Best regional & cultural poetry books according to redditors

Here is a link to the hardcover version on Amazon. :)

For anyone who's interested, there's a newly released translation by JRR Tolkien out. I've only read excerpts so far, but it seems more lyrical than Heaney's translation.

I think he's almost got it. Women do have more sexual market value but it's not because they're inherently more attractive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and men whether gay or straight have a lot more beauty in their eyes:

> [...] the combined flesh lust toward men of all the women in America is sufficient to sustain only one magazine, directed at women, featuring erotic pictures of men. Despite its fame, Playgirl is a small-scale publication boasting fewer subscribers than such narrow-audience magazines as Mother Earth News and Workbench. What's more, fully half its subscribers are men.

> The heterosexuality of women could not possibly be as socially suppressed as is the homosexuality of men; yet gay men find enough beauty in the flesh of men to allow gay erotica to flourish. And the heterosexual desires of men have made erotic imagery of women into a multibillion-dollar industry. But the heterosexual desires of women would seem to be only half sufficient to keep one low-circulation magazine afloat.

• Tim Golditch
  
  Also men are randier than women. These perfectly natural phenomena conspire to give women massive leverage over men in the sexual realm. It's nothing to do with women's bodies being curvy.

Love is a Dog from Hell by Bukowski

Hi,
I have been trying to learn a bit Icelandic myself, as a Norwegian, I do see some similiarities between the two languages, but belive me when I say that Icelandic is crazy difficult. It's not to put you off, but you have to be prepeared.

I bought a nice little book to get me started, I haven't read so many "learn-languages-yourself books" so I can't really comparere, but I found this to be helpful (looks like it's sold out :( )

Icelandic have, as you pointed out, grammatical genders, wich means that you will have to learn what "gender" a noun have. Icelandic have 3 genders, masculin, feminin and neuter. You will have to learn the genders with the nouns. The difficult thing with grammatical genders is that it does not seem to follow any rules. (In Norwegian for instance, "Pike", wich means "little girl" is a masculin noun)

Some nice websites

• English - Icelandic dictionary
  
• Verb-conjugator
  
• Free online course (highly recomended)
  
• Newspaper, also video clips

That there is no reason to suppose we are being irrational by believing it without trying to ground it in some other belief; we are rationally entitled to take it as the foundation of our reasoning and arguments. Alvin Plantinga is known for arguing that theism is such a belief, but I think he's exaggerating when he says his epistemology means that it's rational to believe in God "without any evidence or argument at all", since a properly basic belief is still rooted in experience on his view. For a fuller picture, see Plantinga's Warrant and Proper Function, among his many other works on the subject.

Plantinga wrote 3 books related to this subject. He wrote "Warrant: The Current Debate" to give an overview of the field of philosophy on what needs to be added to true beliefs to yield knowledge. Then he wrote "Warrant and Proper Function" to give his own take. Finally he wrote "Warranted Christian Belief" which basically applies his epistemology to Christian belief. So the guy has done a ton of work in epistemology and also applying epistemology to Christianity.

Links to Books:

https://www.amazon.com/Warrant-Current-Debate-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0195078624

https://www.amazon.com/Warrant-Proper-Function-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0195078640/ref=pd_sim_14_1/164-8766607-7794903?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9CQMRJ1GDZG8WF2EHQ8

https://www.amazon.com/Warranted-Christian-Belief-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0195131932/ref=pd_sim_14_2/164-8766607-7794903?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9CQMRJ1GDZG8WF2EHQ8

From a post I made awhile back:

If you want to go for a scholastic/western positive apologetics approach check out: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.

If you want to go for a scholastic/western negative apologetics approach check out Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds. This is the work that actually re-kindled serious philosophical debate on the existence of God in Anglophone philosophical circles according to Quinten Smith (a notable atheist philosopher btw). From there you could also check out Alvin Plantinga's warrant trilogy in order: Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief.

Personally I'm skeptical of the scholastic/western approach in general and I favor the Eastern/Mystical approach. I think the scholastic/western approach cannot escape radical skepticism, and I mean this in terms of secular and religious. If one takes seriously the scholastic/western approach in general, whether one is atheist or theist, radical skepticism follows. This video from a radical skeptic that goes by the user name Carneades.org does a good job of demonstrating this: Arguments of the Indirect Skeptic

The Orthodox approach has always been mystical rather than scholastic all the way from the beginnings of Christianity. From Jesus, to the apostles, to the church fathers, to right now we still have the original apostolic faith in the Orthodox Church. Check out this short documentary to learn more: Holy Orthodoxy: The Ancient Church of Acts in the 21st Century.

Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky explains the Eastern/Mystical approach: "To properly understand the Orthodox approach to the Fathers, one must first of all understand the mystical characteristic of Orthodox theology and the tradition of the apophatic approach to an understanding-if "understanding" is indeed the proper word-of what the hidden God in Trinity reveals to us. This needs to be combined with the insight that what is incomprehensible to our reason inspires us to rise above every attempt at philosophical limitation and to reach for an experience beyond the limits of the intellect. The experience of God is a transcendence born from union with the divine-henosis (oneness with God) being the ultimate goal of existence. This makes the requirement of true knowledge (gnosis) the abandoning of all hope of the conventional subject-object approach to discovery. It requires setting aside the dead ends of Scholasticism, nominalism, and the limits set by such Kantian paradigms as noumena/phenomena. One must return to, or better yet, find in one's heart (or nous, the soul's eye) union with the Holy Trinity, which has never been lost in the Orthodox Church."

Source: Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky, (2004). Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. p. 178. Zondervan, Grand Rapids

1. Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
   
2. 10/10
   
3. Classic French Literature, Misanthropic, Nihilism, Philosophic.
   
4. Anyone who recommends Journey to the End of the Night as an exemplar of misanthropic literature has obviously never read Maldoror, which isn't too much of a surprise considering this classic of French lit is criminally unknown to the majority of people. This poetic novel doesn't really have a plot, so it becomes a bit difficult to really summarize it by it's plot. If you want a character you who truly embodies amor fati, then I highly recommend this novel.
   
5. Amazon, Goodreads

Rainier Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone

enough
to truly consecrate the hour.

I am much too small in this world, yet not small

enough

to be to you just object and thing,

dark and smart.

I want my free will and want it accompanying

the path which leads to action;

and want during times that beg questions,

where something is up,

to be among those in the know,

or else be alone.

Das Parfüm von Patrick Süßkind https://www.amazon.de/Das-Parfum-Geschichte-eines-M%C3%B6rders/dp/3257228007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314457197&sr=1-1

I bought it at Barnes and Noble, but it is also available on Amazon here.

Da ich nicht genau weiß, was du mit "ältere Schriftstellern" meinst bzw. welchen Zeitraum, einfach mal ein paar detusche Bücher, die mir spontan einfallen: Patrick Süßkind - Das Parfüm, Martin Suter - Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Die Physiker und Michael Schmidt-Salomon - Sollbergs Inferno

One way of sidestepping the Gettier Problem, particularly in light of examples like this one, popularized by Alvin Goldman, is to say that justification should not be thought of as wholly internal to an agents beliefs. That is, things outside of an agent’s belief such as whether the belief was caused in the right way, or whether the belief was formed by a reliable belief-forming process, contribute to whether or not the belief is “justified.” This view is called justificatory externalism and I think it’s at least partly right. If we accept some aspects of externalism, the Gettier problem becomes much less problematic.

One externalist view of justification, more nuanced in my opinion than Goldman's, is Alvin Plantinga's "proper-functionalism" as laid out in his book Warrant and Proper Function. On Plantinga's model, if our cognitive faculties (the ones specifically designed for producing true beliefs) are functioning properly in the way they were designed (either by God, as Plantinga would want to have it, but more likely, by evolution, or even "socially designed"), in the environment for which they are designed, and a true belief is formed, it is knowledge. So, in the robot dog case, since this isn't the sort of environment for which my faculties were designed (we didn't evolve in a world populated with both dogs and robot dogs) and it impairs my descriminative ability, it wouldn't be knowledge, even though it is true belief.

"Warrant" is substituted with "Justification" here, but it functions in much the same way as a JBT account.

Evan Currie's Odyssey One series is more military than pure space opera, but it is awesome.

The Golden Oecumene series by John C Wright is a Transhuman Space Opera of epic proportions. I highly recommend it.

Rachel Bach has a great series called Fortunes Pawn. Also a lil closer to military sci-fi but it has some nice Space Opera themes.

Joshua Dalzelle has a great series called the Black Fleet, again more military sci-fi than true space opera, but very good none the less.

The Reality Dysfunction series though, if you are looking for a meaty Space opera to lose yourself in is a must read series.

____

I almost forgot about the Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter and the Darwin's Radio series by Greg Bear. Both are phenomenal reads, and while technically they are set in the near future and aren't space opera per say, they are must reads for anyone into Sci-Fi.

• By John C. Wright: The Golden Age (first in a trilogy) and the upcoming Count to a Trillion (likewise).
  
• By Greg Egan: Permutation City (in its second half) (excerpt), Diaspora (excerpt), Border Guards, Schild's Ladder (excerpt), Riding the Crocodile/Incandescence (excerpt of the latter).
  
• Possibly Iain M. Banks' Culture series; they say you should start with The Player of Games.
  
