The problem with art in general is that it’s all been done before
I find myself unable to appreciate any modern poetry, even the very well written examples thereof.

Geoffrey Hill was a far better craftsman than Shakespeare, and moreover knew things an almost medieval bard (yes, yes, Renaissance and voyages of discovery but also beheadings galore and no baths) with his utterly destitute and practically illiterate world view couldn’t have imagined, but we can see Geoff Hill. He’s on a hill, you know where he’s going. You know the setup. You can expect the revelation at the end of the poem.

It’s so formulaic it’s rubbish.

And this is craft, mind you - not anyone can write like Hilll or Ted Kooser. But you, the reader, are tired of being manipulated.

And so the only poetry worth reading is primitive poetry. Even Chaucer, because he was a hack. But from before the internet.

---

Maybe one way to salvage poetry is to write about other planets

busker dateline='[url=tel:1789352688' Wrote:  1789352688[/url]']
The problem with art in general is that it’s all been done before
I find myself unable to appreciate any modern poetry, even the very well written examples thereof.

Geoffrey Hill was a far better craftsman than Shakespeare, and moreover knew things an almost medieval bard (yes, yes, Renaissance and voyages of discovery but also beheadings galore and no baths) with his utterly destitute and practically illiterate world view couldn’t have imagined, but we can see Geoff Hill. He’s on a hill, you know where he’s going. You know the setup. You can expect the revelation at the end of the poem.

It’s so formulaic it’s rubbish.

And this is craft, mind you - not anyone can write like Hilll or Ted Kooser. But you, the reader, are tired of being manipulated.

And so the only poetry worth reading is primitive poetry. Even Chaucer, because he was a hack. But from before the internet.

---

Maybe one way to salvage poetry is to write about other planets

Not really sure what your specific gripe is about but how ironic it’s been griped before. For sure the modernists and even more strongly the Dadaists and that was a century before.

There has been a movement, nnuts (nothing new under the sun) that is older than either of us.

That being said - I would love if Chaucer came back in vogue. We really have reached a point he reads as if from another planet

I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

(09-14-2026, 11:37 AM)busker Wrote:  I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

For sure it puts a burden on modern poets - you cannot just write about pretty birds and trees or love loss and death. It is almost enough to make you want to mine the avant garde if they weren’t so dreadfully dull

(09-14-2026, 11:49 AM)milo Wrote:  

(09-14-2026, 11:37 AM)busker Wrote:  I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

For sure it puts a burden on modern poets - you cannot just write about pretty birds and trees or love loss and death. It is almost enough to make you want to mine the avant garde if they weren’t so dreadfully dull

So how do you deal with that?
I find that dentists have an unfair advantage in that they have a captive audience in a chair for a length of time all the time. And unlike with surgeons, the patient is conscious yet powerless to resist.

Y'all talking a lot of bullshit 
I hope nobody innocent and wide-eyed takes your whinging seriously

---

Great, art all sucks, poetry all sucks, so why are you wasting your time here? Go file a tax document or whatever

---

I bet neither of you is remotely in the know about the many of the good poets writing today. Yet you cling to whatever fee examples from however many decades ago and clutch your pearls, as if you know what you're talking about. Give me a break. Go read a book.

(09-14-2026, 01:37 PM)matsunosuperfan Wrote:  Y'all talking a lot of bullshit 
I hope nobody innocent and wide-eyed takes your whinging seriously

---

Great, art all sucks, poetry all sucks, so why are you wasting your time here? Go file a tax document or whatever

---

I bet neither of you is remotely in the know about the many of the good poets writing today. Yet you cling to whatever fee examples from however many decades ago and clutch your pearls, as if you know what you're talking about. Give me a break. Go read a book.

I’ll have you know that I frequent the shadier corners of the more literary minded independent bookstores to browse the poetry section. So I know what I’m talking about. It’s all women whingeing about chopping onions and men writing about the most utterly boring and vapid people imaginable. I’ve cribbed about it separately. The thing is, there’s a reason why poets are bullied. They’re terrible company.

