Shuushin
on Scattered Spaces by embersandenvelopes
29 Mar 2004, 5:06 PM
and so.... ?
again, need more context methinks.
Some nice language though.
A tastey snippet - but needs more to be more.
Not bad vsuede.
I think you said "spell" one time too many, and you have a capital "A" where you don't want one.
This is one of those that I'm sometimes guilty of too though - it's pretty, has some clever language, but one walks away not quite knowing what it is about.
That's fine to an extent, but I don't think you got away with it here (at least with me).
First stanza - the age old confusion: do they congregate to the girl or the bar? This makes brain go "huh? OH, okay"
The punch line falls flat, imho. dunno [shrug]
Just because I don't respond doesn't mean I haven't heard you. "Misplaced Life" was my attempt at removing the clichéâs from my content, but then it was my use of verbiage that upset you. Are you like an English Lit professor that's tired of grading homework?
As far as The Pedestal went, try this on for size. Not everyone who reads poetry does so at a College level or at your level whatever that might be. That particular poem was written for a person who uses English as a second language. So it may be old hat or "cliché" to the 50 or 60% percentile who even keep up with all the clichés out there, but to her maybe it was the first English poem anyone ever wrote for her. So what if it's cliché central, I didn't totally cop out and buy a generic greeting card, I created my own. And that, my friend, just happens to be one of those "little" things that women keep track of.
This poem, if you take the time to study it, has 13 lines just like the flag, there are 50 letters where the stars are, you can read the stars down or across into the strips. You can read the strips with or without the stars (although it seems to miss a beat here or there). IMHO, what stood out about this type of poetry was that its structure is what made it concrete, not the content.
I read what you guys say. I also check on what you're saying about other peopleâs poetry. You seem to really come down hard on budding poets. Maybe life has treated you poorly and your only outlet is to bring someone elseâs world down. So what if it's bad poetry, give it a bad score and make suggestion on improvement. For myself, I could care less what other people think about my work, I write for my enjoyment. If they want to take the time and give me constructive advice on how to improve, that's great. But when YOU arbitrarily slam something the way you do, I just figure:
A: You're pissed off at the world
B: Were an abused child and this is how you're getting closure
C: Your job sucks, you hate your boss, so you surf the net during working hours writing dissertations to people who ignore you
D: All of the above
One other thing, about this poem anyway, this is my first attempt at a "concrete" poem. So what if there are coined phrases or clichés. That just means there are thousands of people out there that understand what Iâm trying to say. So if Billy Bob Redneck gets hold of this he knows Iâm talking about our flag, and doesnât have to wonder what âThe sower of pesticide for the worlds two-legâed cockroachesâ means. By going so far to say something new or that hasn't been said, you run the risk of alienating or insulting people. I'm not saying clichés can't be reworded or improved, but (here comes one now) if it ain't broke, don't fix it (i.e. If its function is within tolerance and performance fits within optimal operating environments, refrain from adjustment, modification, or tampering in an attempt to improve the final outcome)
Oh. For some reason I thought you were talking about the famous Korean War veteran Robert Daltry.
Are you graduate faculty?
Zodiac,
Look harder Zodie, it's there. Read the professor bio's...I've said enough about myself here...even a moron could figure out who I am.
We're both wrong....its Daltrey.
Consider it this way: 27.5 million Americans visited internet porn websites in January 2002, or roughly 10% of the U.S. population. Other studies put that number as high as 20% (and 37% of males). In one study, almost 18% of the respondents who identified themselves as Christian admitted to internet porn viewing. It is not unreasonable to guess that 5-10 of the 50 poemranker users to log on since I posted that message are internet pornsters, a figure which is likely on the low side considering that all poemranker users are already internet users (barring, of course, that we're all poets here and sensitive ones at that.)
Naturally, I wouldn't want to post quotes from porn-addiction-Christian-ministry sites on the poems of posters whom I considered most likely to be porn-users. That would only drive them deeper into depravity, leading to homosexuality, bestiality, evil spirits, or masturbation. So I decided to post porn-addiction-Christian-ministry quotes on random poems, in the hope that the real porn-addicts among us would happen to see them and be inspired to call upon the Maker for salvation.
