Re: a comment on Coney Island Fall by ecargo	ecargo 172.145.59.138	3-Feb-06/3:17 PM
How right you are! That's why it's Coney Island Fall (a pun). That's also why it contains the line: "this autumn day." Last day to ride is usually 10/31; first day to ride is the first Saturday in April (sometimes the last Saturday in March). It was cool to go in winter and take pics of the coasters in the snow, especially before they tore down the old Thunderbolt (under which Woody Allen's character, Alvy, grew up in the movie Annie Hall).
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	Dovina 67.72.98.92	3-Feb-06/3:13 PM
And I do insist. It's a stretch - giving birth. Maybe that's why we're better at it.
Re: Coney Island Fall by ecargo	Dovina 67.72.98.92	3-Feb-06/3:10 PM
We couldn't ride the Cyclone even at Christmastime a couple of years ago. Couldn't even buy a dog. Much less in February.
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	3-Feb-06/3:09 PM
No matter how you punctuate it it's still a bit of a stretch. Maybe the magic skull was a woman's. It certainly was insistant upon getting the last word in.
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	Dovina 67.72.98.92	3-Feb-06/3:02 PM
Szymborska must have realized that Solomon, who claims to have written "The Preacher," Ecclesiastes, was distraught over meaninglessness, and that he said, "nothing is new under the sun" as an exaggeration, meaning that nothing is worthwhile. I suppose it’s okay to use the Bible to illustrate points other than the authors’ meaning; I’ve done it too. I think the point would have sounded more credible if some nod to the author’s probable meaning had been given.
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	Dovina 67.72.98.92	3-Feb-06/2:56 PM
If you quote a poem like this, which lacks punctuation, and string lines together, it's appropriate to insert commas at line ends. In this case, it changed the meaning somewhat. Is that why they believe a magic skull?
Re: a comment on Prozac by Glasseyez	SupremeDreamer 69.106.53.134	3-Feb-06/2:55 PM
Numb, shutting out world, chasing it away with doubt. Used to be deep - but something happened. Lost myself in thoughts of life, looking at the world differently. Able to see what is ahead, not behind me. Seems pointless, being alive within a dream. Screaming deep inside, yet silence prevails - Words can't express what I feel, yet words are used to describe my emotion. That's an example of your poem using only one 'I'. Be creative, the English language is pretty flexible in usage - so long as you do so intelligently.
Re: a comment on Even the elephants by ecargo	ecargo 172.145.59.138	3-Feb-06/2:48 PM
Some might think this could use an amnesiac super-assassin. I do mean windborne. Thanks.
Re: Whales in Gastineau Channel by zodiac	ecargo 172.145.59.138	3-Feb-06/2:46 PM
This doesn't seem to hit its stride until the third stanza. The first almost seems like screenplay style scene-setting (I think I read a comment that you were working on a screenplay. A little genre-bending here maybe?) Nikons and anoraks works well (for me) as a flash image of the crowd. FWIW, "yen" is still pretty common parlance in my part of the country (so's hankering). Borne is spelled correctly. ;)
Re: A Walk in the Park by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.47	3-Feb-06/2:31 PM
Your gift: Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift, absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their "oeuvre" . . . I sometimes dream of situations that can't possibly come true. I audaciously imagine, for example, that I get a chance to chat with the Ecclesiastes, the author of that moving lament on the vanity of all human endeavors. I would bow very deeply before him, because he is, after all, one of the greatest poets, for me at least. That done, I would grab his hand. "'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress that you're sitting under hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same. And Ecclesiastes, I'd also like to ask you what new thing under the sun you're planning to work on now? A further supplement to the thoughts that you've already expressed? Or maybe you're tempted to contradict some of them now? In your earlier work you mentioned joy—so what if it's fleeting? So maybe your new-under-the-sun poem will be about joy? Have you taken notes yet, do you have drafts? I doubt that you'll say, 'I've written everything down, I've got nothing left to add.' There's no poet in the world who can say this, least of all a great poet like yourself." The world—whatever we might think when we're terrified by its vastness and our own impotence or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose life span is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world—it is astonishing. But "astonishing" is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We're astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we've grown accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se and isn't based on a comparison with something else. Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases such as "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events." . . . But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world. It looks as though poets will always have their work cut out for them. - From Wislawa Szymborska's Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	3-Feb-06/2:10 PM
I've always got a little impishness in me but you say and I quote "my flowing skirt did catch jerked back as father’s hand had years ago when playing on a ledge". Either your father's as weak as a rose stem or the rose was as strong as your father. Of course I realized you meant it caught on a roses thorn. As far as the mystery of men goes: In a cartoon I was watching with my neice and nephew a girl asked a magic scull why guys were so hard to understand. The all knowing skull replied, "Because men are simple".
