Re: a comment on The Incubation by oneglove	7-Dec-05/12:46 AM
The second, I believe. The real point is that people who whine about things whine about American culture becoming a hodgepodge of unoriginal sound bites, used poorly. I don't whine myself, but I think they have good some good points occasionally.
Re: a comment on Irish Holliday by Dovina	7-Dec-05/12:43 AM
They are happy, but whatever.
Re: a comment on Jesus, you I see by amanda_dcosta	7-Dec-05/12:42 AM
Just what I read in college. It's where St Francis Xavier is buried, right? How did you end up there?
Re: a comment on FIVE LOAVES AND TWO FISH by amanda_dcosta	7-Dec-05/12:38 AM
Religiously and metaphorically, yes. But, from a literary standpoint, a metaphor needs to work in the literal sense before you can worry about making it work in the metaphorical sense. Consider comparisons like "He was intolerably stupid, Alex Trebek with a better moustache", or "his hands so tenderly caressing the piano keys were miniature David Beckhams sprinting across the cricket pitch". Sure, the guy's stupid, and sure someone playing well is like David Beckham, but the metaphors fall apart, because Alex Trebek isn't stupid and has a great moustache, or because David Beckham is a good soccer player, not a good cricketer. I'm not disputing your actual meaning, which is a good one. But if you have to get a Christian message across by changing the literal events in the Bible -well, that can't happen, can it? Cheers -zodiac
Re: a comment on YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/6:05 AM
PS-Are you still in Mexico? Do you know the carved church at Tonantzintla, near Cholula, Puebla? http://tinyurl.com/aunyl http://tinyurl.com/8k3g6
Re: a comment on YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/5:54 AM
Several parts of your poem remind me of the time I tried to do this: http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=97027
Re: a comment on YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/5:44 AM
We're used to things being messy. I blame nentwined's fixed-width font fixation for most of poemranker's intrinsic messiness. Yours was the third all-caps title I'd read in as many poems; that's why I asked.
Re: a comment on YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/5:42 AM
Nothing. We're easily distracted. Does it bother you that the form you're taking seriously was invented as a mockery of serious form? I mean, I don't see why it would, I'm just curious. I think you're a better writer than Billy Collins, by the way.
Re: a comment on Jesus, you I see by amanda_dcosta	6-Dec-05/2:29 AM
Poor girl. You're gonna scare her to death. I can promise you they don't have people like you in Goa.
Re: YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/2:06 AM
What's up with all these capitalized titles?
Re: a comment on Thespian by BrandonW	6-Dec-05/2:05 AM
Yeah, okay. Now drop the periods in the first lines of stanzas 3 and 4, the commas in the second lines of stanzas 2 and 3, and rewrite all of this so it's as good as stanza 4.
Re: The Incubation by oneglove	6-Dec-05/2:01 AM
http://tinyurl.com/99u6v
Re: Irish Holliday by Dovina	6-Dec-05/1:46 AM
Sad.
Re: Irish Holliday by Dovina	6-Dec-05/1:45 AM
Bad.
Re: a comment on Snake in the Grass by thepinkbunnyofdoom	6-Dec-05/1:44 AM
By way of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville". This is simply awful. Between this and Dovina's Hollidday poem, I'm wondering if there's any America left to come home to.
Re: Irish Holliday by Dovina	6-Dec-05/1:42 AM
Holiday. One L.
Re: a comment on YOUR OWN PLEASURE by Zoe	6-Dec-05/1:40 AM
Paradelle? 'Billy Collins claimed that the paradelle was invented in eleventh century France, but he actually invented it himself to parody strict forms, particularly the villanelle. His sample paradelle, "Paradelle for Susan" (c1997), was intentionally terrible, completing the final stanza with the line "Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it was with to to". When Collins first published the paradelle, it was with the footnote "The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words."'
Re: FIVE LOAVES AND TWO FISH by amanda_dcosta	6-Dec-05/1:36 AM
I had a problem with the first stanza, either because 1. it wasn't really desert then, 2. people are used to desert here (the place where this happened is about two hills over from where I'm sitting now), 3. although metaphorically it's cool, there's no biblical basis for them following him into the desert to the "extreme point of hunger", and/or 4. they're used to pretty extreme hunger. Odds are they were a couple hours walk from the next town (ie, no biggie in Middle Eastern terms) and didn't want to go back for food and miss the preacher. They surely knew they'd be back in their own houses by that night. That said, "The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths. It was significant that this wrack of fallen religions lay about the meeting of the desert and the sown. It pointed to the generation of all these creeds. They were assertions, not arguments; so they required a prophet to set them forth. The Arabs said there had been forty thousand prophets: we had record of at least some hundreds. None of them had been of the wilderness but their lives were after a pattern. Their birth set them in crowded places. An unintelligible passionate yearning drove them out into the desert. There they lived a greater or lesser time in meditation and physical abandonment; and thence they returned with their imagined message articulate, to preach it to their old, and now doubting, associates." - T.E. Lawrence
Re: The Bus by Dovina	5-Dec-05/3:53 AM
I can't believe you sevened my Christmas poem, which, incidentally, beats the pants off yours. Is it because I sevened this? Fie!
Re: a comment on Duff firs, Nawal by zodiac	5-Dec-05/3:50 AM
Of grammar, sound, meaning in Arabic, and meaning in English, something had to give. Turns out they all did a little. I notice no one's asking what, to me, is the crucial question: "How correct is this?" (The answer: "about 92%, and the chorus is a total coup.")