We Need A Revolution In Literature!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother

Do your political views always influence what you write this much?

You have so much hatred for people who don't agree with you.

You didn't say what you thought of the poem I posted. Something tells me that it could be the most beautifully written poem ever but if it was negative about abortion than you would hate it regardless.

On the other hand, you'd probably like a mediocre poem if it glorified the barbaric and selfish act of abortion. I can entertain the argument that abortion is a necessary evil. That it is something that could, and should have been avoided, but wasn't. That is okay. There are a lot of things that happen because of human fault. But the people who herald abortion as some triumph in liberty or womens rights are inhumane.

The same goes for the whole gay thing. Lots of heterosexuals that are so hellbent on gay rights actually dehumanize gays. Have you ever watched Glee? It is a terrible show. You probably love it though because it tries so hard to push buttons. The show has no artistry at all. Well there is a character called Kurt, and he is one of the worst human beings you will ever see. And it has nothing to do with his sexuality. He is rude, belligerent, disrespectful, hateful, doesn't respect women, etc. In all honesty, he is so messed up that I really believe if he was in charge of the world he would have concentration camps for heterosexuals with signs saying "Sodomy Will Let you Free". Now there is nothing wrong with having an awful character, but they try and pass him off as a great beautiful person. Why? Because he is gay. Since he is gay, he is inherently superior and beautiful - more so than other human beings. One of the biggest parts of being an adult human being is that you are held responsible for your ACTIONS, and people base their opinion of you off of your ACTIONS. You deprive them of this human element just as you would if you called them "faggot".

Another way people unknowingly dehumanize gays is they think they are just that - gays. They aren't human beings who just happen to be gay. No. They are simply homosexuals - no more and no less. Glee does this too. All of Kurt's conflicts and breakthroughs hinge on him being gay. They are more than just homosexuals. They are people.

It is similar to people who voted for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. They are just as bad as someone who didn't vote for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. See a pattern?

Also I see you complain so much about Capitalism. So you'd rather have Collectivism? Do you have any idea how many people Collectivism has killed? Collectivism clashes with human nature irreparably. I don't see how anyone could seriously want to try it again.

---

And, lo, when I thought I had seen the largest straw man imaginable, then came a giant, a giant that made the Goliath seem small and pitiful, so large its ankles were shrouded in the highest clouds!

Seriously, though, what does this have to do with ANYTHING? This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet. I think someone has some issues to work out.

Darcy,

I encourage you to add to the list of innovators.

And I can't help but wondering if I'm the only one who had to discover these innovators on my own. 16 years of formal education and nobody discussed these innovators. Nobody assigned their work. 16 years of formal education (with a BA in English literature) and it was ALL conventional literature that was assigned.

I graduated from university a firm traditionalist. But when I realized there was so much great innovative stuff out there I became disenchanted with the shortcomings of formal education. Hopefully others were assigned innovative works in their high schools and universities.

And if the list of innovators goes on and on how come we see so little innovative work in the prestigious literary magazines? The answer is there appears to be plenty of innovative literature but so very little of it appears in the prestigious literary magazines.

Today's young writers are so lucky to have this thing called the Internet. I went through the entire stacks of the poetry sections of the main Manhattan circulating library and the main Brooklyn Public Library looking for innovative poets. The library staff thought I was nuts. What was interesting for me was that a good half of the best innovative poets I encountered were out-of-print, which is an indictment of the traditional publishing industry.

Of course, there are small publishers that do the best they can to publish innovative literature until they get bought up by the big publishing conglomerates and become something called imprints. Then they just become servants to corporate greed.

I encourage everyone to post the names of innovative poets and the TITLES of innovative poems and other works on this thread. Please remember for copyright reasons you cannot publish the entire poem on this thread. If you wish to put part of the poem (like one line or two) please consult the rules of this site before doing so.

But please tell us what innovative poets and writers you like!

I don't know if I'm amused by the Glee analysis or not. I don't like Glee, but your reading of the character of Kurt is pretty flawed. Kurt is often treated as an unsympathetic character on the show when he is acting badly. It is easy to twist the reading of the character to mean anything because Glee, quite frankly, is poorly written and relies heavily on archetype to work its plots. The characters fit roles, jocks, pageant queens, cheerleaders, sassy black girl. And all of them act like horrible people when the plot calls for it, and they are treated sympathetically when the plot calls for it. Also, Murphy is in general not very coherent with his messages to begin with, Glee is not a moralizing gay rights campaigning show, like it is often portrayed as. More often than not Kurt is just used as a prop for making jokes about campness or gay stereotypes. The show is a musical comedy after all.

