How to get better at writing poetry?

>>9329603
Writing poetry.
Mindfulness

>>9329612
>Mindfulness
Have any good book on it?

Poetry is the most retarded art form holy shit, at least write fiction

>>9329634
nice poem

>>9329634
shitty bait

>>9329634
>Fiction
>Art
And like I'm capable of making art, myself.
I do it because I like it, and I would like to get better at it.

I have this problem where I can't write anything good, or anything at all, actually, when I'm not drunk.

>>9329603
Read poetry. Become interminably interested in poetry you struggle to enjoy/understand. Learning how to enjoy/understand has a lot to do with learning how to write.

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>>9329629

>>9329670
Thanks.
>>9329669
I read poetry, I love it, but I have a problem getting books.

>>9329603

Make it rhyme.

>>9329722
bump

but in honesty, the more you read, the better you'll get. Despite what most think, the majority of good poets are poetry nerds themselves.

>>9329722
Yeah, when I was in high school, my biggest role model was Bukowski, and when I got older I had a problem with writing in metre.

>>9329603
write at least one poem everyday. not just write down some lines but really try to write something with some shape.

at the end of the week, Sunday afternoons are good, go through your poems and edit them. improving lines, getting rid of cliches, etc.

read aloud so that you can start to hear and feel where syllables sound good together and where they are clunky.

starter: 7 types of ambiguity, the practice of poetry, handbook of poetic forms (Ron Padgett).

have fun, don't force anything, and if you can't write do an exercise or two out of "the practice of poetry".

jack spicer used the metaphor of alien radio waves to explain inspired writing. it'll come, the aliens will dictate poems to you but they will only be as good as the medium. the more you practice then better conduit you'll be.

good luck. (p.s remember that rejection isn't a thing, good/bad is a matter of taste).

>>9329791
I almost never edit the poems nor can I read aloud.
Thanks, I will definitely remember this.

>>9329612

>>9329612
is it just me or is this a poem?

>>9329686

That sucks. You have the internet though, obviously. Try libgen.

And just to clarify my point about reading. I mean 'study', more than read. When a poem that made no sense to you suddenly becomes clear after a period of dedicated application, you'll be close to the mood from which poetry tends to arise.

>>9329669
>Learning how to enjoy/understand has a lot to do with learning how to write.

THIS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPVzAts74EA

read a fuck ton of poetry. from Shakespeare to contemporary. read read read and don't stop.

Who is your favourite poet? I really like Yesenin, Ujević, Lorca and Davičo.

>>9329927
Hölderlin, Brecht, George, Trakl

>>9329937
I never heard of Trakl, what is his best collection?

>>9329964
My favorite poems of his are his later ones (Sebastian im Traum, Grodek etc.). They are vague and etheral, prophetic, untranslatable (in my opinion). He was high as a kite on opium most of the time. When WW1 happened he went to the front nad tried to shoot himself. The soldiers saved him, but he off'd himself later in prison on an overdose of cocain. Heidegger wrote about him in Unterwegs zur Sprache. Trakl is one of the seminal expressionist/symbolist poets of the german language. You should probably check out his earlier stuff, which tends to be more on the expressionist side of things (around 1910).

rate my poem

"British English is simply lamentable,

No standardized diction, oft incomprehensible.

Some sound dumb, others effete,

Theirs is a tongue that's not evolved yet!"

>>9330741
9/11

>>9329666
your sober mind inhibits you from writing what you really want to say.

>>9329791
thanks man good poast

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when you truly understand me
1/2

>>9330741
Trash. You're doing too much "telling" and not enough "showing". You need to be less direct.

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>>9331712
you're ready
2/2

>>9329603
read more poetry. Download a poetry anthology online and read select authors with a lot of poems in it chronologically

Whenever i see that guys face i cant help but think about Lauras phrase about how he is so dumb.

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>>9331716

How would you go about it then?

Had this at the back of my mind when the idea came to me.

>>9329603
It's good if it succeeds in accomplishing whatever it is that lies behind the desire.

