Hi. I’m trying to find some poetry to inspire me to write, and google’s not up to its usual best.
I’m after some poetry that runs across any of the following themes:
* dystopias
* people’s sturggle with modernity
* people’s struggle to understand/conform to cities/metropolis(es)
* human struggle with concept of perception vs reality (broad i know)
I’m after poetry that explores similar themes to some of my favourite books including:
* neuromancer – william gibson
* hard boiled wonderland and the lake at the end of the world – murakami
* do androids dream of electric sheep – dick
* stuff by Kurt Vonnegut
*
help much appreciated!
Poetry Recommendation – Dystopia, Science Fiction, …?
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June 25th, 2009 at 7:05 am
There’s a Science Fiction Poetry Association.
Every year, they bestow the Rhysling Award on the best works of SF poetry. That might be a place to start:http://www.sfpoetry.com/rhyswin.html
Unfortunately, the site doesn’t seem to publish many of the poems … but you can hunt them down or search around on-line …
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That’s an interesting request. I’m a little embarrassed that more doesn’t leap to mind.
You know, how well do you know T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”? All the writers you mention PROBABLY owe a debt to that poem … so that would be a place to start.
It’s a pessimistic response to modernism, a work of bricolage, of patched together parts, a sense that something is deeply wrong with modern life — that the modern city is in a constant flux between nightmare and history.
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Besides that, you’d find some of those themes in Allen Ginsberg. Like Vonnegut and Gibson, he reaches out to religious images (Moloch!) to express a sense of the power of modernism acting against what’s human, what’s vital. Look at Howl. Same deal — it’s a poetry of dystopia.
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If you’re looking around in this direction, you should definitely take a look at the writing of Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), especially (maybe) the ecstatic essays that go into his early work, TAZ.
He’s a modern thinker/trickster/poet/wiseman who’s deeply concerned with all the things you mention below. http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html#la...
When you first start reading him, he’s weird and maybe off-putting. But … he’s definitely worth knowing.