Need we take an interest in the poetry of the past?

88.89% • 16 votes • YES: It will inspire, educate and encourage us
11.11% • 2 votes • NO: It is irrellevant and unhelpful to us today
Total votes: 18
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Need we take an interest in the poetry of the past?

AdamW
Lost Thinker
United Kingdom 1awards
Joined 24th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 7

Need we take an interest in the poetry of the past?

poet Anonymous

I believe it was Churchill that once said “a country that forgets its past has no future”.

Same goes for poetry in my opinion.

Umm
Dangerous Mind
Latvia 1awards
Joined 6th Dec 2015
Forum Posts: 2373

I don't consider myself a writer or poet, but I truly love reading and I don't think anyone who has read T.S. Eliot's essays on poetry and criticism could ever believe that poetry of the past is irrelevant.

"We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.

.... the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order."

- T.S. Eliot

I hope this is relevant and I haven't missed the point of the thread

Gesare
Strange Creature
Joined 27th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 2

Its rather simple...there is no past no now no gonna be...just the primordial celebration...great poets transcend these arbitrary whoopi cushion structures

Gesare
Strange Creature
Joined 27th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 2

That is an utterly pointless question!!! There is no past no now no gonna be....great poets trancend all arbitrary structures!! They make very real accusations at the institutions that now have there hands in our very minds, they challenge the very aspects ofour  institutions that prop up the endless sheep to slaughter paradigm...these are the ones often hardest to find, the greatest power is inactive

Xxxlix
Twisted Dreamer
United States
Joined 28th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 39

Modern usage which includes rapping is still steeped in old poetic traditions, mostly because it comes from oral recitation.  The skalds and bards used rhythm even more than rhyme

Ahavati
Tyrant of Words
United States 116awards
Joined 11th Apr 2015
Forum Posts: 14273

The poetic difference between those who profess to have written all their lives and those who actually do is how much ( or how little ) they've read or studied our literary predecessors.  

When I ask someone on this board who their influences are ( because I see none ), 90% of the time they'll say only themselves or other site members.

I'm not judging, just sad they're missing an entire path paved by some of the most beautiful literary influences of our  time.  And for the most part, their work demonstrates a patterned quagmire void of breathtaking imagery, emotional depth, and a uniquely surprising expression to something that's been said a thousand times before.

Yet it's their life to be happy at will.

poet Anonymous

Ahavati said:The poetic difference between those who profess to have written all their lives and those who actually do is how much ( or how little ) they've read or studied our literary predecessors.  

When I ask someone on this board who their influences are ( because I see none ), 90% of the time they'll say only themselves or other site members.

I'm not judging, just sad they're missing an entire path paved by some of the most beautiful literary influences of our  time.  And for the most part, their work demonstrates a patterned quagmire void of breathtaking imagery, emotional depth, and a uniquely surprising expression to something that's been said a thousand times before.

Yet it's their life to be happy at will.

Unpeccable observation. I agree. "No one can make themselves. We all are born from someone".

Vandel_Viaclovsky
Van
Thought Provoker
United States 2awards
Joined 21st July 2013
Forum Posts: 126

this is silly,
does an aspiring painter not study painting to some degree or another?
does an aspiring architect not study architecture?
does a doctor not study medicine that has been practiced already or do they just, like, ya know, wing it and hope for the best?
if one has no interest in studying poetry then one should not be in the poetry business, same as anything else really.

(by the way, those of you who make no effort to study your craft, hate to tell you this, but its really terribly obvious)



Astyanax
Ceejay
Fire of Insight
United Kingdom 9awards
Joined 23rd Feb 2010
Forum Posts: 748

Couldn't agree more, Vandel, particularly with your final observation.

poet Anonymous

Vandel_Viaclovsky said:this is silly,
does an aspiring painter not study painting to some degree or another?
does an aspiring architect not study architecture?
does a doctor not study medicine that has been practiced already or do they just, like, ya know, wing it and hope for the best?
if one has no interest in studying poetry then one should not be in the poetry business, same as anything else really.

(by the way, those of you who make no effort to study your craft, hate to tell you this, but its really terribly obvious)



Only by knowing, understanding and appreciating the great poets of the past, can we make art. In ancient times there were masters and disciples. The students lived with their teachers and assimilated their style, thoughts and ways of living and creating. Sadly, these schools have ended with modern day schools. Sad days when pupils are made to go forward even if they don't know or understand what they study. All according to the unfair principle that it is demeaning to leave people back. Bullocks! It's dangerous to promote people for the sake of it. What ever happened to challenge and merit?!

AnonymousBystander
Fire of Insight
United Kingdom 3awards
Joined 28th Sep 2018
Forum Posts: 226

How else would you be able to make it new?

SatInUGal
Kumar
Dangerous Mind
United States 24awards
Joined 31st Dec 2015
Forum Posts: 903

AnonymousBystander said:How else would you be able to make it new?

Pound that home!

SatInUGal
Kumar
Dangerous Mind
United States 24awards
Joined 31st Dec 2015
Forum Posts: 903

To Ahavati's post, all I would add is that the grand majority of poets I've read bore me to no end, so I don't end up reading as much old poetry as I might otherwise. DUP has a decent representation of the kind of poetry I like, which is fascinating. I love it here.

So, for me, I'm really glad for the classic poets and not-so-classic earlier poets that I've read and enjoyed, and my boat these days is mostly being floated by the contemporary poets I read here and other places.

I also think it's quite possible to simultaneously discover forms of poetry that are similar without reading the other stuff. When I read Rupi Kaur's stuff, I was like, "She stole my old style." Nah, I just happened to write (mostly in the past) a style that was in common with today's instagram poets.

Magdalena
Spartalena
Tyrant of Words
Wales 62awards
Joined 21st Apr 2012
Forum Posts: 2993

The word "need" grates with me, because it removes choice.  Who did the first ever Poet/Writer/Painter etc learn from? Someone had to start from nothing sometime long ago. They had to create from their own ideas, mind, thoughts, feelings.

I know very little about famous poets, because I have never been interested enough in them.

I've only taken to reading quotes from Anais Nin the past year or two. I had zero interest in poetry before I started writing it at the age of 18 to purge all of the misery and grief I was dealing with.

I have not studied poetry, but since I started writing (before the internet existed) I have been part of it. I have however, always been appreciative of great lyrics and music, from a young age.  

Maybe I am a reincarnation of a dead poet and that is why writing is in my bones.

My choice, my preference.

It doesn't make those who choose not to inadequate.  


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