Re: thinking while sawin' a few logs by Freethinker1602	4-Feb-04/5:04 AM
Wasn't your nickname nothingtoanyone yesterday?
regarding some deleted poem...	4-Feb-04/11:37 AM
Bravo.
Re: Homeland Security by Lenore	4-Feb-04/11:42 AM
I'm actually with rockmage. It's pretty well-written, barring some of those punctuational things which your higher state of evolution makes you immune to. But it doesn't inspire fear. George Bush inspires fear in me. The headlong crusading of America and Britain inspires fear. This poem could. I think (gasp) it's too intellectual. And are you ending on the note that there actually IS a coming danger? Of course there isn't! On second thought, this is the kind of cadgy line-toeing that makes a famous poem. No matter what side you come from, you'll think this poem says (but not particularly well) what you think. Bravo and an 8.
regarding some deleted poem...	4-Feb-04/2:07 PM
How do you mean 'scat'? Are we scatalogical? Do we jazz-scat?
regarding some deleted poem...	4-Feb-04/6:14 PM
I want to repeat my earlier suggestion that pop songs be written to anagrammatically spell terrible and corrupting things, possibly with the first letters in each line. Oh, and there's a great post about a Hollywood meditational-CD assistant producer at this page: (poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=85208). I hope you enjoy it.
Re: Castaway by andrewjthomas	4-Feb-04/7:32 PM
"for water's search of nooks" - neither 'for' nor 'of' seems right. "her currents steer / your bow to break" - also weird. Very clever. Reminds me of good metaphysical stuff, some Herbert or Donne. They didn't bother naming their structures. Never really used the same one twice.
Re: Soft Beak; Hard lotion by Bachus	4-Feb-04/7:58 PM
Tres evil. What happened to Biff-chin?
Re: The Weight of Words and the Meaning in the Wind by somemorepoetry	5-Feb-04/4:54 AM
My girl died of causes venereal, / (Well, let's say the disease wasn't aerial!) / If you don't mind infection, / I've let out her rectum / To pay for a good Christian burial. /
Re: Notes toward a possible poem by Nicholas Jones	5-Feb-04/4:56 AM
man my girlfriends like such a big ho / so i killed her (feel bad for it, though!) / yeah it banged up her flesh, / but the body's still fresh - / if you're tempted, do give 'er a go! /
Re: Blue Fuckin' Moon by lastobelus	5-Feb-04/9:39 AM
I'm glad you sent me to this one. I remember seeing it a while ago and being tickled. You've got that ee cummings knack for random assocation (even between weird adjectives and their nouns) in your early posts that I can't approximate. I get the sense it was beaten out of you by months of Rancoring, but I wish you had kept some of it, even if hidden, and it should be a little more hidden. Still, that quality is poetic (ie, what's going on OUT THERE) and a bag of chips. An image like "god-red little footsies" would be welcome in a more structured poem. That's the kind of association that's pulp-making. The start, too, with "Then" is very strong. The change to 'we' in the second, um, sentence is off-putting, along with 'go go go amber glint' which I can't make refer to anything satisfying for me. "TV commercial Faulkner doom"? I hope you know now to use concepts like that in a meaningful and more-or-less grammatically correct way. And then it devolves into similar stream-of-consciousness Joycean crap for a while. I've known one person who liked to read Joyce and I suspect she was lying. Then it comes back. After 'ok, laugh' I'm with you again. In manuscript I see the s-of-c lines broken up a little more and italicized. You could pull them off that way. Maybe it should all be broken up more. At least into stanzas. I'm big on stanzas. Crystalline has 2 ls, then 1. Then it just needs to say about 3 more things than it does. At least, to be pulpwood-style. I'm fine with things that just paint a scene, like this. But the good ones that seem to do that, when you break them open, you find more inside. There's some of that here but a little short of enough. Is that it? Very Beat and cummings, which is its downfall. Hide that a little better and you're ace.
Re: Duck - an ode by zodiac	5-Feb-04/10:50 AM
Yeah, I posted over another poem again. This one has rhyme too. They all do.
