' Live-Poets Society ' – A Corner For Poetry

[Mikiesboy]

It's discussion such as this that bring depth to my understanding though I admit I still don't fully comprehend all that has been said. Better still in my ignorance I am still fully welcomed here.

Just smile and nod, dugh. That's what i do and if i really want to know something .. google is your friend!

[Former Member]

Drinking lover's blood means playing on one's feelings. Here the expression is in fact a metaphor about listening to the soulful expositions on Islam by the Lover i.e. the saint in question. While sipping wine is equivalent to reading the Quran & Hadith. It is an ancient technique in Indian Poetics where a person is vilified on the surface while in fact he is being praised behind the metaphor. In sanskrit this technique is called Byajastuti. There are long poems using this technique extant from medieval era. Even some use in modern poetry can be found. Blood gushing from one's eyes will therefore mean the dawning of true understanding of the scriptures. The interesting thing is that, there are a number of poems of this style where overt blasphemous same-sex love is present, that is also poetically adorned.

It was the style of the day. And I don't think it was always this heavenly implied pious narrative that was behind the inspiration of the poet.

So, Rumi's works are full of metaphors…. Could it be interrupted here, that is in the poem excerpted, that the love of God and the love of the boys of Delhi are akin? The symptoms of religious union – as you say, the drawing of true understanding externalized as the drawing of the lifeblood – comes from seeing the boys. The act of being near them is like submersion in the depths of scripture?

[William King]

You make me smile Dennis... with a little light relief... take an asprin, you can be sure there's more to come

[Parker Owens]

Drinking lover's blood means playing on one's feelings. Here the expression is in fact a metaphor about listening to the soulful expositions on Islam by the Lover i.e. the saint in question. While sipping wine is equivalent to reading the Quran & Hadith. It is an ancient technique in Indian Poetics where a person is vilified on the surface while in fact he is being praised behind the metaphor. In sanskrit this technique is called Byajastuti. There are long poems using this technique extant from medieval era. Even some use in modern poetry can be found. Blood gushing from one's eyes will therefore mean the dawning of true understanding of the scriptures. The interesting thing is that, there are a number of poems of this style where overt blasphemous homosexuality is present, that is also poetically adorned.

It was the style of the day. And I don't think it was always this heavenly implied pious narrative that was behind the inspiration of the poet.

 

Perhaps there is an admixture of the pious and the profane here...for one might believe anything a sweet, beautiful believer might say. Especially one such exposed to view by the wind, or what that wind might represent. Soon enough, the admirer would wander about gushing scripture's precepts. Many thanks for the help in understanding this.

[Former Member]

I understand that the way you present the content is important...Very important, but I still think the content itself is most important.

If you are talking about formed verse in general, then I might have this to say....

 

 

Pattern

Most exquisite

Our insight into the Divine 

Be our comfort, our blessing, our excuse and the way in the night

Be Oliver Wendell Holmes' ever expanding Nautilus, and Attila's little bird upon the wire to guide us

to what's right

Edited January 20, 2017 by AC Benus

[Former Member]

Attila's little bird. I like that lol.

I don't forget work that touches me

[Mikiesboy]

 

And the formats were created by human beings too...Meaning that us poets should be experimenting with them...not just stick to the ones we know already.

 

 

 

 

Yes ... trying new forms, making yourself write them is a great way to learn.  You may never want to use them all or any again, but you know them, can recognize and appreciate them. 

 

I had a brilliant time doing AC's poetry prompts. 

[Mikiesboy]

He's moving!!!! He's moving!!!!  He said it out loud... woooo hoooo!!!!!!!

[Mikiesboy]

sorry went a bit mad there!!

[Former Member]

sorry went a bit mad there!!

Being happy and excited will do that

 

You do refer to this as 'Mad-Poets Society' anyway... hehe 

[Former Member]

When considering mathmatics in poetry it is interesting to take account of Fibonacci.

 

A Fibonacci poem (or Fib) is a multiple-line verse based on the Fibonacci sequence so that the number of syllables in each line equals the total number of syllables in the preceding two lines.

 

 

The Fibonacci sequence begins with either zero or one, followed by one, and proceeds based on the rule that each number (called a Fibonacci number ) is equal to the sum of the preceding two numbers. Technically, the first line in a Fibonacci poem with n = 0 has no syllables, and therefore constitutes a moment of silence. This is an important consideration, just as standard syllable and rhythm patterns are critical to other forms of verse such as haiku, limerick, and iambic pentameter. (If n = 1, then there is no initial moment of silence.)

 

Link to full explanation: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Fibonacci-poem-or-Fib

 

fibonacci-spiral.gif

Fascinating entry. I intended to try my hand at it here, but I messed it up and only doubled syllable-lines. Still, it was fun and the results are engaging (imo).

 

I'll try again later

[Parker Owens]

If you are talking about formed verse in general, then I might have this to say....

 

 

Pattern

Most exquisite

Our insight into the Divine 

Be our comfort, our blessing, our excuse and the way in the night

Be Oliver Wendell Holmes' ever expanding Nautilus, and Attila's little bird upon the wire to guide us

to what's right

 

A wonderful display of exponential patterning in poetry. I am especially taken by how well you keep the thought going through each line of exponentially expanding syllables (2^k syllables in each line, for k = 1 to 5), to land on the final three words.

