š
The poetry of Wallace Stevens has been the single greatest help to me in living my life. He taught me to see the world ācleansed of its stiff and stubborn man-locked set.ā He taught me to apprehend the deeper mystery that is Reality, and to quote Stevens, to see āhow much of what he saw he never saw at all.ā He taught me to understand that Reality is not a solid but, perhaps, āa shade that traverses a dust/a force that traverses a shade.ā He taught me to be at peace in the world and I will forever be in his debt.
Aug 31, 2021
Related Recs
š
first poem i loved and kept with me as a ripe 7th grader. read over and over to the point where it plays in my head, little things will remind me of it - foggy nights in the city or the ocean in winter or pondering my own mortality - and lines come flowing back
others stuck in my noggin include style by charles bukowski and the sunflower sutra by allen ginsberg. at this point i can probably recite a good number of billy collins works bc ive listened to the recorded album "the best cigarette" approximately 500 times
Jun 5, 2024
ā
https://wonder-publishing.com/shitwonder/eight-poems-by-john-coletti/
Jan 22, 2024
š
T.S. Eliot for sure if you are interested in the modernist movement, if you like his stuff check out Wallace Stevens.
If you want something more digestible to start out with, maybe try Walt Whitman for some romanticism.
Jan 10, 2025
Top Recs from @caveh-zahedi
š
This is inarguably the most difficult (and formally radical) book ever written and most people canāt make heads or tails of it but if you just start reading and donāt stop and let the words wash over you, its strange poetry starts to speak to you. Joyce invented a new language of neologisms and portmanteau words that were puns in multiple languages at once. He went as far with the English language as anyone can go and he attains heights of poetry, subtlety, and complexity that have never been surpassed. Iāve been reading it for 40 years and have only just scratched its surface but it has been an immensely rewarding experience.
Aug 31, 2021
š½
Tarkovsky is arguably the greatest filmmaker of all time and, for me, Andrei Roublev is his greatest film. Every single shot in this film is a masterpiece - every frame, every camera move, every chiaroscuro effect. It tells the story of one of Russiaās greatest religious icon painters, but in such a ramshackle way that it becomes an allegory of the creative process and what it means to be an artist. The film surprises at every turn ā not a single moment is predictable. The final scene is one of the greatest endings in all of cinema, right up there with the end of Lars Von TrierāsĀ MelancholiaĀ and the end of Robert BressonāsĀ The Devil Probably.
Aug 31, 2021
š
This is the book I have read more times than any other. I donāt think any other (human) writer has ever reached the spiritual heights that Blanchot achieved in this book. His work has been a beacon to me ever since I discovered it in college. Most of the people Iāve recommended this book to did NOT love it, but those that did became lifelong fanatics. Itās abstruse and almost every sentence is a mind-fuck, but I would argue that Blanchot is the greatest writer ever.
Aug 31, 2021