zodiac
replying on Your True War Story by zodiac
1 Feb 2004, 6:54 AM
A few days ago, in a moment of desperation, I did try to create a zodiac., zodiac_, zodeeack, and several others, but nentwined foiled me somehow. Besides, deleting my stinkers is the only way my average ranking is going to surpass forsaken's incredible 6.40. Beating forsaken is, incidentally, my new calling.
All the poems I've posted on top of were pretty poorly received (and already off the top 20, besides, where they would never be seen again.) Ideally, I'd just have the self-control to wait my two days.
This is the best of your war pomes, I think. But this habit of posting pomes on top of other unrelated pomes is disconcerting -- perhaps you should consider investing in another nick?
"Coming home without enough character to kill" is simply wonderful.
Poetry being short relative to prose attempts to make every line count. A reader is more interested in a new image than one used before. So for instance 'fall like rain into the earth' could be more startling 'bury like slate in the earth of my abandoned wonderland'
My second point was critics are quite receptive to when a poet uses words to impress rather than illuminate. Your use of 'fluvial' instead of river is perplexing - why start using scientific labels?
Related to my first and second point is the use of poetic words like forlorn - Such words are used so often in poetry they both lose their meaning and appear to be trying to hard to be poetic rather than to illuminate.
A final point is always try to find an image to represent the abstract - To you the 'depth of my shallow mind' may mean one thing but to others it could mean anything. Readers will get restless and lost if a poem is filled with such things.
This poem overall is rather good though, the flow especially and the use of images to anchor the reader.
Shuushin is a fine critic and he gave you 9.
For one thrilling moment I thought the title of this piece was "AIDS". -10-
A weeping chuff of dignity. -10-
lol you said Settle
[NB - coming out of a black doze pockmarked with nightmares of charging cavalry and endless lines of impressed yeomen foot-soldiers, I find myself on the floor of my office in three daysâ growth of beard and a sort of contrived samurai armor made of old pizza boxes and damp sweatsocks (not mine â of this Iâm sure,) my wife folding laundry nearby and glancing occasionally at me with an amused expression. What has happened? I ask, more than a little angered by what looks like the very real possibility that sheâs been humoring me through another of these... spells, steadily gathering ammunition for her endless snipes against my (to say the least) sanity, credibility, and manhood. Oh nothing, she answers, eyebrow cocked â though it may relieve you to know the Huns have been repelled, the Saxon hordes bribed, and Macarthur is returned and reigning victorious over the Pacific front. Oh no â I gasp, my gaze falling on the scattered papers around me, scribbled in a kind of hurried runic shorthand, some big sheets covered with hasty sketches of enormous catapults and besieged port-cullises. Have I, I ask, been... rambling? And without waiting for an answer I lunge for as many papers as I can reach and ram them quickly into the nearby fireplace. Soon, all of them are burned â all except this last bit. BUT THIS IS THE LAST WAR POEM, I SWEAR!!! I am not a veteran; I am not the tallyho sort; and in fact I hate violence in any of its forms. So let me apologize for any... aberrations you may have been required to tolerate over the last few days. Rest assured, I will soon be back to writing poems about first love and thoughts of suicide â the normal subjects, things a guy can feel... well, dignified writing about. Once again, Iâm terribly sorry. Thanks for understanding.]
well, it isn't bad
it's very clever, 7-8
practically perfect...9 sound good?
Thanks. I learned first hand about the voices of owls after taking acid at the top of a very high mountain, far above the treeline, and having owls whirring around me all night. In the morning there were owl pellets around on the peak.
well I suppose that depends on whether you feel stroking, sliding, surrounded and swallowed constitutes we did, or not. This usually depends on whether you're accuser or accusee.
I think it could work either way
Thanks for the kind words. I think I'd like to switch the order of stanza 4 and 5, what do you think? makes more sense to me that way.
pretty and rhythmic, but not very unique.
er..and that's "certainly" not "certaintly" hehe