>>9329669
How does one get into poetry?

all the best poets beat the shit out of women.

>>9332527
Well Plath did kill herself so you've got one.

how do I get it out of my head that poetry has to have a rhyme scheme, or else it's just artsy prose in line form? I just can't take the medium seriously

>>9332774
learn the more complex techniques
>musicality
>meter
>metrical substitution
>caesura
>paralellism (this one starts super-simple but has the highest ceiling)
>enjambment (lots of different reasons)
>head-rhyme
then finally after those and a bunch of others
>musicality

>>9329603
actually follow a meter instead of the free verse meme, read a lot, and use thesaurus.

>>9332811
meter is important to learn well, but not to use (i mean practice it, but the poems you care about shouldn't be forced into a meter unless you feel its important)

>use thesaurus
eh this is a weird one. i wouldn't use words that don't feel comfortable in my mouth

>>9332823
yes, I mean it as a way to get better, not to use it at all costs

>>9332827
gotcha, gotcha
a lot of people here are all like
>meterless poetry is just chopped prose

Meter is a lot of fun though.

>>9332823
A thesaurus can be very helpful to find new and better words, you just have to be careful. Then again, if it's all for practice to get better (and not trying to make masterpieces yet), you should try to use new words.

Using a Thesaurus, following a certain meter, and having some other limits always helps. Once you start to become much better, you can always throw rules and standards to the side if it makes sense.

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>>9329603
read poetry

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry

>>9329603
>James Hurley
What meme is this OP?

Also write whatever the fuck you want and do it a lot. Make it an active investigation into your own world and express yourself as you feel like. But do it honestly and with high levels of intelligence.

>>9333756
>Also write whatever the fuck you want and do it a lot. Make it an active investigation into your own world and express yourself as you feel like. But do it honestly and with high levels of intelligence
The only correct and possible suggestion. A+

>>9332520
Read it. Be passive to its difficulties. It requires a little faith in the possibility of enjoying it. However, always try to stay close to your inability to 'get into' it. Reading poetry requires self-perpetuating honesty between you and what you are reading. You don't want to lie to yourself and reap a false reward. This is the path to name-dropping and pseudom.

If you need a little support, there are a series of video lectures available on youtube. It's called "Modern Poetry with Langdon Hammer". Could be a helpful guide. I think the course materials can be sourced online too. There are probably good equivalents for poetry other than the modern variant.

I'd suggest that when you immerse yourself fully in it, something should pop out at you and summon you to understand it. Could be as simple as meter or as involved as a particular poet's biography. Regardless, read poetry first, find out what's interesting about it along the way. Don't demand that it entertain you immediately, but don't postpone reading it and start off with a manual of some sort.

>>9333756
I bet you write some piss poor poetry.

>>9333766
That's not what your mom said last night.

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>>9333760
Thanks my man. May the signifiant always have a good signifié in your writings.

>>9333777
Nice trips.

Can we read one of your poems?
Make sure to pick one where you were writing whatever the fuck you wanted, but also were actively investigating your own world and expressing yourself. Oh shit! But also you were doing all that honestly. OHH and with really super high level of intelligence.

>>9333788
Yes. It goes like this:

Why should I care if you're as good as gold? Be beautiful, and be sad. Tears add a charm to the face, as a river to a landscape; the storm makes the flowers young again. I love you especially when happiness vanishes from your dismayed brow; when your heart drowns in horror; when your Present is covered by the fearful cloud of the Past. I love you when yout wide eyes sheds water hot as blood; when despite my lulling hand your over-heavy anguish breaks through like the death-rattle of a man in his last throes. I breathe in - O divine voluptuousness - O profound and delicious hymn - all the sobs of your breast, and I do believe that your heart grows brighter from the pearls which well from your eyes.

I wouldn't mind some critique if you'd mind.

>>9333801
Oh I'd mind alright.

Do you mind if I do an immanent critique and eviscerate you by your own standards?

