poetry

[kasbekz]

what is the general view towards poetry from INTJ's? as for me, i am generally annoyed at drawing out a simple story and using vague metaphors to tell a story that could be told with more detail by using plain language. as is typical of INTJ's, i like to have my information presented in a very hard to argue with manner, not in a manner that leaves it "open to interpretation, especially when the information is only someone's feelings or a story they have to tell. granted, it could be a great message, but i would rather read a plain language summary. of course i do love music, but i am not consumed by the deeper, more metaphorical lyrics. i listen to music for just that, the music.

[absurd]

It depends on the poetry (and art in general).

Some poetry tries too hard to be mysterious and abstract that it just seems pointless. I agree that if you're trying to convey some specific meaning it seems stupid to shroud it in the secrecy for the sake of living up to some poetic standard.

On the other hand, some poetry tries deliberately to be nonsensical - mid-sixties Bob Dylan comes to mind - so that it becomes humorous and thus purposeful. I enjoy offbeat poetry like that.

Poetry can also be clearly written in the form of prose poetry. I think Thus Spoke Zarathustra is very easy to read and understand, and at the same time more "beautiful" than ordinary prose would have made it look. Of course, the philosophical issues presented in that book are less easy to fully comprehend, but that might be because they are quite complex issues and not because the style of writing is unclear.

[kasbekz]

bringing up the prose aspect does make me go back on my statement a little. much prose poetry does make fine sense, and state it's intention clearly, like The Odyssey for example, which tells a completely strait forward story, even if it is quite fictional. as for bob dylan, i do also find his music entertaining, but i dislike his words for different reasons

[Sekai]

Although I'm an INTJ, I actually enjoy poetry albeit a select collection. My personal favorites are Pablo Neruda and John Donne. I find that metaphysical poetry (like John Donne's) is often very engaging. For others, such as Percy B. Shelley....I can't really stand.

[searcher]

There are really two camps of poetry for me.
The ones I like (mostly war poems and Robert Frost)
and the ones I don't like.

I've written some of it, most doesn't make much sense *laughs*.
I'm better with lyrics.

[thephoenix1414]

I'm big into poetry. I don't think about it as trying to necessarilly make it complicated. Alot of prose is so detailed that eventually the meaning is lost in the details. The thing I like about poetry is that you can cram alot of meaning into a few sentences merely because of the symbolisms and connections. But I am picky in what I actually like.

Here's a poem with simple diction, but many connections to a singular point.

Mortal Limit
by Robert Penn Warren


I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons. Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck? Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?

Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it
Hang motionless in dying vision before
It knows it will accept the mortal limit,
And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore

The breath of earth? Of rock? Of rot? Of other such
Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch

[LionsPride]

I like poetry, but not all poetry. I like poetry that says complex things in a very short form. Often the rhythm is as important as the words. I don't mean it has to be patterned, just the pauses and emphasis have to flow. I also like it to evoke emotion, preferably something other than sadness (sadness is just to easy).

[replicant]

I like poetry and I write it. My favorite poets are W. H. Auden, William Butler Yeats, John Keats, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Browning, John Browning, William Blake, John Donne, Shel Silverstein, Allen Ginsberg.. etc

I think the beauty of poetry is to recreate an image, a feeling in brevity compared to that of a short story, etc. It's a challenge and sometimes beautiful things are created and sometimes they are spoiled.

[Fridays Child]

I write

Lines of black

And blue

And silver like the silence

Sounding deeply.

[bladeserver]

See, see the wonderful sky
Marvel at its big puce depths.
Tell me, pete do you
Wonder why the playtpus ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel tired.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your shanrges facial growth
That looks like
A mold.
What's more, it knows
Your fokker potting shed
Smells of pea.
Everything under the big wonderful sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm urines.

Early Vogon. Only for some tastes.

[Fridays Child]

Twinkle light of darkest star
Far Antares calls to me
Whither goes the cracker board
And potted shimps for tea.

[rewhu]

Vogon poetry!!

*writhes in pain*

I enjoy poetry but not as much as I did when I was a teenager. I also wrote more of my own then. So many hormones...

I still read / write but with less frequency. Now I read / write more prose. For the sake of contaminating the thread, I offer the following:

Worn and dirty,
worn and diry
a old pair of socks.
I put them on
they keep me warm
I found them on my block.





rewhu added to this post, 1 minutes and 52 seconds later...

You know, on second thought, I think I'd like to post a legitimate piece of poetry of my own creation. If no one minds, I will do so tomorrow.