Does that help any?
seriously, no references IMHO to pornography or such. sigh, sometimes, people just have to take things at face value... this is a simple "i am looking for ms right but wouldn't be finding her" poem : P no contexts... specially to porn... which i detest, coz i believe it really kills romance. my two cents.
Hey Joe-Joe, I'm having trouble finding your name on the New School homepage. Could you post the address?
It's Robert Daltry, by the way.
Try this as a short story, it might work better.
Interested in being an architect are we? (angles?) Hehe, and you forgot the s' silly, :-p Oh, guess who....ahahahahaha
some deleted user
on From the Top of Apartment Stairwells by embersandenvelopes
29 Mar 2004, 9:56 AM
Does not follow the title.
It's a good observation and a good story.
"the very center of my soul" is overwritten.
Some good images here, but the meaning is lost in a garble of prose. I prefer dlarity.
What do you think?
"13) Looking at porn helps you start to believe the lies it promotes. Examples lies include:
* Sexual freedom = happiness
* Perverted sex is more enjoyable than "normal" heterosexual sex (homosexual sex, incest, BDSM, etc)
* There are no consequences to sexual promiscuity
* Sexual expression is a right, not a God-given or God-defined gift
* You can live a healthy life with the porn images floating around in your mind
* Porn doesn't harm anyone
* Sex is something to be done primarily for self gratification
* The porn stars are the happiest people on earth
* Adults can view porn without any lasting side effects
* Porn will help your sex life
* Porn is just a harmless thing that every man looks at"
yeah... i always fantasized to be a porn star ... but if there was any hint to my poem being pornographic... anyways, what made this so sensual???
I figure you must be ignoring me because of that whole cliche-count business a while back. That's fine; it's your prerogative to only pay attention to positive comments and ignore negative ones (which aren't really what you'd call 'constructive criticism' anyway, am I right? I mean, the positive ones are obviously constructive, since they make you feel good; and the negative ones are obviously best ignored, since they make you feel like a waterlogged 18th-century cliche-dictionary opened to the entry 'stool', am I right?)
But, you see?! That's exactly why I'm writing to you now! I feel I've misrepresented myself to you - like we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. So, I want to make amends by talking a little bit about your poem here and why I gave it a three. You know, constructive criticism like.
The first thing is that I tend to feel like poetry shouldn't be a compendium of trite phrases. In fact, I really believe that poets should try REALLY HARD not to say ANYTHING that has ever been said before. Now, when I said something like this in an oblique manner on one of your earlier posts, you responded to the effect that if you eliminated everything that HAS been said from one of your poems, you'd be left with nothing.
Now, this is not obviously the case with all poetry. Um, my posts are a bad example, but there are even posts here which cannot be reduced to two words by removing cliches. I'd even say there are posts on this site which come pretty close to perfect clichelessness. So it can be done, even by relative hacks.
Remember, this is only my theory of poetry. Some people think cliches are great: Jimmy Buffet, to name one, and John 'Cougar' Melloncamp. But it's all about theory here, anyway, so you might as well take mine into consideration along with everyone else's and your own.
So next I'd suggest that if your poetry is, as you point out, reduceable to two words, then it might be on account of your subject-matter, which judging from your posts here and on your homepage falls into such broad categories as "Love", "Despair", "America", and so on. I don't mean poets shouldn't try to write about those things, but they would have to be more careful doing it than, say, writing about ducks with AIDS or appropriate beard materials for homemade Negro Jesuses, since so many people have written about Love and so on before and hardly anyone has written about ducks and Jesuses - sadly.
So, my recommendation to you would be to comb through this piece for anything which you might have heard anywhere else, which shouldn't be hard since practically everything here is cribbed from Wal-Mart bumper-stickers (you know the ones I'm talking about!) and then to replace every cliche with some original expression. That's all.
Oh, and if your response to this is that this already says everything about America that you can think of or feel then you are SERIOUSLY underestimating America's range and beauty, my friend! What about FRENCH-FRY-SMELLING? What about CHARTER-BUS-TOUR-TAKING? What about BARELY-CONCEALED-HOMOEROTIC-TENDENCIES?
I do hope you'll think about it. Thanks for your time! - zodiac