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Better Off Dead (Lyric) by wilco

The paper-airplane smog hanging over my noose sent me into convulsions on the right side of youth. The recycled thoughts coming out of the clouds became movie-script endings and Indian mounds. And it came without warning and some broken bones a losing lottery ticket and reminders of home. Oh, but the winter chill sinks into my bones like Ebbot’s Pond absorbing stones that we’ve thrown. And she rains when her eyes cloud up and she’s saved from how life ends up when you’re all alone. Cigarette smoking in a hundred degrees and a leper sees your heart says “it’s still a disease”. Take away the romance in the end of your days, it’s just a long holiday at the bottom of Fire Lake. So, I’ll wait for the engine to turn off all the lights, become a secondary character and fade out of sight. Oh, but the winter chill sinks into my bones like Ebbot’s Pond absorbing stones that we’ve thrown. And she rains when her eyes cloud up and she’s saved from how life ends up when you’re all alone.

zodiac 9-Dec-05/3:59 AM
First off, don't be insulted. If I'm coming off harsh, I claim not having slept for 6 days now and having been on 3 totally separate drunks during that time. I like you and I don't mean to be all in-your-facey.

Regarding "general impression":

I think a general impression is as useful as 99% of the other things you could post. Besides, most poemranker posts are so broken they honestly don't deserve the hours you could spend fixing them. Personally, one thing I find useful about poemranker is people's general (even unspoken) impressions. Minutes after finishing a poem, I'm no judge of its worth. But (with a few exceptions) I figure if the poemranker opinion is tepid, everyone's is going to be, educated or not, and I probably need to start from the drawing board. If opinion's really positive, I might keep the poem around awhile. At least, I'll take what I can get here and be happy with it. Of course, I'm not the norm here. What most people want is gushing mush; those people are going to hate everything else anyway.

I stick to commenting on grammar on a lot of poems because (1) I think a poem cannot be successful with crap grammar, (2) it's an easier way to tell someone his or her poem sucks than trying to critique the poem's ideas, and (3) a lot of people seem to need it - whether or not they like it.

Regarding "serious poetry":

There's all kinds. Writing is my profession. With everybody else here, it probably ranges from hobby, like whittling or blogging, to something they did once while bored in study hall and immediately went online to see where they could show it off. I'm not the one to judge who's serious and looking for advice. Probably everybody deserves advice, but after two years of getting trashed by a lot of users for anything other than guffs of praise, I do tend to rush to judgment and trash a lot more than I should. I'm working on that.

Regarding "put up":

I meant, offer the kind of criticism you'd like to see on your poems - ie, "step up". I'm not sure if that's what the phrase actually means. I don't need anything put up at present, though I'd be flattered if you took a look at my posts - not for serious critiquing or judgment, mind; I'd just like to know you'd seen them.

Regarding deleting:
I understand that, but a lot of what seems irrelevant here is the best part of poemranker. I cringe just imagining someone deleting the race of liars, Bayes' theorem, Dovina's and my many wandering "arguements", or the short life of the hobo-sheathed insult generator. And even critiques pertaining only to your poem might be useful to some other user in a similar situation. If you've posted a totally different poem and the comments aren't going to make sense (this has happened before), fine, maybe. But I'd leave comments whenever possible.




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