Re: a comment on Salvatore Quasimodo: Agrigentum Road by Sasha	25-Aug-05/9:27 AM
You can, just re-vote and your last vote is retracted
Re: a comment on With You at an Ancient Temple by Sasha	24-Aug-05/12:29 PM
I don't think "rival ivies" has ever been used in a poem before, nor have "pallid jealousy" or "blessed blasphemy," how are they stylized? The grave accent is not as archaic as you might think. Witness: Yeats: "an agèd man is but a paltry thing" Alastair Reid (in translating a poem by Borges) "Blessèd are those who do not hunger for justice." "Unchanging" I agree is redundant as is "graced"
Re: a comment on No More Autumn Poems (Edit) by Sasha	24-Aug-05/12:22 PM
I don't really feel it's superior, just different. It helps broaden one's exposure to poetry. For example Pound's voice was enhanced by exposure to the dreamy, somewhat non-linear world of Chinese poetry. It's true, there are certain things more abundant in the poetry of some languages than others. For example Russian 19th century poetry has a down-to-earth, quiet and unflashy feel to it. Women in the poetry of that era and before are dark-browed, sweet-featured and tender-voiced. But their faces launch no ships, let alone a thousand. Whereas in English a skylark is, all in the same poem, a "blithe spirit," a "Glow-worm golden in a dell of dew," a "poet hidden in the light of thought," a "rose embowered in its own green leaves" and a "cloud of fire." But as the same poem states "Bird thou never wert.."
Re: Letter from Palermo by Caducus	23-Aug-05/11:06 AM
Hurts my brain, but worth it
Re: a comment on No More Autumn Poems (Edit) by Sasha	23-Aug-05/6:03 AM
Forgive me if I'm just arguing semantics, but I believe he meant that a poem must make use of both its sound and its sense. That doesen't necessarily mean a pleasant euphony must be sustained. For example when Yeats mentions "all dishevelled wandering stars" he uses cacophony. Also Emanuel di Pasquale does with "The rain hushes the surface of tin porches." Sappho too when she inserts a single cacophonic line into her Greek stanza to immitate the whirr and flap of Sparrow's wings as they draw Aphrodite's heavenly chariot: ἄρμ' ὐπαδεύξαισα· κάλοι δέ σ' ἆγον ὤκεες στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶς μελαίνας πύκνα διννεντες πτέρ' ἀπ' ὠράνωἴθε- ρας διὰ μέσσω. Had your carriage yoked in a blink to sparrows As they drew you quick as a wink above the Sultry earth, with flaps in a blur, careening, Down from your cover, Yes, that's Greek. And I'm a pretentious precocious little fuck
Re: a comment on No More Autumn Poems (Edit) by Sasha	22-Aug-05/9:49 AM
some would argue yes. It is possible to write what could arguably be called a poem without a single pronounceable word, like some of e.e. cummings. Sometimes you can deliberately drain the lyricism and music out of a poem if dischord and blandness are its message, as when (sorry to make a reference to russian poetry, but I can't think of another example right now) the greatest Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in his long poem, Eugene Onegin, includes a trite ode written by Vladimir Lensky, one of his characters, to show that Lensky is a mediocre poet.
Re: tanka(4) by shadows	21-Aug-05/3:53 PM
very contemporary with the flavor of the japanese masters. nice
Re: Mystical Chinese Dragon by that_funny_girl	21-Aug-05/1:07 PM
Good, except for the soppy parts about love and friendship and being there when you're down. It may be what you feel, but objectively it weakens the strength of the poem. 8 for overall quality
Re: a comment on Salvatore Quasimodo: Agrigentum Road by Sasha	21-Aug-05/1:05 PM
I promise you the next thing will be original. Ok luv?
Re: a comment on Salvatore Quasimodo: Agrigentum Road by Sasha	21-Aug-05/12:53 PM
Click on my name
Re: GIRL IN THE RED DRESS by prettyktm	21-Aug-05/10:35 AM
Good job, feels like you could do more with expressive and novel language, but the poem did its job very well and there are some beautiful places.
Re: a comment on Salvatore Quasimodo: Agrigentum Road by Sasha	21-Aug-05/10:27 AM
By the way, where's my 10?
Re: a comment on Salvatore Quasimodo: Agrigentum Road by Sasha	21-Aug-05/10:27 AM
This poem has been translated, to my knowledge, three times in addition to mine. Each of the three contained what I considered to be faults. It was my love for the original and my disappointment with the translations that lead me to translate it myself. In addition, translating poetry is an excellent way to improve one's own technique. By putting my another poet's voice through my mouth, I feel I improve and alter my own voice. It is a way to learn to keep my subject matter in focus without letting it waver. By translating I can learn to prevent the sudden transformation of my poem into something entirely different. (Take a look at my "Written while Kayaking" for a prime example of a wavering subject.) So translation benefits not only the reader by introducing them to fresh material, but the translator as well, who learns to write his own work better as a result.
Re: Take heart, you are closer than you know by Bobjim	21-Aug-05/6:37 AM
Powerful, could use some tighter language. But powerful
Re: a comment on Written while Kayaking by Sasha	20-Aug-05/11:02 PM
ok, you curmudgeonly Luddite. Here are some words that were at one time inadmissable to poetry and elevated writing belittle dug (as opposed to 'digg'd' or 'diggèd') neither (as part of the "neither...nor" construction as opposed to "nor...nor") either (as part of the "either...or" construction as opposed to "or...or") Legs (briefly in victorian england)
Re: Poem for a Snowstorm by crooked_smile	16-Aug-05/5:59 PM
This is a bad apostrophe
Re: a comment on Written while Kayaking by Sasha	16-Aug-05/5:58 PM
The idea is that while Kayaking it feels as though you've got such power and freedom whereas really you're just in water on a boat with no more power than one on land. The rest of the poem takes an objective view to that kind of grandiose self-perception
Re: sad moments by rbooey	15-Aug-05/1:26 PM
Please, fix the misspellings. You don't have anything exciting or artful here, just a dull meditation on the afterlife. I have been forced to read many, many poems like this and smile indulgently at their authors and say "it's nice." Online, however, I have no compunction about telling you that this poem is worthless. I mean that as no offense, I'm just telling you what I think.
Re: untitled by nicole081083	15-Aug-05/1:17 PM
Dull
Re: a comment on More Than The World by XOXScottishgrlXOX	15-Aug-05/1:14 PM
I'm going to pick a bone here. Say "Everybody got their problems" or "We all got our problems" or whatever you feel like. "They" as a singular pronoun has been used for over a century. There's nothing wrong with writing the English you speak. The only difference between a grammatically "correct" and "incorrect" construction is whether or not it happened to get standardized (and fossilized) when a language was first written down or thereafter. I'm not being ungrammatical by using "you" as a singular pronoun instead of "thou" although many prescriptive grammaticians of centuries past cried that to do so was to vandalize the English language. Therefore to say "We all got our problems" is incorrect is almost as rediculous as saying that Dante really wrote in grammatically incorrect Latin. Now about the poem, it's bad. It doesen't read like a poem at all but more like a 10 year old's improvised prayer before bedtime. I can't see any way to salvage it. Sorry.