Inspiration in Artistic Work

[Kavi]

Good conversation! I'll certainly partake. However, we are really offtopic, and I think we maybe should move this conversation to another thread, starting from Kavi's post. I don't know how to do that?

I am sorry for this. I try to be more alert with my postings. Should I start a new topic with this theme and copy also two latter comments there, or?

It's strange, by the way, how rhyming is considered totally passé in literary poetry, while it can still be "cutting edge" in rap music, for example. Do you people have any ideas as to why this is?

I might go through the obvious road, but what the hell. In another topic I recently talked about juvenile satanism as a bit moronic thing, which led me to think of the juvenile aspects of Satan. Although rap music obviously has wide spectrum it remains a juvenile thing like rock. It's the "teenage lightning", which can also be found from fantasy, listening to Arcturus and elsewhere. So maybe it's about the actual rulers behind these things that gets to say what goes to where under their watch. The Trickster aspect might have lost it's power and influence over literary poetry while gained some within the new comer rap, where the Trickster can be seen quite literally making tricks with the rhymes. Maybe it's these different cultural forms that rise and bogart the powers of certain aspects to themselves. Under their new hosts the archetypes may continue to actualize, evolve and repeat their cycles in new colors, though the change is proably more like a gradient than sudden jump.
I think great writers don't bend to these cultural forms but are able to incorporate any aspect to their work regardless of it's "style" or form.

Maybe it's seen somehow as a cliche or as an old trick nowadays?

Also even in nowadays there is a lots of rhyming, rhythmical spontaneous spoken-word stuff with music which isn't classified as rap, like "meyxana" in Azerbaijan. I believe rhyming and humor are very much connected and I think that's one part of reason why this kind of style can be seen as a juvenile thing to do. Laughter? Who has time for that except drunken fools in the tavern or master of ceremonies who entertains the people?
In modern poetry what makes me and maybe other people as well become bothered is, that it takes itself rather seriously and becomes somehow very "artsy" without playful attitude.

[Smaragd]

Maybe it's seen somehow as a cliche or as an old trick nowadays?

Indeed! I tried to see through the mechanics of how this happens, but now reading my text again I see the thoughts did not translate well in to the words I wrote.

Laughter? Who has time for that except drunken fools in the tavern or master of ceremonies who entertains the people?
In modern poetry what makes me and maybe other people as well become bothered is, that it takes itself rather seriously and becomes somehow very "artsy" without playful attitude.

An then the fact that it takes itself so seriously may become a subject of humour. There's no escaping it really. I'm personally rather inclined to take everything seriously, ecspecially works of art, but if there is no space for some kid to laugh at, for example, a double meaning he might be bothered by, I'm afraid the poem might lack instinctively meaningful combination of words to make it serious art work. I'm aggravating here a bit, for ofcourse there must be room for more soft and delicate, and should I say fine plays with words that don't go straight to the jugular.

[Kavi]

Laughter? Who has time for that except drunken fools in the tavern or master of ceremonies who entertains the people?
In modern poetry what makes me and maybe other people as well become bothered is, that it takes itself rather seriously and becomes somehow very "artsy" without playful attitude.

An then the fact that it takes itself so seriously may become a subject of humour. There's no escaping it really. I'm personally rather inclined to take everything seriously, ecspecially works of art, but if there is no space for some kid to laugh at, for example, a double meaning he might be bothered by, I'm afraid the poem might lack instinctively meaningful combination of words to make it serious art work. I'm aggravating here a bit, for ofcourse there must be room for more soft and delicate, and should I say fine plays with words that don't go straight to the jugular.

I tend to take every piece of art with seriousness as well.
Recently I have noticed that while reading poetry I actually start to weep after couple phrases and can't continue the reading. This happens every time I open a book to read.
Is this common thing for you folk, or is it just me who is supposedly healing traumas with poetry and art?

[obnoxion]

Laughter? Who has time for that except drunken fools in the tavern or master of ceremonies who entertains the people?
In modern poetry what makes me and maybe other people as well become bothered is, that it takes itself rather seriously and becomes somehow very "artsy" without playful attitude.

An then the fact that it takes itself so seriously may become a subject of humour. There's no escaping it really. I'm personally rather inclined to take everything seriously, ecspecially works of art, but if there is no space for some kid to laugh at, for example, a double meaning he might be bothered by, I'm afraid the poem might lack instinctively meaningful combination of words to make it serious art work. I'm aggravating here a bit, for ofcourse there must be room for more soft and delicate, and should I say fine plays with words that don't go straight to the jugular.

