POETRY.

[fuckrobertfrost.livejournal.com]

Okay guys, I want you to write some poetry about or by your characters. It can be stupid, short, long, rhyming, haiku, whatthefuckever.

Just this once, I will allow you to choose the wuss out option: you can use poems by other poets.

If you don't want to write poems, then name your favorite poets. Or write a screed about why you hate poetry — quite frankly I sympathize — anything, I don't care. This post is about poetry.

Posting this with the relevant account even though I dropped him. FIRST ONE TO POST ROBERT FROST GETS THEIR EYEBROWS SINGED OFF. no I'm kidding he is a fine poet and I greatly admire his diction sob

Comments

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

Writing has never extended to the land of poetry, for me, so I will steal something by some guy named Raymond Foss for the purpose of this thing and pretend it is in some fashion a decent work rather than something that just fits nicely.



In before Ian gets in here and rocks the pants off everyone.

[sam-the-redhead.livejournal.com]

Edgar Allan Poe is my all-time favourite poet and NOT BECAUSE HE'S THE ONLY POET I KNOW, NOR IS IT BECAUSE I'M AN EMO WANNABE-DEEP-POET SLASH SONGWRITER CHICK WHO SLITS HER WRISTS WHILE WRITING SAD SAD WOE IS ME POETRY IN MY OWN BLOOD AND DRAW "INSPIRATION" FROM HIS GOTHIC POEMS WHILE LISTENING TO EVANESCENCE.

It's because I genuinely like his shit. Like. A lot. And I would totally write poetry about my characters but I am way, way too lazy. Too lazy to even use poems by other poets.

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Well, he is a goddamn classic.

NO. NO LAZINESS. MAKE A HAIKU.

[improvesmorale]

Oh god, I can't even touch poetry. The only poem I've ever written was an intentionally nonsensical rambling thing about a tennis match that was so biazrre that I stumped the entire audience. AWKWARD SILENCES. NEVER FORGET.

People should totally recommend poets and poems to me, though! I know very little about the medium, but I'm sure I would like it if I got a better look.

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Very interesting!

... Ian is a poet? something something know it god that was terrible

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

HFDAUFHDAHFDAJhf Nai I love you. I would like to read that poem. I had gotten that reaction a few times when I was in a poetry class and it was just amazing.

I like recommending people James Tate, because his poems are really accessible. Albeit... not... typical poetry?

Same Tits :: James Tate
It was one of those days. I was walking down the St. and this poster glassed in a theater billboard caught my eye. A really gorgeous set of tits. It was noon, hot as hell outside. So I said what the hell, paid my $2.50 and went in. Got a seat all by myself right in the middle. The curtain opens: there’s the same poster by itself in the middle of the stage. I sat there sweating. Finally decided to get the hell out of there. It was still noon, hot as hell outside.

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

S'far as I remember? (And he don't know it--but his big feet show it, as they're Longfellows.)

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Fffffffffff

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Slightly more seriously...

The Lost Pilot :: James Tate
for my father, 1922-1944
Your face did not rot
like the others—the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others—it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come back for an evening,
down from your compulsive

orbiting, I would touch you,
read your face as Dallas,
your hoodlum gunner, now,

with the blistered eyes, reads
his braille editions. I would
touch your face as a disinterested

scholar touches an original page.
However frightening, I would
discover you, and I would not

turn you in; I would not make
you face your wife, or Dallas,
or the co-pilot, Jim. You

could return to your crazy
orbiting, and I would not try
to fully understand what

it means to you. All I know
is this: when I see you,
as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,
spin across the wilds of the sky
like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were
the residue of a stranger’s life,
that I should pursue you.

My head cocked toward the sky,
I cannot get off the ground,
and, you, passing over again,

fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well, or that it was mistake

that placed you in that world,
and me in this; or that misfortune
placed these worlds in us.

[shiromadoushi]

[Just pretend this is in Japanese :)]


In chaotic times
a brief moment of closeness,
treasured for always

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

CONFESSION: I have actually written a poem about an event in DC comics, and I kept that a secret because people actually liked the poem and my teacher said it took risks and then started yelling at me because I was "wasting my life". As such, I am too embarrassed to share it because, uh, well, it DID take risks in the sense that I got all ~emotional~ and shit AND IT'S ABOUT A COMIC AAAAAAAAAAAA I CAN'T GET OVER IT WHY DO I DISINTEGRATE EVERYTHING I TOUCH



This, however, is a poem I wrote on the ic anonmeme once. If you can guess which one of my characters wrote it, and who it is to/what it is about, I shall be very pleased. :3

Pet names, diminutives; I
love you, I always have.
Kissing you implies
the pressure of an ocean,
the darkest trenches where
monsters lie.
Pendulum in a watery prison,
slow, you pass me by.
So self-sufficient, the sound
of returning rings out
into seashell-curving ears,
and where I lie on shore,
eating the salt
of long dead years.

