Re: How to Bleed by MacFrantic	30-Jun-06/1:11 PM
More fragment than poem; hard to connect w/it. Needs flesh. ;)
Re: Glorious Turncoat, I Shall Return by Ranger	4-May-06/10:18 AM
I keep printing out your last several poems to think about and come back to comment on but not getting around to it. I will come back to this! First impressions: lots to like but could benefit from some pruning and tightening of imagery.
Re: Death by rabbit by INTRANSIT	4-May-06/10:16 AM
I likes it! "as they hung"--this threw me off--is someone holding them or are they (as suggested) sort of dangling on the lip? Also, think about dropping "lined with the" ("by their rear legs over the Rubbermaid can, the black maw of a Hefty bag"). Hmmm. maybe. I'm always split on brand-names in poems; on the one hand, I like the detail, on the other hand "Hefty" and "Rubbermaid" are a little distracting. I dunno. Nitpicking. Ending line is ace. Nice work.
Re: Gale of Death (Paradelle) by MacFrantic	4-May-06/10:10 AM
"Billy Collins claimed that the paradelle was invented in eleventh century France, but he actually invented it himself to parody strict forms, particularly the villanelle. His sample paradelle, "Paradelle for Susan" (c1997), was intentionally terrible, completing the final stanza with the line "Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it was with to to"." Hee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradelle That said, some decent lines in this, but I don't think the form, the repetition for repetition's sake, adds anything to the poem. Also, while I like the wordplay to a point, sometimes the meaning is pretty fuzzy. Probably was fun though. ;)
Re: I Sleep by Sunny	26-Apr-06/8:25 AM
I think this might be stronger without the repetition of "I sleep"--it breaks the flow, IMO. Also, "yesterday's embers" borders on cliche. I think the line "I sleep as a nomad [sleeps] is one of the most interesting and would make a good opener, e.g.: I sleep as a nomad sleeps, separating one dawn from the next, listlessly tossing, settling on another day's plain. Life remains outside, staining morning , etc. Of course, that's what I'd do; not necessarily what you'd do, but I do think that cutting some of the extraneous and weaker lines (e.g., the hair and the glaring eyelids) would make this stronger. Re: dissever versus sever--it's anologous to irregardless versus regardless: No real difference in meaning, and they're all real words, but unless your intent is to jar (and I don't get jarring from the rest of this), "dissever" sort of jerks the reader from the piece. Last line (sentence) might read a little better if it were "from my heavy flesh" (interesting image of branching out from flesh). I assume the "at night" is there to signify that the branching is in the realm of dreams or otherwise sleep-induced? Also, everything seems disassociated from a central focus--what is the sin that divides you into halves? This doesn't seem to have a real hook.
Re: a comment on The Way of Monsters by MacFrantic	26-Apr-06/8:11 AM
Can't claim that I am--just a dabbler and a product of the times. ;)
Re: Fraser's Wedding by Stephen Robins	25-Apr-06/9:24 AM
O happy day! I feel almost like I was there (or maybe saw some grainy pictures). Did he wear a corset to sausage his girth into a tux? Did his stays creak as he waddled toward his ace bride?
Re: I Married an Infectious Woman v.2 (My Love, 'Futility') by DreamerSupreme	25-Apr-06/9:17 AM
LOL--well, it's a shit poem, so I have to give the obligatory and only partly ironic 10. ;) Some funny lines. ("Fleshrod" made me snort.) I like the circular ending.
Re: The Way of Monsters by MacFrantic	25-Apr-06/9:14 AM
I love the first line, but the rest of the first verse seems a little high minded for barbarians (quips and angels and the like). Maybe it's too many video games, but I wanted more violence (not necessarily overt). Second verse--really like the "disguise in crowded colors," the swirling, shadowy melee you invoke--fire and smoke and color and movement. Good stuff, Mac. If you could bring verses one and two closer in feeling/movement, this would be ace.
