Re: a comment on The Forgetting by Dovina	5-Jan-06/11:00 AM
I don't want to argue about it; it's just that I find that impossible to believe. Look, I can practically write your poem from article quotes: "The Forgetting" "you stoop to smell a rose," "the same rose" "that you've been stooping to smell" "all morning" ... "delicious in oblivion" "eternal, pastless Now" No, "he tasted everything new" isn't in the article. But it's not grammatical either. Take credit for it if you like. Look, I'm really, really, REALLY not looking to give you a hard time. The only reason I know about the article is that I was looking up a poem I remembered with the narrator stooping to smell a rose (Edmund Waller, maybe?) to congratulate you on referencing it. Let's let the readers decide for themselves. I'd personally like to believe you read New Yorker, The Guardian, or obscure neurology texts.
Re: a comment on The Forgetting by Dovina	5-Jan-06/10:00 AM
ZODIAC: ***PLAGIARY ALERT*** Dovina: Not so. I changed pastless to pasteless. It's an allusion. ZODIAC: The title, central image, and 95% of the words aren't yours. DOVINA: I'm an illusion. ZODIAC: I don't have time for this. You've been warned. Again.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	5-Jan-06/9:52 AM
Agreed. I just moved to Alaska, a 12-hour flight at the end of a two-day party. I'm in no mood to continue this.
Re: This Is Me by PoeticXTC	5-Jan-06/9:48 AM
I'd like to try a different approach. The problem is not your poetry; it's that you're not very good-looking.
Re: a comment on You Have It Backwards by LilMsLadyPoet	5-Jan-06/9:47 AM
Q: What can we do to bring about world peace? MOTHER TERESA: Go home and love your family.
Re: a comment on Nightfall by Niphredil	5-Jan-06/9:44 AM
The most famous use of "darkling" is the line "we are here as on a darkling plain", in Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. If darkling really only meant "in the dark", you should be able to substitute "in the dark" for darkling in Arnold's poem... We are here as on a in the dark plain. CONCLUSIONS: darkling also means "darkish; in the process of darkening".
Re: a comment on Construction Lot (edit) by zodiac	5-Jan-06/9:38 AM
Yes, I meant that they're building, not that something's already built. I'll work on that. Maybe just saying "they build in this" instead of "they've built"?
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	5-Jan-06/9:33 AM
Most nonlogicians think they know more than they know. So, logically, you're left withL What's it better to be, a logician who thinks he knows more than he knows or a nonlogician who thinks he knows more than he knows? Thinking you know more ceases to be a factor, except for dissing people.
Re: The Forgetting by Dovina	5-Jan-06/9:26 AM
David Shenk, who is comfortably under fifty, makes the case in "The Forgetting" that a cure for senile dementia might not be an unmitigated blessing. He notes, for example, that one striking peculiarity of the disease is that its sufferers often suffer less and less as it progresses. Caring for an Alzheimer's patient is gruellingly repetitious precisely because the patient himself has lost the cerebral equipment to experience anything as a repetition. Shenk quotes patients who speak of "something delicious in oblivion" and who report an enhancement of their sensory pleasures as they come to dwell in an eternal, pastless Now. If your short-term memory is shot, you don't remember, as you stoop to smell a rose, that you've been stooping to smell the same rose all morning. http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/010910fa_FACT1
Re: a comment on Construction Lot (edit) by zodiac	3-Jan-06/3:46 PM
I really meant because language, law and possibly religion are originally human inventions. If you start thinking they pre-exist us or have reality outside of our use of them, all kinds of evil ensue. I love my life. Nobody ever accuses me of wretchedness except internet users. I have no idea why.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	3-Jan-06/3:38 PM
Yeah, I guess so.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	3-Jan-06/3:38 PM
