Let's talk about the greatest American poet /lit/

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>>7660159
you go ahead, anon

neither of these people are edgar Allan poe. Thread failed.

>>7660649
lol

>>7660159
>>7660330
Neither of you two can even explain why you like them. Fucking retards.

>>7660657
Yes, because they did not explain, they can't explain. Real solid critique anon.

>>7660656
Nice reply.

>>7660330

Harold Bloom are you not dead yet

>>7660664
Not quite as nice as the original post. I hope you do well on your ap english test.

>>7660663
Buttblasted, inarticulate fag detected

>>7660668
This is THE most EPIC post I've ever read in all my weeks here.

>>7660670
Wow what a burn. Anon on suicide watch.

Funny way to spell Ashbery

>>7660159
That's not Ezra Pound.

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>this thread

>>7660800
I know anon, it's a real feast

Poets are just failed novelists. Inferior artform

>>7660834
Fuck, I meant to say this in the reverse. Consider it edited.

>>7660159
you just made me impulse buy a $3.00 book from him on abebooks.
I fucking hate you.

Ah, the Stevens/Crane GOAT pottery meme.

No thanks. Post-Pound, from here on: only blacks can do American poetry. Sorry OP and sorry /pol/.

>>7660893
You can thank me later

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>>7660985
While we're on the topic of black American poets what do you think of this hero?

>>7660893
he's also my favorite. His book on Imagination and whatever is pretty fascinating
I always say his tone is the conscious of the heart

Stevens has me conflicted. He was a biz-man and never taught English or lived that poet life. It's like, I could do biz, but I want to learn the art of language. Who feels me?

>>7661021
As a business man this just made me infinitely more likely to enjoy him

>>7660791
my nigga

>>7662570
why bump this piece of shit thread?

>>7660657
I'll indulge you with the Snow Man as a way of explanation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174502

Firstly his rhythm and lyricism was up there. Just look at the stuff like 'crusted' to 'shagged' to 'spruces'. Those dragging rolls are a part of it, but he was also good at terser imagisms, like his famous anecdote of the jar. That functions less lyrically, but its just a solid parable image overall.

Also he uses small to commentate on large view, but not in the declamatory way of a Shakespeare soliloquy, for example. In the Snow Man he starts with a light exhortation, switches up to the lyrical description of Nature. But if you go on it gets larger and larger to the abstract notion of the all-encompassing obscurity of Winter. So by the start he posits the 'mind of winter', and starting with Nature he ends with the abstract notion of what he means.

Let's say you have the To Be or Not To Be speech. That shoves the existentialism right in your face, and its pretty clear cut. If you took out all the parts that was straight up talking about Death, and got at it sideways, for example, like a bunch of poems by Rilke, or Trakl, you'd have the Modern sensibility. Stevens was the master of getting at things sideways like that. His other poem, the one about reading a book, is probably a perfect image of what goes on in the process of getting into that imaginary location in your head that arises from the union between the concrete of the page, and the abstract of your own head.

>>7660330

Hart Crane generally has one declamatory Romanticist tone, even though he has very startling images and turns of word. Stevens could dissapear into varied types of tones, sometimes being funny, sometimes crazy like the Emperor of Ice Cream.

>>7660649
>Poe
>good
teehee

>>7660330
Crane is good, intense, perhaps even sublime. But I wouldn't call him "the greatest." He died too young to write even his own greatest poetry. His oeuvre is strong but incomplete.

>>7660330
>>7660159

really? we're going to have two poets who worked in the tradition of Whitman except not include Whitman himself? Whitman is as important as Shakespeare. He was also a better poet than Stevens and Crane, and I adore both of them. Whitman looks easy but is actually a very difficult poet. He is also the most influential poet of the last 200 years by far. Stevens' line of influence mostly ends with Ashbery and Crane's is largely dead.

>>7664468
>being this new

>>7664526

also I'll add that neither really produced a work of poetry as varied and original as Song of Myself. Stevens' closest is maybe Auroras of Autumn, and Crane's is The Bridge -- though I really hate The Bridge as a whole, I prefer his shorter lyrics.

Stevens was a very rich poet but I largely think his later works were less pretentious (in the true sense of the word), and focused less on the philosophical and more on the self. Stevens has a lot of pseudophilosophical duds and to people who only read the first few poems of Harmonium or Blue Guitar it's not obvious how much he parodied himself throughout his career. I don't think he's nearly as rich as Whitman, and his tone is, even with the finer graces of technical proficiency and a wonderful sense for autumn imagery, rather limited to a hermetic-philosophical one. Crane was even more limited, though I think in his small area of focus he accomplished more than Stevens.

>>7664526
what do you mean exactly by "in the tradition of Whitman"? ignorantfag here, point out to me examples of whitman's influence in these poets

>>7664529
>not recognizing obvious bait
If anyone is new, it's you.

>>7660997
Oh, Langston Hughes?
That's my nigga!

>>7664672
Calling a Poe third rate poet is bait? Nice board we have here.

>>7664752
gtfo newpal
poe is not worthy of discussions / dank memes

>>7664672

poe sucks, bait or not

>>7664668

I'd love to but I have a dumb programming project and by the time I have time to post something this thread wil 404