some deleted user
on You are a Fool, Dad by AskittlesK
28 Mar 2004, 9:32 AM
You have a good theme here, just cloak it a little more and it becomes interesting.
some deleted user
on some deleted poem
28 Mar 2004, 10:44 AM
"Rome"
Feet were not used in Rome, nor were amphoras, as units of measure. This is all very vague, but the images are compelling.
I know I've never given you any reason to listen to my babble, but I do love the 'original edit' and consider it one of your best poems. Maybe there's a compromise that keeps the amphoras and the frescos. Please consider it, anyway.
Friendly advice to a lot of lonely fifteen-year-olds.
Run a mile.
Fly a kite.
Swim to Catalina Island.
But - Don't write poetry.
Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.
OMG! The best poem of the year! THIS IS SOOO FUCKING GOOD!!!!!1!!!! You think I'm kidding?! No, man, I'm totally fuckin serious! The writer of this should be fellated by the man* or woman of his choosing WHENEVER THE FUCK HE WANTS!!! Bravo and bravo!
Didn't the Ramones write this...
Very good, my friend.
IMHO, the 4th paragraph needs just a little work, spelling on accompanied? "proclaimed a good" also confuses me just a little.
yes, ah... the author of this fine work should be showered with gifts. And praise, praise and gifts.
And money.
Monies should be deposited into his paypal account. yep, that's what I say.
In fact, I'll ah, MATCH, any monetary gift that anyone cares to make...
oh jesus.
Write - write your heart out.
interesting. Kindof a cool idea. But too long.
Shorten it by half and I'll actually like it.
I think I just read this...
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
Some good images here, but the meaning is lost in a garble of prose. I prefer dlarity.
It's a good observation and a good story.
"the very center of my soul" is overwritten.