Snowflake Challenge Day 6

[gwyn]

I skipped day 5 because I leave a lot of feedback anyway, at least when I can.

Day 6

In your own space, create your own challenge. What’s something you want to see more people doing in fandom? Is there something you’ve tried that you think other people would enjoy if they gave it a go? Dare your friends to try it out, and have fun with it. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I couldn't think of anything beyond the wish I made on day 2 for people to leave feedback, and of course, that's day 5's challenge, but then I thought maybe it'd be a small personal challenge for me that people could help with.

So, I have never been the biggest poetry fan. I have some poets/poems I love, and I wrote a whole damn 31,000-word fic about Bucky and poetry, and a lot of my story titles come from poetry, not to mention a lot of epigraphs, so you'd think I'd actually be a huge poetry fan, but it was always a bit opaque to me, for the most part. So my challenge would be to help me get more knowledgeable about poetry, or point me to some of your favorites or things you think would help me grok it more. Basically edumacate me.

I've really enjoyed reading some of Richard Siken's poems online, though I know more is available in books. I can probably find some things at the library, but if you have online recs, that's great. Modern poems are fine, as are older and classical (Browning was always intriguingly opaque to me, and of course, I read a lot of Rilke for Things We Lost in the War).

Comments

[ranalore]

Naturally, I have none of my poetry books on this side of the country, but I'm a huge fan of Neruda, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Conrad Aiken, and Margaret Atwood, plus of course Rilke. I also really enjoy T. S. Eliot's poetry, even if I like almost nothing else about the man.

That's just a kind of scattershot sampling of mainstream poets I like, but speculative poetry is actually my wheelhouse. I don't know if that's something that would interest you at all; it would link up to my RL name, so I'd rather share under lock if you'd like more info on that.

[ranalore]

I can't believe I forgot to mention cummings! There are several of his poems I think might be relevant to your interests as a fan of Steve/Bucky. I'm linking to two for different moods. The first is one of his most famous, "[Buffalo Bill's]", which includes the oft-quoted "how do you like your blue-eyed boy/Mister Death." I think the second more applicable, though, and strongly reminiscent of some of your vids. That one is "[it is so long since my heart has been with yours]", which I used as the basis for a story for another long-separated couple in another fandom about ten years ago, but which is even more appropriate to Steve and Bucky. And in fact I would recommend reading the next three poems as a kind of continuation of the same narrative theme (man, I love Google books, which at least sometimes gives me parts of my library back even while it languishes in a storage unit on the other coast).