After school, even though I started to study English literature, I did everything I could to get away from poetry. Then, during a summer school in Scotland specifically for Literatur studies, there were a lot of contemporary Scottish poets who came to read their very own poetry. In the lectures, poetry was read aloud in order to grasp a full understanding of the poem. This was when I felt the love rising for poetry, without trying to analyze it. So it took my a long time to be able to enjoy poetry (For instance Robert Crawford with Full Volume)
As someone who read poetry from most eras and cultures, yet prefers modern and contemporary experimental poetry, I think you're missing the point of poetry if you're only into classical form and classical subject matter. There is also a gross oversimplification from the perspective of literary history. Pound was influenced a lot by the French and Italians. French modern poetry starts as early as Baudelaire. You don't have to drone about Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche or the early 20th century Freud (unless you are this inclined to enforce your ideological bent) when there's plenty of modern thought in Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud, who have been massively influential even on late 20th century French theory. It's like arguing that art was "ruined" by Dalí and Pollock when serious reactionaries know it all started with Turner and Impressionism. And to add salt over injury, some elements of modernist and even experimental poetry can be traced back to Baroque/Mannerist poetry - the stuff that went on to be decried as "bad taste" by the Classicists. Also, think of Roman neoteric poets like Catullus. At this point, isn't it clear that there has always been a war between the "classical" and the "modern", with or without Marx or Nietzsche? P.S. Should I also mention how all of this discourse only applies to the Western sphere? Some techniques that are/were deemed shocking in modern poetry are also simply appropriate from indigeneous traditions most Western people are ignorant about.
Well said! I agree with you. As I have a background in modern and postmodern art, I've noticed the problem of this video analysis is that it failed to contextualize the modern art form in the progression of history. Instead, all those big ideology was used to cover up this major flaws, and it suggested an ideological bias when analyzing the influences behind contemporary art forms.
For example, postmodernism existed because of the tragedy of WWII, and so there is major shift from formalism (the emphasis of forms) to the expression of human needs and humanist concerns. How the video simply labels these concerns as self-centered is very bias and selfish, ironically.
I always thought there was something wrong with myself since I tried over and over to read the contemporary poets but feeling nothing at all, now I feel it makes a lot of sense: it's not me, it's not even the poets, it's just the lackluster era we are going through
People are less educated, less literate and less intelligent than they used to be. This applies to poets too. Its not that we don't want to write good, beautiful poetry. It's that we can't. Added to that we have the widespread mind virus (you know the one).
A lot of truth here. I know some excellent poets in our time, but I still feel none of us are quite as good as the greats of the past. Oh well, trudge on.
Not sure it makes even the remotest bit of sense to connect a decline in poetry standards with Marxism. Gorky, Shaw, Miller, Brecht - all avowed Marxists and undoubtedly some of the best literary minds of the 20th century. I do think aesthetic merit is fundamentally apolitical and amoral. Pound was a fascist, and as Eliot was a conservative. They are also fantastic poets. In my opinion, consumerism has much more to with contemporary bad poetry than anything else. But there are lots of good living poets, writing in English: Simon Armitage, Louise Gluck, Michael Symmonds Roberts, Kim Addonizio, Patricia Lockwood... These just off the top of my head, and the more famous ones.
“I don’t like when Black people write poems about their experiences, and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do that if they had to write those poems in iambic pentameter.” - Classical Poets Live
You neglected to mention that my intolerance extends to women, other indigenous peoples, the sexual identity spectrum, the old, the neurodivergent, the young, and fans of pork rinds.
@@classicalpoetslive maya angelou is really SELFABSORBED huh? HD and Marrianne Moore would not be accused of such a crime, BUT Gerard Manley Hopkins and Wilfred Owen? NARCISSISTS
@classicalpoetslive I didn't make it through this video, but looking at the comments section, you seemed to have at least wasted however much time you spent making this video. I'm actually now curious to see if this is really as bad as it appears.
@@Matt_Fields_29 licking the bottom of the barrel with the worms just for you, my beloved haters. And yes, I do try to reply to people. I am a thoughtful bottom-scraper, at least.
Read "Ars Poetica" by Polish-Lithuanian poet Czesław Miłosz. In short, he wrote that in the centre of art, there is something "indecent" and that rhymes and rhythms place poets and readers through "agony" trying to emotionally offload themselves in such restrictions. He wrote that art is dictated by an ancient Greek "daimonion" (like the muses) and that poetry should be written "rarely and reluctantly" out of (emotional) necessity that "good spirits and not the evil ones" use the poet as an instrument.
