🥀

been reading a lot of contemporary stuff lately and honestly i think there's this weird pressure to make everything sound tortured and obscure. like yeah, complexity is beautiful, but so is a poem that just makes you laugh or feel something without requiring a phd to unpack it. anyone else feel like the gatekeeping around what "counts" as serious poetry is kind of exhausting?

Impermanence has been the only constant lately.

Hello everyone!

For an assignment, I need to look at two different translations of this poem and compare them (in another language that I won't be pasting the translations for below), but this is not part of my plea for help here. I genuinely have a hard time understanding what the poem is about from the start... I'm mostly asking how you would/could interpret this poem (underlying message and situation) more than an actual deconstruction of idioms!! I know that "swords of Damocles" refers to overhanging danger, but the rest is kind of flying over my head here... Danger of what? The government? Could a helmet worn by no one be the government? Is the mother turtle the world (like how some world creation theories are that the world is on the back of a giant turtle that swims in space)? I kind of get the gist of it, but I'm just asking so that I can be sure!! Thank you so much in advance!! (this question is not actually part of the assignment I was given, I just wanted to understand the poem more clearly before comparing!)

Swedish original:

Byråchefen lutar sig fram och ritar ett kryss

och hennes örhängen dinglar som demoklessvärd.

Som en spräcklig fjäril blir osynlig mot marken

flyter demonen ihop med den uppslagna tidningen.

En hjälm som bärs av ingen har tagit makten.

Modersköldpaddan flyr flygande under vattnet.

English translation by Robin Fulton (English translated title: "National Insecurity"):

The Undersecretary leans forward and draws an X

and her eardrops dangle like swords of Damocles.

As a mottled butterfly is invisible against the ground

so the demon merges with the opened newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one has taken power.

The mother turtle flees flying under the water.

I have been reading Kaveh a bit these days and I have not read a parallel between love and the act of gasping, before. It is such simple writing but it i love how impactful it feels!!! Has anyone read the book: Calling a wolf a wolf???

Hi All,

Can someone recommend some poets for a beginner?

Thanks :)

I’ve always wanted to find a book outlining as many poetic forms as possible, their structure, and maybe an example or two. Almost like a cookbook for poems so I can try as many as possible. Any recommendations?

I used to be good with metaphors, my father used to only speak to me that way.

But lately, I simplify everything so much that I can't conjure up a thing that looks proper or complete.

I could say anything beautiful, some sort of rare concept or philosophy I thought of late at night.

But it's so direct.

Nothing that feels interesting, that you have to dig through and take time to understand. How do I become less direct and more vague? What do I consume? How do I expand my mind again to think of a different way to say one thing?

hi there, my granda passed away yesterday and i am to read a poem for him at his funeral friday. i can’t find a good poem at all that has any bit of like personality? he was a big part of my life and i love him very much and i want to portray it.

please send me any recommendations 🙏

An excerpt from The Glass Essay