[Fridays Child]

Well, just warn me first... so I can put on my serious reading poetry and looking like I get it face, k?

[PHS Philip]

I like writing poetry, but I've never really liked reading it. It's much more fun for me to figure out how to make it flow than just to read someone else's work's flow. However, I wouldn't post any of it because it tends to be more the kind of stuff you write without the expectation of anyone else reading it. It sometimes gets a little Fi, and it also wanders into cliches sometimes, because I'm not very good at writing stuff really originally yet.

[Mozzes]

I like a lot of poetry. I dislike a lot of poetry. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it. My favorite poem is probably ee cummings "l(a"


l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l

iness

I also like the last part of TS Eliot's "The Hollow Men"

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Peripeteia]

I absolutely love poetry. I prefer to read it to fit my mood. Here are a couple of favorites.

You fit into me like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
- Margaret Atwood


Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
- Billy Collins

[Merle]

I love poetry - and sekai , yup, the Metaphysicals are my favourites too - and I also hate Shelley... I don't think the Romantics in general are very INTJ-ish reading material...
Of the Metaphysicals... George Herbert is my absolute favourite, followed by Donne and Marvell... also Henry Vaughan.

favourite lines:

Herbert: (Virtue)
"Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows you have your closes,
And all must die."

Donne: (The Relic)
"A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,"

Marvell: (The Garden )
"Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade."

Vaughan: (The World)
"I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,"

Oh also, Eliot's Four Quartets is a favourite.

[Synamon]

*kicks thread*
Here's a poem I stumbled across the other day, it screams INTJ to me. Watch out for that Lake of Deep Conviction. Is the island good or bad?

Utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.



By Wislawa Szymborska
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996 for Poetry

[Moriarty]

Anyone can communicate to at least some extent in their native language, but few can express an idea in a way that compels an audience to willfully, word for word, commit it to memory.

[Sir Paul]

There are really two camps of poetry for me.
The ones I like (mostly war poems and Robert Frost)
and the ones I don't like.

I've written some of it, most doesn't make much sense *laughs*.
I'm better with lyrics.

Robert Frost... Have you ever played Grim Fandango? You can get a Robert Frost shaped baloon animal.

I like poetry, but not all poetry. I like poetry that says complex things in a very short form. Often the rhythm is as important as the words. I don't mean it has to be patterned, just the pauses and emphasis have to flow. I also like it to evoke emotion, preferably something other than sadness (sadness is just to easy).

Sadness may be an easy emotion to provoke, but unless its actually capable of ripping tears out of the readers eyes, then its just a half-arsed attempt that, rather than leaving a reader contemplative, leaves them with a dirty taste in their mouth. Myself, I prefer to invoke the emotion of beauty, yes I just invented an emotion. In simple terms I like to paint the reader a piece of imagery that leaves them contemplating things of beauty. Kind of like when a beautiful woman (not sexy, hot, cute, etc. but classical raw beauty) walks by and your mind just goes blank and all you can do is stare. Thats the effect I like to see in both my own and others poetry.

I like poetry and I write it. My favorite poets are W. H. Auden, William Butler Yeats, John Keats, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Browning, John Browning, William Blake, John Donne, Shel Silverstein, Allen Ginsberg.. etc

I think the beauty of poetry is to recreate an image, a feeling in brevity compared to that of a short story, etc. It's a challenge and sometimes beautiful things are created and sometimes they are spoiled.

Yes, yes, I concur, see above.

[Nikita]

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

-Dorothy Parker

[ElstonGunn]

Sometimes I read Spanish poetry, just to see if I can understand it (in terms of diction, not necessarily its meaning). I like Pedro Calderón de la Barca. I also like Homer and some of Arthur Rimbaud, but I can't read them in their original languages, unfortunately.

Aside from that, I can take it or leave it. A lot of my favorite quotes are extracted from poems, but as a whole, something about poetry seems like forced, self-satisfied grandiosity to me. But I'm a philistine, so I'd expect that from myself.

[Nikita]

What I love about poetry is the essence of an entire story, the message, is conveyed in a simple, succinct format. When you read a novel, the essence is found somewhere within it, but the steps to the essence or message are what make the story interesting. Poetry cuts out all of the superfluous crap and gets to the point. Novels are lawyers, poems are comedians.

[Monte314]

James Joyce said that it took him 18 years to write Finnegan's Wake, and it should take someone 18 years to read it.

My question is, why does he think anything he might have to say worth 18 years of anyone else's time?

[Sir Paul]

Because he's a theif.