I unpaused and immediately regretted it. "Darwinian evolution has never shaken serious scholarly challenges to its fundamental premises." That's why we changed the Theory to accurately reflect our understanding of reality. To the hypothetical person reading this comment: It's *very* easy to tell that someone is science-illiterate when they refer to the Theory of Evolution as "Darwinian Evolution" or "Darwinism". "The Theory of Evolution" specifically refers to our modern understanding of biological evolution, while "Darwinism" refers to the 19th century understanding of it. Darwinism doesn't take genetics into account, because Darwin had no idea what genes were. Creationists and other science-deniers have a habit of conflating these terms, mostly because turning something we understand more intimately than Gravity into an "-ism" is a pretty effective way to disarm their flock against THE most iron-clad theory in all of science.
If “Life emerged from slime” is ironclad, I’m Santa Claus. But I see what you mean about the terminology. I wasn’t referring to Darwin’s study of finches per se so much as the social application of evolutionary theory, for which Darwin’s name has become shorthand (as you alluded to). Evolution has been touted as an explanation for every modern human behavior. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor has noted, it is “inherently post hoc.”
@@classicalpoetslive If by "social application of Darwin's theory" you mean "Social Darwinism", that is a post-hoc pseudo-scientific justification for racism and imperialism, which is why no one (except racists) buys into it today. If you meant "Evolutionary Psychology", that tries to understand the human mind through the lens of evolution. "Modern human behavior" is more significantly influenced by culture than biology, as I understand it; though, that culture does have a foundation in human biology, which is why the lens of Evolutionary Psychology is so useful. Your characterization of Evolution as "life emerging from slime" shows just how little you understand this subject. The Theory of Evolution doesn't even cover or hypothesize about how life could have emerged from non-life (abiogenesis). That falls under the purview of Origin of Life research, which is entirely separate from Evolution. The idea that you don't understand your stuff is further reinforced by you quoting someone who referred to Evolutionary Biologists as "Neo-Darwinists" in the year of our lord 2010. Again, the Theory of Evolution has not been referred to as "Neo-Darwinism" in a scholarly setting in actual decades. "Neo-Darwinism" refers to the integration of Darwin's Natural Selection with Mendel's Gene Theory (circa 1895). It sounds to me that you have more of an issue with Scientific Naturalism, rather than merely the Theory of Evolution.
I am a poet of the Modern Age who keeps much of the classical spirit and practices alive. I am writing a series called The Wild Sonnets, which now includes 600 poems (contained in 6 books of 100 Wild Sonnets each). My channel here on TH-cam features an Out Loud series where I read two selections from this body of work. Feel free to stop by to get a sense of how I am bringing the sound and structure of past poetry into the times we live in.
This video is actually very subjective, biased, and with a self-centered perpective. This so-called analysis is at most an exmaple of cherry-picking, as it erases the influcence WWII and the emergence of postmodernism. Particularly, postmodernism indicated a major shift from formalism (focus of forms) to the expression of human suffering and humanist concerns. This shift has been expressed in all major disciplines of arts. Labelling them as "self-centered" is actually very narrow-minded, self-centering (ironically), and shows a lack of the basic skill contextulization. (Shaking my head-people actually believe in this just because the video mentioned some big words and "ism"?)
Also, it is very concerning for a video made in 2024, you erased what is happening in Palestine? The Palestinian poet, Refaat Alabama, wrote about the suffering of civilians in his poem. If you think that is self-centered, then, there is a serious concern regarding the moral and humanity of this video analysis.
Liked this very much. It has been my contention that the last poet in the English language of any worth was Dylan Thomas, and he died in the fifties. I'd probably take issue with some of your choices, as I might retain all of Stevens, all of Hart Crane, some Whitman, a little of Pound, and a little of Williams from the lineage you describe... but I like the thesis very much, have long considered myself to be a 'non-modernist poet', and hope very much people take notice of what you're saying. (I'd also absolutely concur with you re; most or all of English language poetry since WWII. Let us not forget however that - on the level of being thinkers - Williams and Pound included economic ideas in their poetry that were incredibly prophetic for what became known on the internet in the 21st century, regardless of how one feels about their political views.)
Hadn’t previously heard of him. Looked him up and the first poem I stumbled on was “Three Wishes.” I thought it was excellent. A particularly delicious line: “You can ease me off crosses and spice me like Christ.”
