Re: a comment on There is a journey tree by ALChemy	18-Oct-05/12:52 PM
To elaborate, you seem to be coming at things from a kind of Wordsworth-&-Coleridge Romantic position. That is, you have an image you want to show people, and the rest of the poem (to the extent there is one) is kind of a shabby prop or excuse for that. Cf, all the poems in Lyrical Ballads - "We Are Seven" is the first that comes to mind. I'd have to read the book again to think of the others. Oh, this isn't Wordsworth or STC, but "Ozymandias", too. Personally, I think that's kind of a weak way to write your poem, or to get around to your image. I'll accept that I'm more narrative-minded than is healthy, but I think this is going to leave even the straight-up imagists among us wanting. Sarcasm aside, if this were my image I'd try to add some aspects of (yes) story-telling: a character, a progression, a change. The real approach I'd take is to lighten or semiundermine the allegory imagery (sea of fire, birds actually changing feathers), to make it pretty much subjective. I.e., walking at a specific time, thinking about some specific situation in his life, guy sees tree with birds flying around, imagines the rest. Or maybe it's sunset, so as he's looking out what he sees actually looks like a sea of fire, etc. That's tough, I know. I've got tons of images thought up that I'm always trying to find ways to slip into poems. Note: I meant "You can't stand amidst it, amidst a river." I'm mistyping all over the place. I blame Arabs. Now if I could only figure out HOW...
Re: Air Guitar by Miggy	18-Oct-05/5:45 AM
And I love how it makes masturbation almost elegant. -10-
Re: Air Guitar by Miggy	18-Oct-05/5:44 AM
Oddly, your best song to date. -10-
Re: a comment on Figment by Dovina	18-Oct-05/4:34 AM
Ha. I just remembered why I still love you, after everything.
Re: a comment on I don't rhyme enough, eh? by Niphredil	17-Oct-05/12:12 PM
It's all there: Guy walks into a bar, drinks a beer, pulls a gun, grabs the girl, runs.
Re: a comment on There is a journey tree by ALChemy	17-Oct-05/12:08 PM
I appreciate your wanting to make them represent all these things, but if you don't try to make them represent AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE THINGS well, you're not doing very good poetry. Ambiguity is 99% of the time just sloppiness.
Re: a comment on There is a journey tree by ALChemy	17-Oct-05/12:05 PM
You can stand in the middle of something. You can't stand in amidst it. There is a journey tree Standing in a wide river Where a waterfall crests Into a sea of fire - is the easiest thing I can think of. Pigeons and doves are the same species. Most "doves" released at dove-releasings are really trained homing pigeons. I was just using someone else's "hypothetical". Unfortunately, it was Dovina's. You're wrong thinking hypothetical implies a "realistic" situation. Recently on poemranker we've had hypothetical worlds where, among other things - humans evolved with hairy asses, - I'm not wearing pants, and - people communicate using only lies. An image like your tree is nice for a color-by-numbers painting over the TV, the kind usually depicting lighthouses standing against the storm, or rainstorms looming over a small Alpine cottage. If you mean it to be a story, or poem, or story-poem, or poem-story, I think you need it to do something. I also think that'll be really hard to do. People who try tend to do one or more of the following things: - Be walking along full of doubt and find the tree, - Be swept along in the river and grab the tree, - Remember the tree from youth and return to find it gone, - Be Samuel T. Coleridge and zonked on Mexican brown.
Re: There is a journey tree by ALChemy	17-Oct-05/3:08 AM
I'm pretty sure it's impossible to stand amidst one thing. If you've just got to stand amidst, it'll have to be amidst parted waters or something such, and who wants to do that? Also, waterfalls should just be waterfall. Or it should have brinks. I'm confused, does the waterfalls ends in a sea of fire, or the river? At any rate, it's too many strung-together phrases: the tree that's amidst the river that's at the falls that end in fire. Split them up, make some new sentences. I don't understand how the tree relates to (and presumably helps) journeys. Apparently it STOPS people from journeys to the bottoms of the falls. Rivers in "rivers rage" should have an apostrophe, probably before the s. Some regular sentence punctuation would help to. If you're having trouble deciding where, try writing it out in paragraph format and seeing where it doesn't make sense. I thought the birds exchanging feathers was striking though. I have know idea what they mean. Responding to your and Dovina's comments, the refuge you're talking about is the hypothetical itself, so of course the tree doesn't fall.