I tend to take every piece of art with seriousness as well.
Recently I have noticed that while reading poetry I actually start to weep after couple phrases and can't continue the reading. This happens every time I open a book to read.
Is this common thing for you folk, or is it just me who is supposedly healing traumas with poetry and art?

When reading great texts, I often have to stop after few lines. But it is usually because I start to sort of tremble with intense pleasure. Then the words stay with me, and it might take a week before I can continue reading that text. I suppose that is one of the reasons I am reading a hundred books at the same time, most of which I never finish.

[Nefastos]

When you understand the natural rules, then with your writing you can begin to break them.

&

The optimal artist and magician even according to Ervast would be someone who has obtained knowledge and structurized it and is therefore more or less on influence of apollonian. [...] This lack of knowledge/ Apollon can be seen in every drawing I make, in every sentence I make - there is some kind of memory trapped in the creation but its full potentiality can never flourish as I can't even remember or handle simple structures and syntaxes of sentences and rules how to use commas. This bitterness of being in some sense "handicap" brought me towards satanism in the first place while studying closely the failure and mistakes one can make in arts. It was also nice to find out this similar idea in Verge's song called "because it's wrong" as I definitely have been born to this life "ass first".

There seems to be two paths: Learn the rules to break them, and break the rules to learn them. Much to my dismay, I too am an "agrippa" (born upside down) psychoenergetically and cannot often proceed in what is considered normal nowadays, in the Aristotelian sense (as opposed to Platonic idea of starting from above and advancing into particulars & details last). It has been quite a surprise to see during the years how this works in every aspect of life; everything seems to proceed in reverse orders. Naturally it seems to be connected to the Oedipal psychology, but wouldn't let the hook go off so easily as to say that the latter is the reason, instead of one of the results.

Although I think that "Apollon" holds the reins of both of these ways (so that they are actually both the Sun-paths or the paths of ascension), for Apollo is a Sun-god and in the symbol of the Sun we have these both points of entrance: point in the middle, and circumference. Only in the "Moon paths", the paths go actually crooked, and can actually go Wrong (even though it is just a possibility). In this first cross of the two Sun- & two Moon-paths there's the first cross to create the "Eight Paths" (of occult development or soul's destinies).

For let the artistic (or other) inspiration be from the middle point or from the circumference, the "Apollonian" inspiration is the inspiration of grasping of the whole, i.e. understanding of the unity in thing perceived, be it from the nucleus or from the cell membrane – so to say – the effect will be similar. Thus, this is the working of buddhi in man, its connection to our creative manas. Technical skills, on the other hand, are something that are learned by conscious or subconscious mimicking – which is called culture, or cultivation by succession.

Recently I have noticed that while reading poetry I actually start to weep after couple phrases and can't continue the reading. This happens every time I open a book to read.
Is this common thing for you folk, or is it just me who is supposedly healing traumas with poetry and art?

More & more common as I see myself slowly regenerating back to health, or something resembling it, from a long black burnout. I think that tears as living water might need a thread of its own, though, for the psychoenergetical - we can say magical - phenomenon is so multihued & deep.

[obnoxion]

It's strange, by the way, how rhyming is considered totally passé in literary poetry, while it can still be "cutting edge" in rap music, for example. Do you people have any ideas as to why this is?

I might go through the obvious road, but what the hell. In another topic I recently talked about juvenile satanism as a bit moronic thing, which led me to think of the juvenile aspects of Satan. Although rap music obviously has wide spectrum it remains a juvenile thing like rock. It's the "teenage lightning", which can also be found from fantasy, listening to Arcturus and elsewhere. So maybe it's about the actual rulers behind these things that gets to say what goes to where under their watch. The Trickster aspect might have lost it's power and influence over literary poetry while gained some within the new comer rap, where the Trickster can be seen quite literally making tricks with the rhymes. Maybe it's these different cultural forms that rise and bogart the powers of certain aspects to themselves. Under their new hosts the archetypes may continue to actualize, evolve and repeat their cycles in new colors, though the change is proably more like a gradient than sudden jump.
I think great writers don't bend to these cultural forms but are able to incorporate any aspect to their work regardless of it's "style" or form.

Looking at this from more conventional point of view, rhyming for me is a tool of finding meaning through restriction. Now I don't know the definition of "literary poetry", but might it aim to more open expression?
EDIT: Literary poetry as in poetry in written form? Well, in that case, my more conventional point is not valid.