You do not know poets very well. They are not self-concerned. That do not ignore history. Look at Billy Collins writes in free verse and advises young poets to read the poems of the past. Ocean Voung - a Vietnamese American poet in an interview said he was once obsessed with formal poetry ,tried to write in iambs but realized it doesn't work for what he wants to say in poem. Dozens other poets admit that they don't write formal poems coz they can't master meter and rhyme not because past poems are old and shit and we need to loon in the present and ignore the poetic lineage. And no the average person hates poetry because school teaches that to read a poem is to analyse a poem is to beat it and beat it and beat it asking it what it means.
I think the point of the video is that poets who are ignoring the poetic lineage, as you say, are in fact part of one path of poetic lineage roughly starting with Whitman that is a self-destructive dead end. Billy Collins may of course admire pre-Whitman work, where the lineage divides. I'd be interested to learn what he thinks of Longfellow and the traditional poetic lineage after that such as Frost and Wilbur. Supposing he tells people to learn from those as well, the fact remains he writes in the poetic lineage that is different and he can only admire from afar. His lineage is self-destructive, so maybe he feels such poets need some input for something to start with and then destroy.
Collins has some good stuff, but to say there are exceptions to the general trend is not to deny that the trend is occurring. Go to a major poetry journal like Poetry magazine and take note of how many poems published there do NOT contain the word 'I' in the first line--almost invariably, they are a minority. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
There are a lot of things wrong with this video, but I'll stick to one for the sake of brevity. I would argue that rap (or even lyrical music more widely) is the most common form of modern poetry, and there are plenty of rap songs that aren't about "identity politics" or "themselves". There is plenty of trash rap music, don't get me wrong, but there are also plenty of trash poems. I think the issue here has more to do with the fact that most art nowadays is visual/audial (reading is technically visual but I think you understand what I'm getting at). With the advent of things like radios, TVs, computers, and cell phones, most of us would rather consume something like a television show, a movie, a song, or even a TH-cam video, rather than sit down and read a book/poem. This feels like the weirdest medium to whine about the culture war through, nebulously referring to "Darwin" or "Communism" to explain why art isn't the way you like it now. "The gays are coming for our poetry!" lmao. I clicked on this video thinking (and hoping) that the thumbnail was just click-bait, but I guess not.
Sorry to ruin several minutes of your life. Perhaps you could show this video to your therapist and discuss your feelings about it? You are right about living in a post-literate culture, though. And as far as rap, I think Tupac a rather excellent poet in that medium.
@@classicalpoetslive Please at least try to keep your comments tonally consistent. You can't follow "AHAH YOU TRIGGERED LIBTARD" immediately with "well actually yes I agree with that thing you said." Also academia has always leaned left, so please continue to mald with your square ass hairline while your contemporaries move on with the rest of culture
Much of what classical poetry sought to do has been taken over by song lyrics. Nor is this entirely new, as evidence the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth.
I have no problem with song lyrics. Folk songs, country songs, rock, etc. can have artful lyrics like anything can. But the level of complexity is generally less than what you'll find in a sonnet by Shakespeare, Petrarch, etc--although in the case of some of those classic poets, their works were sometimes set to songs, as Schubert's lieder did with Goethe. Modern pop songs, though, are mostly just strings of cliches.
@@classicalpoetsliveAll too true. On the other hand, that's also much of the Old Ballads. Our age seems in headlong flight from complexity in all its arts -- perhaps understandable in light of the complexity of its machinery, software, and economic structures -- but sad. And today's music (or "music") has an advantage denied it in the era of classical poetry -- the same instant universal distribution!
A clear perspective of the debate that many a young poet must wrestle with. My thoughts are everyone from Erza Pound onward who eshewed regular meter where under the notion that writing that panders to a society is the fastest way to notoriety. And, like celebrities, they are eventually forgotten along with the trend in society that raised them up. The truth of the matter, it seems to me, is the example from ancient texts, such as the Bible, which demonstrate all three divisions of verse being used (well maybe not blank verse) in a striking and memorable way. What ever topic one has a need to write about, the content must fit the form. Not in the way a shoe fits but in the way a delious cake comes out after it is baked.
That’s a very good point about the Bible. Anything can be done well, and contemporary free verse or prose poetry hardly rises to the quality of Psalms or Isaiah or Ecclesiastes. The trends, as you say, are antithetical to that sort of versecraft.
I think many normal people also read Carl Sandburg. I would say fairly equal to Robert Frost... Also, I think there is a lot more to explore in what you are saying. There are many variables.
