I haven’t gotten too deep into Blake but this art goes with his “prophetic books”

And yeah it was a cool feeling when I read Sailing to Byzantium and realized that’s where No Country for Old Men was drawn from

Antler-like atlatls rattle
kill the chatter; can it
slow paddle; aim from the saddle
fishscale scatter, skedaddle

Light patterns, prism fractals,
deep red lanterns dancin'
Pisces, Aquarius, Cancer
Zodiac, heads on mantles

Need to eat; live, die, repeat
intellectualizing effete
bare feet thump in sync
hands drum out beats

Now we feast

reading yeats just reminded me of the modernists (like T.S. Elliot) & confessional poets (like Sylvia Plath) who were right around the corner after him.

i love the romantic poets, but these two movements that came afterwards are probably what inspire my own personal writing style the most. so raw and internally driven.

adding you to op based on raw talent alone LOL

the pivot from zodiac signs to comparing them to the animal heads on mantles got me like

keep em coming would love to see more s*** from you

In

I’ll look more into those

I don't read as much poetry as I would like to.

But I do enjoy writing them every now and again. Very therapeutic

welcome

can definitely help you out with some recommendations do you have 1 or 2 favorite poems already?

would love to see some of your writing. i was actually thinking of coming up a writing prompt in the next few days just one single word as a guide and see how everyone riffs off of it.

stay tuned for that

I find it interesting when people say depression can actually fuel creativity but I feel like it essentially killed my drive

I am vertical.
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

By Sylvia Plath

Any advice for returning back as a beginner?

for me it can be either way. sometime i find a way to express my pain. other times, it is just so crippling that i can't leave my room.

intense emotions manifest differently for everyone. don't weigh down expectations on yourself depending on how other people respond. take care of yourself as best as you can and the magic will happen on its own time ❤️

i'm gonna add you to the club! stick around and we'll help each other out do & be better

that's really beautiful and poignantly put.

reminds me of avatar the last airbender. they spend almost 3 seasons of the show showing how fire ravaged the entire world before showing that it too, like every other element, is born of pure, untainted energy.

even apart from necessities like cooking and warmth, fire has amazing intangible value to so many cultures around the world. it is the symbol for ultimate purity, its own, almost cosmic, state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas.

i've heard of kahlil gibran before but never given his work a try. definitely gonna change that now any go to recommendations?

man. i don't know what to say. that was just really gorgeous. i really had goosebumps by the end. the way you extend your own personal emotional perceptions as tangible physicalities in the world around us is stunning.

thank you so much for sharing. i can't wait to see more of your writing soon

gonna put out a writing prompt by tomorrow in case you're interested! it'll just be one word and you can interpret it however you like. i'll add you to op and tag you when i do

for me personally what gets me out of a rut is knowing (even vaguely) what idea/thoughts I would like to express and then writing prose instead of poetry.

at least for me, writing poetry comes with this inherent need to create a more "perfect" or finished product. if it doesn't flow right, it may not feel like you've done a good job. with prose, all you need to do is literally just keep writing like a madman and don't even look back.

turn off all your devices and just zone in for like 15 minutes. don't think about structure, style, paragraphs, etc. don't even think about being coherent. even if you end up writing one sentence that runs for 5 lines straight on the page, that's fine. ramble on.

the moment you run out of things to say, you'll know you've expressed yourself as purely as you could 😃do this a few times and i swear when you actually want to write poetry, you'll find your gears turning more easily than they were before

This is a poem by Sylvia Plath. Sorry didn’t mean to confuse just saw ‘share your favorites’ in op and this is my favorite poem
It is very touching tho

oh that's no problem man. beautiful words no matter who they come from, thanks for posting it

i really really enjoyed it. I have read a decent amount of her work and am really inspired by her tying in the emotional to the physical like I mentioned earlier! i try to personally emulate that a lot when I do my own poetry.

do you write as well?

I’m trying to lol. If you’ll do prompts I’ll try to participate

You got a fav poem by Plath? Or any similar writers?

Recently reread on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong, the prose is fantastic and I’ve never read a book that mixes novel and poetry like that.

Preordered time is a mother today can’t wait to read it

a constant anxiety that split half into the day

ignorance of bliss or malice

from Grace

realized late last night

why i swallowed to fade the light

her door shut me out

365 moons, trying to distract myself

from my irrelevance to her

not knowing why

I try to rationalize

the chest deep inside

where my affection resides

has been raped

someone who was supposed to represent something

greater than myself

but left me

alone again

avenge i will

my stature on Earth

will end up bitter and rich

Daniel Day

ruminating on those who dont kiss my feet

or at least

acknowledge me

• @KAYTRANADA

gonna post the prompt very soon, will tag you

i would definitely recommend any of the poets who were part of the Confessional Poetry movement in the late 1950s to 1960s. it was a group of mostly americans who wrote these intensely personal autobiographical poems that talked about depression, death, loss, trauma, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, failing marriages, generational disillusionment and a ton of other taboo topics that had never really been explored and laid bare like that up until then. they stopped hiding behind the finesse of poetry as an art form and ripped their hearts out for everyone to see.

Plath is probably the most well-known of the lot but there are a few more really good ones. Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, Snodgrass are considered the other big three from this movement.

Lady Lazarus by Plath is particularly intense & heartbreaking but also very beautiful. she is literally running the reader through the many times she's tried to kill herself, while expressing anger towards those who saved her. it's like the poetic equivalent of an experimental noise song. bitter and harsh, but still incredibly gorgeous and potent.

i just looked up the vuong book and damn, i'm definitely gonna have to check that one out myself. i absolutely love writers who experiment with their work like that

Gil Scott Heron needs to be brought up in this thread

here fam you dropped this 👑

this was heartbreaking but also stunningly clear & elegant. thank you for sharing and in case this is from personal experience, which it seems like it is, i hope you've been doing better recently