Re: a comment on This one the love by thepinkbunnyofdoom	25-Apr-05/11:06 PM
Maybe she figured you'd already pre-voted her vote with one of your dozens of self-10s.
Re: a comment on All You Need Is Gloves by -=DIABETES=-	25-Apr-05/11:02 PM
It's going to be the saddest thing in the world if you really only remember Dave Matthews' "All you need is love, love, love" from The Christmas Song and not "All you need is love" from the Beatles song.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	25-Apr-05/11:00 PM
I can't think of a common-use situation where the phrase "go ahead" isn't a command - or at least a subtle or weak close cousin. Okay - mostly because -=Dark_Angel=-,P.I. knows better, yes I can. In a bank-teller's line, for example, you might say, "Can I go ahead of you?" But I'm sure we can agree that's nothing like the case we're talking about here. Ibid as far as "ignore me, don't hire me," etc etc goes. Dovina probably meant something closer to "you ignore me, you don't hire me," etc, but that's not what she said. What she said has no other English usage, common or not, except mandative. Does German have a mandative tense with distinct conjugations? (I figure it's probably known in German as a 14-syllable word meaning roughly, 'the way we talk to each other all the time', but that's another matter.)
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	25-Apr-05/10:50 PM
I thought of that. But then I thought it was probably your real personality. Hence my original comment: "Have you ever read Margaret Atwood's short story 'Rape Fantasies'? You should."
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	25-Apr-05/10:43 PM
I believe it is possible; it's certainly been done well hundreds of times. The trick is probably to find some new angle, like Alice Walker writing about blacks's search for post-African identity in her short story "Everyday Use", Zora Neale Hurston writing about power-struggles in isolated all-black communities in all her books, or (since I haven't named a white author yet) all the white authors of the television show "Martin". No, "maybe it's time for retribution" is not a new angle.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	25-Apr-05/10:33 PM
Oh. Maybe we should have said in the beginning that writing about any GROUP from the perspective of a GROUP is a major mistake. Of course, you've already said that you were writing about one person, and even identified the poetry-reading-disser you were thinking of. But I think we can agree all that flew out the window a long time ago. And for that matter, (and this is the last time, I swear,) why did you call the poem "Middle-Aged White Woman" instead of "Dovina"? And why all the "my kind abused your kind" stuff? Of course, it's also perfectly reasonable here to say that any person writing about any person, from his own group or another, can be read as writing about the group as a whole. That's why you have to be very careful.
Re: a comment on Butterfly Plague by zodiac	24-Apr-05/4:55 AM
Thanks! Interestingly, that's really the only image in this poem, and I used it about 10 times in 20 lines. I'd have liked to have included more, but I just don't know that much about moths.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	24-Apr-05/4:52 AM
Oh. I guess it's a marvel of computer programming then. My wife says that as an undergraduate she got a mild preference for blacks on the Harvard test. Should I worry?
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	24-Apr-05/4:35 AM
Only a few decades ago, it was considered perfectly enlightened to say things like, "I love blacks; they're such great athletes and dancers. They've such gleaming white smiles! And they're always very polite and docile." What's changed since then? I doubt very much Americans' biases have changed very much. And besides, the speaker of the quote above might easily have scored a bias FOR blacks on -=Dark_Angel=-'s test. Still, I doubt even Dovina would feel very comfortable about saying something like the above today. What's changed is the vocabulary for talking about blacks, women, or groups of any kind of people. Someone decades ago realized that despite the above's seeming pro-black bias, it was still mildly offensive or denigrating to blacks, especially ones who, I don't know, fly fighter jets or own small stores of some kind, and the word got around. Most of us probably didn't hear it expressly in school or whatever. And I'd go even further and say our current aversion to saying such things doesn't come naturally to most people. However we learned it, we did have to learn it somewhere, even if just from TV or casual conversation. There are still tons of things that are slightly denigrating to blacks, though most people don't see how until they're told. Perfectly unbiased people accidentally say them all the time without realizing it. Most of what I'm trying to say is that, with all the best intentions in the world, Dovina has. Mostly, like you said, from naivete. I don't think she's really a racist.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	24-Apr-05/4:10 AM
I don't think it's fair to criticize my country for lacking female leaders. All you've done is borrowed some other country's aging queen.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	24-Apr-05/4:05 AM
And I'm ashamed to have repeated it all. You just didn't seem to have gotten it before.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	24-Apr-05/4:04 AM
1) The verb go in "go ahead" is in what's called the mandative tense. That comes from the same root as command and mandatory. "Go ahead, make my day" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The guy obviously can't really make Clint Eastwood's day, except by Clint's express permission. 2) I don't see how the poem implies that retribution isn't in order. Out of curiosity, what part do you think implies that?
Re: a comment on Prickly Pear by Dovina	22-Apr-05/1:43 PM
No, it's almost surely Dovina.
Re: a comment on A love apple's just a tomato (edit of "Uprooting") by fevriere	22-Apr-05/1:42 PM
And maybe "just", too.
Re: Couplet by fevriere	22-Apr-05/1:41 PM
The commas around soon are unnecessary. Is it really more wasted time than other ways of passing time? That's The Eagles' philosophy, and look where it got them.
Re: A love apple's just a tomato (edit of "Uprooting") by fevriere	22-Apr-05/1:40 PM
Drop "and" from the last line.
Re: The South Side of Racine, 1988 by jessicazee	22-Apr-05/1:38 PM
I disagree with Dovina.
Re: Antique by Billy Fights	22-Apr-05/1:35 PM
"breathe" should be "breath".
Re: Ode to Billy Mac by windyone	22-Apr-05/1:34 PM
There's nothing really wrong with this poem except that it should be properly punctuated and doesn't really have anything distinguishing it. Original or striking poems about friends are hard to write. And there are far too many friend-poems on poemranker. If you're bent on doing it, though, here's an interesting place to start: http://www.slate.com/id/2092680 Or here: http://www.slate.com/id/3416, http://www.slate.com/id/33215, http://www.slate.com/id/2089046
Re: Country Song by Caducus	22-Apr-05/1:31 PM
Aren't you, like, Welsh? This isn't really a country song. Real country music these days is filled with boasts about the singer's anti-intellectualism. Here's one I just heard (in an Old Town Amman shawerma stand, no less!): http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~shuppr/lamusic/pina.htm