Re: The Brigadier's Motto by wFraser Allonby Q.C.w	2-May-04/3:43 PM
"...Nor was the sixteenth-century sodomite a homosexual. In 1631, Mervyn Touchet, Earl of Castlehaven, was tried and executed for sodomy. It is clear from the proceedings that the earl was not understood by himself or anyone else to be a particular kind of sexual individual. ... The earl did not slip into his tightest doublet and waltz down to the nearest gay tavern to mingle with his fellow sodomists. He stayed in the manor house and buggered his servants. Gay self-awareness, gay pubs, the sense of group commonality, and even the term homosexual were not part of the earl's universe." - Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality
Re: Natural Remedy by richa	3-May-04/1:12 PM
Good. The first bit appeals to me most, my mother-in-law being the craziest homeopath in an area chock full of crazy homeopaths. Not being much of a gardener myself, I don't get a lot from the rest. Kind of a Seamus Heaney feel, I guess, only miniaturized - a teaspoonful of dirt turned. "Grow mature and tall" bugs me a little. I don't know if that's gardener talk or not, but it seems one of those adjectives should be replaced with a better one - doesn't matter which. Good as ever.
Re: As Catullus Said (Updated and Revised) by Sasha	3-May-04/5:24 PM
I would translate "praecipitem eiciunt" as "subjected him to anal abuses" for the rhyme.
regarding some deleted poem...	3-May-04/5:27 PM
Hey, here's some interesting news for you: she/he probably doesn't.
regarding some deleted poem...	4-May-04/11:50 AM
I liked this. But this title is ridiculous. It sounds like the title of a handsome leather-bound poetry.com "anthology". I read I'm supposed to accompany my criticisms by "offering solutions." How about "Seventy-mile-per-hour Diesel-powered Avian Super-rape"? Sorry, that's the best I can think of on short notice, and it's your fucking poem. You fix it. -9-
Re: tribute by francis nor capule	4-May-04/12:08 PM
It would probably be better if it made a bit of sense, whatever form it's in. If this poem is, as I imagine it is, about how some vaguely-defined (read 'nonexistent') INSTITUTION forces everyone to write in rhyme and prettily-formed phrases exactly like the 'Masters', and how much of a rebel you and a few other daring souls are who take poetry out for wild formless spins at night, then it's utter crap. In school (and I imagine you're thinking largely of some high-school-type setting) you're taught a bunch of stuffy carefully-metered rhyming poems and very few daring non-careful poems because you are being taught much of the best that poetry has done from its beginnings (in English at least), meaning 1200 years of rhyme and meter and pretty much only 150 years of not. And because in the lower-grades teachers are more likely to teach the rhymed and metered ones (like "My lady's eyes are nothing like the sun") because it gives them a whole lot of easy things to talk about which aren't closely related to its content, while such mostly non-rhymed, non-metered later poems as "The Waste Land" don't. If you have a problem with that, talk to your teacher, who, if he/she is anything like most American teachers, is hugely undertrained and liable to stick with what's easy. Or stick your head out a window and see what's going on everywhere else in the world, where non-rhyme non-meter has UTTERLY DOMINATED THINGS so long that many people are bored with it and looking for other things to do, such as write some kind of rhyme/meter again. Thank you.
Re: As Catullus Said (Updated and Revised) by Sasha	4-May-04/3:48 PM
Cipote, Do you do requests? I'm looking for an English translation for Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quite Pas" that goes with the melody and doesn't sound utterly gay, unlike my French.
Re: Where Have All the Punk Rockers Gone? by wilco	4-May-04/4:11 PM
"Just give me a beat that I can dance to!" -zodiac's ace band, The Brotherhood of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist
Re: American Idle by wilco	5-May-04/7:31 AM
10 for "fatigue is my color". There are so many things about this poem I'd change if it were mine; that line isn't one of them.
Re: American Idle by wilco	5-May-04/7:43 AM
Speaking of those Idol shows, Ben Folds' "Army" is a great model for anyone trying to write ace pop songs. Bjork's "Army of Me" is not.
Re: Lorca's Terrible Presence (Edit) by Sasha	5-May-04/5:07 PM
You'd do Lorca's rhythm better if you wrote something more like: I want the white water to rest with no bed I want for the wind to be left without dells You might at least go 12-syllabic. I see you've (roughly) done it later on, but the first two lines are glaringly off-beat. And the trick of expanding the english line with _____ and/or _____ at the end three stanzas in a row kind of shows. And Lorca punctuated throughout, hijo. And my one other criticism: you might consider an exciting writer for once. How's your Russian? Some recent Russian poets are totally ace.
regarding some deleted poem...	5-May-04/5:13 PM
Jesus.
Re: Epitaph by philn	7-May-04/5:23 AM
If ever a poem was in need of a good smacking, it's this one.
Re: sunrise at kofa by unknown^user	8-May-04/3:43 AM
"if the hills sing and the valleys mourn" seems to me to have no meaning whatsoever. What do you think?
Re: The follies befalling an unfledged street poet. by SupremeDreamer	8-May-04/5:20 AM
I graduate from Poetry School with my Master's in Poetry today. This is a general announcement and has nothing to do with this poem, which I find is almost unreadable and totally, unsurprisingly about SupremeDreamer. -10-
Re: Anodyne by wilco	8-May-04/4:47 PM
I find myself inclined to critique this seriously, who knows why, so here goes: 1) Drop the comma after "sway" in the first stanza. 2) Change "swiftly moving" to something else. 3) Say what color, pattern, etc. the bedcloth is, rather than simply saying it's tacky. 4) "as" in line 2 of stanza 2 should be "like" or nothing. 5) "nightstand new" is awkward; why didn't you say it in a way that made sense? 6) "it's" should be "its", and that whole clause is worded completely awfully. 7) "upward" is bad; stare at a water-stain in the shape of a beautiful woman, a light-fixture, or almost anything else. 8) The ellipses in the penultimate line are terrible. When people do that, it makes me feel like the last line is supposed to be a punchline, which is a ridiculous thing to put in a poem and a ridiculous way to set it up. I find that a comma, appositive or some interjection works a lot better to pause the poem a bit before the end; something like: but the truth, I think now, is that it just etc etc. That's awful, I know, but you get the idea. 9) I wish you'd kept up the soft rhyme from the first stanza; it was nice.
regarding some deleted poem...	8-May-04/4:53 PM
I presume you know Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It uses an infinite number of flips with the same result (heads) as a symbol for the failure of reason, since even after hundreds of flips Rosencrantz still chooses tails, imagining that the odds have to even out (they don't). That trick's one of the most ace things I've read in a long time.
regarding some deleted poem...	8-May-04/4:54 PM
Fabulous. You see, <~>? This is exactly what I was worried about. No vote.
Re: forwards by nentwined	8-May-04/4:56 PM
This should be reworked so "forwards" works as a plural noun.
Re: Anodyne by wilco	10-May-04/3:48 AM
"like a drifter bedding down for the night." He IS a drifter bedding down for the night. Nice fail!