Replying to a comment on:

Old Glory (Concrete) by Richard

/----------------------------------------------------------------\ | O L D | not a name to be used, taken lightly, casually | | |------------------------------------------------| | G L O R Y | it comes from within but humbly asserts itself | | |------------------------------------------------| | B R A V E | tiding, good omen for oppressed people worldly | | |------------------------------------------------| | S Y M B O L | this a new nation meant for, and by the people | | |------------------------------------------------| | A Y O U N G | man pledges daily allegiance, piously, serving | | |------------------------------------------------| | N A T I O N | earning its name through pride, and assistance | | |------------------------------------------------| | S E R V I N G | without regard for race, creed, origin, or God | | |------------------------------------------------| | F R E E D O M | the most basic human right to live, and breath | | |------------------------------------------------| | H O N O R | those who came before and those yearning daily | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | For a life without subjugation or a lingering death to slavery | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | Standing tall as a beacon of hope, soaring higher than tyranny | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | Raised by those whose hearts are full of expectation for peace | |----------------------------------------------------------------| | Colors, never running, waving honorably in the wind of freedom | \----------------------------------------------------------------/

zodiac 29-Mar-04/7:57 AM
I figure you must be ignoring me because of that whole cliche-count business a while back. That's fine; it's your prerogative to only pay attention to positive comments and ignore negative ones (which aren't really what you'd call 'constructive criticism' anyway, am I right? I mean, the positive ones are obviously constructive, since they make you feel good; and the negative ones are obviously best ignored, since they make you feel like a waterlogged 18th-century cliche-dictionary opened to the entry 'stool', am I right?)

But, you see?! That's exactly why I'm writing to you now! I feel I've misrepresented myself to you - like we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. So, I want to make amends by talking a little bit about your poem here and why I gave it a three. You know, constructive criticism like.

The first thing is that I tend to feel like poetry shouldn't be a compendium of trite phrases. In fact, I really believe that poets should try REALLY HARD not to say ANYTHING that has ever been said before. Now, when I said something like this in an oblique manner on one of your earlier posts, you responded to the effect that if you eliminated everything that HAS been said from one of your poems, you'd be left with nothing.

Now, this is not obviously the case with all poetry. Um, my posts are a bad example, but there are even posts here which cannot be reduced to two words by removing cliches. I'd even say there are posts on this site which come pretty close to perfect clichelessness. So it can be done, even by relative hacks.

Remember, this is only my theory of poetry. Some people think cliches are great: Jimmy Buffet, to name one, and John 'Cougar' Melloncamp. But it's all about theory here, anyway, so you might as well take mine into consideration along with everyone else's and your own.

So next I'd suggest that if your poetry is, as you point out, reduceable to two words, then it might be on account of your subject-matter, which judging from your posts here and on your homepage falls into such broad categories as "Love", "Despair", "America", and so on. I don't mean poets shouldn't try to write about those things, but they would have to be more careful doing it than, say, writing about ducks with AIDS or appropriate beard materials for homemade Negro Jesuses, since so many people have written about Love and so on before and hardly anyone has written about ducks and Jesuses - sadly.

So, my recommendation to you would be to comb through this piece for anything which you might have heard anywhere else, which shouldn't be hard since practically everything here is cribbed from Wal-Mart bumper-stickers (you know the ones I'm talking about!) and then to replace every cliche with some original expression. That's all.

Oh, and if your response to this is that this already says everything about America that you can think of or feel then you are SERIOUSLY underestimating America's range and beauty, my friend! What about FRENCH-FRY-SMELLING? What about CHARTER-BUS-TOUR-TAKING? What about BARELY-CONCEALED-HOMOEROTIC-TENDENCIES?

I do hope you'll think about it. Thanks for your time! - zodiac




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