vision of Sin "Fill the cup, and fill the can: Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born. "We are men of ruin'd blood; Therefore comes it we are wise. Fish are we that love the mud. Rising to no fancy-flies. "Name and fame! to fly sublime Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools, Is to be the ball of Time, Bandied by the hands of fools. "Friendship!--to be two in one-- Let the canting liar pack! Well I know, when I am gone, How she mouths behind my back. "Virtue!--to be good and just-- Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell. "O! we two as well can look Whited thought and cleanly life As the priest, above his book Leering at his neighbour's wife. "Fill the cup, and fill the can: Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born. There's tons of others that are classics including Charge of the Light Brigade. His stuff is cool, and varied.
Wadsworth's "Hiawatha" is also a startling oeuvre...i seeked it after watching Katherine Hepburn recite a stanza on "Desk Set" & have since been unable to read it w/out using her cadence - perfectly matched, oddly enough
Moe... out of curiousity how would you rate these two poems from tupac? You are the expert and i by no means am nothing but a novice...
After going back and reading his poems they are definatly lacking in the metaphors than what i remembered... that being said they seem to be nicely fitting to entertain and wow a teenager(which i was)... still decent but not as deep as other poets i have listened to or read... still decent message and meaning tho...
A 7th grade girl could write a better poem than that, it is mawkish at best. Rappers are good at cadence and rhythm, not at word usage. Compare that to Andrew Marvell... no contest bro.
Respect to you sir. Moes, would you accept a lyricist as a poet? The only example i can conjure at this moment would be Sinatra's song "A Very Good Year"...weak perhaps, but hopefully you get my drift
Why is there always someone who says something like this? Now I'm not picking on you specifically, but this is an attitude that I think needs to be put down in general. Every single genre of art, every single one, has at least a general set of defining rules that allows it to be what it is. There is this thing in art called form and function. This is what separates great art from bad art, and great artists from bad artists. There must be some form, even if that form is self-imposed and non-classical, and in turn that form must serve some kind of a function. That is why T.S. Eliot said that "free verse isn't really free"; because in order to write well, or draw well, or play music well without the bounds of classical form binding you, you yourself have to be the one putting some kind of restriction and convention upon your own work in order for it to result in being some kind of cohesive piece of art. I believe it was Charlie Parker, the great jazz musician, that said you must learn every single rule there is to know about your art, and then you can break them any which way you want. You have to KNOW the rule before you can break it, because only then can you break it at the right time in the right way. Poetry has degenerated into a bastardized art-form because of what I mentioned above. Too many amateurs have it in their heads that they can break the rules without even knowing what the rules are. Instead of delving into the concept of meter and rhythm, they shy away from it, fearing that it will somehow defy everything they ever thought they knew about their own ability (and it will). I was one of those people. I was one of those people who never wanted to learn about meter because it meant that I would essentially have to start over. But I eventually learned, and I eventually did start over. But that's art. You wouldn't just pick up a violin and start playing it, you have to learn. Poetry is just like any other art. You must learn it before you can write it. A lot of "poets" nowadays don't get that. The barrier of entry is too low. All you need is a pencil, a paper, and a recent break-up and BOOM. Everyone's a poet. It's pathetic to watch and in turn, worse to read. In closing, good poetry is invariably bound by rules. Sometimes those rules aren't even perceptible! But the rules are there. Whether they be the rules of classical form, or they be rules imposed upon the poem by the poet him/herself, the rules always exist. And for goodness sake, before anyone goes around saying that they "play by their own rules", you have to learn the actual rules first.
This reminds me of that book I started reading, "Fountainhead", I have only read the first chapter so far but are you saying you are against objectivism? Or whatever Roark was babbling about in the first chapter about he did not care for architecture's history, all he wanted to do was his own form of architecture. He didn't care for standards of other people, but his own. At least that's what I gathered from the first chapter.
Fantastically put and understood... maybe i said it out of me being such a free spirit... /debate over i got owned :grin:
Probably Lorine Niedecker. I like this poem very much: The clothesline post is set yet no totem-carvings distinguish the Niedecker tribe from the rest; every seventh day they wash: worship sun; fear rain, their neighbors' eyes; raise their hands from ground to sky, and hang or fall by the whiteness of their all.