No. The rule I gave takes time into consideration. I think you misread it. The trick was "calculable rate" - specifically 9.8 meters/second^2 at sea level at a certain temperature. The speed doesn't stay the same. After one second, the object's falling 9.8 m/s; after 2 seconds, the object's falling 19.6 m/s, and so forth. After one half-second, it's falling at a speed proportional to 9.8m/s^2. The quantum level is a trump card and straw man. Nobody knows for sure what happens at the quantum level, if there is such a thing. No logician or mathematician claims to. That's why, for everyone except poets, "rules" or "laws" of physics are given as long strings of conditions (see my gravity rule above) with plenty of room for as-yet unobserved conditions. That's why we're right and poets aren't.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	3-Jan-06/3:19 PM
My answer is, You're blathering. This is insane. We have no common vocabulary with which to continue this discussion. Do you even know the difference between a logical proposition and a proof? Or between logic and proof, even? (DOVINA: A logical proposition is blah blah blah... ZODIAC: Shut up.) I could say your characterizations of fuzzy logic and illogic are ludicrous and the most made-up things I've ever read on poemranker, and you're just going to say "Hair jelly" or something equally ludicrous. Let's just stop. Now.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	2-Jan-06/9:32 PM
1) "Fuzzy logic" is a term used by, oh, fishmongers and politicians. No person who'd ever studied logic, proof, or nearly anything else would ever say "fuzzy logic", except in the most tasteless of jokes. 2) Yes, of course most people use some mix of logic and (blind) faith to get through their lives. I've not suggested otherwise. I personally don't think it's as healthy to use faith as it is to use logic, but then most people are awful at logic, so they're just as well off using faith as sullying the good name of logic. Which they do anyway. If it's any consolation to the faithful, they'll get to go to heaven and I won't. I think if you got down to it, you'd find that logic and faith aren't as often as odds as you'd expect. Actually, I believe the logical conclusion matches the faithful conclusion in almost every instance where logic applies. In a case where your dog dies and you feel his presence somewhere in the bow'lsphere or whatever, logic doesn't and can't apply. Anyone who has told you so is a bad logician, and disqualified. Ergo, I consider myself a pretty logical person; at least, I base most of my decisions on the best of my logicking abilities; and I think you'll find we agree on most matters not 100% related to faith. Here's what gets me - YOU: Nothing can totally be proven to make it complete logic nor disproved to make it a matter of complete faith. ME: Not true. For example: Under conditions such as those existing in a laboratory on Earth at the present moment, objects falling in a vacuum will accelerate toward the Earth's center at a calculable rate irrespective of their mass = true, logical, and proveable. 2. I feel bored = true, logical, unproveable. 3. God exists = possibly true, unlogical, proveable. 4. There possibly exists a Being who can do everything = true, logical, unproveable. What allows you to make such grandoise assertions as "nothing can totally be proven to make it complete logic nor disproved to make it a matter of complete faith"? YOU: Faith. ME: Okay. Well, then... Um...
Re: a comment on Construction Lot (edit) by zodiac	2-Jan-06/9:29 PM
What can I say? I like made-up compound words, rhyme, and pentameter. This is the oldest of my poems I still read. Given our recent debate, it seemed fitting. Do you see how?
Re: a comment on Construction Lot (edit) by zodiac	2-Jan-06/9:28 PM
Good suggestions. Thanks. I've been trying for about 10 years to think of a better oddball/reasonable word for "mirror". If you think of a better one, please let me know.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	2-Jan-06/9:02 PM
You're blathering. You have no idea how badly you're coming off here. Please stop now.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	2-Jan-06/8:52 PM
Because most people, myself included, are compelled to find or make some meaning for their existences. Compelled by what? TV, I'd say.
Re: We'll be right back after these messages by INTRANSIT	2-Jan-06/8:10 AM
Cute.
Re: Desperate Season by Sisterwolf	2-Jan-06/7:58 AM
Hm, I like your more modern-voiced poems a little better. But kudos for the title and Richard III reference. I'm with Dovina: the transition from winter to full summer needs more transitioning. Yes, it's jarring and juxtaposed. No, I don't think that helps the poem. Otherwise, good. I'm glad you stuck around after all.