The Red Wheelbarrow

Oh I remember that one. That's one of the clearest examples ever of Lit teachers being full of B.S. If that can be considered poetry, than any random words a four year old strings together can be as well.

That sounds so fun! I think I might try my hand at it over summer break or something. ^^

Yeah, I remember that one too. I actually like (good) poetry, but stuff like that is a prime example of "I'm going to take a regular sentence and put random line breaks in".

"The Second Coming" kicks ass, though.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:18:28 PM by JapaneseTeeth

I don't actually read a lot of poetry althoug I do own some books of poetry including the complete works of Langston Hughes and The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks.

Oh god I remember "The Red Wheel Barrow" and trying to explain the meaning of why so much depends on it.

Explicating poems is BS.... who the hell knows what the poet meant when they wrote it. Most likely they were tripping on something and the poem doesn't mean anything.

I own the entire collection of Shakespeare's Sonnets, a Milton book with a lot of his poetry (including all of Paradise Lost) and "100 Essential Modern Poems" with Joseph Parisi.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:22:44 PM by ilsemmr

Yeah, for poetry explication, you can make up any random nonsense and it doesn't matter.

In stanza 4, the author used lots of long vowel sounds to create an urgent atmosphere in the reader. This reinforces the subject matter of the poem by making the reader feel their impending mortality. blah blah blah

Also, anyone want to try a Python CTF? I created one for fun and I'm curious if anyone can beat it.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:21:51 PM by storyyeller

It's not total BS (although a lot of it is). In college a lot of the analysis we did was more along the lines of examining the poet's background and trying to understand how it influenced their writing. There's actually a basis for that kind of stuff. It's when people move from "what did the author say?" to "what do I want it to say?" that it becomes stupid.

The only poetry book I own is the collected works of John Donne. Love that guy.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:23:39 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Well it is possible to make legitimate theories on that stuff, but I think most of what the lit teachers expect fails the Turing Test. I bet a computer could be programed to churn out this nonsense and get all As.

I wish I had a better appreciation for per-modernity works overall (poetry, Novels, plays) but it never captures me. I think Emily Dickerson is one of my favorites from that era but after I read The Waste Land and liked it I knew I was gonna have a harder time appreciating earlier works.

@Mousa, RE: art of the list: Hm.... Hm...

Well, first of all you sound a bit too close to the microphone. Like, your voice sounds really fuzzy and just kinda off... I'd say either turn down your mic reception or back away from it. Your volume will be lower, and you'll get a much clearer sound.

As far as the singing itself, it's alright, though you're a bit clutzy and it's usually fairly clear when you pause for breath. But I don't imagine you do much singing, so it's forgivable. Your voice itself sounds nice, but it's hampered by the issues with delivery

The lyrics are pretty good(I think; the muffled delivery makes it hard to make out a bit, as does poor enunciation in some spots), and certainly fit Twilight's character. I could imagine a bit of animation actually going along with it, which I imagine was probably the intention. Thing is, though, while your general rhythm is there the lyrics stumble and force a few beats. Like, I can hear you trying to stretch a single syllable across a beat where there should be two, and occasionally you have a two-syllable word where it just sounds like there should be a word change. Things like that. I'd try comparing your lyrics side by side with the original, saying them out loud and seeing how they feel next to each other. If it doesn't feel spot-on, try reworking it.

On the whole, it's... alright. I've certainly heard worse, but I wouldn't quite call it good. Passable, yes. But not really exemplary in any way. Had it been something I'd stumbled across on Youtube, I probably wouldn't have finished.

TL;DR: Move away from your mic to get better voice reception, work a bit on the lyrics to make them flow better, and enunciate a bit better while you're singing. It's not terrible, but it's not great.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:25:16 PM by kegisak

It really depends on whether you get a good teacher or not. I lucked out in college and got a guy who was actually a published poet and had a good sense of how to approach the material. Unlike in high school when I suspect that the teacher had never tried to write a poem before and thus didn't really know what things to focus on.

Dang, now I want to start writing poetry again.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:25:19 PM by JapaneseTeeth

@yeller: What is CTF, and what level of programming-fu does that entail?

I'm in a year-long English class and it has to be my favorite. It's almost impossible to get an A in anything, but it's a fun class. And He likes to analyze as well. Our professor doesn't try to force us to find an analysis. If we can't think of anything, he either gives us random stories or moves on to another poem. Plus, we can chose the poems we wish to talk about XD.

As for "The Red Wheelbarrow": "he discovered how the placement of letters, words, and lines on a page could produce a visual as well as a verbal artifact, as in "The Red Wheelbarrow, " where the long first line form the "handle"

@story Sorry, the only programming language I'd consider myself at least good in at this point is VISUAL Basic

edited 7th Mar '12 9:30:29 PM by crowlover

I just remember doing a report on Samuel Taylor Coleridge in AP English and my teacher seriously disliking my explications of his poem Kublai Khan as being induced by an opium overdose.

And now I think I'm going to stop sniffing this strawberry scented pony torso and go to sleep...

edited 7th Mar '12 9:30:09 PM by Emidawg

@Story As cool as that sounds, I don't know enough about Python to try it and I'm not too interested in hacking. Besides, programming is my day job, so I'd rather relax and not do it for a while in the evenings.

I also own One Hundred And One Famous Poems 1926 edition which is by far the oldest book I own. The second oldest is A Penguin press anthology of Dante Allehgeri(sp?), which contains a translation of The Divine Comedy, from 1947. Oh I also have The Canterbury Tales too.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:34:16 PM by Allik

Alright, then. Goodnight, Emi.

@Allik Ah, Dante. I will admit, when I first tried reading it, I thought the She-Wolf of Incontinence was something entirely different.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:36:08 PM by crowlover

Filly paper-bag wizard?

Well, I'm going to sleep now, goodnight.

So even the crow has gone back to its nest. Goodnight. Well I'm still here for at least an hour.

edited 7th Mar '12 9:49:51 PM by Allik

I'm going to sleep as well soon. Not yet though

If someone things of something interesting to talk about, please mention it. This thread need to MOVE! :D

I was unprepared for the concentrated adorable.

Well since no one is posting I must now think of some random, boring thing to talk about. Since we were talking about literature, anyone share my love for late 19th Century Russian Literature?

edited 7th Mar '12 9:57:33 PM by Allik