Firstly, what is up with this shapeless blob of purple piss poorness? This is why you don't "write whatever the fuck you want".

>good as gold?
cliche = expressing yourself? I don't think so.

> Be beautiful, and be sad
Is this what an active investigation looks like? Cos it sounds to me like you're just standing some loosely connected and mushy observations beside one another.

Main problem is that your imagery is not unique enough. Tears, rivers, storms, flowers, heart, cloud(of the past YUCK), water, blood, etc.

These can be used time and time again, but the poet's job is to reinvent them for us. To make them new and at the same time of the world. You haven't done so. All your imagery falls in service of the cheap romantic gesture of the poem, which you weren't even capable of expressing without dressing up in the false dignity of tired images.

Try writing this poem again in a plainer style. Or, spend more time studying the style you opted for and figure out how you can do something worthwhile with it.

>>9333852
>Tears add a charm to the face, as a river to a landscape

Also, c'mon man. telling telling telling. Do something fun with it. Don't just tell us about it.

What about; "The charm of your face the tears that river its landscape." Or "Your years a river that charms the landscape of your face" I hope you can see how boring you're being.

>>9333852
Bro you're so full of shit. What i posted is a translated verse of a Baudelaire poem. You sounded like a true Bloomfaggot which was why i expected your instantaneous about writing "what you feel like". However Bloom adores Baudelaire. But i guess your immanent critique and evisceration of Baudelaire is a capability beyond the critique of Bloom and the majority of literary critiques to which Baudelaire is a highly regarded poet but you didn't even recognize this to be a typical french poem of the symbolist art movement. Oh wait a sec...

Oh...
...
...
Oh wait.. No i think you just might be an edgy faggot. Anyways OP sorry to derail your thread but i had to assrape this faggot.

>>9333877
You got me bro. Headshot.

Bet you still write piss poor poetry

>>9333895
Try me, fool

when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it

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>>9333785
Aww, thank you, Anon.

>>9333902
This is actually SO good. Well done.

>>9333902
rupi, is that you?

>>9329603
All you have to do
Is have a broken home and
Pain

>>9331718
The biblical infant-killer is Herod; Herodotus is the Greek historian. Unless it is a pun which I don't get.

>>9333762
Thank you anon, any poets or books you consider easy to get into or would recommend for new poetry readers?

>>9333902
The best advice I can give is that you seek employment at Hallmark

>>9334025
Try Robert Frost. He's the first poet discussed in the lecture series I pointed you toward.

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OP here, thanks for the help, and keeping the thread alive.

>>9334031
>>9333925
>>9333920

Take another one:

In our youth
we believed
that fairness
is the least
we should expect.
Now we know
it is the best
we can hope for.

>>9334313
You take fairly banal sentences and simply cut them into verse. How profound does it look now?:

"In our youth we believed that fairness is the least we should expect. Now we know it is the best we can hope for."

>>9334320
Profound enough to get a publishing deal.

>>9334326
Oh, I'm sure

>>9334320
I second this opinion

>>9333939
not sure i'd call it a pun, but it was intentionally written that way to play on the idea of being forgotten as the seonc death and how herodotus took that peace away by writing histories.

That's like asking how to develop autism.

>>9329603
>Step 1.1: Read over the basics of writing poetry.
>Step 1.2: Read advice from acclaimed(or personal favorite) poets.
>Step 1.3: Write shitty poetry
>Step 1.4: Work up courage to share and ask for advice
>Step 1.5: Ask what people think of your shitty poetry
>Step 1.6: They tell you it's shitty. If you're lucky, they'll tell you why
>Step 1.7: Get pissed and embarrassed
>Step 1.8: Cool off
>Step 1.9: Take some advice but keep your style (this is key)

>Step 2: Repeat steps .1-.6 (indefinitely)
>(eventually)
>Step 2.5: Realize you don't need to try so hard; and that good form comes naturally with repeated practice.

>Step 3: Write poetry

...and so on.

>>9336909
Thanks, I still have a problem with Step 2.5.