• Riding the Crocodile and the elsewhere-mentioned Thousandth Night first appeared in the anthology One Million AD.
  
• Relevant TV Tropes pages: Human Subspecies, Time Abyss, Transhuman Aliens.
  
  In response to this comment, Egan's one example of someone who wrote near-future stories in the '90s that remain non-ridiculous.

As for reading, check out The Poetry Foundation. They have a huge archive of poetry for you to check out. Hang out in this subreddit and read the poems posted. If you like a poem, post a comment and ask which poets are similar to that style, then look them up. The OCPoetry subreddit has a wealth of original poetry content - but keep in mind that the caliber of work there will obviously be mixed. But it's good to see the contributions of ordinary people, either as a way of engaging with a community or as a barometer of your own abilities once you start writing.

And as for writing, I can't recommend this book enough: Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual. It's worth the 10-15 bucks or whatever to order it. It contains lots of examples of poetry from many authors, and Kooser's advice is indispensable.

And always remember - with any art, you want to take in more than you put out. Read more than you write. Absorb everything you can. I get the impression that most mediocre OCpoetry that I read is probably written by people who haven't taken the time to actually read poetry. It's essential. Good luck!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0781811910/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1397625371&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40

Beginner's Icelandic by Helga Hilmisdóttir Is a good resource. It comes with discs with examples of pronunciation. The pronunciation guide is written for Brits which it's only evident in one example. It gives a simple overview of the language.

Other than that I would say that pretty much everyone you will meet will speak English. Almost to the point of frustration if you are trying to learn icelandic.

Lately I've been picking up poetry books by Bukowski. I couldn't resist this one:

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Drunk-Percussion-Instrument-Fingers/dp/0876854374

That title is just so good. Also, the recent whiskey/scotch add that used "So you want to be a writer" from the collection entitled Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems. That poem really struck a chord, and I picked that up as well.

here's the commercial: http://bukowskiquotes.com/2013/09/charles-bukowski-poem-dewars-commercial/

post office is fantastic as well.

John Blofeld's introduction to Red Pine's The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain.

Other works of fiction that contain the concept of a metaverse;

Books

• The Otherland series, by Tad Williams, beginning with City of Golden Shadow (sidenote, this series also has an MMORPG based on it, currently in closed beta, and recently (October of last year) brought back from the dead)
  
  
• The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons, beginning with Hyperion.
  
  
• The Golden Oecumene, by John C. Wright, beginning with The Golden Age.
  
  
• Accel World, by Reki Kawahara, beginning with Kuroyukihime's Return. (If you are familiar with the manganime Sword Art Online, this is by the same author, and shares the same universe)
  
  
• This Alien Shore, by Celia S. Friedman. (amazon link)
  
  
• The Sprawl Trilogy, by William Gibson, beginning with Neuromancer.
  
  
• Accelerando, by Charles Stross. (free e-book link)
  
  Anime and Manga
  
  
• The .hack series, specifically .hack//SIGN
  
  
• For a lighter feel, there's Summer Wars (available on CrunchyRoll) and the INCREDIBLY similar second Digimon movie, Our War Game!. Also I guess by extension, but not really explored as much, the entire Digimon series, as it takes place in an analogy for the internet.
  
  
• Serial Experiments Lain
  
  
• Okay fine, here's Sword Art Online (CrunchyRoll link)
  
  Film
  
  
• The Singularity is Near, a speculative documentary based on the Ray Kurzweil book of the same name.
  
  
• The Thirteenth Floor, a crime thriller about the owner of a VR simulation company getting murdered.
  
  ----
  
  I know I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the genre, because if there's one thing humans are good at, it's writing fucktons on what we like.
  
  So feel free to comment additions to this list, or opinions on what I've currently included. I have by no means read/watched all of these, so having someone with actual experience with each of these weigh in would be nice.

I have been practicing a little less than a year, so I am a relative newbie. The most important thing is support from your sangha, which is your Buddhist community. Find one and spend time with them. Learn how others react to specific situations and deal with everyday problems that way. Without the sangha, all the books, tapes etc in the world are of little use.

My teacher is Thich Nhat Hanh. My sangha is Deerpark monastery in Escondido, Ca. A good place to start reading is here

Good luck to you!

The Golden Age trilogy has a lot of future-law in it. The main character is essentially caught up in a legal battle which he can't remember due to his memories being erased. One of my favorites of the last 10 years or so.

My favorite collection of poems is Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.

