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silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile
sings or if(spiraling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss
losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
- you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
Can you guys suggest me any classics or high literature that do not take place in the 'real world'.
My main problem with reading the classics is that while I apreciate the prose I just can't get myself to actually care about the characters or settings.
Run Run Run on
0
Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Maybe Very Happy
by Jack Gilbert
After she died he was seized
by a great curiosity about what
it was like for her. Not that he
doubted how much she loved him.
But he knew there must have been
some things she had not liked.
So he went to her closest friend
and asked what she complained of.
"It's all right," he had to keep
saying, "I really won't mind."
Until the friend finally gave in.
"She said sometimes you made a noise
drinking your tea if it was very hot."
Can you guys suggest me any classics or high literature that do not take place in then 'real world'.
My main problem with reading the classics is that while I apreciate the prose I just can't get myself to actually care about the characters or settings.
By real world do you mean instead of every day life taking place in a world of science and fantasy? If so, there isn't much because the history of literature starts with a bunch of boring people writing shit about every day life down.
If you want a classicaly styled depiction of what we'd call sci-fi/fantasy Jules Verne & Mark Twain & H.P. Lovecraft come to mind.
Then theres also Homer & Shakespeare... and the writer of Beowulf if you want fantasy... though really Shakespeare as literature is an argument to be had somewhere else.
You can also read Mallory who collected the tales of King Arthur... but they are in no way as cool as you might think.
futility on
0
Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
The Young Watch Us
The young girls look up
as we walk past the line at the movie,
and go back to examining their fingernails.
Their boyfriends are combing their hair,
and chew gum
as if they meant to insult us.
Today we made love all day.
I look at you. You are smiling at the sidewalk,
dear wrinkled face.
Gold
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years
shining and whole.
I think you've done your fair share now Quoth, you don't have to keep finding poems
also I drew a comic about a bird reading Jane Austen a few days ago. after I was done I stepped back and was like "oh well shit I just drew a comic about quoth"
Vann Diras on
0
Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
I think you've done your fair share now Quoth, you don't have to keep finding poems
also I drew a comic about a bird reading Jane Austen a few days ago. after I was done I stepped back and was like "oh well shit I just drew a comic about quoth"
it's cool, i stopped, i have to keep writing this response essay
Basically I don't want to read about people's mundane day to day problems.
Less Pride and Prejudice and Catcher in the Rye - more Slaughterhouse-Five and Moby Dick.
By not set in the 'real world' I meant larger than life. Adventures not soap operas.
Sorry for being not quite clear. Scifi-Fantasy or Horror or old Epics are of course awesome too.
I tend to be the same way about books. I've opened up a bit lately, but typically everything needs to be larger than life or I get bored and can't finish the book
edit: oh great now my literary shame is on the top of the page
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
Basically I don't want to read about people's mundane day to day problems.
Less Pride and Prejudice and Catcher in the Rye - more Slaughterhouse-Five and Moby Dick.
By not set in the 'real world' I meant larger than life. Adventures not soap operas.
Sorry for being not quite clear. Scifi-Fantasy or Horror or old Epics are of course awesome too.
I understand what you mean. I don't have anything against stories set in a non-fantastical setting, but I read to take myself away from the ordinary, so I tend to gravitate to fantasy and sci-fi, and occasionally horror stories.
Posts
Get out
I really have not read much poetry at all
I like the D.H. Lawrence one posted on the previous page, and the few I've read of Countee Cullen were pretty good
silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile
sings or if(spiraling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss
losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
- you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
by Alan Michael Parker
The weight of what falls surprises, the solidity of
the slapping water, its constant and different pressures,
the way when you're thirteen everything seems
not to have happened, life itself, and yet be
dumped upon you, and you can spread wide
your arms, wide as the rest of July, and still
be filled with feeling while holding nothing,
like a movie screen, or the voice of the girl
who called on a Friday to ask about the homework.
Moss slimes the rocks, cattails rim the pools,
and the water rushing to arrive through the cut
feels like sunlight on your skin if only sunlight
would have mass and volume and pound
your head and shoulders, and with your mouth open
breathing is like laughing and laughing
is like breathing, and the surprise persists,
the sense of being between elements and standing up
in your swim trunks and sandals as though
on land and swimming at once,
and your resolve also matters, to keep hold
of these feelings, of each single feeling
no matter the future, to stay true to what you feel
and not to give the next kid a turn, the long line of
campers beginning to chant your name, and you
pretend not to hear, deafened by the lovely
crushing of the water on your head.
"My Son, Under the Waterfall" by Alan Michael Parker, from Elephants and Butterflies. © BOA Editions, 2008
by Alan Michael Parker
Oh, how I hate my mind,
all those memories
that have invented their own memories.
Take my first love, for instance,
how after Mass we'd kneel
underneath the back stairs
and kiss and kiss and kiss and.
Were her lips like peaches or plums?
She was Catholic and she wanted
to be bad, and I loved her
more than baseball,
but all the other days
divided us, carry the one,
nothing left over. So strange,
only to kiss on a Sunday,
to hold my own breath again
for a week, another 10,022
minutes of wretched puberty,
until she moved to Iowa
or Ohio or the moon.
