Re: Birth by nentwined	10-May-02/7:18 AM
This is good. It's content suggests more of a senryu than a haiku. It's use of the form is very faithful. Spell checking would've helped ;)
Re: This Is The Sound of My Heart Breaking by Owner of the Sky	10-May-02/8:24 AM
It's not a bad evocation of the scene, but I think there's too many modifiers. For instance, you don't need to say the water is sucked down "powerfully" in the toilet--it doesn't add much. "cheap plastic lighter" could be reduced to one adjective or, better still, none. Etc.
regarding some deleted poem...	10-May-02/8:31 AM
It's a great moment to work with and a very nice poem. Not sure about crinkly, but it is a daring choice.
Re: sonnet by hoopoe	20-May-02/8:45 AM
Ohhh, I know this feeling. There's something about formal poetry that propels us through the writing of a poem, a birth-like struggle. This is a very funny piece of ars poetica, particularly the abundance (and alternation) of feminine rhymes from a "female poet".
regarding some deleted poem...	20-May-02/10:53 AM
Hmm...that's true. On the other hand, though, it is helpful to be able to submit a "batch" of poems, making it easier to write several poems offline over the course of a week or so, then submitting them all at once when you're happy with the lot. responding to: ------------- Actually, I agree - with the first comment. Why do people presume to dump 10 poems on the site at one time? It kind of pisses me off because I usually go to the recent list first to start my reading/critting. responding to: ------------- You tell 'em man! I'm fed up of damn newbies coming here, writing in excess of 5 poems a day, and then thinking they are big and clever for writing complete shit. It's just not funny. This is a serious website for l33t poets only. responding to: ------------- Perhaps you could put a cap of a certain amount of poems a day/week/month like they do at Imaginaries.org? That way it would prevent people like these verynewbies from spamming.
Re: #7 by mikejedw	21-May-02/8:11 AM
"Inhaled," to my ear, is two syllables, but you do raise an interesting point. I've long wondered whether "fire" is properly one or two syllables--the triphthong of "ire" makes for a very long vowel sound (long in the classical prosody sense) and can, in some dialects, sound much better broken in two. In fact, in the Carolinas, many "r" triphthongs, such as "there," come across as two syllables--"they-air." I make use of this ambiguity with "fire" in my haiku, "Fireflies."
Re: #9 by mikejedw	21-May-02/8:17 AM
Ah, comments on comments! You've been really busy, man--this is pretty great. Anyway, the numbering is there because I tend not to like giving haiku titles. I think, in larger poems, that I've actually written titles that are longer than haiku. It just seems overwhelming for such a short poem.
regarding some deleted poem...	21-May-02/8:26 AM
kaolin has been working with weighting the averages so that poems with fewer votes gravitate closer to "5" and poems with larger votes gravitate toward their true arithmetical mean. That helps reduce the instability in the averages of poems with fewer votes and makes the "Best" and "Worst" chart more reflective of the poem's real popularity (or lack thereof). responding to: ------------- I'll send an announcement out shortly, and I suppose I should add something to the FAQs now -- averages are weighted, now, so as to fit things with less votes in less erratically... responding to: ------------- seems to be a problem with the averages ... oddly enough, i noticed it with my score ... two votes of 6 and 8 respectively .. well, that's not a difficult piece of arithmetic; your smart little app has extracted 5.33 as an average, unless maybe that's rainfall and I'm at the wrong window. I checked out the "Best" and they seem to be scoring lower than they were yesterday! new bug???
Re: Sleep Well by jriemerm	21-May-02/8:31 AM
This is a really, really nice poem. It's great that you've introduced the use of "Sometimes/Some nights" to join a free verse poem together syntactically. The images are fresh and compelling.
Re: To Kiss by Jody Conn	21-May-02/8:56 AM
Holy Georgia O'Keeffe, Batman! The line "I savor at any hour" doesn't scan well, but, otherwise, I like it.
Re: #3 by mikejedw	30-Jul-02/10:20 PM
Obscurity? The idea of the "floating world" is a foundation of Buddhist mythology. Plus, I'm riffing on one of the world's most famous haiku, by Issa: "In this world/we walk on the roof of hell/gazing at flowers." Oh, and Nietzsche was beloved by the Nazis, so pick your heroes wisely. Hey, it ain't a great haiku, so don't take it too serious, and I won't do the same.
regarding some deleted poem...	3-Oct-02/11:32 AM
"looked into your eyes" and "the taste of your skin" are cliched and pretentious to the extreme. And that's not the worst of it. If you want to continue writing in this kind of dark vein (and there's nothing wrong with that, if done right), read more Baudelaire or Georg Trakl and try again when you've finished. Pure nonsense.
Re: THE MISSING HEART by Prince of Void	12-Jan-03/9:01 PM
It's six lines too short to be a sonnet. What's with the capitalization?