Re: a comment on Inbetween Lovers/Blueprint by Ranger	20-Apr-06/6:54 AM
If by "ordinary" language you mean simple language--well, to an extent, you're already doing that. And it's WHY you've improved so much in my opinion. Even this poem--yes, there are places where you 'commit acts of poetry' (a capital crime), but much of it is pretty simply stated. Most of the best lines are, anyway: "How many times I have bargained, drunk with God To take this lust - I'll plead again tomorrow." Here's what Louise Gluck, the former Poet Laureate in the U.S., said on the topic of ordinary--well, simple--language. "The axiom is that the mark of poetic intelligence or vocation is passion for language, which is thought to mean delirious response to language’s smallest communicative unit: to the word. The poet is supposed to be the person who can’t get enough of words like "incarnadine." This was not my experience. From the time, at four or five or six, I first started reading poems, first thought of the poets I read as my companions, my predecessors – from the beginning I preferred the simplest vocabulary. What fascinated me were the possibilities of context. What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a word’s setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that word’s full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise; such language, in being generic, is likely to contain the greatest and most dramatic variety of meaning within individual words. I liked scale, but I liked it invisible. I loved those poems that seemed so small on the page but that swelled in the mind; I didn’t like the windy, dwindling kind. Not surprisingly, the sort of sentence I was drawn to, which reflected these tastes and native habit of mind, was paradox, which has the added advantage of nicely rescuing the dogmatic nature from a too moralizing rhetoric." [From Louise Glück, "Education of the Poet," Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (New York: Ecco, 1994) 4-5.] Gluck's not the final word on the topic, obviously--she's talking about her own experience, and certainly there's room for variation and experimentation. But there's something to be said for creating magic from common cloth. The trick to it is making simple, ordinary language seem fresh and your own, and using all the other poetic techniques--meter and the way the words play together--to make it something special. That's something not too many people can pull off, IMO--but it's worth striving for, I think.
Re: jay by ecargo	17-Apr-06/1:54 PM
Math poem fans: "Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author . . . wrote a post on his GottaBook blog (gottabook.blogspot.com) two weeks ago inviting readers to write "Fibs," six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line. Then, last Friday, . . . slashdot.org . . . linked to Mr. Pincus's original post, and suddenly, it seemed, Fibs were sprouting all over the Internet." Story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/books/14fibo.html?ex=1145419200&en=e0ccb44acd92493d&ei=5087%0A
Re: jay by ecargo	17-Apr-06/1:50 PM
Pulitzer (announced today) for poetry goes to Claudia Emerson for _Late Wife,_ - "Epistolary poems about losing love and finding it again." http://www.nytimes.com/ref/arts/pulitzers2006.html (registration required) Three poems by Emerson for anyone curious about what Pulitzer Prize winning poetry looks like: http://www.poems.com/threeeme.htm
Re: Don't touch the chairs in a gay bar. by Stephen Robins	17-Apr-06/11:40 AM
What? No votes? Even beardless and guntless, very funny (though not as funny as a "cream-horne of Jesu"--but what is?). I used "gunt" (the word, not the unsightly appendage) in conversation the other day.
Re: greymo(u)rn by lmp	17-Apr-06/11:37 AM
Nicely descriptive, and the lack of narrative (story, whatever) is fine, but while reading it I kept reaching for more of a--well, not a point, exactly, but some sort of earlier payoff. The point seems to be the longing, and I think the last stanza gets there (to that payoff point), but the lead-up is a little too scene-setty for me. I think less of a linear approach might work, e.g., starting off with "it was better before the fog burned off; at least the mystery of what may be hidden within was appealing." The usual disclaimers here.
Re: In Ethel’s Honor by Dovina	17-Apr-06/7:53 AM
Simple and vivid=good. "Then watched her" in the second verse is a little confusing.
Re: Another quarter. by richa	17-Apr-06/7:49 AM
Other than "scalding" and the pie, ace in my book. Simple in all the best of ways.
Re: Skellington Bakery by -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.	17-Apr-06/7:48 AM
A yummy cautionary poeme--most light and flaky (like the fabled Cream-horne of Jesu, I imagine). The footnotes were the cherry on the treat.
Re: a time of dynamics by Dental Panic	13-Apr-06/6:39 AM
Fantastic in every sense of the word, DP.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	12-Apr-06/6:42 AM
Whatever, dude. It's a public board, so I don't need anyone's permission to talk about any topic, no matter who brought it up or who it's directed to. You said something I considered bullshit originally, so I cried bullshit--very politely too. I didn't realize you were so sensitive or I wouldn't have bothered to try to have a rational discussion with you. In retrospect, it was kind of like having a conversation with someone who, instead of listening to what one is actually saying, just thinks about what they're going to say next. I couldn't give a shit what you believe--that was never the point, and the idea of trying to convert you in some way or mock your beliefs bores me silly. I'll let you go back to fighting the War Against Christmas and all the rest of it. Have fun.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	11-Apr-06/2:40 PM
Once again, out the door (gorgeous here and a beach run is calling), but before I go--yeah, I should have taken it in context. Humor is sometimes hard to convey in these little boxes and this awful font. ;) So, pax. Seriously. And I apologize for calling you smug--that was insulting. This discussion--the scope of my part in it--is deceptive. I only place so much "faith" in logic, though I do think our progress in science is amazing. FWIW, I do believe in the importance of a spiritual life, God or no God, and I don't think that's an area that can be comprehended entirely on a logical basis. But that's a discussion for another day. ;) Have a good evening.