---

Name a single good poet today and I’ll show you two hundred like them
There’s no Radnoti, who got shot
Anglo poets today are all the same inner city types who like coffee and taking potshots at capitalism

I mean I get what you're saying, I also hate White Woman Poetry which is so much of what's printed today 
But you're just incorrect, there are plenty of fine poets today and they're not just working about the stuff you say

matsunosuperfan dateline='[url=tel:1789360638' Wrote:  1789360638[/url]']
Y'all talking a lot of bullshit 
I hope nobody innocent and wide-eyed takes your whinging seriously

---

Great, art all sucks, poetry all sucks, so why are you wasting your time here? Go file a tax document or whatever

---

I bet neither of you is remotely in the know about the many of the good poets writing today. Yet you cling to whatever fee examples from however many decades ago and clutch your pearls, as if you know what you're talking about. Give me a break. Go read a book.

This is commonly referred to as a straw man argument

I don't really see it as a problem so much as a challenge. I prefer reading older poets less because I think most poets nowadays are bad---most poets of every age are bad, with the success of Ben Jonson or Pope's Dunciad as good evidence---and more because things so often go back to them. If you want to distinguish yourself as either a writer or as a reader, you have to read a lot of the old farts, either to reference them (for readers, to understand when they're being referenced) or to studiously avoid them. Plus certain old poets survive because they were such masters of their respective forms that it would be stupid not to try and follow their example at some point, whether one desires to generally write in form or not, like how the most accomplished visual artists at one point or another drew nude models. The challenge, then, is how not to get bored reading Pope's perfect couplets (because greatness does not necessarily equate to excitement), or how to find the Shakespeare or Milton of one's era (albeit that probably comes down to luck, more than anything else).

(09-14-2026, 07:45 PM)RiverNotch Wrote:  I don't really see it as a problem so much as a challenge. I prefer reading older poets less because I think most poets nowadays are bad---most poets of every age are bad, with the success of Ben Jonson or Pope's Dunciad as good evidence---and more because things so often go back to them. If you want to distinguish yourself as either a writer or as a reader, you have to read a lot of the old farts, either to reference them (for readers, to understand when they're being referenced) or to studiously avoid them. Plus certain old poets survive because they were such masters of their respective forms that it would be stupid not to try and follow their example at some point, whether one desires to generally write in form or not, like how the most accomplished visual artists at one point or another drew nude models. The challenge, then, is how not to get bored reading Pope's perfect couplets (because greatness does not necessarily equate to excitement), or how to find the Shakespeare or Milton of one's era (albeit that probably comes down to luck, more than anything else).

Be honest: how many good sonnets did Shakespeare write? Perhaps 5.
The best sonneteer in English was Spenser and he’s read only because no one can understand him. The language is quaint.
Milton wrote two good sonnets and invented affectation

You have to go to the early Elizabethans and before, when English poetry was about dung and poo, and therefore authentic

(09-14-2026, 07:48 PM)busker Wrote:  

(09-14-2026, 07:45 PM)RiverNotch Wrote:  I don't really see it as a problem so much as a challenge. I prefer reading older poets less because I think most poets nowadays are bad---most poets of every age are bad, with the success of Ben Jonson or Pope's Dunciad as good evidence---and more because things so often go back to them. If you want to distinguish yourself as either a writer or as a reader, you have to read a lot of the old farts, either to reference them (for readers, to understand when they're being referenced) or to studiously avoid them. Plus certain old poets survive because they were such masters of their respective forms that it would be stupid not to try and follow their example at some point, whether one desires to generally write in form or not, like how the most accomplished visual artists at one point or another drew nude models. The challenge, then, is how not to get bored reading Pope's perfect couplets (because greatness does not necessarily equate to excitement), or how to find the Shakespeare or Milton of one's era (albeit that probably comes down to luck, more than anything else).

Be honest: how many good sonnets did Shakespeare write? Perhaps 5.
The best sonneteer in English was Spenser and he’s read only because no one can understand him. The language is quaint.
Milton wrote two good sonnets and invented affectation

You have to go to the early Elizabethans and before, when English poetry was about dung and poo, and therefore authentic

I didn't know Shakespeare only wrote sonnets. Besides, if you really want to read sonnets, go read Petrarch. I might read him next when I get back to reading Italian more seriously (him or Tasso).

---

I'll add that I can understand Spenser near perfectly (though I'm reading The Faerie Queene at the moment, not yet his sonnets---and also the part of the Faerie Queene that gets a bit iffy in terms of Ireland). I guess I'm no one xD

(09-14-2026, 11:24 AM)busker Wrote:  The problem with art in general is that it’s all been done before
I find myself unable to appreciate any modern poetry, even the very well written examples thereof.