This video is quite a ride. You forgot to explain the multiple steps that literature took along the many ideas that flourished throughout the modern period. This video implies that poetry is simply mediocre due to postmodernism and overly emphasized political subjects, however, that is not true. The change in paradigm regarding metric for example, has to be understood as a natural development from the rigidity of old forms, the free verse wasn´t born out of laziness but rather as a departure from the myriads of experiments that modernists did to the classical forms. If anything you can blame the German romantics for all of this, and before them the French enlightenment. I agree with you in the fact that contemporary poetry seems to rely A LOT on personal individuality and a lack of interest in the craft, however there's no reason to consider that poetry has never been a political matter, you have to acknowledge the fact that you might be politically aligned with the classical and neoclassical periods. Politically driven poetry has been present since the greeks and romans, sometimes it´s been explicit and other times the subject has been present in a more subtle way, consider for example works such as Pharsalia by Lucan or The Works and Days by Hesiod, both are true classic poetry masterpieces, and both go heavy either in criticizing or supporting the political systems that the authors lived in, Lucan even got killed for not liking emperor Nero too much.
to answer ur starting question i recently read 'I Wanna Be Yours' by John Cooper Clarke who's a phenomenal English poet and comedian who's been in the game a while and is still alive today, he published something this year I believe, other than that the rest of the video is tripe hackneyed "downfall of western civilisation" "woke is bad" (not quoting u btw) bs that everyone has heard 1000 times over
I’m focusing here on written poetry rather than songwriting, which follows somewhat different rules. It is interesting, though, how everyone always cites rap rather than another genre of popular music. Folk, pop, rock, etc. would also apply.
Marx and Freud are not incompatible; who told you this? I suggest you read Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization," and Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" and "The Sane Society." Freud is also not incompatible with Darwin. Freud revered Darwin and his whole approach to human psychology is firmly rooted in the theory of evolution. Freud even borrowed arguments of Darwin's when he (Freud) wrote his book called "Totem and Taboo." And of course Freud and Nietzsche are nothing but compatible. All you have to do is read any of Walter Kaufman's translations of Nietzsche's books (particularly "Beyond Good and Evil" and "Genealogy of Morals") to see the endless footnotes in which Kaufman points out where Nietzsche anticipated Freud, as well as Kaufman's own book on Nietzsche. The only incompatibility I see in your list is between Nietzsche and Marx. Now, I agree with your statement that each of these thinkers demystified the world. Nietzsche, Marx and Freud are the great hermeneuticists of suspicion. Moving on, Freud (who was the only one of these thinkers who was alive at the start of WWI) quite clearly disavowed cynicism and despair over that war and what it said about European civilization. He analyzes exactly this subject in his essay entitled "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," which he wrote during the war. I have to say, the entire first half of your video made me think of Wittgenstein's famous dictum at the end of his Tractatus: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," which translates to "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Now, to answer your first question: yes, there is an excellent poet alive as of today (12/16/2024) whose works I love and champion them to others whenever I can. His name is Rodney Jones. He's written 10 or so volumes of poetry, all of them good. My favorite volume of his is "Transparent Gestures." (Published in 1989.) I hope you read and respond to my comments as I would love to have a dialogue with you about everything you touched on in your video. I know a great deal about this subject matter, having studied it for 40 years.
Go… 010 T.E.N. = The Eternal Now = OUROBOROS Timing Times Relativity = Timeism لا الله الا زمان لا اللهً الا سلام ابراهيم رسول السلام Go Go YAHWEH for all of humanity. Yahweh I.S. Information System.
After school, even though I started to study English literature, I did everything I could to get away from poetry. Then, during a summer school in Scotland specifically for Literatur studies, there were a lot of contemporary Scottish poets who came to read their very own poetry. In the lectures, poetry was read aloud in order to grasp a full understanding of the poem. This was when I felt the love rising for poetry, without trying to analyze it. So it took my a long time to be able to enjoy poetry (For instance Robert Crawford with Full Volume)
Thank you for sharing this experience. Scottish poetry has a long and glorious tradition, and I’m glad writers today are keeping it alive.
As someone who read poetry from most eras and cultures, yet prefers modern and contemporary experimental poetry, I think you're missing the point of poetry if you're only into classical form and classical subject matter.
There is also a gross oversimplification from the perspective of literary history. Pound was influenced a lot by the French and Italians. French modern poetry starts as early as Baudelaire. You don't have to drone about Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche or the early 20th century Freud (unless you are this inclined to enforce your ideological bent) when there's plenty of modern thought in Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud, who have been massively influential even on late 20th century French theory. It's like arguing that art was "ruined" by Dalí and Pollock when serious reactionaries know it all started with Turner and Impressionism.
