#ars poetica

[inhernature]

Ars Poetica

by Leslie Sainz

You skewer

all the present moments

with a fork. They squirm

spectacularly, like second languages.

A fate—

can you stomach it?

Anyway, you eat it. You eat it anyway.

Have You Been Long Enough At Table, Leslie Sainz

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

— CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ, from “Ars Poetica?,” trans. Czesław Miłosz

 & Lillian Vallee.

[babylon-crashing]

numskull

To suck. To feed. To gnaw on a deranged teat. It's been years since I've felt that panic. Oh dear. I guess it can't be helped. How strange just how consent comes in comics. Graphic grubby, voracious and somehow safe. No matter the kink. No matter the hunger. Pity poor passions, the one door I know that the gods speak through. I still remember all their voices. What else will dementia grind down until I'm ravenous? roughshod? stripped of bliss? A hungry ghost that nothing will fill? Desires numskulled by trauma? Numb. Skull. Panic. The urge to be gnawed to the bone. The urge to do the gnawing.

[uhambii]

Poetry arrives like a seed, foreign,

tucked into your pocket when you weren’t looking—

a stowaway from some distant garden.

You don’t know its name,

you don’t know its bloom,

and when you plant it, you’re not even sure

if it will grow in your soil.

But you water it anyway, a quiet ritual,

like speaking to someone who’s still a stranger,

not yet a friend. Each line is a sip of light,

each verse, a touch of rain.

It’s slow work,

but there’s joy in the waiting,

the slow unfurling of leaf and stem,

the way a poem reaches out in a language

it doesn’t know how to speak—yet.

And with time, it starts to show itself:

veins running through green,

the roots deepening underground,

tendrils reaching out as if trying

to pull something closer.

The more you tend to it, the clearer it becomes,

but always with mystery, the way a shadow

clings to the underside of a leaf.

Not everything is meant to be named,

not every bud blooms in daylight.

A good poem is like this:

it grows in the spaces you don’t control.

It asks for care, but it doesn't beg for understanding.

A poem should be a living thing,

its beauty not in perfection

but in the wildness it retains.

A poem should surprise you—

with how familiar it feels,

but yet unknown.

And why should poetry matter?

Because it teaches us to wait,

to listen to something other than ourselves,

to believe that there are things worth tending,

even if we don’t always know

what they will become.

Poetry reminds us:

we, too, are seeds—

we, too, need water and light,

and we, too, grow best

when given room

to be wild.

- Ambii

[movietonight]

M*A*S*H // Ars Poetica - Archibald MacLeish

[flipchild]

[subtextures]

writing

such arrogance, this trope

where we bend a new world

to our image, our doubts

and failings, our belief

we are somehow unique

against which all other

must be compared wholly

is too simple a path

to follow with devotion

who are we to demand

our vision, no matter

how myopic, provide

a luminous clarity

for all who are not us

as if we were small gods

caught up in a turf war

where any loss in faith

begins a slow decline

that in and of itself

becomes a corollary

tangental to love:

so we cower in fear

the mind’s splinter slices

along old wounds to bleed

like stigmata, easy

to hold close, as our days

fall away to soft ash

(July 3, 2024)

[fallinginreversefanblog]

The very essence of the hater bullying videos, what we, fans know already for a long time, but these pathetic fools still think they're in control of their actions LMFAAOO 🤣🤣🤣

“Fuck ronnie radke”

Next tweet

“In honor of our 15th anniversary of our sophomore album we are playing it in full at sonic temple on the borders books stage at 11:30am”

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

[rustbeltjessie]

Poet Laureate Of… / Writer-in-Residence Of…

Think of a place you know well (can you tell I’m really into the aspect of place in poetry?), but not a state or a town or a country or a college or a literary institution. Think of a place you know well that would never have its own Poet Laureate or Writer-in-Residence, and then imagine you are the Poet Laureate or Writer-in-Residence of that Place. (Ex.: poet laureate of your favorite bench at a local park, writer-in-residence of the Waffle House, poet laureate of the Safeway parking lot, etc.) Write a poem about your imagined experience of being poet laureate or writer-in-residence of said place. Make this poem an ars poetica.

For Further Reference: “Ars Poetica”

—prompt from Rust Belt Jessie’s Prompts & Exercises for NaPoWriMo 2024

[polishpoems]

Desperately looking for a translation of "Odys" by Leopold Staff, please tell me it exists at all 🥲

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25777998

if you don't have institutional access, you can read up to 100 articles on jstor for free (monthly) so just make an account to get the full piece. the translation you're looking for is on page 94 (3rd of the actual file). i'm not sure if it's the full poem though? so let me know (and also let us know again if you have trouble with accessing it in the first place!)

[cruisingxdystopia]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Emil Nolde - Sea with Violet Clouds and Three Yellow Sailboats, 1946

* * * * 

As Milosz said in Ars Poetica,

… And yet the world is  different from what it seems to be and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings. People therefore preserve silent integrity, thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors. The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will. What I’m saying here is not, I agree, poetry, as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope That good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

—Excerpt from Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems (1931-2001) Harper-Collins 2001

[Ars Poetica Parabola, by Lee van Laer]

[babylon-crashing]

retch

The gods had ceased singing. My verse had cooled,

then dried up. Nightmares, livid with love, came

with puke and drool, as if I'd somehow fooled

Temperance. As if self-restraint and shame

only bedeviled others. And today? ¬

Six years have passed. The bloat has left my face.

¬ Scars on my liver. ¬ Scars on my wordplay. ¬

Lifetime of scars, self-loathing and disgrace;

cuz' who dies clean? Pffft. Thomas? Poe? Sexton?

Saints of excess. ¬ Today? This day. ¬ Call this

a small price to pay. ¬ Of these fifty-four

years six were spent sober. Without swollen,

flushed flesh. Without the gods, “taking the piss.”

¬ Without retch. ¬ Without fucking up hardcore.

note.

Today, 2/18/2024, marks my 6th year anniversary of entering Recovery. As they say, one day at a time.

[onmyliteraturebullshitagain]

"Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?"

-- "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe" by Elizabeth Alexander

[valentina-lauricella]

Dall'Ars poetica di Orazio

Splendida traduzione ripresa da quella di Fedeli e Paolicchi. Notevole l'universalizzazione della sentenza finale ottenuta sostituendo "modalità d'espressione" con il vocabolo "parole".

(*) dagli Aquiloni

[flipchild]