Re: Various 7-Eleven hold ups... by Bachus	22-Aug-02/1:25 AM
Actually quite funny
Re: Dear Ms. Sexton by <{Baba^Yaga}>	22-Aug-02/1:17 AM
OK, horus8/bachus/baba yaga, you win, I can't be bothered with this split identity thing any more, you just keep on ranting in your clever/remedial way and I'll steer round it and maybe we'll both be happy. And Dark Angel - would you prefer that I hate everything equally? Surely one of the points of criticism is that you discuss a single poem on its merits rather than swaggering in with a predetermined persona dispensing shards of ill-formed and meretricious nonsense? And I said Tom Waits because that's exactly what it sounds like. Did you take exception to that comment because you don't know what I'm talking about?
Re: Secret, Admirer by <~>	21-Aug-02/9:01 AM
I preferred the first draft-it was more compact and immediate, and was suggestive rather than explicatory.
Re: cold sonnet by <~>	21-Aug-02/8:26 AM
That's an interesting revision of sonnet form - no real regular rhyme scheme, shortening lines, but a final couplet to pull the whole together. 'Piney hearts' is very good.
Re: Making Sense in Plain Living by Flaithri	21-Aug-02/6:34 AM
I didn't really understand the title and this sounds more like prose than poetry
Re: Hunny by Venus	21-Aug-02/6:21 AM
I think this is great - Sylvia Plath drops the Nazi imagery and gets her own back. How could any man neglect his Venus so thoughtlessly?
Re: A Nightmare by Dreamer	21-Aug-02/4:07 AM
This is rather melodramatic - I'd really get rid of the aposiopoesis at the end.
Re: setting the record straight on April by poetandknowit	21-Aug-02/2:06 AM
This is just trying too hard to be clever and iconoclastic. I know what you mean but...if you sat next to me on the bus and launched into this, I'd move away.
Re: Ambiguous Love Poem For A Girl I Once Knew by poetandknowit	21-Aug-02/2:01 AM
I was determined to be annoyed by your stuff as you keep telling em to edit my work in an irritating high-handed manner but... bugger it, I think this is really great. Your self-denying but defiant last stanza breaks the heart.
Re: North by lw_nd	21-Aug-02/1:31 AM
Regret and yearning so often live togetherI especially like the astrological stuff in the last stanza - as if this is what we're all fated to suffer. Existentialist, huh?
Re: white harvest by <~>	21-Aug-02/1:19 AM
I love the first line, and the deceptive way the poem leads you to think it's going to be about more than an unwillingness to pay bills. It's something we can all understand and it's become heroic! Though I must admit I rifle through my post as soon as it comes in case someone's sent me an impromptu present. They never have.
Re: Sugar Coating by nentwined	20-Aug-02/7:03 AM
I like the kick in the face at the end - a real wake-up to the emotionally deluded (like me).
Re: Once Sought by necroscope7	20-Aug-02/6:56 AM
So where were they? Buried with W.H. Davies?
Re: Secret, Admirer by <~>	20-Aug-02/6:55 AM
This is so sensually evocative - I love this. In fact, I think I love you ZZinnia!
Re: Dear Ms. Sexton by <{Baba^Yaga}>	20-Aug-02/6:49 AM
Notwithstanding Bachus's rather crazy tirade, I think, Baba-Yaga, that you have stored up some bad Poemranker kharma, especially in your acid comments on Memorybabe's poems. Therefore let me come to turn the wheel...when you stop recycling Tom Waits lyrics, you can start to berate others for their poetic failings.
Re: To You, In Warmer Climes by <~>	20-Aug-02/6:15 AM
This is lovely - intricate, romantic, suggestive. The colour imagery is beautifully evocative. As for 'geometry on the page' - I don't get a sense of it being contrived at all. My only complaint is that the cosiness of the first stanza doesn't really build up to 'mercury' and 'bleeding' of the last stanza. But how seductive those gifts would be....
Re: Untitled by purplestain	20-Aug-02/6:07 AM
This is touching but too personal - this is plainly written straight from the heart without any objectifying distance. We can feel the pain and sincerity but it doesn't really hang together as a poem. Brave though to expose yourself like this.
Re: American Haiku by memorybabe	20-Aug-02/6:04 AM
I think a haiku needs to suggest more than this, which just sounds like a route planner. As an English reader, this means nothing to me.