The Epic

[rowens]

I was alone in the theatre but for a few people, which means I wasn't alone; and I performed a ritual in realtime during the Sirens scene that worked.

What made the movie itself work was two things: The way awkwardness was ran with as transitional time/scene edits made memory and lore so direct that it couldn't be otherwise, and how the movie demolished its own credibility as "this is what happened" into this is what we will remember, not having happened, but, happening.

---

In that sense, Hart Crane, W. C. Williams and other more recent people took advantage of abstract modernism and jazz and surrealism and made "epics".

[RiverNotch]

"I was alone in the theatre but for a few people, which means I wasn't alone; and I performed a ritual in realtime during the Sirens scene that worked."

Wankge xD

[rowens]

The real thing with the bardic tradition is that it teaches lessons, which, when it happens, is bad enough, and that it carries culture from the past to the now.
That's the real thing. Everything we do is based on what is, such as how we can't live without phones, and the top popularizers of social theories treat the internet and ai like things we have to have.

I moved to a country where polygamy is morally sanctioned, but my wives didn't want to come with me.

Masturbation, celibacy and fucking around are all frowned upon because they can be done without the family or the economical structure.

One epic was fought over a woman, another getting home to a woman. And all other women are Amazonian men-haters, witches and Aileen Wuornos who ages well with the help of shiva-flowers: and those latter are where the real real thing is.

When Jesus was giving the parable of the sower, he was making a certain hand motion.

[rowens]

I always saw and see Russell Crowe as Odysseus.

[RiverNotch]

I prefer someone who's actually Greek





Zach Galifianakis

[rowens]

Despite all the fuss about identity, I don't think it matters anymore who is what from where.
A British actor can use prosthetics. An American actor has to gain the weight; it would be appropriation otherwise. And we fought the British off with a stick so we could stop appropriating them. But their language held us. The Queen like a Divine Name, and the Pope in aesthetic majesty, holds the hierarchy in check.
From Australia to Canada, the song remains the same.

But Alaska is a tunnel to Russia: Where even the Pope has elections without name.

It runs through all movies like the spinning-top and token sock in Running Man.

[RiverNotch]

If the end of this week doesn't kill me, I'll have finished reading The Faerie Queene. Solid poem. I especially liked book three---I really like heroic women---and the present book, with its pastorals. Book five was an interesting example of why having bad politics tends to mean being a bad poet, and not in the way Shakespeare's early plays kinda suck: the allegory becomes way too obvious, and not in the intented meta-commentary in book two. Generally his style is a really good study for anyone wanting to write poetry in general, since he has a very strong command of all the little details that goes into the art. Even the fact that his diction is so antiquated is to his advantage, because in his case the language was antiquated even for his time: he was deliberately echoing Chaucer and the like, deliberately hearkening back to when knights and "damzells in distresse" were so common a sight---to when the bounds between Faerie and the world as we know it seemed much looser---so, for one, his poetry gets to feel about as universal as the Authorized Version of the Bible, compared to how Shakespeare's use of contemporary slang often needs a solid amount of footnotes to fully grok; and, for another, one gets a better feel for how to use one's diction to communicate a point, one (hopefully) gets to write in more varied ways than your usual "antiquated" or "natural". If I had one true criticism of his work overall, it's that he just doesn't have as strong a sense of character as some of his fellow greats: none of his heroes or villains work as full-fledged people, unlike all the characters with which Shakespeare or Dante pepper their masterpieces (even the mere cameos!). Maybe his women, but that might just be my bias making me more sympathetic to them.

[Luckieman]

If there is a question or a discussion topic buried in here it may be too deep to unearth.

Should you write an epic?  Are you concerned it may not be as popular as your other reams of verse (and everyone else's reams of verse)?
I wouldn't fret too much about modern readers at this point or really any readers.

Do you want to write an epic?  Write an epic.  It's the best reason

Nobody will read it but your mum either way but it's a poor reason to write poetry anyway.

The majority of modern (homogenised) cultures are antithetical to the concept of the 'hero' on which epics are anchored. Admittedly some aspects of most heroes were quite nasty (but of their times and societies) but the common factors are personal as opposed to corporate (in the generic sense) duty, and implacable and ineluctable fate. Neither is considered other than as a joke in our urban cultures, so heroes can't really exist. Batman, Superman and co are not heroes, they're just Dei ex machina - magic helpers for the incapable, which isn't the same thing as hero. Almost all heroes finish up dead as that's fated - it's part of their myth to die gracefully doing something dramatic. However small vestiges of heroism do sometimes show up and they can make powerful literature, if for no other reason than their rarity and thus surprise value.

