Poemranker [Replying] Sun May 19 19:47:05 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

Directly in front of me the one I call husband Our eyes meet for one true and necessary instant Then turning away as a stranger does back to his lifeâs recesses Those places I have not been and will never be invited The taut lean torso a silhouette in my doorway The sure hope of his shoulders standing inert

zodiac

10-Oct-04/5:00 AM

Sure it is. You just don't believe me because I say mean things about you all the time and because you have some kind of uninformed notion that "real criticism" is something people do in parlors, maybe, or cafes with really-good-but-not-too-loud stereo systems where people (or better "a community of interested and artistic individuals") gather afternoons over lattes to discuss others' "work" in enthusiastic, incisive, and playful but generally polite and supportive ways - or, barring a suitable nearby cafe, then in some "online forum" where "serious" and "likeminded" amateur writers gather.

This is just bunk. And if those places and people do exist in any worthwhile manifestation, I promise you they're not talking or caring much about each others' writing, or very much interested in hanging out with the kind of person who goes in for that stuff. They're probably just smoking pots and giving each other really really hard times. Of course, they sometimes point out some glaring mistake in somebody's writing or, I don't know, make a suggestion or something; but there is no "ongoing discussion" or "pure forum for presenting and evaluating ideas" or whatever the hell you think, except among old dim gays trying desperately to act like they imagine "real" critics and poets acting and mostly being bored to death and doomed to neverending obscurity. If you're interested in those places, I'll in all honesty show you where they are. But please believe me, they're the most rarified homogenized orgies of self-glorification and utter boredom ever.

That said, I hope you don't think it doesn't occur to me occasionally to point out some problem I notice here. I get whims sometimes. For example, the "standing" thing seems rather poorly-considered. There are a ton of better verbs which describe what shoulders do; I'm sure you can think of some. Also, that lack of punctuation makes your poem seem kind of amateurish and affected when it might otherwise not. And also, you've got a serious bad habit of constructing sentences in a way that's probably what you imagine being artistic and eloquent (but isn't) instead of worrying about making them grammatical or even particularly intelligible. You might try being aware of it in the future. And before you say anything else, this is real criticism, or as real as it ever gets, sister. So SUCK ON IT!!!!! SUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKK ONNNNNN ITTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!11!1

Yours truly,
zodiac in Karak

Track and Plan your submissions ; Read some Comics ; Get Paid for your Poetry

An internet tradition since June 9, 2001