And to add salt over injury, some elements of modernist and even experimental poetry can be traced back to Baroque/Mannerist poetry - the stuff that went on to be decried as "bad taste" by the Classicists. Also, think of Roman neoteric poets like Catullus. At this point, isn't it clear that there has always been a war between the "classical" and the "modern", with or without Marx or Nietzsche?
P.S. Should I also mention how all of this discourse only applies to the Western sphere? Some techniques that are/were deemed shocking in modern poetry are also simply appropriate from indigeneous traditions most Western people are ignorant about.
They are bunch of grifters and clueless dolts. This video is embarrassing.
Well said! I agree with you. As I have a background in modern and postmodern art, I've noticed the problem of this video analysis is that it failed to contextualize the modern art form in the progression of history. Instead, all those big ideology was used to cover up this major flaws, and it suggested an ideological bias when analyzing the influences behind contemporary art forms.
For example, postmodernism existed because of the tragedy of WWII, and so there is major shift from formalism (the emphasis of forms) to the expression of human needs and humanist concerns. How the video simply labels these concerns as self-centered is very bias and selfish, ironically.
I always thought there was something wrong with myself since I tried over and over to read the contemporary poets but feeling nothing at all, now I feel it makes a lot of sense: it's not me, it's not even the poets, it's just the lackluster era we are going through
Incredible video! Looking forward to see this channel take off!
Thanks, that’s probably unlikely to happen given my subject matter, but I appreciate your support.
People are less educated, less literate and less intelligent than they used to be. This applies to poets too. Its not that we don't want to write good, beautiful poetry. It's that we can't. Added to that we have the widespread mind virus (you know the one).
A lot of truth here. I know some excellent poets in our time, but I still feel none of us are quite as good as the greats of the past. Oh well, trudge on.
Not sure it makes even the remotest bit of sense to connect a decline in poetry standards with Marxism. Gorky, Shaw, Miller, Brecht - all avowed Marxists and undoubtedly some of the best literary minds of the 20th century. I do think aesthetic merit is fundamentally apolitical and amoral. Pound was a fascist, and as Eliot was a conservative. They are also fantastic poets. In my opinion, consumerism has much more to with contemporary bad poetry than anything else. But there are lots of good living poets, writing in English: Simon Armitage, Louise Gluck, Michael Symmonds Roberts, Kim Addonizio, Patricia Lockwood... These just off the top of my head, and the more famous ones.
You are right that consumerism does play a large role. Thanks for your input.
Also A.A. Stallings, Stephen Dunn, Terrence Hayes...
“I don’t like when Black people write poems about their experiences, and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do that if they had to write those poems in iambic pentameter.” - Classical Poets Live
You neglected to mention that my intolerance extends to women, other indigenous peoples, the sexual identity spectrum, the old, the neurodivergent, the young, and fans of pork rinds.
@@classicalpoetslive maya angelou is really SELFABSORBED huh? HD and Marrianne Moore would not be accused of such a crime, BUT Gerard Manley Hopkins and Wilfred Owen? NARCISSISTS
Can you drop a video on your approach to writing poetry and just some tools you use 🙏.
Yes, I would be happy to.
Good poetry is in hip hop music. There I saved you 7 minutes.
If only I’d learned this brief wisdom years ago, I would not have wasted half my life.
@classicalpoetslive I didn't make it through this video, but looking at the comments section, you seemed to have at least wasted however much time you spent making this video.
I'm actually now curious to see if this is really as bad as it appears.
LoL, okay, 7 minutes later, and I can say yeah, this is some lowest common denominator slop you've cooked up here, dawg!
@@Matt_Fields_29 licking the bottom of the barrel with the worms just for you, my beloved haters. And yes, I do try to reply to people. I am a thoughtful bottom-scraper, at least.
Hip hop and rap rely on a cadence, not meter. This is why it is inviting to lay down a track and rap to it.
Read "Ars Poetica" by Polish-Lithuanian poet Czesław Miłosz. In short, he wrote that in the centre of art, there is something "indecent" and that rhymes and rhythms place poets and readers through "agony" trying to emotionally offload themselves in such restrictions. He wrote that art is dictated by an ancient Greek "daimonion" (like the muses) and that poetry should be written "rarely and reluctantly" out of (emotional) necessity that "good spirits and not the evil ones" use the poet as an instrument.
An interesting argument. I admit that my video lacks nuance.
Thanks a lot for sharing this interesting comment!
You’re welcome.
I unpaused and immediately regretted it.