Oh, I can still remember
nothing about her,
only kissing, and the impossible
geometry of the descending stairs
that rose to the church kitchen,
her breath like hot nutmeg
and a little like the ocean;
and once, oh my god, she bit me,
a first taste of my body,
blood in her smile.
by Kathleen Flenniken
The main character sits on his childhood bed
naming everything that's gone—ex-job, ex-wife,
ex-best friend-and finally apprehends
the breakdown we've felt coming since chapter five.
When his doctor calls with test results, most of usv decide to remain minor characters
like the quixotic neighbor growing
bonsai sequoias, or the waitress with thick
glasses and a passion for chess,
because the main character, in the thrall
of a relentless plot, can't help hurtling toward
the crumbling cliff edge. And who needs that?
Some inherit genes from generations
of minor players, some must learn to guard
those sunny Sundays with the paper
full of heroes in distant gunfire. And some of us
who've gotten smug over the years turn another page,
turn on the football game, until one day
the doorbell rings. We close our books,
adjust our eyes, and the protagonist
sweeps in insisting himself into our lives
with his entourage of lust and language,
sorrow, brio. Hero, anti-hero, it hardly matters
with the lights this bright. The music crests
and it's time to speak.
"The League of Minor Characters" by Kathleen Flenniken from Famous. © University of Nebraska Press, 2006
no... it wasn't such a bad book. I mean yes it was poorly written, but it had a decent story
My main problem with reading the classics is that while I apreciate the prose I just can't get myself to actually care about the characters or settings.
by Jack Gilbert
After she died he was seized
by a great curiosity about what
it was like for her. Not that he
doubted how much she loved him.
But he knew there must have been
some things she had not liked.
So he went to her closest friend
and asked what she complained of.
"It's all right," he had to keep
saying, "I really won't mind."
Until the friend finally gave in.
"She said sometimes you made a noise
drinking your tea if it was very hot."
"Maybe Very Happy" by Jack Gilbert from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
I actually really like this second one. I think I may use that one.
By real world do you mean instead of every day life taking place in a world of science and fantasy? If so, there isn't much because the history of literature starts with a bunch of boring people writing shit about every day life down.
If you want a classicaly styled depiction of what we'd call sci-fi/fantasy Jules Verne & Mark Twain & H.P. Lovecraft come to mind.
Then theres also Homer & Shakespeare... and the writer of Beowulf if you want fantasy... though really Shakespeare as literature is an argument to be had somewhere else.
You can also read Mallory who collected the tales of King Arthur... but they are in no way as cool as you might think.
The young girls look up
as we walk past the line at the movie,
and go back to examining their fingernails.
Their boyfriends are combing their hair,
and chew gum
as if they meant to insult us.
Today we made love all day.
I look at you. You are smiling at the sidewalk,
dear wrinkled face.
Gold
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years
shining and whole.
"The Young Watch Us" and "Gold" by Donald Hall from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
FUCK YOU PUNCTUATE
dude was a genius e t a i c e r p p a his workAmazon Wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/BusterK/wishlist/3JPEKJGX9G54I/ref=cm_wl_search_bin_1
I think you've done your fair share now Quoth, you don't have to keep finding poems
also I drew a comic about a bird reading Jane Austen a few days ago. after I was done I stepped back and was like "oh well shit I just drew a comic about quoth"
but see unlike all the subsequent wannabe losers, he actually did it for a purpose
many of his poems are sonnets
it's cool, i stopped, i have to keep writing this response essay
but i do like me some poems
also that is awesome, i am in a comic!
Less Pride and Prejudice and Catcher in the Rye - more Slaughterhouse-Five and Moby Dick.
By not set in the 'real world' I meant larger than life. Adventures not soap operas.
Sorry for being not quite clear. Scifi-Fantasy or Horror or old Epics are of course awesome too.
I tend to be the same way about books. I've opened up a bit lately, but typically everything needs to be larger than life or I get bored and can't finish the book
edit: oh great now my literary shame is on the top of the page
I really loved Shakespeare back in school, but he is a pain to read when English isn't your native tongue.
Seriously, look into Dan Simmons work
Will do, thanks a lot.
Dude, I have read over 45 Magic the Gathering books. Can't get worse than that.
Specifically look at his Hyperion/Endymion books and Illium and Olympos. Hyperion is glorious madness and Illium is the Illiad in space.
after years
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
shakespeare is always a pain to read
this is an excellent poem
nice
also I'm sure I've asked this before but has anyone else read Wicked?
did you think it sucked every dick it possibly could and then, unsatisfied, invented new dicks to also suck?
I'm seeing it for the third time this Saturday
I don't particularly want to but it's a good dating move
but then I've never liked the Wizard of Oz, so
Anything by Gene Wolfe (but especially the Book of the New Sun series)
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
you know, the movie with Fairuza Balk or whatever her name is
i loved the way it set up all the characters in the beginning
I understand what you mean. I don't have anything against stories set in a non-fantastical setting, but I read to take myself away from the ordinary, so I tend to gravitate to fantasy and sci-fi, and occasionally horror stories.
The Deadly Desert is still pretty freaky to me. Oh, and Momby, with all her detachable heads.
Man, that is some tragic stuff
I just wanted him to be happy
Momby is actually a concatenation of two characters from the book
but i actually like her better because she is indeed very freaky