Have you any good tips in order to become a better writer?

In relation to the above, I'm quite new to writing and found a way to embrace the fact that I'm a novice. I've played with childish composition and I make a rhyme every time a rhyme comes. The important thing is not to do childish or whatever things for the sake of it, but to follow the meaningful voices and try understand them in honest manner during the process of translating them to language.

It is a good point about rap lyrics. I used to listen rap music exclusevily for a few years in the beginning of the '90's, and I still enjoy the more raw and rythmic stuff of the early days. I do not much enjoy the overt swearing and violent content, but I do appreciate its traditionality (good example would be the quite delicious lyric of the folk song Stagger Lee, which has been done also by Nick Cave). In a way I have celebrated this era of Hiphop as the return of the rhyme and meter, and anyone wishing to continue to create a contemporary metric poems might benefit from researching the roots of the rap lyrics.

But I think it is not so much rhyming per se that is considered passe, but the the concept of traditional form. I am reading Robert Alter's "The Art of Biblical Poetry", and I quote: "Whereas in Job, for example, one encounters daring leaps of invention in the imagery or, in the Prophets, intricate elaborations of rhetoric figures, the psalms do generally stick to something more "primary"- which does not mean something less literary but, on the contrary, a greater reliance on the conventional, the familiar, in imagery, in the sequence of ideas, in the structure of the poem... Our own post-Romantic predisposition to orginality in literature may lead to a certain perplexity about how to think of a collection where in any given genre a dozen or more poems seem be saying the same thing, often with more or less the same metaphors and sometimes even with some of the same phrasing. What I think we need to be more attuned to as readers is the nuanced individual character - "originality" in fact may not be relevant concept - of different poems reflecting the same genre and even many of the same formulaic devices. There are abundant instances in later poetic tradition.... where the power of the individual poem is meant to be felt precisely in such a fine recasting of the conventional, and that is what we ought to be able to discern more minutely in the psalms."

So I would sat that where as in traditional form, rhyme and meter serve to convay subtlety, in rap lyric it serves to covey explicity. Rap lyric actually prides itself on explicity, and the warning stickers on album covers informing of explicit lyrics work as positive advertisements.

A naivity, I think, is paramount for a good poet. And a mastery of a traditional form, I believe, can sublimite naivity to awesome power of sincerety, which transcends poetic form.

When it comed to modern poem (beginning from Auden, Eliot etc.), I think one should discern in it the strong influence of neo-Thomist and Barthian Theologies. The profane turn, I suspect, is a sort of evolution from a dogma of the God as completely other and radically unavailable. This would form a starck contrast (and, perhaps, a neat correspondence in paradox, also) to my own Tantric-Pantheistic theologies of poetry, where God is radically availble.

[Cancer]

Looking at this from more conventional point of view, rhyming for me is a tool of finding meaning through restriction. Now I don't know the definition of "literary poetry", but might it aim to more open expression?
EDIT: Literary poetry as in poetry in written form? Well, in that case, my more conventional point is not valid.

By literary poetry I meant the Western tradition of poetry as an art of innovation, a practice where progress is a - if not the - central idea. Lyrics for popular music can be archaic and repetitive ("fascist", as Adorno would say ), because they do not belong in this tradition, are not measured against some sensually superb piece of terza rima from four centuries ago. But that is not to say that rap, rock etc. don't have their own traditions: they do, and they're generally just as conscious of their origins as plain old logocentric poetry. I'm opposed to the view of this kind of newer popular art as "juvenile". That poetry is purely, or even mostly, an intellectual pursuit is a juvenile thought if there ever was one; Finnish (and American, and Swedish) avant-garde poetry is full of theoretically bloated twenty-, or thirtysomething-"teenagers" who are too shy and self-conscious to write a word about their own immediate experience - who will only ever touch language with the tips of their fingers (by tapping the keyboard), never allowing it into their mouth and chest (by singing, talking to themselves, going crazy). Poems must have flesh, and they must be able to enjoy themselves in it, much like human beings. Intellectualism could probably be classified as a poets' eating disorder (logorexia nervosa).

I think it is not so much rhyming per se that is considered passe, but the the concept of traditional form.

This is exactly true. And I think it's almost not a metaphor to say that a recycled, time-enrichened, deep form is a poems' flesh or body in the sense that I outlined above. Seeing the matter this way, one can discern in Modernism Europe’s attempt to escape the horrors of the 20th century into "pure", disembodied consciousness.