Geoffrey Hill was a far better craftsman than Shakespeare, and moreover knew things an almost medieval bard (yes, yes, Renaissance and voyages of discovery but also beheadings galore and no baths) with his utterly destitute and practically illiterate world view couldn’t have imagined, but we can see Geoff Hill. He’s on a hill, you know where he’s going. You know the setup. You can expect the revelation at the end of the poem.

It’s so formulaic it’s rubbish.

And this is craft, mind you - not anyone can write like Hilll or Ted Kooser. But you, the reader, are tired of being manipulated.

And so the only poetry worth reading is primitive poetry. Even Chaucer, because he was a hack. But from before the internet.

---

Maybe one way to salvage poetry is to write about other planets

I think we're living in a time that hasn't been experienced exactly like this in human history, so I think there are new things to make art about. I'd write about it myself but I find it too scary to dwell on. So while mine, at the moment, can go in the Cats and Trees trash bin I'm confident that you, or someone else, can write something unique. There have always been the same perceivable colors, yet artists have somehow been able to blend them in what seems to be infinite combinations. Regardless, if you write a poem that reaches your reader in some memorable way, even once, that's a communication I think is worthwhile. We never know the ripple effects of our actions and art is, at least, an action.

(09-14-2026, 05:47 PM)milo Wrote:  

matsunosuperfan dateline='[url=tel:1789360638' Wrote:  1789360638[/url]']
Y'all talking a lot of bullshit 
I hope nobody innocent and wide-eyed takes your whinging seriously

---

Great, art all sucks, poetry all sucks, so why are you wasting your time here? Go file a tax document or whatever

---

I bet neither of you is remotely in the know about the many of the good poets writing today. Yet you cling to whatever fee examples from however many decades ago and clutch your pearls, as if you know what you're talking about. Give me a break. Go read a book.

This is commonly referred to as a straw man argument

That's not really a straw man. I'm not summarizing the position in bad faith, I'm just claiming the position is baseless and ignorant. It's more ad hom than straw man.

Anyway Busker is the one straw manning, as usual, making absurd and hyperbolic statements about his betters.

---

I appreciate irreverence but some of y'all take it way too far. Sitting around talking shit about poets who are 100 times better than you in just their pinky finger. 

Embarrassing

matsunosuperfan dateline='[url=tel:1789397247' Wrote:  1789397247[/url]']

milo dateline='[url=tel:1789375647' Wrote:  1789375647[/url]']

matsunosuperfan dateline='[url=tel:1789360638' Wrote:  1789360638[/url]']
Y'all talking a lot of bullshit 
I hope nobody innocent and wide-eyed takes your whinging seriously

---

Great, art all sucks, poetry all sucks, so why are you wasting your time here? Go file a tax document or whatever

---

I bet neither of you is remotely in the know about the many of the good poets writing today. Yet you cling to whatever fee examples from however many decades ago and clutch your pearls, as if you know what you're talking about. Give me a break. Go read a book.

This is commonly referred to as a straw man argument

That's not really a straw man. I'm not summarizing the position in bad faith, I'm just claiming the position is baseless and ignorant. It's more ad hom than straw man.

Anyway Busker is the one straw manning, as usual, making absurd and hyperbolic statements about his betters.

---

I appreciate irreverence but some of y'all take it way too far. Sitting around talking shit about poets who are 100 times better than you in just their pinky finger. 

Embarrassing

The argument was that there is nothing new in poetry 

You argued against - there are no good poets - nobody made that argument 

That’s a straw man argument 

I can give greater detail if needed

(09-15-2026, 12:24 AM)milo Wrote:  The argument was that there is nothing new in poetry 

You argued against - there are no good poets - nobody made that argument 

That’s a straw man argument 

I can give greater detail if needed

please don't lol

just read the thread from the top, obviously the thrust is "this poetry is not worth reading," if you want to spend your time distinguishing between that statement and "this poetry is no good, none of these poets are good" then knock yourself out ig

I just find busker's general critique of poetry so tiresome and embarrassing. all he does is go around pointing to pillars of the form and saying they aren't very good. I'm not sure he likes anything at this point. There's some thread of "we should all be writing about poop and rotten vegetables" that I'm picking up on, but beyond that who can say. Fortunately I don't much care, other than to feel an impulse to loudly label his arguments bullshit, because sufficiently bad opinions about poetry offend me.