Plus, Ryan Murphy wouldn't be a heterosexual dehumanizing gays with his show, he would be a gay man dehumanizing gays.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WolfLarsen

Somebody requested something more concise than the essay. Well here you go:

THE WOLF LARSEN MANIFESTO

1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps!

2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper!

3. All contemporary “poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!

4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else than you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite “literature”!

5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than “writers” and “poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!

6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. After all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god than words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.

7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!

8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.

9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be the most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!

10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious “literary” magazines filled with hack “poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal “well-polished” “well-crafted” “literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Jackson Pollock’s paintings can hardly be considered sleepy! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!

11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!

---

Has this text been written by a young student? It is so juvenile and full of clichés.

I encourage you to add to the list of innovators.

And I can't help but wondering if I'm the only one who had to discover these innovators on my own. 16 years of formal education and nobody discussed these innovators. Nobody assigned their work. 16 years of formal education (with a BA in English literature) and it was ALL conventional literature that was assigned.

Wolf... I serious question whether you really read all you suggest you were "forced" to read because I have a hard time with your notion of "conventional literature". From my experience with literature, the greatest of the old and the new masters were anything but "conventional". I can't imagine reading Dante's Comedia, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Blake's Poems, Rousseau's Confessions, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Melvilles, Moby Dick, or any number of other "classics" and not being stunned by the absolute audacity of the writers. "Conventional"? Do you even know what the word means?

As for your list of "innovative" poets... some are not bad: Andrei Codrescu, Pablo Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, October Paz, Henri Michaux, Yves Bonnefoy... You might enjoy Cesar Vallejo, Rafael Alberti, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Boris Pasternak (as poet), Marina Tsvetaeva, Fernando Pessoa, Charles Wright, Louis Zukofsky, Samuel Beckett, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, etc...

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are both overrated... along with a majority of the "confessional" poets IMO. Of the Surrealists/Cubists/da-da poets Apollinaire, Breton, Eluard and a few others are interesting... but can't rival their Symbolist predecessors... nor what was going on at the same time in Spain.

I can't see what your complaint is with regard to your never having been exposed to these writers in 12 years of public school and 4 years working toward a BA in English Literature. Grade school is rarely the place for the exploration of contemporary literature, and your focus upon English Literature was not likely to result in an exploration of a great many writers outside of the English language. Seriously, my college studies of World Literature included Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, Apollinaire, and many others...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

And, lo, when I thought I had seen the largest straw man imaginable, then came a giant, a giant that made the Goliath seem small and pitiful, so large its ankles were shrouded in the highest clouds!

Seriously, though, what does this have to do with ANYTHING? This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet. I think someone has some issues to work out.

---

I don't think I'm guilty of any strawman arguments. I went ahead and specified what he said about being "immoral and blasphemous" about never to do it just for shock value, and he pretty much responded saying that it is never done "just for shock value" it is just that there are always retarded and prudish and evil conservatives who dismiss it as that because of their ignorance. That made it pretty clear he is pretty damn radical about it.

Sorry if it was a bit discursive though. I'll admit I was beating around the bush.

I think Wolf is a phony. I bet he loves anything that ridicules religion, conservatives, and rich people, but anything that ridicules his beliefs he well, dismisses it and the writer as simply a religious fool, a close-minded prudish conservative, or a filthy rich person (who obviously trampled over 50 orphans to get where he is). I bet he is one of those ultra politically-correct people.

He really should keep his politics out of his writing. Not even so much because politics in general choke art. His political views are so sophomoric that they makes him sound like a pretentious and hyper 10th grader. Also my God are they ridiculously slanted and bigoted. It really seems like he thinks conservatives are demonic and liberals are brilliant artistic angels. (of course he knows for a fact there is nothing greater or more powerful than man.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by B. Laumness

Has this text been written by a young student? It is so juvenile and full of clichés.

---

No man. You missed it. You missed the point. He said that God doesn't exist and that us humans are Gods. That proves he is truly a free thinker.:banana:

Also come on you saw all of the problems with society he listed. He nailed it! Capitalism is the worst thing that has ever happened to society. Did you know that not everybody has the same amount of money? How can things get worse than that? Collectivism doesn't cause problems like that.