 

Both pattern and poetry fit elegantly into this poem, for you are right in both example and definition – they are insights into the sacred and the infinite, at once comfort, blessing, and light in the darkness. And heaven knows both are good excuses to while time away in airports, boring meetings, and pleasant hours in a comfy spot.

 

If one is an obscurantist who delights in hidden patterns, one could do this with all kinds of alternating sequences to come up with interesting syllabic counts. Now if all math teachers are obscurantists, and some math teachers are poets…the logic exercise is left to the student….

[Parker Owens]

Just please...please don't tell me you're a math teacher.. please. Lol

 

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid...

[Mikiesboy]

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid...

You're okay for a math teacher though, Parker ...

[Former Member]

 

A wonderful display of exponential patterning in poetry. I am especially taken by how well you keep the thought going through each line of exponentially expanding syllables (2^k syllables in each line, for k = 1 to 5), to land on the final three words.

 

Both pattern and poetry fit elegantly into this poem, for you are right in both example and definition – they are insights into the sacred and the infinite, at once comfort, blessing, and light in the darkness. And heaven knows both are good excuses to while time away in airports, boring meetings, and pleasant hours in a comfy spot.

 

If one is an obscurantist who delights in hidden patterns, one could do this with all kinds of alternating sequences to come up with interesting syllabic counts. Now if all math teachers are obscurantists, and some math teachers are poets…the logic exercise is left to the student….

 

 

Thanks for your wonderful comments, Parker. My little poem sparked a studious reply, for which I am humbled and grateful at the same time.  

 

I guess I've always been an obscurantist too, though I just learned the word today

[Mikiesboy]

Thanks for your wonderful comments, Parker. My little poem sparked a studious reply, for which I am humbled and grateful at the same time.  

 

I guess I've always been an obscurantist too, though I just learned the word today

Obscurantist: 

a person who is deliberately vague

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=obscurantist

 

Another word I didn't know.  I am far from being one of these .... rather a chatter-box, me. 

[Mikiesboy]

Two poems from today .. they aren't happy. 

[asamvav111]

Two poems from today .. they aren't happy. 

"I hope then you’re lovin’ me

When my soul decides to soar"

 

Hugs.

[William King]

 

I guess I've always been an obscurantist too, though I just learned the word today

And I always thought you were a prestidigitator! LOL

[asamvav111]

This is why I did not want to give the religious explanation of the poetry. Yes, it's all well and good if you understand one particular explanation of the metaphor. BUT, really, people, I believe in Satre. So make your own little expositions. Don't depend on a thousand year old explanation of a particular vein. That's how poetics stagnates and dies.

As far as Rumi is concerned, all these poems directed to Saki and others written by Hafiz or any other farsi or urdu poets with homoerotic content, were actually written as a metaphor of love between man and God. Even though God is neuter gender in Islam, the traditional view of calling God a "he" has persisted through the ages. And also the medieval Islamic poets were indoctrinated in platonic view of Love and Form and Justice.

But, this understanding should not diminish the fact that all these men of God were also Men. And they lived and loved. And it is obvious from their words that they were, at one time or the other, intimately fascinated by the male on male eroticism. Whether they identified as homosexual or not is immaterial here; At least for us secular readers.

Edited January 22, 2017 by asamvav111

[asamvav111]

Oh and Fib sounds fabulous.

[William King]

Two poems from today .. they aren't happy.

 

"Not feeling good today ... makes me think about the future ...."

 

They are two beautifully sad poems - Ce sont deux poèmes magnifiquement tristes.

 

Who wants to live forever? Your soul is here for eternity.

[William King]

Whether they identified as homosexual or not is immaterial here; At least for us secular readers.

Homosexual is a modern term, I don't think they even thought about it like that.

[asamvav111]

Homosexual is a modern term, I don't think they even thought about it like that.

Yes and No. Homosexuality as a sexual preference isolated from human experience as a whole is a modern social construct. But, human beings had always felt homosexual tendencies or as Kinsey puts it "predominantly bisexual with homosexual leanings". All Abrahamic religions are significantly vocal on condemning it. Why? It will take several blog-posts to explain that and even then it will be full of vague conjectures than real science. The point is, from the get go Islam had condemned homosexuality. Yet, its religious poetry due to various socio-cultural reasons is overflowing with it. And being poets, we all know that we write from our own experiences and fantasies. Ergo they as poets may have experienced some homosexual contacts or had fantasies to do so. At least, that was the case till it became convention to describe male beauty and etc as a part of God's grace. I am all but sure that these early poets of exquisite verse did not call themselves "Gay" but their preference was bare to all.

[Emi GS]

That was fabulous Asamvav. Yeah human, most importantly men of Islam, put God in spot light; whenever they can't understand a particular happening. Yet the religious views of simplicity and devotion to his beliefs made man fear of these facts. After all we believe we are the creation of God. Or so we say.

 

Question for anyone...

 

Do you find that writing in certain meters (iambic, throcaic - tetrameter, pentameter) puts you in certain moods? I seem to feel increasing darkness in pentameter, for example...just curious how everyone else feels....

 

I never found any particular meter turn from my emotional status. Or any particular meter generate particular mood of general life. But, for me, the forms have been generated with particular mood. Haiku has always triggered the happiest and precious moments of my life always.

 

I

write,

hoping

the ghost of

Fibonacci won't

complicate every line put down.

You always caught up before me. As Val said, simplicity shines through this poem. Way to go bud. Well done. Edited January 22, 2017 by Emi GS