Re: f*ckyouoldmenandyourrules by Damien_	20-Apr-05/1:47 AM
It is incorrect to say that all your critics are old and only critical because of this. Many of your critics can write like this but have chosen not to because they believe the style is not particularly valuable. Most decent poets can rhyme well and most decent poets will throw away many perfectly good rhymes because they have set their poem a structure to fulfil. This is called discipline. Now jam poetry or rap poetry or whatever you wish to call this traditionally has less discipline. If this style is to be good you must use some. Now if you were to write a poem about the criticism of goad then certain things would not naturally come up, castration for instance. The good poet would therefore look for a more suitable word. There is no use of metaphor in this poem. Now there is no law to say you need to use metaphor, but metaphor at least conveys reflection of an idea and an attempt to represent that idea in an interesting way. I would take issue with your point about Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare did to a certain extent break the rules, what he did not do was make the same mistakes that every other uneducated hack poet made in his day. Bad poets have forever made the same mistakes such as vagueness, forced rhyme and incoherence. If you make these mistakes they are not suddenly going to become revolutionary just because they are not found in published poetry. The question of punctuation and grammar is important. There is an argument that a bad critic will focus on poor grammar and use that to make conclusions about the poet and poetry as a whole. This is analgous to a poet using the metaphor of a rose to infer that all pretty things have thorns. It is unwarranted. However poor grammar and punctuation can contribute to the poet being unable to get his message across. To attack grammar for grammar's sake therefore is entirely valid. There is no advantage to a poet writing poor grammar and therefore any rectification of it is a good thing.
Re: ab*defg by Goad	19-Apr-05/3:17 PM
fu*king bit*h why the fu*k am i not allowed to use the letter 'c'.
Re: a comment on Reincarnation by Dovina	19-Apr-05/3:10 PM
It is so pleasing that in this climate of hypersensitivity the catholic church can overlook Cardinal Roland Ratzinger's rather unpleasant nazi connections and install such a fine candidate.
Re: a comment on f*ckyouoldmenandyourrules by Damien_	19-Apr-05/3:02 PM
I used to think that but then I realised I was thinking about 'Stan' and 'my name is' and all his other lyrics were utterly thick.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	17-Apr-05/10:54 AM
and what of mock indignation? Is your mock indignation trivial in comparison to that which has gone before or can you rightly be termed a mock indignator.
Re: Birmingham gardens by INTRANSIT	17-Apr-05/10:45 AM
Exchange rate doesn't work. The 'exchange rate' exists and is altering rather than coming on the scene (I wait for the exchange rate). The light rewards fishes because they are bright rather than because they cause no harm. Other than that good. Nice to see a block of text.
Re: a comment on Utensils of creation by Damien	14-Apr-05/2:41 PM
I bet if you could construct a sentence that made sense your insults would be ace?!
Re: science by whispern_smoke_wisp	13-Apr-05/3:24 AM
The dogs don't love humans can be taken two ways: (i) That dogs are only in it for the reward and any attachment is to the reward and not the person and (ii) That dogs unlike humans have no consciousness and therefore do not 'love' or 'like' or 'be'. There is also the old Bernie Skinner adage that the question is not do animals think but do we. Is what humans call love qualitatively different from simple behaviourism of animals. Anyway whichever view you take, it is important I believe that you make the poem 'slant'.
Re: Potential by Christof	13-Apr-05/3:22 AM
It was ace before, this I think is a step backwards. Words like slackened (the drawing of an arrow is not a process of slackening anyway) and loosed are too imprecise.
Re: a comment on science by whispern_smoke_wisp	13-Apr-05/3:11 AM
you would shake your head at something you agree to be terrible.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	13-Apr-05/3:03 AM
Are you suggesting that white people should let themselves be subjugated in the interests of fairness. Frankly I am not really up for that.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	7-Apr-05/10:18 AM
and you are going to have a terrible life if you believe when people argue with you it is because they hate you :(
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	7-Apr-05/8:48 AM
I suggest you are thinking of someone else.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	6-Apr-05/2:22 PM
I have defined closed mindedness in several ways. And therein, Dovina, lies the problem.
Re: Cold Feet by gregsamsa222	3-Apr-05/3:48 PM
It is not richly poetic and there are not many lines that turn me on, but it does skip along rather nicely. I do like the bit about astronomy and the repetition (not as the final line though). The narrators asides like 'there's nothing wrong with that' are cool. Not sure about the end though. To say that business makes men gods and purpose well-defined underestimates the subtleties of mans place in the world. In a word it is a little bit trite.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	1-Apr-05/1:35 PM
To dirty hippy, some time when I was still young :(
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	1-Apr-05/1:34 PM
If arguing that which you hold to be true as wrong is the same as arguing the conviction of open-mindedness and you accept that arguing that which you know to be true as false is required or else one is closed-minded then arguing the truth about open-mindedness is itself closed-minded.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	1-Apr-05/1:27 PM
This can be attacked from two positions. (i) you can not hold truth with no conviction to identify it (ii) you can not judge the falsity of a statement without first accepting valid criteria to judge it by.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	1-Apr-05/1:22 PM
To recap. This all started when you claimed any belief as to the workings of the world is not open-minded and inhibits the *-ingestion-* of truth.
Re: a comment on No Worries by Dovina	1-Apr-05/1:17 PM
only thickies don't understand irony.