"Darwinian evolution has never shaken serious scholarly challenges to its fundamental premises." That's why we changed the Theory to accurately reflect our understanding of reality. To the hypothetical person reading this comment: It's *very* easy to tell that someone is science-illiterate when they refer to the Theory of Evolution as "Darwinian Evolution" or "Darwinism". "The Theory of Evolution" specifically refers to our modern understanding of biological evolution, while "Darwinism" refers to the 19th century understanding of it. Darwinism doesn't take genetics into account, because Darwin had no idea what genes were.
Creationists and other science-deniers have a habit of conflating these terms, mostly because turning something we understand more intimately than Gravity into an "-ism" is a pretty effective way to disarm their flock against THE most iron-clad theory in all of science.
If “Life emerged from slime” is ironclad, I’m Santa Claus. But I see what you mean about the terminology. I wasn’t referring to Darwin’s study of finches per se so much as the social application of evolutionary theory, for which Darwin’s name has become shorthand (as you alluded to). Evolution has been touted as an explanation for every modern human behavior. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor has noted, it is “inherently post hoc.”
@@classicalpoetslive If by "social application of Darwin's theory" you mean "Social Darwinism", that is a post-hoc pseudo-scientific justification for racism and imperialism, which is why no one (except racists) buys into it today. If you meant "Evolutionary Psychology", that tries to understand the human mind through the lens of evolution. "Modern human behavior" is more significantly influenced by culture than biology, as I understand it; though, that culture does have a foundation in human biology, which is why the lens of Evolutionary Psychology is so useful.
Your characterization of Evolution as "life emerging from slime" shows just how little you understand this subject. The Theory of Evolution doesn't even cover or hypothesize about how life could have emerged from non-life (abiogenesis). That falls under the purview of Origin of Life research, which is entirely separate from Evolution. The idea that you don't understand your stuff is further reinforced by you quoting someone who referred to Evolutionary Biologists as "Neo-Darwinists" in the year of our lord 2010. Again, the Theory of Evolution has not been referred to as "Neo-Darwinism" in a scholarly setting in actual decades. "Neo-Darwinism" refers to the integration of Darwin's Natural Selection with Mendel's Gene Theory (circa 1895).
It sounds to me that you have more of an issue with Scientific Naturalism, rather than merely the Theory of Evolution.
I am a poet of the Modern Age who keeps much of the classical spirit and practices alive. I am writing a series called The Wild Sonnets, which now includes 600 poems (contained in 6 books of 100 Wild Sonnets each). My channel here on TH-cam features an Out Loud series where I read two selections from this body of work. Feel free to stop by to get a sense of how I am bringing the sound and structure of past poetry into the times we live in.
Thanks, enjoyed these and have subscribed.
This video is actually very subjective, biased, and with a self-centered perpective. This so-called analysis is at most an exmaple of cherry-picking, as it erases the influcence WWII and the emergence of postmodernism. Particularly, postmodernism indicated a major shift from formalism (focus of forms) to the expression of human suffering and humanist concerns. This shift has been expressed in all major disciplines of arts. Labelling them as "self-centered" is actually very narrow-minded, self-centering (ironically), and shows a lack of the basic skill contextulization. (Shaking my head-people actually believe in this just because the video mentioned some big words and "ism"?)
Also, it is very concerning for a video made in 2024, you erased what is happening in Palestine? The Palestinian poet, Refaat Alabama, wrote about the suffering of civilians in his poem. If you think that is self-centered, then, there is a serious concern regarding the moral and humanity of this video analysis.
Totally agree with this, this video implies that poetry simply got corrupted and strained away from the "righteousness of tradition".
Liked this very much. It has been my contention that the last poet in the English language of any worth was Dylan Thomas, and he died in the fifties. I'd probably take issue with some of your choices, as I might retain all of Stevens, all of Hart Crane, some Whitman, a little of Pound, and a little of Williams from the lineage you describe... but I like the thesis very much, have long considered myself to be a 'non-modernist poet', and hope very much people take notice of what you're saying. (I'd also absolutely concur with you re; most or all of English language poetry since WWII. Let us not forget however that - on the level of being thinkers - Williams and Pound included economic ideas in their poetry that were incredibly prophetic for what became known on the internet in the 21st century, regardless of how one feels about their political views.)
What do you think of the English poet Tony Walsh?
Hadn’t previously heard of him. Looked him up and the first poem I stumbled on was “Three Wishes.” I thought it was excellent. A particularly delicious line: “You can ease me off crosses and spice me like Christ.”
