/lit/ - Literature

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

>>4538506
Did you take your pink pills? You can have some of mine. We can share.

>>4538488
there are many people, they are mental, they are problems

>>4531086
Meter's too regular, I think. These days, it's difficult to write end rhymes without them becoming a distraction, and a common way to work around that is rhythmic variation - you don't break out of iambic pentameter until line 7, and by then the reader's already bored by the sheer regularity of it (though I wasn't at all displeased with the heart/dark half-rhyme).
I'd also recommend that you avoid filler words and modifiers that exist for the sole purpose of making your poem "fit" your meter: it should be the other way around.
Examples of places where you do this:
>Intrinsically exquisite and divine
>lines beginning with 'and'
>himself (I see what you're doing, but it's ineffective)

>>4531079
A lot of the above advice applies to you, too.
Also, that Judas mention is out of place.

>>4530580
Heartbreaking.

>>4530525
Oh god, I love this so much.

>>4530444
This just got better and better as I read through it. It's just so -tidy-, you rarely see that kind of cleanliness with poems like these.

>1
The chickadees wake with the sunrise and shy their slight notes
among snow-laden breezes; in reveille
finches sound off: now one, now another.
But what morning is this for songbirds?
Hear now the cardinals mimic and guess
at your baltering language of laughter and touch
that excites the ear with strange orchesis.
They flush the blank air like a rash;
they are not you.
I favor the mute falling snow,
the waltzless white dust: unmoving and unreminiscent.


>2
Evening rain against the window
glass blends all the world in its clear

mud. Maple and asphalt made alike,
leveled by heaven's balms.

Lights and sirens flare, borne by
catastrophe, and mingle with the skies'

black skin of stars. Traffic
and storm are wed,

and yet we've still to touch.
Between our two hides

in indefinite pause is harbored
a century's worth of want, a sense

of incommunicable urgency, which surfaces
only through ellipsis.

Tacit, too, are these
candles, waxen papavers

that wilt now,
sick with fever

--meanwhile raindrops sound their Pathetique
like fingers that press, at long last,

into their bedmate's flesh, but know
not what urge begs their fall.

>Italian
La bella estate by Cesare Pavese
l'Iguana by Anna Maria Ortese
La Vita accanto by Mariapia Veladiano

>Romanian
Nostalgia by Mircea Cărtărescu
Tinereţe fără tinereţe by Mircea Eliade

>1
The chickadees wake with the sunrise and shy their slight notes
among snow-laden breezes; in reveille
finches sound off: now one, now another.
But what morning is this for songbirds?
Hear now the cardinals mimic and guess
at your baltering language of laughter and touch
that excites the ear with strange orchesis.
They flush the blank air like a rash;
they are not you.
I favor the mute falling snow,
the waltzless white dust: unmoving and unreminiscent.


>2
Evening rain against the window
glass blends all the world in its clear

mud. Maple and asphalt made alike,
leveled by heaven's balms.

Lights and sirens flare, borne by
catastrophe, and mingle with the skies'

black skin of stars. Traffic
and storm are wed,

and yet we've still to touch.
Between our two hides

in indefinite pause is harbored
a century's worth of want, a sense

of incommunicable urgency, which surfaces
only through ellipsis.

Tacit, too, are these
candles, waxen papavers

that wilt now,
sick with fever

--meanwhile raindrops sound their Pathetique
like fingers that press, at long last,

into their bedmate's flesh, but know
not what urge begs their fall.

>>4527982
Not fond of the second one; it seems too arbitrary.
The first one is a really great start - "sigil sun", especially, is a very evocative choice of words. The first stanza's got a nice, solid sense of pace.

>>4525024
>Quixote
Edith Grossman

>>4523909
Mandelbaum, with parallel text. The Hollanders' translation is good if you want the color, but Mandelbaum's a must if you want to see what the poet is actually doing and finish the canticles with anything close to a solid understanding of the poem.

>>4524305
Compare it how?

I'll never get this thing up-to-date, but here ya go:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/14462140-gabriel

>>4521464
>>4521526
Oh god, this and this.
And also, the way it automatically lists a book as having been read in January when you only specify the year.

tfw your majors aren't listed

The chickadees wake with the sunrise and shy their slight notes
among snow-laden breezes; in reveille
finches sound off: now one, now another.
But what morning is this for songbirds?
Hear now the cardinals mimic and guess
at your baltering language of laughter and touch
that excites the ear with strange orchesis.
They flush the blank air like a rash;
they are not you.
I favor the mute falling snow,
the waltzless white dust: unmoving and unreminiscent.
_______________________

What works? What doesn't?

>Cassandra, by Christa Wolf, translated by Anita Raja

>Sarà lui a condurre la folla alla porta Scea e a macellare il toro, ma libererà il fanciullo: il dio, Apollo, che protegge la città, d'ora innanzi non vuole più sacrifici di fanciulli.

>He will be the one to lead the crowd to the Scaean Gate and slaughter the bull, but he will let the child go free: the god, Apollo, who protects the city, no longer desires child sacrifices.

Um....

Along with Hegel and Gibbon.

>>4517953
>I awoke on
his signal. The

>>4517309
The same reason there are countries where roofies are legal.

>>4514688
Fuck Chomsky

>>4514803
For an academic introduction, this.

>>4516499
You only made this thread so you'd have an excuse to say "rim-job-baud"

>>4515389
I know exactly what you mean, and in Romanian I'd say șmecher, but in English I can't think of any way to say it without resorting to figurative language--'shark' springs immediately to mind.

Um, would anyone mind giving me some feedback here..? >>4512755

>>4513218
Fuck off.

>>4513226
>>4513161
There was no reason. It was never my intention to critique every post in the thread, just the ones I thought I could comment on constructively, I got tired, tried to go to sleep, failed, and now I'm back. So:

>>4513025
I'm not a fan of "precipitation"s bulk. "Instruments outfitted" feels good on the tongue & sounds even nicer, but the verse develops clumsily: drop the article before "trumpet", and consider slapping a hyphen or two in there: "trumpet- and truth-welding wailers".
You should also think about trading "in to" for "down" in the first line: it's more consonant, more rhythmic, and above all else, more natural.

>>4512970
Poetry is a music; sound comes before all else.
Play around with phonaesthetics/phonosyntactics a bit, see what it does for you.

>>4512992
You got a bandcamp/soundcloud or anything?

>>4512953
I know you intend "hung" to be read as a participle (and it makes for some love vowel harmony with 'unlit'), but I can't help but wonder how many readers mistake it for a past-imperfective verb on their first read.
The pairing of "empty" and "clutching" works marvelously.
"a dollhouse breathes in" (beautiful imagery) is hindered by the following verse.
Do you have any particular memory attached to this?