Re: Sleep It All Away by somemorepoetry	17-Oct-05/1:48 AM
I'd try not to rhyme "glass" and "glass" in stanza 2. Other than that, kind of said-before. Some of it's a little touching, but not "Blue Bayou" touching.
Re: a comment on I don't rhyme enough, eh? by Niphredil	17-Oct-05/1:41 AM
http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Scott.Lochinvar.html
Re: Was Everyone Put On This Earth For A Reason by cabot	17-Oct-05/1:39 AM
We weren't put here, we just all happened to be here at roughly the same time.
Re: a comment on Waking at night by Niphredil	17-Oct-05/1:32 AM
Ha. The word "bland" seems too bland. Game, set, match.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	17-Oct-05/1:30 AM
Firstly, something like "I hope I can poop today, it's been so long" is not a prayer. Nor is it necessarily related to faith in some higher power. Nor is it true or even remotely supportable that "Any human being has prayed for help at least once in his life", nor is it true that the structure of every hope is essentially a prayer, "Please, let X happen". Nor is it true or proveable that an animal leaving its den doesn't think, to the extent it's capable of thinking, "I hope a hawk doesn't eat me." It is, however, probably true that faith developed as a result of hope. When life or death depended on, say, rain falling at a certain time or there not being a drought, people made up physical manifestations of their hopes of not dying, with backstories and other semiunrelated powers. All of this and all of the preceding conversation, of course, hinge on there not having been at any point in history a voice from the sky telling people to have faith. Given that this doesn't even come under discussion here unless I, the best atheist of all of you, drag it in, I proclaim us all spectacularly unqualified to discuss any of this. In addition, the inevitable next phase of this conversation, "Don't atheists really have FAITH that God DOESN'T EXIST?", should be avoided at all costs, lest we all actually do go blind from stupidity.
Re: The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	17-Oct-05/1:20 AM
Forgive me. I'll recharacterize. DOVINA: Saying that something is made by evolution gives it importance because it says that it fits a theory. Therefore it's understandable. For example, evolution, the theory designed to explain the development of faith (among other things), can explain the development of faith. ZODIAC: That's totally ridiculous. In addition, if either faith or evolution were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what they are now, the theory designed to explain them would still explain them. That wouldn't make the hypothetical nonfaith or nonevolution any more important. In addition, the real reason claiming evolution gives faith importance is by making it outside of our control, it's in our natures, like reproduction or fattiness. Why don't you respond to that? DOVINA: Blaaaaaat.
Re: a comment on Rocky Road by Dovina	17-Oct-05/1:12 AM
Don't be. You do the job as well as, to name a few, velveeta cheese, Lisa Kudrow, or poking myself repeatedly in the eye with a pen. It's not a distinguished category.
Re: a comment on Figment by Dovina	17-Oct-05/1:09 AM
Dovina's magic - CROWD: You're not levitating. You're just standing there. DOVINA: Blaaaaat.
Re: It’s getting dark by Prince of Void	15-Oct-05/5:58 AM
By "poetry of imagery", you can't possibly mean your poetry.
Re: 3312 by D P Robertson	15-Oct-05/5:57 AM
Whaddup, LA.
Re: muted muffability by calliope	15-Oct-05/5:53 AM
Everything except the semicolon is great. Nice one.
Re: monday v2 by ay deee	15-Oct-05/5:53 AM
Can't trust that day. On a related note, I just watched that movie Elephant last night. Now that's some fucked up shit.