[Merle]

@ Monte: there's no apostrophe in Finnegans Wake... just to be petty ;)

But I have to say, I'm not all that convinced that Joyce did expect anyone to spend 18 years of their life on anything he wrote, I'm being incredibly presumptious here, but my feeling is that for the majority of literary writers the audience or readership is not something that really comes in to it a great deal... especially modernist writers... they're not trying to impart a 'message', and they don't expect a reader to understand everything they write --- if you take T.S. Eliot as an example, his symbology is so opaque and personal that there is no way to ever really 'get' all the levels of meaning in his poetry. That doesn't mean that you cannot enjoy it, or that you cannot understand it in a different way... I think what Joyce meant was that to decode Finnegans Wake would take 18 years, but who wants to do that?!

[Nebula61]

I love this thread--read this and had to join the forum! I would think poetry is a natural thing for INTJs since we like solving puzzles. And poems are puzzles in succinct form.
I agree with NikitaNT and Merle's descriptions of poetry. And thanks to Synamon for that great poem, "Utopia" by Szymborska--I'd never heard of that poet!

And speaking of who a poet is writing for, I give you Kay Ryan, the new Poet Laureate's poem,

Ideal Audience

Not scattered legions,
not a dozen from
a single region
for whom accent
matters, not a seven-
member coven,
not five shirttail
cousins; just
one free citizen--
maybe not alive
now even--who
will know with
exquisite gloom
that only we two
ever found this room.

from the collection The Niagara River, Grove Press, 2005.

You can't accuse Ryan of being wordy or obscure!

(I hate Joyce BTW, but love Eliot)

Another favorite poet with a sparse style, Mark Strand.

[enWTFp]

There are two types of beauty in poetry. I also do not appreciate as much the beauty of multiple interpretations and open-ended form, that OP discusses. But there is also beauty of words, melody of phrasing, harmony of syllables that clings to you. And when a powerful message is given in this sacred form, then it haunts you, simultaneously with its meaning and its beauty.

I'm thankful for this thread. I'm rather new to the aesthetics of the English language, and probably not equipped well enough yet, but I would like to learn more about it. Here is a very simple poem that I like, no idea how popular it is, just stumbled upon it once.

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

The author is Gwendolyn Brooks. The way she talks and looks, I think she is an INTJ. She comments and recites the poem here: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Colette]

It depends on the poetry (and art in general).

Some poetry tries too hard to be mysterious and abstract that it just seems pointless. I agree that if you're trying to convey some specific meaning it seems stupid to shroud it in the secrecy for the sake of living up to some poetic standard

This is a common criticism of poetry (and especially free form verse). However poetry doesn't always have to convey 'meaning' in the classic sense. It can (and sometimes is) akin to abstract art - words used to 'paint a picture' or create an aesthetic. This kind of poetry can't be mined for meaning, and the reader will miss the point of it if that's what they expect to find. This style of poetry needs to be approached by the reader's aesthetic sense, as if s/he were looking at a work of modern art on a gallery wall.

My credentials to be holding forth on this topic? I am a poet who's had a number of poems published in literary journals here in NZ.

[Synamon]

Post one for us here Collete. Pretty please.

[Sir Paul]

I second that notion and add sugar to the top.

[MacGuffin]

I have my own poetry thread elsewhere, but this:

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.


I really liked.

On a lighter note involving gin:


A Drink With Something In It

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

-Ogden Nash

[Colette]

OK here's one (written in the library after seeing a poetry reading):

Library

There is a commotion
a serene bedtime ritual disrupted

Hemingway; bolt upright
pipe tamping, never slouching
in a chintz chair

firelight flicker
amplifies his hearth

Sylvia Plath
face set in a mask of neglect
falls on her side
arms flapping dust waves

uneasy bedmates –
they may have something to share

A young Marie Antoinette
skips through fields of blue cornflowers
her loom feet weave a noose in skeins

Bertrand Russell
preaches skepticism to sleepy acolytes

Edith sits well
a strange electric eel amongst catfish

glossy ball players slam dunk

the boys of Sparta dance naked in the gym

Alexander finds Olympias in a wine fug
tames the foaming Bucephelus

bestsellers elbow for status—
she’s wearing too much of the wrong shade of lipstick

a control freak boasts four issues in one week

a sharp clack
summons the unseen spirit of Kitchi Manitou
across the Bering strait

they dance to the beat of his heart
he seems to reside here

****

[Sir Paul]

*applause*

[Merle]

Every time I see this thread title I think of the W.H. Auden lines:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

I'm never sure if I agree or disagree with him....