You do not know poets very well. They are not self-concerned. That do not ignore history. Look at Billy Collins writes in free verse and advises young poets to read the poems of the past. Ocean Voung - a Vietnamese American poet in an interview said he was once obsessed with formal poetry ,tried to write in iambs but realized it doesn't work for what he wants to say in poem. Dozens other poets admit that they don't write formal poems coz they can't master meter and rhyme not because past poems are old and shit and we need to loon in the present and ignore the poetic lineage. And no the average person hates poetry because school teaches that to read a poem is to analyse a poem is to beat it and beat it and beat it asking it what it means.
I think the point of the video is that poets who are ignoring the poetic lineage, as you say, are in fact part of one path of poetic lineage roughly starting with Whitman that is a self-destructive dead end. Billy Collins may of course admire pre-Whitman work, where the lineage divides. I'd be interested to learn what he thinks of Longfellow and the traditional poetic lineage after that such as Frost and Wilbur. Supposing he tells people to learn from those as well, the fact remains he writes in the poetic lineage that is different and he can only admire from afar. His lineage is self-destructive, so maybe he feels such poets need some input for something to start with and then destroy.
Collins has some good stuff, but to say there are exceptions to the general trend is not to deny that the trend is occurring. Go to a major poetry journal like Poetry magazine and take note of how many poems published there do NOT contain the word 'I' in the first line--almost invariably, they are a minority. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
There are a lot of things wrong with this video, but I'll stick to one for the sake of brevity. I would argue that rap (or even lyrical music more widely) is the most common form of modern poetry, and there are plenty of rap songs that aren't about "identity politics" or "themselves". There is plenty of trash rap music, don't get me wrong, but there are also plenty of trash poems. I think the issue here has more to do with the fact that most art nowadays is visual/audial (reading is technically visual but I think you understand what I'm getting at). With the advent of things like radios, TVs, computers, and cell phones, most of us would rather consume something like a television show, a movie, a song, or even a TH-cam video, rather than sit down and read a book/poem.
This feels like the weirdest medium to whine about the culture war through, nebulously referring to "Darwin" or "Communism" to explain why art isn't the way you like it now. "The gays are coming for our poetry!" lmao. I clicked on this video thinking (and hoping) that the thumbnail was just click-bait, but I guess not.
Sorry to ruin several minutes of your life. Perhaps you could show this video to your therapist and discuss your feelings about it? You are right about living in a post-literate culture, though. And as far as rap, I think Tupac a rather excellent poet in that medium.
@@classicalpoetslive Please at least try to keep your comments tonally consistent. You can't follow "AHAH YOU TRIGGERED LIBTARD" immediately with "well actually yes I agree with that thing you said." Also academia has always leaned left, so please continue to mald with your square ass hairline while your contemporaries move on with the rest of culture
@@classicalpoetslive You didn't ruin several minutes of my life. You just have a bad opinion. Womp womp! :(
Much of what classical poetry sought to do has been taken over by song lyrics. Nor is this entirely new, as evidence the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth.
I have no problem with song lyrics. Folk songs, country songs, rock, etc. can have artful lyrics like anything can. But the level of complexity is generally less than what you'll find in a sonnet by Shakespeare, Petrarch, etc--although in the case of some of those classic poets, their works were sometimes set to songs, as Schubert's lieder did with Goethe. Modern pop songs, though, are mostly just strings of cliches.
@@classicalpoetsliveAll too true. On the other hand, that's also much of the Old Ballads. Our age seems in headlong flight from complexity in all its arts -- perhaps understandable in light of the complexity of its machinery, software, and economic structures -- but sad. And today's music (or "music") has an advantage denied it in the era of classical poetry -- the same instant universal distribution!
Excellent prognosis
Great subjects in such a short time, but with grace and objectivity. Good job guys!!!! Fantastic!!!
Thanks for watching.
I see you’re getting some pushback. That’s an excellent sign.
I am finally getting the hate I deserve.
A clear perspective of the debate that many a young poet must wrestle with. My thoughts are everyone from Erza Pound onward who eshewed regular meter where under the notion that writing that panders to a society is the fastest way to notoriety. And, like celebrities, they are eventually forgotten along with the trend in society that raised them up. The truth of the matter, it seems to me, is the example from ancient texts, such as the Bible, which demonstrate all three divisions of verse being used (well maybe not blank verse) in a striking and memorable way. What ever topic one has a need to write about, the content must fit the form. Not in the way a shoe fits but in the way a delious cake comes out after it is baked.
That’s a very good point about the Bible. Anything can be done well, and contemporary free verse or prose poetry hardly rises to the quality of Psalms or Isaiah or Ecclesiastes. The trends, as you say, are antithetical to that sort of versecraft.