I don't read so much fantasy (the closest involves dragons in The Napoleonic Wars… alt history instead of fantasy), but for sci-fi I have one suggestion I frequently mention here. The Golden Age by John C Wright is the most densely compacted sci-fi epic I have ever read in a 300 page book. There is only one main character instead of an ensemble, but every other page introduces another element of the universe to wrap you melting noggin around that, for some, the pace of reading will be slow. I myself slammed through it for fear of forgetting or never finishing it. The second and third book of the series (the author intended it to be one doorstopper, but the publisher wanted to cut it up) ease up a lot compared to the first. READ SOME REVIEWS FIRST. Also the third book has an appendix that should have been included in the first book. If you see it on a bookstore, flip through it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Golden-Age-John-Wright/dp/0765336693

The Golden Age by John C. Wright, and its two sequels, The Phoenix Exultant: and The Golden Transcendence.

It's not quite what I think you mean by transhumanism, but it's a great posthuman novel. The publisher says:

> The end of the Millennium is imminent, when all minds, human, posthuman, cybernetic, sophotechnic, will be temporarily merged into one solar-system-spanning supermind called the Transcendence. This is not only the fulfillment of a thousand years of dreams, it is a day of doom, when the universal mind will pass judgment on all the races of humanity and transhumanity.

The trilogy is written with style and humor, with a strong dash of the classics, and with an eye toward limits and implications of communication across different levels of computational capacity, mind architecture, and processing speed.

In fact I think I just talked myself into re-reading it :-)

I've used Hippocrene's Beginner's Icelandic as well as Complete Icelandic. I fell off the wagon and haven't devoted any time recently to learning, but both books were helpful when I was trying to learn. If I had to choose only one of them, I'd probably choose Complete Icelandic, but they were useful to me in tandem because each covered little things that the other didn't.

I've also heard that Icelandic Learning is very useful. IIRC, you have to pass the entire course before you can apply for citizenship/visas. I could be wrong on that, it's been a few years.

Also available in Canada for free!

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Thomas Merton's book The Way of Chuang Tzu has Chuang Tzu using Lao Tzu as a character to illustrate many ideas. There's "mythic" stories of his wake, or one of his disciples Keng Sang Chu coming to visit him for advice for example. Not sure if this is what you're after?

The item on my wishlist I want is this. It is the album that introduced me to punk when I was a little guy. It is just such an important album for me and the genre as a whole. It was and is revolutionary. Plus Johnny Rotten is probably your cousin or something!

The coolest thing on my wishlist is this. A little known sci-fi epic poem full of hoplessness and despair, what is cooler than that! Also, the only sci-fi book to win a nobel prize. Just all around cool-ness.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Poetry-Home-Repair-Manual/dp/0803259786

Scope this out.

No worries!

> Most importantly, boys and girls alike need to be taught to view all of the above as emotional tools to be picked up and put down as the situation demands - not as permanent characteristics against which they define their identities.

Funnily enough, this is the moral of Inside Out :p (albeit with non gender stereotyped emotional responses)

Have you read Loving Men, Respecting Women? You, me and the author seem to be on the same wavelength :)

Pretty recent stuff:

John Brown's Body

The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel

Aniara

Ah! Right now I'm working on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and am currently on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (got maybe 10 pages left) to continue on. I've been getting through them oh-so-slowly because they're on my phone and I read them on my breaks at work.
You ALL still have Zoidberg!

My favorite post-singularity fiction is the Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. Superintelligent AI, virtual reality, and mind uploading, and he still manages a deeply human tale of epic heroism. It's a little hard to get into for the first three or four chapters, but then it really takes off. I've read it three times.

Greg Egan's work is pretty interesting, eg. Permutation City, which is mainly about uploading etc.

For more of the near-future speculation side of Accelerando, Cory Doctorow writes a lot of good stuff. And there's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom which is post-singularity.

Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age is pretty much a classic, covering nanotech, AI-based education, and all sorts of craziness. One of my favorites.

Plantinga is an old-school academic philosopher, so the best way to get familiar with his ideas is his published works (Amazon links below):

• The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader - a well-edited anthology that presents a broad survey of Plantinga's ideas (leans heavily toward his epistemology, though IIRC).
  
• Warrant: The Current Debate
  
• Warrant and Proper Function
  
• Warranted Christian Belief This is the only one of the "warrant" books I've read. The three books aren't considered a "trilogy" as such, rather WCD and WPF are companion pieces and WCB then builds a different argument based on the earlier works. Namely, Plantinga responds to what he calls the de jure argument that Christianity is irrational, unjustified, and/or unwarranted (in contrast to the de facto argument that Christianity is false). Some googling will reveal reviews of the book from every conceivable angle, some with responses from Plantinga himself. When Plantinga refers to the earlier books, he gives some context, so it's possible to read this book without having read the other two.
  