Re: La Belle Epoque by andrewjthomas	5-Feb-04/11:21 AM
"I thought about my the rapist." Is there a word missing here? "in this flying hunk of steel." - ehhh... "And still the Rezidence" - I'd drop the 'And'. "the futility of you." - there's a better, more original word that 'you'. "feeling like a stranger in a strange land" - don't say that. Say it originally. "gotten off my ass" - ehhh... "unspoken streets" - more like unspeaking (to Americans anyway) "walked near your job" - are you trying to avoid saying that it was a Starbucks? That's usually the case with that phrasing. Make something up better than job. All good confessional poets do. "And finally the awkward moment of nudity" - that's an awkward moment of transition. "buffoon" - ehhh... "anal" - ditto... Whew! The crazy thing is that I had almost exactly the same experience in France and Germany once, except that it ended so much worse. You have no idea. The thing you did with the first part works in some places but mostly not in others. I don't know if you were trying to follow my suggestion, but I would have been happier I think leaving the lines whole and just breaking them into stanzas, like: I think of you as I would any self-made image: (break) I was sitting there in the international terminal, waiting for my flight to Munich, anticipating our rendezvous, and watching Annie Hall. (break) I seem to have established a fondness for Woody Allen, but I'm thinking I'm too young to appreciate him. (and so on. keep the stanza breaks you have and number or mark them somehow.) The end is really dense-looking still. Is it that you just haven't redone the last half yet? It looks scary. Poetry readers like to see more white on a page than black, I've learned. Anyway, I'm witholding my vote for another revise.
Re: Gardener by lastobelus	5-Feb-04/2:34 PM
You HAVE been reading Heaney! This is good. I don't mean it's good because it's Heaney or vice versa. It stands by itself, carries off the influence well, and has some memorable images. My one quibble: I would add something to "the sky touches the brim of my hat" to make the diction a little alien or arresting, so people don't gloss over it, which is what I see happening. As cheesy as it sounds, if you said something like "the sky touches on the brim of my hat" or perhaps even 'to', I think it would work. If you wonder about the 9, it's cause I don't think there's the density of idea and imagery here that you have in some of your others. That's a quibble and a personal thing, but as Shuushin would say, at least I didn't give you a zero.
regarding some deleted poem...	5-Feb-04/4:13 PM
This poem is the evil that is America. Trite. Sentiment. Wrong. And yes, bum. I will give you 20 L sterling and a good shilling (ie, $32.50 or euros and shilling is a verb,) to not make your next post here in AABB rhyme.
regarding some deleted poem...	5-Feb-04/4:16 PM
Jesus loves me, this I ken / but Crystal loves agnostic men.
Re: Let's Let the Flies In, Thomas by NanceXToo	5-Feb-04/6:53 PM
For the line, "Well, it's the Tannenbaum's lawn now", I'd suggest getting rid of 'well' and 'it's' and the parenthesis, which make it chatty in a way that bugs me here. In fact, that whole stanza is unnecessary. It adds nothing, but allows a couple of cheap lines to creep in (see lastobelus's note). The next stanza too, could be pared down, the lines shortened and tightened up. You could characterize Jackie in one short line (I see clacking bracelets somehow) and that would help a lot. I know you're trying to keep a breezy chatty style, and I know why. But I think it hurts. The language could be familiar and still poetic. The last stanza powerhouse. It's too strong to come after the rest. You should let it (and st.1) set the tone and voice for the middle. That's about all I can think of. And yes, I got your email.
regarding some deleted poem...	5-Feb-04/9:03 PM
If this continued about 16 lines past where it currently ends, it would probably be at the beginning of being a poem.
regarding some deleted poem...	6-Feb-04/7:19 AM
Haikus are easy to write and hard to judge. Are you a canny politician or just a bad writer? That said, the Chinatown grammar kind of pleases me, though I would change the title (since "Remembering _Girl's name_" is never going to go off well anywhere,) and then write about 20 more lines of this.
Re: rather not high jump every 20 minutes, well maybe o.k. by A. Nomaly	6-Feb-04/7:22 AM
Were you interrupted while writing this (prhaps by one of the eponymous high-jumps)? What you have is rather good in a fitter-happier sort of way, but it breaks off really, really abruptly and unsatisfyingly. So we dont necessarily read poetry to be satisfied, you say. Buncombe, I say. -8-
Re: Go Figure by MacFrantic	6-Feb-04/9:19 AM
You Shouldn't Oughtn't Mightn't Try Because you Can't. So don't. Cant. -0-