Re: The Mirror by TLRufener	23-Feb-06/9:27 AM
I like the idea of smashing reflections--maybe focus it more there, other things to smash/avoid, don't tell us so obviously about the self-loathing, let the images carry it. Easy way to tell if you're telling too much is to count the "I"s and "my"s. You've got a lot of 'em. :) Good start.
Re: Gaia and Man by Blue Magpie	23-Feb-06/9:25 AM
A little too end-rhyme driven for my taste--admirable that you found so many rhyming words that worked in your narrative, but it too often leads to awkward phrasing or cliches. Also, too long for the eventual payoff, and the points are made a little too obviously and literally. Every read Ozymandias by Shelley? Another "met a traveller" poem with a big point to make, but he makes it without saying it explicitly: Ozymandias I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed, And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. (Or there's always the Monty Python version: I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said, "Six vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert And on the pedestal these words appear, My name is Ozymandias, King of Ants Look on my feelers, termites, and despair! I am the biggest ant you'll ever see The ants of old weren't half as big and bold And fierce as me!") ;-)
Re: a comment on During the Grace by jahnotis	20-Feb-06/1:38 PM
How does something split naively?
Re: Gunsong by MacFrantic	20-Feb-06/7:53 AM
Really interesting and fresh images. Some of it gets a little too self-consciously "poetic" for me, but you keep the language pretty simple which helps it from becoming overly flowery. Somethings get a little blurry: "plants more often wintry Than all the spiky seeds of summer " ? More wintry than the . . . seeds of summer are wintry? I don't think that's what you mean, but it's what you say. Do you need "phantom" given that you have "ghouls" already? How's a "suicide of pixies" a "harmless guarantee"--things like that. Cool, overall though--I'd like more coherence, but it's original and you've got something good to work with.
Re: The Dead Poet's Dream by drnick	20-Feb-06/7:24 AM
A cool idea, but I don't think you take the ski metaphor far enough (particularly since you like the line enough to repeat it), and some of the comparisons to other things seem scattered. Some places where the language gets a little stilted because you're writing to the rhyme (are never deemed mild; His love has just left/To come back yet again/He will misspell words/But only in pretend). You have a good sense, here and otherwise, of bringing things to an end (I think endings are sometimes the hardest thing to pull off).
Re: Ben Fogle by Stephen Robins	20-Feb-06/7:19 AM
I looked him up, but I didn't really have to (because this nailed it). He is a clean, adventurous Gentleman, isn't he?
Re: You Sang To Me In A Cathedral Chamber by Ranger	20-Feb-06/7:17 AM
Some good stuff in here, Ranger! "Thin-spinning"; "top-hat velvet . . . tails", songs in grain, pendulum toys and ticktock steps. Really cool feel and language. You talk about the use of metaphor--spider, tree--in your comment. It does come through, I think--but, out of curiosity: what were you aiming for?
Re: Lost In Her Effervescence by ALChemy	14-Feb-06/3:21 PM
Fire and ice, air and un-air - bonus points for making "cold boiling" work. Cool.
Re: Journeyman by Glasseyez	14-Feb-06/3:06 PM
Yeah, Ranger's right, I think--four of the seven seas; you'll slide right over the "of" so it doesn't really throw off the rhythm. This would make some decent lyrics. Forget Poetry for Dummies; more Johnny Cash.
Re: In response to by INTRANSIT	13-Feb-06/10:45 PM
Intransit, as good as I think you've gotten over the past couple of years, I don't think anyone, not anyone, could make the "deer in the headlights" image sound anything but hackneyed. And headlights, even by analogy, can't be complacent. (Nor fearful, for that matter. Confusing, sure, because they can confuse.) Semantics aside: the truck imagery would work better, I think, if it were attached to something more developed; something we could get a fix on. Right now this seems just amorphous angst with axles.
