Re: a comment on Dear Lord, by INTRANSIT	26-Aug-05/5:16 AM
I think the rhythm's fine as is. If anything, you need a syllable before "unto" in the line before, but I wouldn't even work too hard on that. Modernish, this way.
Re: Wrapping a Gift by Dovina	26-Aug-05/5:12 AM
I happen to be listening right now to a song with one of the sexiest lines I know: - So go outside in the desert heat, get your dress all wet and send it to me. My suggestion: White cotton panties and nothing else.
Re: a comment on Wrapping a Gift by Dovina	26-Aug-05/5:10 AM
A matter of T & A, rather.
Re: a comment on The Stone Man by Bethy	26-Aug-05/5:07 AM
Oh my, you're young.
Re: a comment on With You at an Ancient Temple by Sasha	26-Aug-05/5:07 AM
Weak answer: I dunno, just kind of strike me as stylized. You'll have to give me a day or so for the not-weak answer. As far as accents, I look to Frost, whose more-or-less straight-up rhythmical verse is full of extra and dropped syllables (cf. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.) I've never had trouble reading Frost's intended rhythm, and I wouldn't stumble on "blessed blashphemy" in a pentameter poem. At best, the grave's unnecessary for modern readers, I think.
Re: a comment on How Angels Sleep by Dovina	26-Aug-05/5:00 AM
Oh. I thought you were talking about angels, not people dressed as angels. My bad.
Re: a comment on Leaving the Woods House by zodiac	26-Aug-05/4:59 AM
Have you read some of the comments on poemranker lately? Nothing, I'd say, is too simpleminded to be believable. That said, since posting the poem, I'm kind of taken with the idea of something being a discrete thing every instant of its existence (ergo you have no emotional connection to the thing it is this instant now, now, now, only a series of emotional connections to the different things it was in previous instants.) Call me simpleminded, but my wife just went back to live in America for my last year of Peace Corps service, so it kind of helps to think so. Incidentally, I read my idea the same as your "one moment ends and another begins" reading. What am I missing?
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	26-Aug-05/4:53 AM
Yeah, actually I understand that, but it's kind of self-serving, isn't it? I mean, in order to make God exist then, you've got to make infinite potential exist, but that's just as hard to invent as God is, and it's just as arbitrary, just as much an act of imagination, an invention. For example, with the amount of mental effort it takes for you to believe in the existence of infinite potential, I can: - believe in the non-existence of infinite potential, - believe in the non-existence of nothingness, - believe that the existence of infinite potential means an infinite potential that God DOESN'T exist, - make a cheese sandwich. They're all just as easy, see? As far as nothingness on an infinite scale existing in a realm of infinite possibility, I disagree. Imagine for a moment there are only two possibilities concerning my existence (I know that's impossible, but imagine for a moment): 1) Either nothingness can exist on an infinite scale, or it can't. 2) Either I'm wearing pants right now, or I'm not. As far as the hypothetical reality above goes, is there an infinite possibility? No, there are only two possibilities. Can nothingness exist on an infinte scale? Yes. To make infinite nothingness exist, you only need one potential thing: the potential for infinite nothingness. See what I mean? If you don't, we need to get -=Dark_Angel=-,P.I. back from vacation in Leeds to tear us both to pieces on this. On a side note, some ancient thinker (Augustine?) said that since human consciousness can't fathom the concept of infinity, he can't have invented it by himself, therefore: God. This is kind of balls. Anyone will tell you infinity is just the highest number you can think of plus one, a concept which even the dullest among us can fathom.
Re: a comment on No More Autumn Poems (Edit) by Sasha	26-Aug-05/4:29 AM
The point I was trying to make is, as far as modern poetry is concerned it is musical. That is, all good modern poetry has a concern with musicality, even if it isn't driven by music. Hardly any of it's in iambic pentameter or end-rhymed, but you can bet most good modern poets are reading their poems over and over and editing for flow, euphony, etc. I spent a very, very long time writing poems in strict rhythm, high formal wording, and exact rhyme trying to get music (actually, the first poems I posted here are the first I ever wrote without precise rhythm, and that was after like eight years of writing.) I think a STRENGTH of modern poetry is that it goes for more subtle music than olden-type poems do. Yeah, it's so subtle you don't see it sometimes, but I think it's there. And if it weren't, you'd notice. Like in most poemranker poems.