Also have you seen Lady Gaga? How she always wears crazy stuff? She is such a genius! She is doing what has never been done before and she is so courageous!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OrphanPip

I don't know if I'm amused by the Glee analysis or not. I don't like Glee, but your reading of the character of Kurt is pretty flawed. Kurt is often treated as an unsympathetic character on the show when he is acting badly. It is easy to twist the reading of the character to mean anything because Glee, quite frankly, is poorly written and relies heavily on archetype to work its plots. The characters fit roles, jocks, pageant queens, cheerleaders, sassy black girl. And all of them act like horrible people when the plot calls for it, and they are treated sympathetically when the plot calls for it. Also, Murphy is in general not very coherent with his messages to begin with, Glee is not a moralizing gay rights campaigning show, like it is often portrayed as. More often than not Kurt is just used as a prop for making jokes about campness or gay stereotypes. The show is a musical comedy after all.

Plus, Ryan Murphy wouldn't be a heterosexual dehumanizing gays with his show, he would be a gay man dehumanizing gays.

---

Ehhh. Glee has had like 10 episodes about gay rights and all of that stuff. I don't care if Ryan Murphy is gay that is irrelevant. The only time sexuality is relevant is... well... you know. Also I was mostly using Glee so I could avoid generalizing too much.

Nice avatar!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother

It is similar to people who voted for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. They are just as bad as someone who didn't vote for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black.

---

What an atrocious post. This part in particular made my BS-detector flash red and blare its siren. There is no logic or sense to this whatsoever. The abortion stuff I can humour. You had me open-minded until this. Ridiculous. UGH. And I despise the present occupant of the White House just so you know.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darcy88

What an atrocious post. This part in particular made my BS-detector flash red and blare its siren.

---

Okay explain more. Why is one case of letting skin color influence your opinion/judgement of someone not as bad as the other?

There is no logic or sense whatsoever in despising any judgement of someone for their skin color?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet.

---

No kidding. Cue the rant about a character from a television musical? What the hell?

Well I will clarify a little. I suppose if someone didn't look at any candidate whatsoever and just went to vote, and just thought "hmm I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a black president" - that is different. There are different motivations for that.

However if someone is "serious" about voting and doesn't even consider the other candidate because they want to vote for the black one, then yes, that is discriminatory and just as bad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother

Okay explain more. Why is one case of letting skin color influence your opinion/judgement of someone not as bad as the other?

There is no logic or sense whatsoever in despising any judgement of someone for their skin color?

---

If you look at the history of the treatment of African Americans in the United States and then say what you are saying now, the absurdity leaps out with a blinding supernova-like flash. I can't believe I even have to explain this. How is negative bias different from positive bias? Really?! Comparable to racism is voting for a representative of a long-suffering, long-segregated group that not 50 years ago hadn't the remotest chance of assuming the presidency? Ok then. I'm done. This thread is wearing on me. Your odious additions to it are like the further spreading of an already vile rash.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darcy88

If you look at the history of the treatment of African Americans in the United States and then say what you are saying now, the absurdity leaps out with a blinding supernova-like flash. I can't believe I even have to explain this. How is negative bias different from positive bias? Really?! Comparable to racism is voting for a representative of a long-suffering, long-segregated group that not 50 years ago hadn't the remotest chance of assuming the presidency? Ok then. I'm done. This thread is wearing on me. Your odious additions to it are like the further spreading of an already vile rash.

---

Let's get one thing straight. I am talking about the ISOLATED ACT of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN. Obviously the person who doesn't vote for Obama because he is black has a better chance of being a bad person than the person who does it for the opposite reason. That is because they have a much better chance of being actively racist. You have morphed my statement into a battle of KKK vs someone wanting a black president. You are misrepresenting me. The isolated act of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN is equally bad both ways.

And what does slavery matter? There have been many different races that have been victim to much worse enormities than slavery. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by getting specific, but many of them happened to be predominately white. Yes maybe not in America, but that does not matter. We are talking about humanity after all.

It is a bad path to go down. You are still rationalizing discrimination.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother

Also I was mostly using Glee so I could avoid generalizing too much.

---

So you want to think in terms of stereotypes, but you know that if you actually employ stereotypes in this discussion you'll get your a$$ handed to you so you use a television show which is really a collection of stock characters as the basis of your argument? That's really, really, really stupid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bewlay Brother

Nice avatar!

---

Since most of your beef is with gay culture, can we assume that this comment on a David Bowie avatar is your attempt at a douchey jab?