  Plantinga is also on the editorial board of Faith and Philosophy, the journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, and he's contributed several articles over the years. There are even more published articles written by his students and colleagues about his ideas.

And if you haven't read Warsan Shire's poetry, I highly recommend it. I re-read this recently:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Mother-Give-Birth-Mouthmark/dp/1905233299/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

This translation by Alexis Lykiard is the one I have, it's very good.

https://www.amazon.com/Maldoror-Complete-Works-Comte-Lautr%C3%A9amont/dp/187897212X/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=le+chants+de+maldoror&qid=1562627249&s=gateway&sr=8-11

A while back I watched this really interesting video on Han Shan’s life and work: https://youtu.be/R3OWTwGdGmo

Red Pine is in the video, who translated a lot of Han Shan’s poetry: The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556591403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ilqhDb0P6T9BA

It's a bit different from other suggestions, but you might try Chinese Through Poetry by Archie Barnes.

Collected writings of Rilke. Maybe this one.

I haven't finished it yet, but I'm enjoying Chinese Through Poetry quite a bit.

The Golden Transcendence Trilogy, starting with "The Golden Age". It's fantastic and it saddens me more people haven't read it. Here is the Amazon review:

> The Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF's golden age writers.

> The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion.

> Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself.

> And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity.

> The Golden Age is one of the major, ambitious SF novels of the year and the international launch of an important new writer in the genre.

DOOOD, i just bought The Way of Chuang Tzu. Its all Taoist poetry, and its fucking awesome so far.

Ill share my favorite quote from a parable that was inside (most of it is poetry and not parables btw)

"look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light. Being full of light it becomes an influence by which others are secretly transformed"

-Chuang Tzu

I've been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's Peaceful Action, Open Heart, which is wonderful, concurrently with A Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra, by Nikkyo Niwano, that gives a concise overview of each chapter. It also helps to have an introduction, in the form of a talk or short articles. There's a short chapter in Cultivating the Mind of Love on this Sutra.

I was at a retreat with TNH in the 1990's where he spoke about the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras, that's since been issued by Sounds True as The Ultimate Dimension.

Most of the talks were on the foundational practices for entering into the kinds of experiences described in these Sutras, and I found that his framing them in this way actually made them accessible. Remarkable!

These are good places to start.

As Thay said in his commentary, these are not so much works to be studied with the rational part of ourselves as they are to be received as inspired poetry, lived with and enjoyed. Then meaning of these sutras and the truth they speak of can reveal themselves to us gradually.

He says, in the beginning of The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

“When we hear a Dharma talk or study a sutra, our only job is to remain open. Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing. If we read or listen with an open mind and an open heart, the rain of the Dharma will penetrate the soil of our consciousness.

“The gentle spring rain permeates the soil of my soul.
A seed has lain deeply in the earth for many years just smiles.

“When reading or listening, don’t work too hard. Be like the earth. When the rain comes, the earth only has to open herself up to the rain. Allow the rain of the Dharma to come in and penetrate the seeds that are buried deep in your consciousness.

“A teacher cannot give you the truth. The truth is already in you. You only need to open yourself - body, mind, and heart - so that his or her teachings will penetrate your own seeds of understanding and enlightenment. If you let the words enter you, the soil and the seeds will do the rest of the work.”

Best wishes to you in your practice.

A bit OT (you might already know this, other readers might not), but Tolkien was so into Beowulf he penned his own translation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0544442784?pc_redir=1412081864&robot_redir=1

It's my pleasure and I hope you enjoy it!

After that, if you haven't already, maybe you can check out Cold Mountain

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Icelandic-Two-Audio-CDs/dp/144410537X

https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Icelandic-Audio-CDs-Hippocrene/dp/0781811910

https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Icelandic-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/1138949736

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Icelandic-idiosyncrasies-delights/dp/993592985X/

I agree. You might enjoy this particular MRA's book.

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Men-Respecting-Women-Politics/dp/0982794800/

first replying to the topic of clarity & purple

didnt know they had a phrase for this:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose
  
  
• https://medium.com/@lucillemoncrief/what-is-purple-prose-beige-prose-and-blue-language-9cae7fd44ba9
  
  
• https://thewritepractice.com/purple-prose/
  
  
• https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=purple%20prose
  
  tho i understand it harms clarity tho:
  
  
• the context requires it
  
  
• & it's not meant for other minds so it wont be relevant to this context
  
  ---
  
  it seems overall that many dont like thes kinds of things,
  
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara#Reception
  
  
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1138948.Aniara
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Aniara-Epic-Science-Fiction-Poem/dp/1885266634
  
  & overall culturally this has been the trend
  
  ---
  
  i also dont like these kinds of things tho i can understand some of the main reasons why others would think that this is the only and best that certain things could said
  
  tho i should add that i dont consider the scene/piece that poetic/purple cos it could be 1000x more so
  
  tho that's the thing with relative words like 'purple' and such, they're all just relative, and in that way, they do lose 1) clarity & 2) meaning
  
  ---
  
  

Free ebook of gaming-themed poetry.

