the pros and cons of being a poet...

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Comments

  • cassia
    cassia Posts: 277
    "But me? One day I am thinking of
    a color: orange. I write a line
    about orange. Pretty soon it is a
    whole page of words, not lines.
    Then another page. There should be
    so much more, not of orange, of words,
    ....Days go by. it is even
    prose, I am a real poet..."

    frank o'hara
  • Goulet
    Goulet Posts: 918
    I think I'll cry myself to sleep tonight.
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by CranMalReign
    I think, therefore I'm not.

    I'm telling you, it's a classic, centuries-old put down, devised to stop the creation of a world of poets, good, bad or indifferent, who might stop working like good little peasants and start composing when there was money to be made on the land. To think yourself a poet is a bigger threat than to write great poetry behind closed doors, so people are told, "You can't be a poet...only the court poet is a poet, and he doesn't say he is." (Lie..he was always boasting his status.)
  • Goulet
    Goulet Posts: 918
    to think you're a poet is irrelevant
  • Yellow
    Yellow Posts: 699
    this is most absolutely true
    unless you're trying to get a job as a poet
    which happens
    meekly from time to time

    and really the only instance
    (aside from here...my brain on the sidecart)
    in which i'd CALL myself that with any amount of conviction


    :)
    It's all yellow.


  • Yellow
    Yellow Posts: 699
    oh... fuck all dat self depricating bullshit...


    goulet???


    YOU NEED a SPANKING




























    the disillusioned self monickerd poet spake...




    :P





    spank....

    there, one more for good measure :D
    It's all yellow.


  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by Goulet
    to think you're a poet is irrelevant

    Not if the poem concerns the notion of the poet:

    "Irish poets, learn your trade,
    Sing whatever is well made,
    Scorn the sort now growing up
    All out of shape from toe to top,
    Their unremembering hearts and heads
    Base-born products of base beds"

    (Yeats)

    A major theme of so much poetry is the self-creation of the poet as much as the act of vision itself.

    Also, Shakespeare's Sonnets 1-126 aren't just love poems...they're about a poet questioning his status as a poet with his patron. The speaker thinks he's a poet, and gets jealous when a rival poet gains his patron's favour (Sonnet 86).
  • Yellow
    Yellow Posts: 699
    personally, i can't stand poetry about poetry..

    or songs about songs...


    double corndog, easy on the goulet :P



    :D
    It's all yellow.


  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by Yellow
    personally, i can't stand poetry about poetry..

    or songs about songs...


    double corndog, easy on the goulet :P



    :D

    Aren't all songs about songs, all poems about poems, all art about art?

    I'm enjoying this debate. There's a certain amount of "Devil's Advocate"- playing going on, but it's important as an intellectual exercise that we think this out. See - now I'm debating about debating.... we just can't help ourselves!.....


    Meta- bollocks!!:D:D:D
  • Goulet
    Goulet Posts: 918
    Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
    Aren't all songs about songs, all poems about poems, all art about art?

    no
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by Goulet
    no

    I've changed the link. Try this:

    http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/6.html
  • Yellow
    Yellow Posts: 699
    this song is not about a song :D

    Queen of Light took her bow, And then she turned to go,
    The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom, And walked the night alone.

    Oh, dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
    The dark Lord rides in force tonight, And time will tell us all.

    Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, Rest not to lock your homes.

    Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all.

    I hear the horses' thunder down in the valley blow,
    I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow.

    The apples of the valley hold, The seeds of happiness,
    The ground is rich from tender care, Repay, do not forget, no, no.
    Dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

    The apples turn to brown and black, The tyrant's face is red.

    Oh the war is common cry, Pick up you swords and fly.
    The sky is filled with good and bad that mortals never know.

    Oh, well, the night is long the beads of time pass slow,
    Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.

    The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath,
    The drums will shake the castle wall, the ring wraiths ride in black, Ride on.

    Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before.
    No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold.