Re: Silence by crooked_smile	24-Aug-05/5:14 AM
Sometimes talking is overrated
Re: The Big Stupid Dink :) :) by Bethy	24-Aug-05/5:13 AM
Drop the comma after week and it's the best first verse I've seen lately. Stanza 3's good too. The rest could use work. Here are some directions to take it: 1) What can a poem this long talk about besides the guy was a jerk, at least the kids have great me? Possibilities: the real emotion of a guy leaving, even if he wasn't that great; the empty side of the bed; small bits of human contact. 2) I'd like to have the following commandment for all poetry engraved: Thou shalt not sound reproachless. Thou shalt at least leave some tension surrounding whether the narrator's really a great guy (or girl) or not. Also whether or not the narrator's really on the right track or not. Thou shalt at least leave some room for doubt, lest lightning striketh your unhumble head. Like in the one I just posted: The guy's got some sensitivity problems, leaving his house and fucking women like that. And he might not even be so right about things. Maybe he is, but there's a give-and-take, see what I mean? -9 for the first and third stanzas-
Re: Letter from Palermo by Caducus	24-Aug-05/5:03 AM
Rivers of cataracts is kind of funny, since in the most obvious sense of the word it's practically the same thing. Yes, I know about the less-obvious sense of the word. Not worth the cuteness, says I. But then, I did just post one where the ears she boxes are rabbit-ears, so who am I to talk? Would you consider dropping the air-quotes around comfortable? I think the irony is obvious enough without. Then adding a period and dropping "as" from the next line. Yes, I've a personal thing with "as", and it seems to me like if you're telling a story, like you are, then it's kind of understood that things are happening at the same or almost-same time. That's about it. This is one of the best of yours I've read.
Re: With You at an Ancient Temple by Sasha	24-Aug-05/4:58 AM
Hey, you pulled off the slang! Great! But... some archaicky and/or highfalutin talk: "graced", "lent", "rival ivies", "unchanging", "pallid jealousy", "masked behind bold gossip", "blessed blasphemy" (minus extra for the unnecessary diacritic.) It's not that I have a problem with highfalutin as such. Lord knows I highfalute as much as anyone. But it's just so... STYLIZED, you know? I mean, what does it mean for a thing to grace you with something? Or who thinks statues are really unchanging anymore? Nothing and nobody, except in the kinda-removed language of old poesie. I doubt even Pope ever felt really GRACED by something in his long damp life. It's just what you say something does when you need to make it do something in a poem. Or it's like trying to write folksy/bluegrass music (which I do a lot). At some point you're not originating, you're just writing what bluegrass is supposed to sound like - the forms. Not art but a museum piece, ya know? -10-
Re: a comment on Pity Her by Dovina	24-Aug-05/3:51 AM
Ha ha. Not EVEN in the least. Pity me, I spend 23 hours a day speaking the most stupid imaginable language. For example, this poem in street Arabic would go something like: Thinking a lot, she remembers it a lot, the notion of lot-itude past the possibility you are together, then you think, and at the end, you say. You move by funny thought that something so nice will disappoint you a lot, she pours one more glass, moves the gun, and . . .
Re: a comment on Leaving the Woods House by zodiac	24-Aug-05/3:45 AM
I'll consider your suggestions. Except that the sex be tender. I don't think it's a very tender poem at all. I'm wondering, did the pocket-philosophy (each moment a thing is new and discrete from the thing it was a moment before, so you can leave anything,) come across? Not that I believe it, I just thought it was an interesting thing for my narrator to say.
Re: a comment on How Angels Sleep by Dovina	24-Aug-05/3:41 AM
Not to drag this on any further, but I think that, as a general rule, an image you've carried through a poem shouldn't suddenly become a metaphor at the end without you expecting people to carry the metaphor back through the poem. And, for the last time saying this, I don't think it works suddenly having one angel/man be different from the others. Oh well, maybe sometime I'll get around to writing it the way I would write it instead of telling you how to do it. I don't know why I brought the Bible in. I guess I thought that's where angels live.
Re: a comment on Leaving the Woods House by zodiac	24-Aug-05/3:38 AM
Really? I just kind of figured tenterhooks are what people who are on tenterhooks are hung on. Looking it up, I find a tenterhook is "A hooked nail for securing cloth on a tenter." I don't know what that means.
Re: a comment on The Servant and The Messenger by ALChemy	24-Aug-05/3:30 AM
An atheist is one who professes without proof that there is no God. Of course I'm not really an atheist, as Dovina should know if she weren't so worried that I'm trying to pants her. I'd say belief/faith is "thinking something is true despite proof to the contrary." In my sense of the word, thinking that the Big Bang happened or gravity will cause my pants to fall down if I leave them unbuckled is not belief/faith. God IS beliefaith. Of course, this is all rot because God-believers will say they see proof of God in a sunset or a newborn baby's smile. But then, believers say a lot of other slightly silly things like, um, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" or "untennable". The reason I'm rambling on about this is, well, sorry, but I don't understand a lot of the rest of your comment. Sure if you have infinite potential you can make God exist, but what makes infinite potential exist? In at least 3 out of 10 people, a combination of silliness and laziness, I'd say.
Re: Pity Her by Dovina	22-Aug-05/11:53 PM
Not in the least.
Re: Dear Lord, by INTRANSIT	22-Aug-05/11:52 PM
This is good. Drop the "thee".