Re: a comment on Valentine by zodiac	13-Feb-06/10:03 PM
Not that it matters (because you wouldn't--and shouldn't--reference it so explicitly), but Valentine's Day, the giving of valentines on Feb 14, has been popular for a long time. (I used to collect ephemera--vintage postcards, paper, etc., and Victorian valentines were popular w/ a lot of folks.) So they would have known of the custom--and the significance of the sweetheart holiday--in all likelihood (even gangsters have to impress the dames with a little romance--initially, anyway). GW gave you some good crit, and I think she's right that if you wanted that V-day connection, that sense of offering, it's not quite there. But I think even a single, subtle line would do it. (The reader has to be responsible for getting some of it, too.) I think it's what you tried to do in the "lacking even the dignity" line, no? But it got lost in there somewhere.
Re: a comment on Valentine by zodiac	13-Feb-06/2:49 PM
Well, I've seen a couple of movies about the V-Day Massacre and read a couple of books about Capone, so I knew the rough details (gangland killing, phony cops). I almost certainly couldn't have placed Gusenberg's name without any context, though. You gave enough information (title, reference, details) to make it easy to find out the details, so I did what I usually do--I Googled it. That's how I knew about the "blond alibi" and that Gusenberg was known as "Tight Lips." Easy enough to find out.
Re: The Struggling Poet's Lament by Ranger	13-Feb-06/2:09 PM
Some nice lines, Ranger, but not hanging together quite yet. Some images don't stand close scrutiny ("deftly flowed"; "volcano ripple in reverse"? "idol of adultery"--what's the story there? snaking flies, pregnant flame). I do like the sound of this and some images like a hem waltzing drunkenly, but it needs some tweaking.
Re: discovery by skaskowski	13-Feb-06/2:01 PM
What's this? ACME (TM) Poem-o-matic? Input words and it spits out a "poem"? first line could lead to something interesting--but this ain't it.
Re: Valentine by zodiac	13-Feb-06/1:59 PM
Ace. What's not to like: old Tight Lips (the mug), a good tale well told. Glad you resisted the temptation of too much "tough guy" speak, the suggestion of it's just enough. This gets a little convoluted: "And lacking even the dignity or indignity of bringing a shivering pile of guts clutched-in already cooling to you is enough without these kids who even as I die make me their hope, their trick, their crash averted." Love the "and already wandering . . ."; the ("blond alibi?") dame's essential to the noir. Killer.
Re: a comment on Sonnet by zodiac	9-Feb-06/12:37 PM
“The Augean Stables,” by Seamus Heaney My favorite bas-relief: Athene showing Heracles where to broach the riverbank With a nod of her high helmet, her staff sunk In the exact spot, the Alpheus flowing Out of its course into the deep dung strata Of King Augeas’ reeking yard and stables. Sweet dissolutions from the water tables, Blocked doors and packed floors deluging like gutters… And it was there in Olympia, down among green willows, The lustral wash and run of river shallows, That we heard of Sean Brown’s murder in the grounds Of Bellaghy G.A.A. Club. And imagined Hosewater smashing hard back off the asphalt In the car park where his athlete’s blood ran cold.
Re: a comment on Sonnet by zodiac	7-Feb-06/1:40 PM
That's part of it, sure, but Yeats used myth as a metaphor for larger themes. And even the myth on which he based it had wider implications--literally sowing the seeds of disaster. He used a form that was traditionally used for love poetry, which was a shocking--and deliberate--departure that highlighted the violence of it. It's a modern poem, even now I think, far more than it is a traditional sonnet, whatever its structure.
Re: a comment on Sonnet by zodiac	7-Feb-06/12:39 PM
To completely oversimplify (understate?) it: sex and death. Are there "modern themes"? At their core, are they modern? (I'm not being facetious or particularly rhetorical in asking.) Even your Perigenetic Prayer--the language (i.e., your use of a scientific term) is modern--but is it a modern theme?
Re: a comment on Sonnet by zodiac	7-Feb-06/11:41 AM
Are they? Leda And The Swan - WB Yeats A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? He plays with the form--the broken line, the rhyme scheme, so it's a departure from standard form, sure--but so what? Roethke's _In a Dark Time_ is another sonnet that you almost realize is a sonnet after the fact, because you're so caught up in the language and lyricism. Good stuff.
Re: Sonnet by zodiac	6-Feb-06/6:51 AM
Interesting approach, decent dismount.