Fabulous commentary - love this - keep it up!!!
Will do thanks, the reassurance is encouraging.
Your mental gymnastics and strawman-per-minute denseness actually impresses me. Please stop talking about things you do not understand.
Why talk about things if you understand them? The sage sits in silence.
I think many normal people also read Carl Sandburg. I would say fairly equal to Robert Frost... Also, I think there is a lot more to explore in what you are saying. There are many variables.
Poetry must be read from a high horse, got it
Don’t forget a silver saddle.
@@classicalpoetslive colonel-ism
@@robert0price Horse so high-
imperil is, hmm?
@@classicalpoetslive Yoda knows that your fear has led to anger and that anger is leading to hate.
@@robert0price You don't know the POWER of the dark side.
Thumbnail goes incredibly hard. Read Whitman!!!
This video is quite a ride. You forgot to explain the multiple steps that literature took along the many ideas that flourished throughout the modern period. This video implies that poetry is simply mediocre due to postmodernism and overly emphasized political subjects, however, that is not true. The change in paradigm regarding metric for example, has to be understood as a natural development from the rigidity of old forms, the free verse wasn´t born out of laziness but rather as a departure from the myriads of experiments that modernists did to the classical forms. If anything you can blame the German romantics for all of this, and before them the French enlightenment.
I agree with you in the fact that contemporary poetry seems to rely A LOT on personal individuality and a lack of interest in the craft, however there's no reason to consider that poetry has never been a political matter, you have to acknowledge the fact that you might be politically aligned with the classical and neoclassical periods. Politically driven poetry has been present since the greeks and romans, sometimes it´s been explicit and other times the subject has been present in a more subtle way, consider for example works such as Pharsalia by Lucan or The Works and Days by Hesiod, both are true classic poetry masterpieces, and both go heavy either in criticizing or supporting the political systems that the authors lived in, Lucan even got killed for not liking emperor Nero too much.
to answer ur starting question i recently read 'I Wanna Be Yours' by John Cooper Clarke who's a phenomenal English poet and comedian who's been in the game a while and is still alive today, he published something this year I believe, other than that the rest of the video is tripe hackneyed "downfall of western civilisation" "woke is bad" (not quoting u btw) bs that everyone has heard 1000 times over
I will try to be hackneyed in a more original way next time.
Rap is pretty popular though
Rap primarily relies on cadence.
I’m focusing here on written poetry rather than songwriting, which follows somewhat different rules. It is interesting, though, how everyone always cites rap rather than another genre of popular music. Folk, pop, rock, etc. would also apply.
Money and economy kills art, here is your answer.
Doesn’t art need business?
Marx and Freud are not incompatible; who told you this? I suggest you read Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization," and Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" and "The Sane Society." Freud is also not incompatible with Darwin. Freud revered Darwin and his whole approach to human psychology is firmly rooted in the theory of evolution. Freud even borrowed arguments of Darwin's when he (Freud) wrote his book called "Totem and Taboo." And of course Freud and Nietzsche are nothing but compatible. All you have to do is read any of Walter Kaufman's translations of Nietzsche's books (particularly "Beyond Good and Evil" and "Genealogy of Morals") to see the endless footnotes in which Kaufman points out where Nietzsche anticipated Freud, as well as Kaufman's own book on Nietzsche. The only incompatibility I see in your list is between Nietzsche and Marx. Now, I agree with your statement that each of these thinkers demystified the world. Nietzsche, Marx and Freud are the great hermeneuticists of suspicion. Moving on, Freud (who was the only one of these thinkers who was alive at the start of WWI) quite clearly disavowed cynicism and despair over that war and what it said about European civilization. He analyzes exactly this subject in his essay entitled "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," which he wrote during the war. I have to say, the entire first half of your video made me think of Wittgenstein's famous dictum at the end of his Tractatus: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," which translates to "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Now, to answer your first question: yes, there is an excellent poet alive as of today (12/16/2024) whose works I love and champion them to others whenever I can. His name is Rodney Jones. He's written 10 or so volumes of poetry, all of them good. My favorite volume of his is "Transparent Gestures." (Published in 1989.) I hope you read and respond to my comments as I would love to have a dialogue with you about everything you touched on in your video. I know a great deal about this subject matter, having studied it for 40 years.
Not just poetry. All modern art is garbage compared to history.
Curious-what do you think of Dali?
@@classicalpoetslive Not what I think of DaVinci
Just give up on the beard.
Go… 010
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Not quite sure what this means, but thanks
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