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Captain Cannibal (Free verse) by Lenore

Murder! Have you ever heard the like As they always do in stories of a shipwreck found at night? Where survivors are floating for days on a raft; I remember the ghastly bits on the mast Where the last surviving sailor had helped eat the whole crew; He claimed he was the captain it was a good joke too, Depends on who’s the victim; The point of view counts for a heap in such things, You’d laugh yourself sick to know what it brings Starvation holds water better than your boat, When every plump and tender sailor keeps your stomach afloat No roast albatross for dinner For they gave you the slip, Your only choice left, Potluck or the dip All that last night, He sailed upon sluggish water, Covered with rotting flesh, Rank and stagnant pools of seamen Whispered by ghosts of dead comrades Carried on moonlit currents, All the water black with blood and shadow, Drifting westward homeward bound He came so near to broken, but his soul would not sink down Though he killed them as they lay there, And gnawed upon their bones, The tide of might had risen and brought him safely home

Goad 27-Jan-04/2:43 AM
sorry, but jackson pollock went to art school. He knew the rules before he broke them.

there has never been an iconoclastic artist who didn't first go through an intense period of learning and absorption, whether in school or self-imposed. van gogh, for example, spent thousands of hours studying paintings, sitting in galleries sometimes looking at one painting for an entire day.

You can't break rules you don't thoroughly know. You can't defy tradtions with which you are not intimately familiar.

That doesn't mean you are required to devote yourself to studying poetry to play around with writing, or that you shouldn't play with breaking "the rules." By all means, go for it! But it does mean that name dropping famous iconoclasts to excuse the inaccessibility of your efforts, as though you were somehow their peer, when you quite obviously haven't gone through the rigorous and intensive learning and training they typically do is inexcusable and will simply result in people dismissing you out of hand.

You see, when you don't actually KNOW the rules, you inevitably break them accidentally, and this shows plain as day, as opposed to when you break the rules for some intent or effect. At least read and absorb Strunk, it's like 30 pages long. Christ.




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