Re: a comment on A Walk in the Park by Dovina	Dovina 67.72.98.84	3-Feb-06/1:15 PM
I cannot believe that someone who can be as distantly vague in his imagery as you ar sometimes, could not take "rose" as the thorn of a rose stem. Are you being impish? Sorry not to be mysterious enough for you. The whole female mystique business escapes me. We're not nearly as mysterious as men.
Re: a comment on Nomads by amanda_dcosta	amanda_dcosta 203.145.159.37	3-Feb-06/12:50 PM
In the kettle of tenderness the rain sweeps...... Its just an opening line for a poem. it's not in any poem. i'm merely taking it for mine. I've got something like this when I first read it. wasn't sure it it made any sense.... In the kettle of tenderness the rain sweeps God's Spirit flows and blessings heap One's heart now knows no sorrow. was thinking about this... and was tempted to open shut eye. good night and sweet dreams to you too..... I mean, after 10 hours?
Re: a comment on Nomads by amanda_dcosta	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	3-Feb-06/12:39 PM
No, just the "tree of life". The pattern was of birds being in haikus in general. Sleep tight.
Re: a comment on Nomads by amanda_dcosta	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	3-Feb-06/12:37 PM
I don't know what the rest of the context of the poem you got that from was but heres what you should do: Take the key words like "kettle" and "sweeps" and look them up for alternate definitions. Here's what I got. "In the glacial lake of tenderness the rain glides by swiftly." The glacial lake being a cold heart that's been melted(by tenderness) and the swift rain being to quickly weather the storms that life brings. But I'm probably way off.
Re: a comment on Nomads by amanda_dcosta	amanda_dcosta 203.145.159.37	3-Feb-06/12:34 PM
The tree of life or the ones zodiac posted above your comment? Those can't be yours, he said they weren't up to the mark. Good night. I'm off to bed. It's 2:00 a.m. now. thank God it's saturday tomorrow.
Re: a comment on Whales in Gastineau Channel by zodiac	Niphredil 192.117.117.50	3-Feb-06/12:29 PM
On the subject of cameras, I actually think that "Kodaks and anoraks" sounds better :-)
Re: Nomads by amanda_dcosta	amanda_dcosta 203.145.159.37	3-Feb-06/12:18 PM
Zodiac...As you can see, I have been trying my best to understand haikus and yes, thanks a lot for your FINALLY frank remark ( or is there more to it?)...ha ha. No offence! I agree, I have to improve on my quality, but aren't I getting somewhere. Besides I've come across a phrase "In the kettle of tenderness the rain sweeps".... what could it most likely mean or imply. I've got quite a few ideas in my head, but I think I would go for a second opinion. Still no chance of chat?
Re: a comment on Whales in Gastineau Channel by zodiac	zodiac 209.193.18.47	3-Feb-06/12:13 PM
Nikon is a brand of camera. I don't know if they're so much in use these days. Thanks for reading.
Re: a comment on Nomads by amanda_dcosta	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	3-Feb-06/12:11 PM
Did you read my haiku? I'm noticing a pattern in them.