When it comed to modern poem (beginning from Auden, Eliot etc.), I think one should discern in it the strong influence of neo-Thomist and Barthian Theologies. The profane turn, I suspect, is a sort of evolution from a dogma of the God as completely other and radically unavailable. This would form a starck contrast (and, perhaps, a neat correspondence in paradox, also) to my own Tantric-Pantheistic theologies of poetry, where God is radically availble.

Maybe this is why I’ve come to hate Eliot and Auden with a passion. Especially Eliot. In the poetry thread there is a shameful old post in which I recommend Four Quartets to "anybody interested in poetry and occultism". Please allow me to take my words back - I was after all a student of comparative literature when I wrote that, guaranteed to have horrible tastes.

On a more serious note, the theological explanation for certain kinds of Modernist poetics rings true to me also because it sheds light on the Modern aversion to one of my favorite English-language poets, William Blake - who was ”in God’s presence night and day / […] He never turns his face away”. I mean, it’s not hard to figure out various reasons why Blake was all but forgotten for so long; I’ve just never considered his marginal position from this particular, very fitting, angle. It’d be very interesting to read whatever book you had as ”source material” here, obnoxion.

[obnoxion]

I would be happy to recommend my source material for the Theological backround of Eliot et al. It is Anthony Domestico's "Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period" (John Hopkins University Press, 2017). It deals with T.S. Eliot, David Jones and W.H. Auden and their huge interest in modern theologies.Though I am an amateur enthusiast, poetry is one of my main interest in life, and even if poetry doesn't speak to my heart, I always get excited about technical skill and things like that. I am certain that any student of literature or theology would enjoy Domestico's book.

Still, I love romanticism and symbolism, and adore pretty much everything previous to that - though I do have a strong cerebral interest in modern art and poetry, too. For me, I see no difference between William Blake and biblical prophets, when it comes to power of language, integrity of vision or enduring relevance of his message. For Finnish speakers, Risto Ahti's "William Blake & Vimmainen Genius" is, I feel, a fine example of modernism's struggle with Blake. One of the more interesting book on Blake I have recently acquired is Leslie Tannenbaum's "Biblical Tradition in Blake's Early Prophecies - The Great Code of Art" (Princeton, 1982).

[Smaragd]

Looking at this from more conventional point of view, rhyming for me is a tool of finding meaning through restriction. Now I don't know the definition of "literary poetry", but might it aim to more open expression?
EDIT: Literary poetry as in poetry in written form? Well, in that case, my more conventional point is not valid.

By literary poetry I meant the Western tradition of poetry as an art of innovation, a practice where progress is a - if not the - central idea. Lyrics for popular music can be archaic and repetitive ("fascist", as Adorno would say ), because they do not belong in this tradition, are not measured against some sensually superb piece of terza rima from four centuries ago. But that is not to say that rap, rock etc. don't have their own traditions: they do, and they're generally just as conscious of their origins as plain old logocentric poetry. I'm opposed to the view of this kind of newer popular art as "juvenile". That poetry is purely, or even mostly, an intellectual pursuit is a juvenile thought if there ever was one; Finnish (and American, and Swedish) avant-garde poetry is full of theoretically bloated twenty-, or thirtysomething-"teenagers" who are too shy and self-conscious to write a word about their own immediate experience - who will only ever touch language with the tips of their fingers (by tapping the keyboard), never allowing it into their mouth and chest (by singing, talking to themselves, going crazy). Poems must have flesh, and they must be able to enjoy themselves in it, much like human beings. Intellectualism could probably be classified as a poets' eating disorder (logorexia nervosa).

I very much agree on the latter part. Also very interesting note about the "fasicst" repetition, for at the same time such popculture may be looked as progression (youth claims the future) in the next step or trend inside its own tradition, but the actual content marches in place for the celebration of the 'Anaconda' or whatnot. This is not unlike focusing in specific archetype for a while and then moving on.

Maybe the word juvenile in my first message was too strong for I didn't mean it in a negative sense, or to claim intellectual approaches superior. It is what it is, and in popculture there seems to be this youthful charge in it. I might look into 'The Ages of Man' by Nefastos and try to think the correspondences between the ages and different fields of music. This might be helpful for attaching lyrical meaning to different kinds of music that keep bursting out, as it points towards the powers behind them.