on The follies befalling an unfledged street poet. by SupremeDreamer
8 May 2004, 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-
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-
replying on California triolets by zodiac
8 May 2004, 3:50 AM
Yes.
on sunrise at kofa by unknown^user
8 May 2004, 3:43 AM
"if the hills sing and the valleys mourn" seems to me to have no meaning whatsoever. What do you think?
replying on The Influence of Anxiety by Nicholas Jones
7 May 2004, 4:35 PM
No, I'm afraid the actual "poem" was:
Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)
[rougly centered]
"Jacobs was explicated as a reference to Jacob's ladder, traditionally allegorized as a figure for the Christian ascent to heaven. In this poem, however, or so my students told me, the means of ascent is not a ladder but a tree, a rose or rosenbaum. This was seen as an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary, who was often characterized as a rose without thorns, itself an emblem of the Immaculate Conception." - Is There a Text in This Class, Fish, 1980
Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)
[rougly centered]
"Jacobs was explicated as a reference to Jacob's ladder, traditionally allegorized as a figure for the Christian ascent to heaven. In this poem, however, or so my students told me, the means of ascent is not a ladder but a tree, a rose or rosenbaum. This was seen as an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary, who was often characterized as a rose without thorns, itself an emblem of the Immaculate Conception." - Is There a Text in This Class, Fish, 1980
replying on The Influence of Anxiety by Nicholas Jones
7 May 2004, 2:19 PM
In 1971, SUNY-Buffalo professor Stanley Fish performed an experiment on his poetry class where he left a list of 5 authors on his blackboard from another class and told them it was a religious poem. The poetry students critiqued it surprisingly well, considering it was RANDOM and UTTERLY MEANINGLESS. He wrote about the incident, "My students did not proceed from the noting of distinguishing features to the recognition that they were confronted by a poem: rather, it was the act of recognition that came first - they knew in advance that they were dealing with a poem - and the distinguishing features then followed" (326).
Fish claims to have performed this same experiment thousands of times on lecture audiences with the same result, even though he is now hideously famous for it.
Fish claims to have performed this same experiment thousands of times on lecture audiences with the same result, even though he is now hideously famous for it.
replying on California triolets by zodiac
7 May 2004, 8:20 AM
You should have seen the version where she was reading Henry Miller. Talk about morally bankrupt; I nearly exhausted my prostrate in the writing of it.
replying on California triolets by zodiac
7 May 2004, 7:03 AM
Are you being ironical?
replying on deviant conveniences by J.B. Manning
6 May 2004, 11:44 AM
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo
Weren't you even listening in the Clubhouse?! You nod your head with some serious expression on your face so I think you're paying attention, but you're really humming "witchy woman" endlessly in your head while idly wondering if other people's earwax tastes the same as yours (it does). Then I find out you haven't heard a word I've said. Jesus, this unending guff-trap is never going to be over this way.
Weren't you even listening in the Clubhouse?! You nod your head with some serious expression on your face so I think you're paying attention, but you're really humming "witchy woman" endlessly in your head while idly wondering if other people's earwax tastes the same as yours (it does). Then I find out you haven't heard a word I've said. Jesus, this unending guff-trap is never going to be over this way.
replying on Beard my Homemade Negro Jesus (Improved! With AIDS!) by Everyone
6 May 2004, 4:47 AM
It has now.
replying on Everglades parkway by INTRANSIT
5 May 2004, 7:09 PM
You need something more Florida-specific; it doesn't necessarily have to be where you were. "Volusia" is that empty stretch south of Daytona. Or "Lakeland" on I-4. Or "Oceola" on 192 between Melbourne and Orlando.
If you asked me, I'd say "Everglades Parkway," whether it happened there or not.
If you asked me, I'd say "Everglades Parkway," whether it happened there or not.
replying on Lorca's Terrible Presence (Edit) by Sasha
5 May 2004, 5:53 PM
You still need commas or periods at the end of each line.
replying on Everglades parkway by INTRANSIT
5 May 2004, 5:11 PM
My serious cheat suggestion: Just give it the name of a small Florida-sounding town or county just off the interstate -"Ocalacala" or something, but not made-up.
on Lorca's Terrible Presence (Edit) by Sasha
5 May 2004, 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.
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.
replying on deviant conveniences by J.B. Manning
5 May 2004, 9:04 AM
Read further in your Derrida. There is no physical to speak of, only language, so worrying about "the physical" makes no damn sense. You might as well just call language-constructs the physical and go on from there, which will at least get you through your seventy-odd years on Earth. Saying "there is some 'real' physical which can't be matched to anyone's language-physical" is a crap way to go about things. My language says there's a thing called "gravity" which causes objects to "fall" towards an object of greater "mass". However artificial and arbitrary that is, it at least gives me some idea which direction I'll go if I take a running leap off a cliff.
replying on American Idle by wilco
5 May 2004, 8:39 AM
Oh I am!
replying on American Idle by wilco
5 May 2004, 8:39 AM
The Eagles song goes like this:
I like the cheatin' kind of women,
Which all women are, and terminally numb;
She's going to her sorry-ass man's for some sinnin'
While I sit at home, 'cause I'm dumb.
The Tool song goes like this:
Forsaken's "poetry" times infinity.
I like the cheatin' kind of women,
Which all women are, and terminally numb;
She's going to her sorry-ass man's for some sinnin'
While I sit at home, 'cause I'm dumb.
The Tool song goes like this:
Forsaken's "poetry" times infinity.
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.