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Aw, how very Bakura.

[sam-the-redhead.livejournal.com]

He is but I feel like saying he's my favourite makes it seem like I don't know about other poets out there because everyone knows about Poe.

FINE.

A wash-up sits and
starts reminiscing about
her past glory days.

AND FOR SHEGO

Red hair catches her
eye and she stops to wonder
if she needs to fight.

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get that. And I always feel SO obligated to get as obscure as possible, without relegating myself to referencing some 13 year old in Wisconsin's rain poem. It's almost like people are with indie bands.

Well, I like both of those very much. Sally totally needs poetry written about her. Haha, I don't know why I feel that way. Maybe because I just see that era as so... not glamorous, but it was definitely something else, those times, and those women.

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

YOU WROTE THIS?

I loved that one from the moment I read it on the meme--and spent the better part of the following hour trying to Google it to find out who the author was and where I could find more!

(Did you also write the one about green eyes? I saved them both to my computer that day.)

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

:O!!!!!!!!!! omg. I was excited because someone left a comment that it was "lovely", and it is so amazing to hear this from you, thank you!

I was concerned about the hokey rhyme pattern or... lack thereof... but it wasn't intentional, so I left it.

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Green eyes was not me! Was that in the most recent anonmeme? /zooms to read

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

I don't remember which anon comm I found it on, but I do know that I read yours and it on the same day--I'm super picky with poetry so when I find one that strikes me I try to save it on paper or the laptop or something so I never lose it, hee.

[liebe_krieg]

I have no talent for writing poetry and my reading of it has been very limited. That said, I like dark, haunting poems the best, the kind that evoke images of death and nightmare. Poe's 'The Raven' is my favourite, but I also really like parts of 'The Waste Land,' 'The Second Coming' and 'The Hollow Men' for similar reasons. Poetry for me tends to be very good at creating a sense of the incomprehensibly apocalyptic.

I think this bit from Byron's 'Darkness' could apply to the Major:

And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was Death

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I love that. "Fact of his pulse" and crash test cars, and the ending.

Man, I love that a poem like this could just be delivered to our doorstep, so to speak. Because it's so intimidating and exasperating to go out looking for poetry by people who aren't yet published.

[sam-the-redhead.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really is. I mean we had to pick poets to research in my AP English class and everyone was picking all these obscure poets and I was all "Edgar Allan Poe plz" and I got looks. I really don't get why you have to go obscure in order to seem like you're a high-and-mighty literary encyclopedia or...whatever. G_d I can't brain sentences and words today hhhhhhhh.

SHE REALLY DOES BUT MAYBE BECAUSE I'M BIASED AND LOVE HER. We're learning about that era in women's history and it...kind of sucked to be a woman like Sally during that time. It seems glamourous on the outside, what with all the women like Marylin Monroe and all those pretty black-and-white pictures of celebrities and everyone on tumblr being obsessed with that shit, but in reality...it kind of sucked being a woman. Once you were married...and lord help you if you were a woman and not married, that was...basically it. Especially if you retired and your time in the limelight kind of faded for you. The beginning of the end and you're stuck taking care of the house while your husband travels for work. It's lonely being a woman during that time. :/

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

I love the Wasteland. And oddly relevantly, I also love war poetry, but the ones I know aren't really applicable to the Major. I like that bit, though. I can imagine him beaming as it's read.

[taughttolisten.livejournal.com]

...idk about this guy but i've written multiple dirty haiku about, um, a lot of characters

and a weird prose poem thing that mutated from star wars fanfic into an actual creation myth

[exprophet.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yeah! I'm just like, ngl, I don't know very many poets and I only slowly accrue them as I'm accidentally exposed to their work... but against my will I am impressed by people who just toss out names I've never heard XD and reference them effortlessly.

Oh man, yeah. lmao tumblr And Sally seems to go against that so much but at the same time, you just can't escape that kind of thing and it did have such an incredible effect on her life, which in turn had such a strong effect on Laurie.

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

Rhyme pattern is usually one of the first things that puts me off poems. People rarely use it when they express themselves naturally (speaking or ranting or thinking) so it just tends to throw me out of the comfy spot floating in the middle of the river when it comes to word flow.

And you're quite welcome--beyond welcome! <3