Lullabies for Dungeon Crawlers

Thanks for your analysis. I definitely understand what you're saying about the subconscious/surreal element, and I guess I can see where you find a personal honesty in his films, but I don't know if I can agree that understanding Lynch's films can be a "very involving and rewarding process," simply because I haven't really enjoyed the physical process of watching his films.

Again, that's not to say they aren't good. I actually love works of art that are thematically similar. Sometimes shockingly so. If anyone here is a big fan of Eraserhead and is looking for something that's difficult to read, for example, check out the Comte de Lautréamont. There is one chapter in the Comte's most famous work where our (anti-)hero, Maldoror, while staying in a brothel, converses with an enormous hair follicle fallen from the scalp of God, which goes on to explain how its master enjoys coming down from on high to flay young male prostitutes alive. There is no discernible plot to the book, and the language is incredibly dense, but it is beautiful and dark and weird and grotesque. And, most importantly, so, so very difficult to understand. But worth it. As Lynch is, I'm sure.

I certainly plan on giving him more of his due down the road. Like I said, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway are on my list of films I really ought to see. I would actually very much like to get David Lynch the way others do. To go back to a previous analogy, it's why I keep watching Steven Soderbergh films. I've wanted to catch that something that I've been missing in others' appreciations. With Soderbergh, I came to the conclusion that I simply do not like his filmmaking. (Please no one ask to explain that one.) I know I haven't given Lynch enough of a chance yet to say with finality that I won't some day "get it."

As it stands, though, I know Eraserhead is one of the more popular releases from Criterion this year, and I felt compelled to stand up for the few (Or is it just me? Just me? Okay. Just me.) who are not fans.

buy this book if you want some formal/academic opinion on inspiration/lyric writing etc.

I've read most of those and LOVED them. I'll just say you're looking for fictional "good books" and go from there. I recommend:

1. Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequels by Scott Lynch. My favorite books of all time--and that's saying something. It's about a gang of con-artist thieves caught between their biggest heist and a powerful mage and his employer, who wants to use them as a cat's paw.
   
   
2. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Excellent fantasy with a witty, resourceful, extremely intelligent protagonist. Set in two timelines, the protagonist is the only survivor of a gypsy clan that was destroyed by a powerful enemy he vows to hunt down.
   
   
3. The Orphans of Chaos trilogy by John C. Wright. Amazingly original fantasy, with 4 paradigms of power and featuring a showdown between the Titans and Olympian gods.
   
   
4. The Golden Age Trilogy also by John C. Wright. This is faaaaar-future sci-fi (think 1+ million years), it's extremely creative, and if anyone else had attempted to write it, it would have turned into gobbledygook.
   
   
5. The Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King starting with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. This is a re-imagined Sherlock Holmes series done very well, set after his official retirement, when he meets a young woman who matches his intellect and observation skills and decides to take her on as protege.
   
   
6. The Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix. Pretty great YA fantasy in which trained practitioners can move beyond the gates of death...and have to battle things that come back from beyond those gates.
   
   
7. The Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathon Stroud. I had a ball with these books when they came out. Features a snarky demon and his master.
   
   
8. The Hungry City Chronicles by Phillip Reeve. Set in a post-apocalyptic type world where cities are mobile and move around, chasing smaller cities down across the landscape and cannibalizing them for resources.
   

Still learning. I've taken three years of formal Mandarin classes during undergrad (with more to come next fall), more rigorous classes while in China, and supplemented these with a shit-ton of personal study through books, podcasts, apps, and good old language cds. As for classical, along with personal study from the standard text books, I've had a couple of professors who've sat down with me for translation roundtables. Other than that, I make a conscious effort when I read a translated text or academic study, to look up characters for important names, and find the original texts. I find it invaluable to refer to them for clarification, or to just check to see If I can correctly guess a specific term or reference. I also like to just buy random ancient texts, flip open a page, and see if I find something interesting. Once you get your head around the basics, it becomes a matter of finding the right dictionary, grammar handbook, or reference guide. All the stuff I've translated here has been more of less for fun. I'd spend about a week or more perfecting a translation before including it in a conference paper or potential journal article.

If you are looking for recommendations on where to start, I'd point you towards Chinesepod (I've heard there is an awesome torrent of their episodes floating around) and Chinese Through Poetry: An introduction to the language and imagery of traditional verse.

Sounds like you need something to read while you relax at home...

