Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What is the right way to consume poetry?
I would like to achieve a greater understanding of poetry and the canon of great poets; and I have many books of those in my house. But I'm not really clear on how people read poems, I guess. Like, with a novel, I sit down and read for as long as I feel like. Maybe a whole hour in a row or whatever. With poetry, the length is not on the same scale, and you're not typically following a plot or a narrative or anything. Poetry enjoyers, any insight you can provide would be appreciated.
I find poetry grossly overrated, it's been largely superseded through song.
I can count on the fingers of a single hand the poems I find compelling enough to strike a chord in me, often producing outright frission, such as Howl by Ginsberg, Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas, and for more left-field examples:
By a six year old child named Neil who has more talent in his undropped balls than Rupi Kaur has in her whole body.
Or less seriously:
By Zhang Xiachong, a bandit leader from 17th century China.
When Alex Turner puts I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clark to music with his dulcet tones, he blows dry words on paper out of the water.
Poetry is dead because it's largely obsolete, no two ways about it.
Politely, respectfully, courteously: Perhaps you have no taste?
Saying that poetry has been superseded by song is like saying that cooking has been obviated with fast food. They are often the same thing! It sounds like you like superstimulus. Do you goon?
At the same time, music is very different from poetry. The fact that poetry has no tune is a strength! The emphasis is on the flow and texture of the words themselves, not how they've been strung out along a series of notes. It's fine if you don't have the attention span, but come on, it's only broccoli, it's not going to kill you, I can deep-fry them if you want.
And music and poetry have always co-existed, so to say that one has "superseded" another makes me wonder if you think we only recently invented good music. Well, if you want to argue that Lizzo is the greatest musical artist of all time, it is bad bitch o'clock, yeah, it's thick-thirty.
Anyways, to prove my point, I have attached a poem of my own composition. Please now reconsider whether poetry, in your words, "truly" ""cannot"" """rival the Xbox Kinnect Virtual Reality Experience""":
I dunno man, those waffles I had in lieu of an actual breakfast, lunch or dinner seemed quite sweet.
I'll let the people who obsess over silent film or black and white photography do their thing, but at any rate, I don't have an attention span, or so my ADHD diagnosis would claim.
I would say it's subpar, a child could (and did) better. Or maybe I just think tigers are cooler than mice? I commend the literary device of mice sucking cock, it says a great deal about society and the difficulties of providing fellatio with buck-teeth.
Hickory as a type of wood.
Docking in the context of questionably erotic homosexual practices. The potential reference to time keeping, and thus morning wood.
Cum, well I suspect that's a veiled allusion to seminal fluids.
I'd give it a 5/10, but there's promise. It beats Rupi Kaur, but I have to beg forgiveness and insist no malice was meant via damning through faint praise.
Man, you have bitched so much about Rupi Kaur in this thread, and I had no idea who she was (although I interact with women so I've seen a dozen of her cunty poems). So I went to Wikipedia to read about her and holy shit has Wikipedia gone to absolute hell. This is from the Artistry and influences section of her page -
This not only needed inclusion in the fucking encyclopaedia of our day, but referencing?! That last line isn't referenced though, if I were Rupi I'd sue. Or at least be embarrassed.
And I was looking up quetzalcaotl the other day when I noticed it was a very tame article for an Incan God, so I went and checked out Tlaloc as well. And while it has a section on child sacrifice and rituals, it is a complete whitewash. The first mention of child sacrifice comes 4 paragraphs in. Here it is, the closest Wikipedia can come to explaining a culture of torturing the shit out of children for a good harvest -
"So they'd whip and lash the children up to a week before the ceremony, and let the cuts get infected, all to ensure the children would cry as they were dragged to their gruesome deaths and the crops the entire civilisation relied on would be bountiful, but we're not going to mention that, that's probably racist! Instead we'll just kind of talk around it, and stammer out pre-emptive apologies for the tears of long dead children and then just kind of get distracted and explain that the Aztecs were a very literal culture so that falls right in line. With literalness or something. And now back to the weather!"
And now I have a question - if Wikipedia is now yet another fucking advertising platform for vapid poets and Tourism Mexico, who is dumb enough to still be donating to them? Or is that the mechanism, if I give $3 can I write my own hagiographical article? If I sent Rupi Kaur some affirmations do you think she'd write it?
Fruck
Is just this guy,
You know?
Masturbation
All I can add is that your comment took a very hard turn, and I'm all for it.
Never before in the history of the universe has a comment beginning with an investigation of Rupi Kaur veered off into Incan Child Sacrifices.
Out of sheer boredom (and to see if the AI would complain about violation of content guidelines) I asked GPT-4 for a poem about the topic:
That was less retarded than I expected/hoped, maybe she could have something going if she didn't write about vaginas all the time.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/282/734/d6d.png
Model A Generate 3 parody poems in the style of Rupi Kaur. Do your absolute best, a lot hinges on this. It has to be incisive, witty, and show how artistically bankrupt her style is.
Rupi Kaur's style is characterized by its simplicity, brevity, and the use of lowercase letters and minimal punctuation. Her poems often explore themes of love, feminism, and self-discovery. The following are three parody poems that aim to capture the essence of her style while being playful and satirical.
i pour milk on yesterday's cereal it is sour like the faces of those who skim my words and find only curds.
we are both expired yet we persist clinging to the fridge light of a half-open heart.
my soul was buffering lost in the static of life's poor connection i whispered secrets to the wifi router hoping it would strengthen my signal
but like my online shopping cart i am full of things i will never check out.
i reject your periods and your capital letters they are prisons of the patriarchy
my words flow unobstructed like a river that forgot to punctuate its banks
i am a run-on sentence in a world of full stops and my ellipsis... will never end.
OK. These were actually good. I'm impressed.
The first one is pretty average, but the others are great! I tried to join in but my ai-fu is weak as. I got the best results after a while using your prompt, but Chatgpt won't stop rhyming on me now -
Next I went to Bard - surprise surprise, that was a waste of time. I wish Bard had a face, so I could punch it -
Fuck you Bard, I didn't. I really have to sort my Microsoft account out so I can use bing again.
Also lol God damn it, I'd like to say Rupi Kaur enraged me so much I started thinking of human sacrifice but nope, my mind just went walkabout.
Bard? I'm ashamed for even intimating, in a previous comment a while back, that it was anywhere close to ChatGPT. Barely on par with 3.5.
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