---

This whole idea that "oh the modern poets are just whinging about their tax bracket and their poor inconsequential first world problems" is gross, anti-humanist, and kind of antisocial tbh. Sorry people have lives and not all of them are about survival. Yes, We Live In A Society. Lots of people lead very plain, boring little lives that never go off the tracks. Are their lives therefore unworthy of examination? Is there no poetry to be found in a real accounting of the tensions and dreams and grief and expansion and frivolity and grist and muscle of their days? 

Why, because some guy who hates on Milton says we should all just go back to the bog and roll in the mud? No thanks.

(09-15-2026, 12:38 AM)matsunosuperfan Wrote:  

(09-15-2026, 12:24 AM)milo Wrote:  The argument was that there is nothing new in poetry 

You argued against - there are no good poets - nobody made that argument 

That’s a straw man argument 

I can give greater detail if needed

please don't lol

just read the thread from the top, obviously the thrust is "this poetry is not worth reading," if you want to spend your time distinguishing between that statement and "this poetry is no good, none of these poets are good" then knock yourself out ig

I just find busker's general critique of poetry so tiresome and embarrassing. all he does is go around pointing to pillars of the form and saying they aren't very good. I'm not sure he likes anything at this point. There's some thread of "we should all be writing about poop and rotten vegetables" that I'm picking up on, but beyond that who can say. Fortunately I don't much care, other than to feel an impulse to loudly label his arguments bullshit, because sufficiently bad opinions about poetry offend me.

---

This whole idea that "oh the modern poets are just whinging about their tax bracket and their poor inconsequential first world problems" is gross, anti-humanist, and kind of antisocial tbh. Sorry people have lives and not all of them are about survival. Yes, We Live In A Society. Lots of people lead very plain, boring little lives that never go off the tracks. Are their lives therefore unworthy of examination? Is there no poetry to be found in a real accounting of the tensions and dreams and grief and expansion and frivolity and grist and muscle of their days? 

Why, because some guy who hates on Milton says we should all just go back to the bog and roll in the mud? No thanks.

I think you are mixing threads or something.  You responded to me.  The only discussion I was part of was the nnuts discussion and mostly just to comment on the irony that even the observation itself wasn't new

Through a timely series of fortunate events (the bump of milo's "yield" thread on which he linked to an old thread with some Frost) I spent an enjoyable morning reading Frost and Larkin and came upon this response to Achebe who had a similar but even further reaching complaint.

Quote:Leanne Wrote:
Ah yes, you're right of course -- the best of English came from people who despised their Englishness and went off to foreign countries to try to become king/ not die of venereal diseases/ find someone to shag who wasn't related. Alternatively, let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Alternatively, we could just work with the rich, fluid and exceedingly poetic language that we have right now, and do it properly

.

(09-15-2026, 01:06 AM)wasellajam Wrote:     

Through a timely series of fortunate events (the bump of milo's "yield" thread on which he linked to an old thread with some Frost) I spent an enjoyable morning reading Frost and Larkin and came upon this response to Achebe who had a similar but even further reaching complaint.

Quote:Leanne Wrote: 
Ah yes, you're right of course -- the best of English came from people who despised their Englishness and went off to foreign countries to try to become king/ not die of venereal diseases/ find someone to shag who wasn't related. Alternatively, let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Alternatively, we could just work with the rich, fluid and exceedingly poetic language that we have right now, and do it properly

.

For those who don't know - that is Busker's old ID.

(09-15-2026, 01:06 AM)wasellajam Wrote:     

Through a timely series of fortunate events (the bump of milo's "yield" thread on which he linked to an old thread with some Frost) I spent an enjoyable morning reading Frost and Larkin and came upon this response to Achebe who had a similar but even further reaching complaint.

Quote:Leanne Wrote: 
Ah yes, you're right of course -- the best of English came from people who despised their Englishness and went off to foreign countries to try to become king/ not die of venereal diseases/ find someone to shag who wasn't related. Alternatively, let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Alternatively, we could just work with the rich, fluid and exceedingly poetic language that we have right now, and do it properly

.

There’s always a Leanne quote for everything.

A garrett in Cornwall
Dying of venereal disease 
Beloved of milkmaids