Faust

Die Physiker

Die Leiden des jungen Werther

Der Prozess

Buddenbrooks

Emilia Galotti

Das Parfüm

Die Blechtrommel

Im Westen nichts neues

These are the ones I remember from school.

I am not sure if they are easy enough to read for you, "Die Physiker" and "Emilia Galotti" are probably the easier ones to read out of these.

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

"Play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit"

Hey man, sorry for not getting back to you yesterday. Here are some recommendations.

https://www.amazon.com/Maldoror-Complete-Works-Comte-Lautréamont/dp/187897212X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2UG7IORZO7MOG&keywords=maldoror+english&qid=1563734129&s=gateway&sprefix=malodor%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-3

​

https://www.amazon.com/Exploits-Opinions-Dr-Faustroll-Pataphysician/dp/1878972073/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3FIN94ANSVCSJ&keywords=exploits+and+opinions+of+dr.+faustroll%2C+pataphysician&qid=1563734228&s=gateway&sprefix=dr+faustroll+%2Caps%2C125&sr=8-1

​

https://www.amazon.com/Valerie-Week-Wonders-Vitezslav-Nezval/dp/808626419X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2MVWRWT2G7RYS&keywords=valerie+and+her+week+of+wonders+book&qid=1563734389&s=gateway&sprefix=valerie+and+her+wee%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-1

​

https://www.amazon.com/Mount-Analogue-Non-Euclidean-Symbolically-Mountaineering/dp/1585673420/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_pd_crcd_0_20?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1585673420&pd_rd_r=885af56e-246c-4203-b69a-3ada3d549cad&pd_rd_w=nBgvG&pd_rd_wg=D0uLp&pf_rd_p=d17c2de0-cc1d-4b09-aad8-987099a21717&pf_rd_r=MPT3RGNB79T8MX0H41BF&psc=1&refRID=MPT3RGNB79T8MX0H41BF

​

the first two are not surrealism in the sense of the authors being part of the actual movement but they were precursors for it as well as being hugely influential to all who took part within the movement; the first one specifically, was said to be, by the surrealists themselves, their bible and holy grail. Surrealism can be quite difficult to read and hard to understand if one is not acquainted with the time period and the history of their epoch but if you stick with it it will pay off in time. You may have to do a little research into the back-stories of each author but this will only benefit you in the end: the last two will be much simpler to read on their own as they are more or less, linear straight-forward fictions. Good Luck!

Cleaned up: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0803259786/

Reading Rainbow! Or this one or even this one...

Happy almost birthday 🎉
The secret to my wellness is my dog. He is literally the only thing that keeps me going. The only other thing I can think of is Bukowski because his poems are just so great. He is absolutely the best writer and his stuff is just so relatable; I'm extremely grateful my English teacher covered Bukowski instead of Shakespeare.

It’s a fantastic read, by the way. The commentary is good if you’re into that sort of thing, but there’s also some other writing in their that’s a lot of fun.

Amazon link

Alright, so I'm not sure where to begin with this one. Personally, I'm Agnostic. I have all of the qualifications for Atheism except that I like the idea that there's something after life. So sue me. (Don't, please.) Anyway, I know Atheists, Pagans, Wiccans, Christians, and my mother calls herself a "Recovering Catholic". I've met a Buddhist turned Christian, and Christians turned Buddhist. It's a crazy world out there, and tolerance is a great place to start, because these are all great people in my life.

Now, I suggest letting her explore her beliefs, but all parents want to help, so if you're leaning that way, I suggest, when she's old enough to understand them, give her 3 things to read.

1.) Plato's Euthyphro

2.) The Way of Chuang Tzu

3.) The Gospel According to Thomas

Yes, in this order. You can sit down and talk with her after each.

1.) The Euthyphro argument is basically, if something is good because Gods says so, then there is no good, because can change it on a whim. Yet if something is inherently good, we don't need God to tell us, and he becomes an arbitrary figurehead.

2.) The Way of Chuang Tzu is mostly parables. There's a lot of verse, and was my first introduction to Buddhism and Taoism. I actually have an old version that belonged to my great grandmother. Some are really easy to understand. The general message is that you should be yourself, but be a good person, but they are each a different lesson in how one should act.

3.) The Gospel According to Thomas was one of the "Lost" versions of the gospel. If she's really researching, she'll probably have stumbled onto the bible. It's pretty hard not to. The point of this one is to say, "This was cut from the bible for not being close enough to its teachings." The way it's written is something much more closely resembling the Buddhist/Taoist writings from the Far East. It still conveys the bible's message, but with a different view. You use this one to show that everyone's beliefs are different, but sometimes they overlap. It's the message, and not the doctrines that are really important, and she should be free to believe whatever she chooses.

