[ SECRET POST #5214 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5214 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________


03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #746.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[kaijinscendre]

Never read them. Are they similar to Shel Silverstein?

I have never been a fan of poetry. My 9th (and 10th/11th) grade English teacher made us analyze poetry as our class opener because he KNEW I hated poetry.

[(Anonymous)]

This probably makes me a bad person, but I giggled 'cause my first thought was he died to get out of the diversity training.

[(Anonymous)]

Lol

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

I like Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. I don't like Shakespeare. I respect his work and understand why people like his sonnets (and plays), but I'm just not a fan of them.

[(Anonymous)]

Lol damn as a fandom Olde, I really felt this.

[(Anonymous)]

This is one of the best secrets ever.

[(Anonymous)]

I scream laughed at this.

Well done, OP. I'm sure you didn't know what was going to happen, but that only makes this funnier.

[(Anonymous)]

I love Walt Whitman’s work, but this Simpsons bit is still great and possibly appropriate for you, OP:

https://comb.io/uADmxy.gif

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, but that doesn't mean you have to be smug either.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[philstar22]

I love Shakespeare's plays, at least most of them, but not his poetry. Too sappy for me. Give me Macbeth or Hamlet or Julias Caesar any day, but I have no interest in a romantic sonnet.

Re: Question for UK FSers

[(Anonymous)]

Did it work first time?

[meadowphoenix]

I mean, I've never actually met someone who likes Leaves of Grass as a whole, but that could just be my encounters. But there's so much of the Leaves of Grass as individual stanzas that is so good. I also think the smugness is pretty brave considering, so. Knowing Whitman's history, and his participation in the "free soil party" tho, like...yeah he's def smug in the particular way of men who believe they should work very little but still control events much more than those who work a whole bunch.

That said I feel the same about the Beatniks, every last one, and everything about Oscar Wilde, and Hemingway, Fitzgerald, but unlike Whitman I think it's the educational institutions these people hung around in frankly.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

They both wrote humorous poetry, Nash tended more to the silly/lighthearted side and Parker the dry/satirical side.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

The sonnets do give good fodder for fic titles though lol

[meadowphoenix]

I mean...Tony has actually invented things, and he's never called people pedophiles for refusing dubious help, so not quite as insufferable, you know? his fanboys would be equally insufferable tho.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

Poets I dislike: all the ones whose "poems" are just prose with line breaks.

Yesterday
I went to the store
And bought some flour
And butter and eggs
To make a cake
But I forgot
To buy
Sugar

Novels that are written as a collection of related poems are soooo guilty of this.

Re: What kind of people do you trust and/or alternatively not trust?

[(Anonymous)]

People who actively dislike cats get my distrust. I'm often willing to give people who actively dislike dogs a chance, mostly because the majority of people I've encountered who actively dislike dogs do so because they've had bad experiences with violent, aggressive, or otherwise poorly trained/uncontrolled dogs, but people who actively dislike cats...it almost always seems to boil down to them being angry that they can't cow and control a cat as easily as they can a dog (or a person they think is beneath them.) I've met exactly one person who disliked cats for any other reason (with her it was because a cat attacked her as a kid and left her with a lifelong fear of them.) I don't think it's a coincidence that virtually all the people I've met who've hated cats have been men, either. That particular trait of hating anything you can't abuse into submission seems to be particular to a specific type of really unpleasant dude.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, so I think it is, to a certain extent, a combination of things.

One big part of it is that Larkin has this poetic persona of 'poor little old loser me' that he relies on for the reader's sympathy. And I think, in a sense, I find that persona in his work arrogant itself - it can be very self-pitying. It reminds me of Orson Welles' take on Woody Allen - that the most timid people can sometimes be the most arrogant. An example of this might be "Love Again" - "Isolate rather this element / That spreads through other lives like a tree / And sways them on in a sort of sense / And say why it never worked for me."

And then that combines with two other major themes in Larkin's work - first of all, an incredibly deep cynical streak about the possibilities of human existence; and second, a frequent use of a certain optimistic "turn", often at the end of his poems, that points towards a more humanistic, positive assessment of human existence without fully commiting to it. You can see the cynicism in a poem like Vers de Societe. And you can see the optimistic turn most iconically, maybe, in An Arundel Tomb - "Our almost instinct almost true / what will survive of us is love" - it's a beautiful sentiment but it's one that Larkin consciously holds back from fully endorsing.

And so when you combine those things, you get a poetic oeuvre that I just find incredibly ugly - a combination of total self-regard for one's own loneliness and failings, total cynical contempt for other peoples' attempts to find love, but also an unwillingness to come right out and say this, and instead, an attempt to play for the sympathy of readers and present yourself as The Good Guy. You get poems like He Hears That His Beloved Has Become Engaged - "But no. What you did, any of us might. / And saying so I see our difference: / Not your aplomb (I used mine to sit tight), / But fancying you improve her. Where's the sense / In saying love, but meaning indifference? / You'll only change her. Still, I'm sure you're right." A poem that I just find totally arrogant, self-justifying, but also cowardly. Admittedly, with a certain amount of ironic self-knowledge - but for me, that doesn't improve the situation at all. Larkin wants to be this clear-eyed gloomy observer of human failings but that's really just a cynical, manipulative pose.

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

I only like those if they are funny. Otherwise they so so often tend to fall into overwrought melodrama just by virtue of the format alone, when a prose formatting of the exact same words would probably seem pretty normal most of the time.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll give Wilde a pass because he amuses me, but omg I hate the beatniks so much

[(Anonymous)]

How's this for too soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu-3qR-nQQU

Re: What kind of people do you trust and/or alternatively not trust?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't trust people whose self-image is that they're selfless and giving. Not saying I hate them right off the top, or will never trust them no matter what they do. But at least until I get to know them, I don't trust them. In fact, I trust them less than people who straight up admit to being selfish.

The people in my life who see themselves as selfless and giving have generally been the people who have been the most selfish and also the most controlling of others.

[(Anonymous)]

very nice image, thank-you, secret-maker. and now i'm wondering whether the dragon has a forked tongue.

[(Anonymous)]

For some reason I really wanted this Secret to be written in the style of Dr Seuss xD

Re: Which poets do you like and/or dislike?

[(Anonymous)]

It was written by students, back when students were supposed to learn Latin and worthy, philosophical things but *also* liked to piss about in taverns. There's a, uh, bit of a toneshift between some of the texts.