Re: a comment on After the ice season ~ shamelessly lewd revision by zodiac	8-Feb-04/2:39 PM
re: "For me the sunk rhyme stops the piece before the new line." The correct way to read a poem is not to consider the end of a line as a period or break. Imagine reading this as prose: "Sit out all night on an old Pontiac sunk in weeds up to its windows, in a field where winds blow warm over us." It makes perfect sense now, doesn't it? Ask yourself if this would work better: "Until my body with yours you cover, The trunk of a tree which over us bends, Creaking in the wind..." Basically, you'll find that ending lines at the ends of clauses or phrases drastically limits the amount of things you can say or the amount of style or natural diction you can use. Walt Whitman pulled it off with his amazing run-on lines, but almost everyone since has considered the concept of 'enjambment' a necessary poetic tool. Will you please give this one another shot with that in mind?
Re: a comment on After the ice season ~ shamelessly lewd revision by zodiac	8-Feb-04/1:55 PM
Here's some cheese: it's a primal expression of need, in the simplest purest form. The 'Christ!' especially gets me. And the small rain. And that as much as he wants his love's touch, he also really just wants to be in bed. It's a good one for rockmage to look up sometime, with his ten-word poems. That is how it's done, rockmage.
Re: a comment on After the ice season ~ shamelessly lewd revision by zodiac	8-Feb-04/1:35 PM
Weird call on the western wind. I haven't seen that poem in years, but I remember it giving me an odd feeling every time I read it - still does.
Re: a comment on After the ice season ~ shamelessly lewd revision by zodiac	8-Feb-04/1:31 PM
I just meant it's too cold for love, which is kind of the case here, or neglecting love until it's been too long to start again. I've tried to make this longer and fuller dozens of times and not been successful - another example of the poem choosing its shape.
Re: The Mocking Bird by Caducus	8-Feb-04/11:12 AM
Mockingbird. One word. "Violent ripples flow through her nipples" makes me laugh. Do you want more?
Re: a comment on Taller Girl by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/11:09 AM
One more quibble: segregating circles would be more accurate; but I almost like segregated better, whether it makes sense or not. Something to think about, at any rate.
Re: a comment on First Shot by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/11:05 AM
I just spent an hour reading eratosphere. Ehh. Kinda airless in there, isn't it? And I agree: sterile. Give me the rancor any day.
Re: a comment on Taller Girl by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/11:00 AM
It just didn't represent drumming to me. I wouldn't know what to do reading this aloud, and on the page it just looks like page-trickery. What about another representation? Would that fly? Like "up! up! towards them..." or "under-guitar-drum-thunder". Dashes always do it for me, obviously. And line breaks. The suggestion to split some of the lines into beats has some merit to it. Or - WAIT! Maybe write some lines out like bars of music with big spaces for measures or something! Crazy? Maybe just crazy enough to work! Again, these are just suggestions, but I'm a freak for taking punctuation the way Webster intended it and can't help reading periods as sentence ends. Another idea: more drum imagery. Use the words beat, backbeat, something onomatopoetic (which always makes people look for the rhythmical structures elsewhere.) Nentwined, I think, does a decently good job with that here (www.poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=78791). Is there room in the poem for a drummer? That can clue people in - again, readers are overwilling to look for that stuff if they have a clue it's in there. I think I might've gotten the rhythm to this (which on a second reading was definitely there) if I'd had more clues and less distraction from those periods. There's a really strong natural beat here, enough (almost) to suggest itself.
Re: Taller Girl by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/10:05 AM
.aff.e.cta.tion. It. ta.kesa.way fro..........m good/lines%like "her skirt in segregated circles" and 'turtling' down. 7 until you improve.
Re: a comment on First Shot by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/9:50 AM
I don't want to crash their club, but I'd be interested in seeing what they do there. Where is it? I'll keep quiet.
Re: Love that's not true or double-sided by fevriere	8-Feb-04/8:44 AM
There should be punctuation after hard (a comma, probably) and eyes (a dash, comma, or semicolon). You might change the comma after flies to a dash. Great.
Re: a comment on First Shot by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/8:18 AM
re: "-- not sure if i get this..." Maybe: My head is ringing, I Smell guncotton. My shoulder aches and I say Aiming.... Or some variation of that. (This, by the way, is not the variation you want. Just an idea.) You could just say "And pay for the shooting with _____, which makes me go..." And think of a really crazy word for ___. What kind of stuff gets praised on eratosphere? Is any of it here? I'm interested in how their taste differs from the rancor. I mean, I've been looking at NanceXToo's discussion group and thinking they're all so serious and blah. You have to put up with a lot of crap here, but you won't get bored reading tidy grown-up poems. And I think you can post stuff that's here a little less... polished. Stuff you actually want help on, maybe.
Re: a comment on My heart had a war...no body won by sonawrote	8-Feb-04/6:39 AM
Ok. Break each of these lines in half, break every four lines into stanzas, and punctuate, and it'll be something like a poem. Better than some of your other ones.
Re: a comment on Triptych: Rural by lastobelus	8-Feb-04/6:38 AM
How about "their beer"? And another word for takes?
Re: Paranoia by lastobelus	7-Feb-04/9:44 PM
What can I say? You sound pretty peppy about it anyway.
Re: First Shot by lastobelus	7-Feb-04/9:43 PM
"up field" could be "upfield" or "up-field". The word "darkens" isn't right. I feel like "nor him neither" should be "nor him either". If that's not grammatical, it sounds better to me. "pay it for the shooting"? The crow? Like a native american tradition, or just ambiguous wording - you paid with guilt for the shooting? I don't feel like the repetition of "and" in the last sentence does what you want it to, which I can clearly see you trying to do. It would be just as well, maybe, with a period after guncotton and no and before my. This is my favorite one of yours so far. You know how I love a good narrative. Bravo and tchuss.
Re: Triptych: Rural by lastobelus	7-Feb-04/9:31 PM
The first two are great, the last not so great. It jars. How about "Uncles lean on cars; some beer / takes away..."? Is that any improvement? Do you see what I'm asking?
Re: everything Zen by crwncka1	7-Feb-04/3:21 PM
"Everything Zen" is the title of a song by the immensely popular (in the mid-nineties) bad British rock band Bush. How could you have not known that? Do you think people often name poems after songs? And what if songwriters named their songs after other songs? There'd be no end to the confusion. Oh, and I say this to you so much that you've probably taken to disregarding me altogether, but what a giant pussball of non-punctuated too-long-lined say-nothing cliche crap this poem is! How can you have not given up after all this time?
Re: a comment on Gardener by lastobelus	7-Feb-04/10:52 AM
If poetry were only a true expression of the poet's feelings, then the following would not technically be a poem: THE POET WAITS FOR INSPIRATION - Dowsing-rod, snake, quarter-pound burrito - Names which I've given my own libido. Sand-trap, horse-face, lady-in-furs - Names which I've secretly given hers.
Re: a comment on Ducks With AIDs (a feeble attempt of something different) by Blindpoetry	7-Feb-04/9:03 AM
C'mon. There's two of you and only one of him. And can you beat a bit like "They lick an ashtray, as they get satisfaction"?? That's gold.