    Oh dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
    The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back. Bring it back.

    At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by,
    With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes.
    It's all yellow.


  • Goulet
    Goulet Posts: 918
    Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
    http://ist.socrates-berkeley.edu/~arcadia/tesseract/language.html

    I don't follow links
    I follow eye winks
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by Goulet
    I don't follow links
    I follow eye winks

    "There is nothing outside of the text."

    Jacques Derrida

    OK then. Who's next?

    :)
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    Originally posted by Yellow
    this song is not about a song :D

    Queen of Light took her bow, And then she turned to go,
    The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom, And walked the night alone.

    Oh, dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
    The dark Lord rides in force tonight, And time will tell us all.

    Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, Rest not to lock your homes.

    Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all.

    I hear the horses' thunder down in the valley blow,
    I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow.

    The apples of the valley hold, The seeds of happiness,
    The ground is rich from tender care, Repay, do not forget, no, no.
    Dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

    The apples turn to brown and black, The tyrant's face is red.

    Oh the war is common cry, Pick up you swords and fly.
    The sky is filled with good and bad that mortals never know.

    Oh, well, the night is long the beads of time pass slow,
    Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.

    The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath,
    The drums will shake the castle wall, the ring wraiths ride in black, Ride on.

    Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before.
    No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold.

    Oh dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
    The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back. Bring it back.

    At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by,
    With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes.

    Intertextuality, a dialogic imagination for evermore! :D

    I haven't even started to warm up yet....you should see me on the Bakhtin site...... :D
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    No language is stable...it always contains a consonantal trace of a previous utterance either in the speaker's or reader's'/readers' experience....texts cannot help but interact hypertextually...experience and subjectivity dissolve into oneness....all words are about words about words.....we don't get to that mythical, signified bottle of Merlot-ness....unless you're me and a certain freshwater blue cascade who visits us occasionally! :D
  • chadwick
    chadwick up my ass Posts: 21,157
    this is one old ass thread.
    i found it among some others while looking for a thread on the subject "English essay."
    i'll have to read through this thread when i get some time as i was not a member of this board way back then.
    for poetry through the ceiling. ISBN: 1 4241 8840 7

    "Hear me, my chiefs!
    I am tired; my heart is
    sick and sad. From where
    the sun stands I will fight
    no more forever."
    Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
  • chadwick
    chadwick up my ass Posts: 21,157
    FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:
    There was a bloke called Roman Jakobson who said we poets think vertically and everyone else thinks horizontally.

    :)

    i agree whole heartedly. we are very different and will not conform no matter how hard they try to break us down. i for one find proper English writing (for school) to be sheer agony most of the time. "you have to know the rules before you can break them"; i have heard this at least five times in the last year, all from English teachers who truly believe they can teach someone to be a poet. that is so wrong it is unreal to me. one is either born to be a poet or they are not. that is my opinion.
    for poetry through the ceiling. ISBN: 1 4241 8840 7

    "Hear me, my chiefs!
    I am tired; my heart is
    sick and sad. From where
    the sun stands I will fight
    no more forever."
    Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
  • catefrances
    catefrances Posts: 29,003
    chadwick wrote:
    i agree whole heartedly. we are very different and will not conform no matter how hard they try to break us down. i for one find proper English writing (for school) to be sheer agony most of the time.{b] "you have to know the rules before you can break them"[/b]; i have heard this at least five times in the last year, all from English teachers who truly believe they can teach someone to be a poet. that is so wrong it is unreal to me. one is either born to be a poet or they are not. that is my opinion.


    blah blah blah. ive never subcribed to this notion. hows about i just do it the way i want and rules be damned. english is full of rules and they just get in the way. :p:)
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • catefrances
    catefrances Posts: 29,003
    catefrances wrote:
    blah blah blah. ive never subcribed to this notion. hows about i just do it the way i want and rules be damned. english is full of rules and they just get in the way. :p:)

    this notion: "you have to know the rules before you can break them"
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say

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