I will tentatively accept that we are entering some new period of getting along. But you must understand that I am like the wary person attacked by tigers in my recent poem "Racism." If I write such a didactic poem as a person claiming that content and meaning are the prime ingrediaents for judging her own writing's worth, it behooves me to heed my own words. The title is "Racism" but the message is broader. My favorite of my poems is usually the most recent, unless the recent one is intintionally silly or retribution or parody or some such. I write several poems in an average week, and usually the one I post after the obligatory two-day wait is the most recent. "Racism" is currently my favorite. A poem can be self-contradictory and still a good poem. Matters of belief and emotion often conflict with logic and often work better when they do. I rate a poem most highly when it settles as true on some level, and even higher if its truth is well presented. "Check and mate" is so self-congratultory an arogant, a reversal to what I have learned to expect.

Maybe the cumbersome wording is from lack of punctuation. I'm trying to do entirely without it here in hope that readers will pause at the end of each line. Please let me know if reading it that way does not help.

I didn't see this comment until after I'd posted my reply. Sorry. Just to make sure we're on the same page, I'm not turning over any leaves. I've always responded positively to things I think are sensible, well-thought-out, or well-put, and disliked things I think are unreasonable or poorly-put. Most people, I gather, have some idea of liking people which, to use Dan's example, means applauding even their mistakes. I don't. Or here, at least, I don't. This poem and several other good things you've posted are perfectly respectable and deserve good responses. If you've got the idea that I'm kind of blanketly crapping on everything you do (maybe because of some personal animosity on my part), I hope you'll change it sometime. PS-Sorry for saying you're only pithy and 10-giving.

What a breathtakingly silly bunch of things to say. Here's my silly thing: I thought we were entering some new period of getting along. Oops. As for your comment, yes, of course we have different criteria for judging goodness (though not as different as you think.) But the question was, which do YOU think is your best? Not which do I think. I obviously think this one is your best. I believe I've already said so. So, again, because I'm really curious and want to understand you, which of your poems do you think is your best? And incidentally, not contradicting yourself has everything to do with content and nothing to do with form. Please note that the poems I picked as my best are my least formal and most content-filled. The contradictory poems I was referring to are the most formal. If I were required to pick between content and form, I'd pick content any day. Luckily, I'm not usually required to because most good poems are good in both respects. If you think, what a load of crap, zodiac always criticizes form and never content - well, first you're wrong. If you don't believe me, take a look at my comments on "Middle-Aged White Woman", for one. I comment on the content of your poems easily as much as I comment on their form. This despite that, truth be told, I'm a little uneasy about criticizing the "content" of most people's poemranker posts. Is pain really pleasure? Are hobos worse than salesmen? Is God really a great bearded beard-mount? Who knows? And how the hell do you criticize that? Oh, right. Like you do, with a pithy bit of summarization and a 10. In all honesty, I believe a poet can get away with saying most anything if he says it well. If he doesn't, it's still easier to let him know the poem doesn't work by way of criticizing his formal mistakes than by criticizing his content mistakes. So I take the easy way out -so what? I still comment more substantively than any other poemranker user. Thanks, zodiac PS-I think this is your best poem for both its formal and content-oriented elements. Check and mate.

Both are good concerns, neither above the other. But your new leaf turning over, or maybe pretentiously so, is cause for concern.

We have different criteria for judging goodness, or best. I did not really mean that my formatic, but senseless "Paradelle of Progress" was my best, only that you might think it so because of form. What you say here about good rhymes and not contradicting yourself, confirms that your concern is form while mine is content.

I'll stick with this one. For a lot of reasons. I feel like I've asked you to do something I can't myself, so here goes: My best post is the hall-key one; after that, the greyhound bus one. My best moments are, in this order, rhyming penguin/being one in "A Dangling Poo", rhyming Violet/twilit/pilot/while it/and islet in "Ballad for a Bad Irish Accent", and making it through two poems without contradicting myself a half-dozen times.

I was rooting for you, though.

Not too much, apparently.

That seems like any easy thing to say and a lot harder thing to back up. Can you think of any example you've ever read where a "lack of" grammar lets your mind take you to places you don't see everyday? I'm not really trying to be hard on you. To prove it, I'll give an example myself: The inappropriate grammar of things written in dialect - for example, "Yassuh youse right gentrous, Marse," said the pickaninny - takes us to the mind and situation of an uneducated black child in the South in a way proper grammar wouldn't. Is that what you meant, that the grammar in your poem is supposed to give us a vivd feeling of being illiterate?

It would be "relinquish" if it were in English. . . Yes, grammar is important but I think sometimes the lack of it lets your mind take you to places you don’t see everyday.

Thoughts were censored on the way; words were picked after others were discarded. Or that's the best I can do on 20 hours of sleep this week.

Paradelle of Progress

When a spiny caterpiller appears metamorphosed into a gentle butterfly, what is a green leaf to think.

I think this is really one of the cleverest things you've said here. You seem to be on a roll.

Out of curiosity, which do you think is you best?