Alternatively, you could give her Plato last. Those are just some research suggestions.

I'm not sure if this really adds a whole deal to the conversation but there's this amazing 300+ page epic by Frank Stanford--The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You--that's empty of any punctuation.

Thich Nhat Hanh: "In 1976, the communist government of Vietnam wanted to set up a government-supported Buddhist organization to replace the Unified Buddhist Church, and they spread a rumor that I had died of a heart attack in Paris. The young monks and nuns in Vietnam had strong faith in me. They knew I was doing my best to help and protect them. In Paris, through our office at the Peace Delegation of the Unified Buddhist Church, we stayed in touch with Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations, and every time there were human rights violations by the government, such as the arrests of monks or nuns, we informed the press and others so they would intervene. That is one of the reasons the government decided to close down the Unified Buddhist Church and set up their own Buddhist organization. They had already arrested Thich Quang Do and Thich Huyen Quang, the leaders of the Unified Buddhist Church and they wanted to confuse people and undermine the support that the people felt from us in Paris." https://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Mind-Love-Thich-Nhat/dp/1888375787

I would add the other two books in Plantinga's trilogy on Warrant as well.

Warrant: The Current Debate

Warrant and Proper Function


Also Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre

I've heard that Charles Taylor is a must as well.

There's probably a few ways you could go about expanding your knowledge base. The two that seem most fruitful are

1. Reading for a deeper understanding of the topics that you're already familiar with.
   
   
2. Ranging more broadly into other areas that may interest you.
   
   If (1), then I'd probably suggest one of two courses. Either, (a) read the stuff that influenced the existential thinkers that you've listed, or (b) read some literature dealing with issues related to the thinkers you've listed.
   
   For (a) I'd suggest the following:
   
   

• Anything by Kant
  
• (In the case of Kierkegaard) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Aesthetics
  
• (For Nietzsche) Emerson's essays, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, or Spinoza's Ethics
  
• Maybe some Freud for the later thinkers? Civilization and its Discontents is really good.
  
  For (b) it's really a mixed bag. I'd suggest going through the SEP articles on the thinkers you've listed and looking into some good secondary literature on them. If you're super interested in Nietzsche, I'd definitely suggest reading Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality. I really couldn't tell you more unless you told me something more specific about your interests.
  
  If (2), then I suppose I'd suggest one of the following:
  
  
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy for a good, broad introduction to Chinese Thought
  
• The Analects of Confucius. This translation is excellent
  
• A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
  
• Heidegger's Being and Time
  
• Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  
• Some of Rilke's work
  
• Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life
  
  Again, it's hard to give you better directions without more information on what you're actually interested in. I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you, and you couldn't possibly be expected to read, say, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation over break and be expected to really understand it.

I think Asian poetry should be your go to for this.
Chinese:
[Hanshan] (https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Mountain-Mandarin-Chinese-English/dp/1556591403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519439&sr=8-1&keywords=hanshan)
[Libai and Dufu] (https://www.amazon.com/Li-Po-Tu-Translated-Introduction/dp/0140442723/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519506&sr=8-3&keywords=li+po)
[Tao Yuanming] (https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems-Tao-Chien/dp/1556590563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519544&sr=8-1&keywords=Tao+qian)
and Japanese:
[Saigyo] (https://www.amazon.com/Saigyo/dp/023107493X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519595&sr=8-1&keywords=Saigyo)
[Basho] (https://www.amazon.com/Narrow-Road-Interior-Writings-Shambhala/dp/1570627169/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519621&sr=8-3&keywords=Basho)
[Ryokan] (https://www.amazon.com/Dewdrops-Lotus-Leaf-Poems-Ryokan/dp/1590301080/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1481519642&sr=8-4&keywords=Ryokan)

Would you be interested in my copy of Love is a Dog from Hell?

I'm interested in both of your Vonnegut books.

Edit: I also have Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut to balance it out if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Mountain-Mandarin-Chinese-English/dp/1556591403/

Why would you ask a question about taxes without asking what those taxes pay for? They pay for the shit everyone needs.

As for learning the language, there are two decent books I can recommend: Colloquial Icelandic and Beginner's Icelandic. But nothing is going to save you from the fuckton of grammar you have to learn within the first 40 pages or so. Spend the extra on the companion CDs.

0-5: Campbell's Soup poster because it will look good in my kitchen and maybe in yours too

5-10:Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 (35mm film) because you need film to capture your favourite moments

10-20:The battlefield where the moon says I love you I can be an ispiration for you or get you started reading poetry

20-50:Lomo Fisheye 35mm CameraTo capture your favourite moments in the most unexpected-fun-memorable way

This is my first time commenting on this subreddit, nice to meet you all