[RiverNotch]

Maybe in writing, but mulling on what you said, Michael Corleone happens to fit this definition of a hero perfectly xD Also perhaps Anakin Skywalker and Scarlett O'Hara.

If there is a question or a discussion topic buried in here it may be too deep to unearth.

Should you write an epic?  Are you concerned it may not be as popular as your other reams of verse (and everyone else's reams of verse)?
I wouldn't fret too much about modern readers at this point or really any readers.

Do you want to write an epic?  Write an epic.  It's the best reason

Nobody will read it but your mum either way but it's a poor reason to write poetry anyway.

The majority of modern (homogenised) cultures are antithetical to the concept of the 'hero' on which epics are anchored. Admittedly some aspects of most heroes were quite nasty (but of their times and societies) but the common factors are personal as opposed to corporate (in the generic sense) duty, and implacable and ineluctable fate. Neither is considered other than as a joke in our urban cultures, so heroes can't really exist. Batman, Superman and co are not heroes, they're just Dei ex machina - magic helpers for the incapable, which isn't the same thing as hero. Almost all heroes finish up dead as that's fated - it's part of their myth to die gracefully doing something dramatic. However small vestiges of heroism do sometimes show up and they can make powerful literature, if for no other reason than their rarity and thus surprise value.

---

....and I just remembered Gone With the Wind started life as a book.

---

....also The Godfather! xD

[Luckieman]

Maybe in writing, but mulling on what you said, Michael Corleone happens to fit this definition of a hero perfectly xD Also perhaps Anakin Skywalker and Scarlett O'Hara.

If there is a question or a discussion topic buried in here it may be too deep to unearth.

Should you write an epic?  Are you concerned it may not be as popular as your other reams of verse (and everyone else's reams of verse)?
I wouldn't fret too much about modern readers at this point or really any readers.

Do you want to write an epic?  Write an epic.  It's the best reason

Nobody will read it but your mum either way but it's a poor reason to write poetry anyway.

The majority of modern (homogenised) cultures are antithetical to the concept of the 'hero' on which epics are anchored. Admittedly some aspects of most heroes were quite nasty (but of their times and societies) but the common factors are personal as opposed to corporate (in the generic sense) duty, and implacable and ineluctable fate. Neither is considered other than as a joke in our urban cultures, so heroes can't really exist. Batman, Superman and co are not heroes, they're just Dei ex machina - magic helpers for the incapable, which isn't the same thing as hero. Almost all heroes finish up dead as that's fated - it's part of their myth to die gracefully doing something dramatic. However small vestiges of heroism do sometimes show up and they can make powerful literature, if for no other reason than their rarity and thus surprise value.

---

....and I just remembered Gone With the Wind started life as a book.

---

....also The Godfather! xD

To my mind Corleone wasn't - he didn't have any sense of duty except to himself and his clan as an extension of himself. Skywalker was a half understood Hollywood attempt at an epic hero but turned out rather limp - with the trappings, but not the required strength of character (because Hollywood doesn't understand it), and Scarlet was just a spoiled brat. The Godfather too, had no sense of outward looking duty.

The same distinction exists in honour. The true hero's honour is outward 'I honour you' (which is why so many went knowingly and willingly to their deaths in the Trojan war when they could have sidestepped it) whereas the 'honour' of the Godfather and his kind is inward looking 'you honour me', which is just high pride. Neither in any of these characters is there a continuous recognition of their ultimate fate in the hands of an implacable external agency (e.g. 'the Gods'). It's a fundmental driver of heroic action as it's inescapable. Grettir's doom is foretold, and dictates his entire life's course until his end occurs exactly as foretold.

[busker]

The Greek idea of tragedy was bizarre and hardly poetic. Not very intelligent either, which is why the best Greeks (Archimedes, Plato, Aristotle) were naturalists and the worst, like Sophocles, third rate script writers.
There is nothing heroic or tragic about Achilles, nor is the poem about his rage worth reading, except to see what inspired great conquerors like Alexander and Hitler.

Literature, unlike science or sculpture, was the opiate of the masses back then. And correspondingly lowbrow. It’s just that people have been brainwashed to agree that yes, Antigone doesn’t suck.

Give me the mammoth eating bards by the Neander river or the root foraging lyricists in Lake Mungo. Or a supremely intelligent AI. But not the Greeks.

Also why the great Saracen prophet Mahomet banned poetry