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Inactive Forums => Forge Birthday Forum => Topic started by: Kesher on April 04, 2006, 03:24:48 PM

Title: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Kesher on April 04, 2006, 03:24:48 PM
Okay, this is nowhere near as pretentious as that title makes it sound...

So, I've been reading a lot of mid-20th century poetry lately, and the gigantic book The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner and the following analogies began popping up in my head like brightly colored mushrooms:

Dave Arneson is our Homer
Gygax is Ovid, which maybe ain't fair, but he sure ain't Homer
Greg Stafford is, well, I can't decide, but someone.

(large interlude, eschewing any sort of chronology)

Ron Edwards is Ezra Pound (y'know, pre-Pisan imprisonment days)
Vincent is like a weird mixture of Blake and Whitman
Ben Lehman is Rimbaud
Jared Sorensen is Andre Breton, or maybe Tristan Tzara (okay, they're not primarily poets, but I've been reading the Surrealist Manifestoes as well as octaNe and c'mon, it fits...)


Aaron
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Lisa Padol on April 04, 2006, 04:14:23 PM
Who's our James Joyce?

And who's our Dumas?

-Lisa
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Stefan / 1of3 on April 04, 2006, 04:17:29 PM
I usually considered the Forge the neoteric Alexandria. So someone here ought to be Kallimachos.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Kesher on April 04, 2006, 07:52:42 PM
OH YES, fuckin' Joyce... I skipped right over him 'cause I was thinkin' poets, but yeah...

I say the sum total of all D+D homebrews is the rpg equivalent of Finnegans Wake.  Yup.

And yeah man, Alexandria; either that or Babylon...

Aaron
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Ben Lehman on April 04, 2006, 11:21:07 PM
Clinton is moving towards being our Robert Frost.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  I mean that as a compliment.  I realize that Frost gets bashed in some academic circles.  This is because some academic circles are full of pikers.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Peter Nordstrand on April 05, 2006, 02:38:04 AM
Greg Stafford is Snorri Sturlasson

And Ron isn't Ezra Pound, he is Hugh Hefner

Cheers,

/Peter
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: talysman on April 05, 2006, 02:47:18 AM
Quote from: Peter Nordstrand on April 05, 2006, 02:38:04 AM
Greg Stafford is Snorri Sturlasson
no, he's obviously Edmund Spenser.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: droog on April 05, 2006, 04:23:20 AM
Emily Care Boss is, of course, Emily Dickinson.

Paul Czege is Charles Bukowski.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Emily Care on April 05, 2006, 10:25:36 AM
Alas I did not wait for love
But then it came for me
It found me in the underpass
Where conflicts came to be....

Tony LB could be our Byron and Michael Miller our Keats.
(Though I think with less animosity between the two).


Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Kesher on April 05, 2006, 10:57:15 AM
Okay, Stafford is Snorri, absolutely!

So we have Byron and Keats; who's Shelley?

I agree Ben, Bobby Frost gets the shaft-- he's a bit out of fashion these days.  I can see some Hayden Carruth in Clinton, too...

For some reason I was thinking of Paul Czege as more akin to John Berryman, but Bukowski, yeah, I can see that.

Aaron
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Larry L. on April 05, 2006, 01:26:42 PM
Kesher,

I'm gonna say our Joyce has not yet been.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: jerry on April 05, 2006, 03:59:08 PM
Quote from: Peter Nordstrand on April 05, 2006, 02:38:04 AM
And Ron isn't Ezra Pound, he is Hugh Hefner

"Thank heaven, for little games..."

Jerry
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Mark D. Eddy on April 05, 2006, 04:00:00 PM
Dumas Pere, or Fils? Rein*Hagen for Pere, I'd say.

R. Sean Borgstrom is the Sibyl.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: Michael S. Miller on April 06, 2006, 06:32:07 AM
Quote from: Emily Care on April 05, 2006, 10:25:36 AM
Tony LB could be our Byron and Michael Miller our Keats.
(Though I think with less animosity between the two).

I'm not much of a poetry guy, but if I have to be one of the Romantics, I get to be Shelley. Why? Because if I kick off prematurely, my wife will totally devote herself to promoting my body of work.

As for Kat's equivalent of Frankenstein ... it's in development, I assure you.
Title: Re: rpgs and poetic tradition...
Post by: droog on April 06, 2006, 06:34:09 AM
I'm kind of thinking right now that Tony might be Dorothy Parker.