well .. gilded can be taken many ways... i could say, the cracks in the sidewalk are gilded in snow... and it would be something totally different. even tho gilded usually refers to gold. but, ahhh well.
"i leave a lot up to interpretation" is the buncombe dodge of an inveterate guffer. The only way you could say something like that and expect to keep even a shred of dignity would be to actually deliberately include a lot of things to be interpreted in your poem. And let's be up-front about this: it's as obvious as my own left buttock that you haven't. You've plopped down the first dozen words that occurred to you and told yourself you're being clever and ambiguous. Bow'ls. Hey, you wanna learn some new concepts? How about the interworking of different parts of a poem, maybe? Some consistency of imagery and/or metaphor?
"i leave a lot up to interpretation." Bow'ls! say I. I get all flummoxed and constipated just trying to imagine where you learned to parrot such a useless phrase. Yes, a poet can leave a lot up to interpretation, and some very famous poets (i.e., W.C.Williams) made whole careers out of this sort of addleheaded guffing. But first you need to be a halfway decent poet, which means if you start your poem with an image like a roadmap, it has to go somewhere. Your "velvet" might work, if you gave more of a hint that the roadmap is worn down to vellum-softness by use - but you won't; you'll expect me to do all the associative work that you haven't done. And then I'll run into "nameless", "unpainted", and "a movie" right after that, none of them building on each other or even fitting very well with each other, and I'll reach the correct conclusion, as I have, that you have no idea what you're talking about. In short, _______.
Hey, and thanks for not talking down to me about what poetry is and isn't in the future! Have a nice one!
wow! this is almost funny. i am sorry i don't understand all the words you throw around, but i am not sorry i don't understand where you are coming from. you don't know what else i have written, and who else has interpreted my works, and what poetry i have read. not that i care to tell you.
i am really sorry that you don't like to mentally work while you read poetry, or my poem. i am sorry you like to be spoon-fed. and that you have such strict rules about what it should be, and are not free to have more than one idea about it. i would hate to go to a museum or a gallery with you!
and thanks.. for the constructive criticism. i hope if you actually are a self-deemed expert in the realm of poetry-writing / interpretation (because there ALWAYS is interpretation, varied by reader, uncontrollable) that you come across alittle better to others ... in order to help them... anyway.
re: "i am really sorry that you don't like to mentally work while you read poetry, or my poem"
I, for my part, am really sorry that you don't like to mentally work while you write poetry, as it means we have another week of reading this sloppy hash before you vanish forever from our hallowed halls without so much as a leaving rant.
And I'm not a self-deemed expert in poetry-writing or interpretation. I'm a society-deemed semi-expert in it, having recently received a Master's in Poetry from an accredited Poetry School.
When you "leave things to interpretation" by having a complete thought (or image), from which you excise details to pare the thought (or image) down to the size and shape of a few stanzas, while leaving signposts for the astute reader to reconstruct a complete thought or image for themselves: that is a valid exercise. We all agree to call that poetry.
When you have an INcomplete thought, from which you jot down a few random phrases/images, from which you then demand that the reader construct their own complete thought, that is not a valid exercise. Assume a reader does construct a complete meaningful thought for themselves, engendered by your dribbled phrases -- should they ascribe to you any credit? for what? a cowpatty lying in a pasture, whose folds and texture happen to resemble the shape of a lovely young girl's buttocks might also engender a sudden vivid intense rush of imagery in the mind of a passerby. Ought they then to deem the cowpatty a genius? We agree to call such writing "mental diarhea" or "meaningless dribble" to distinguish it from the more difficult to write and more meaningful to read "poetry"
Zodiac is beginning to sound like the infamous J. Evans Prichard, P.H.D. and his little essay of "Understanding Poetry." The description of that was "excrement," I believe. So yeah, rip out that page.
to Goad, who considers incomplete thoughts unworthy of interpretation and "mental diarhea" or "meaningless dribble", i say, you're entitled to your preferences, and you're real boring.
No, I'm realLY boring. Or did you mean "you're real -- boring!"? If so, I assure you I'm quite false. But I doubt you meant that. It would be quite out of character for an illiterate poseur to profess to prefer artifice over realitát. "Being real" is, after all, the standard apologia for those who wish to defend their eschewing of technique, study, editing, and all other forms of artistry that require actual effort.
In any case your pome is quite decipherable: it expresses the adolescent yearnings of a teenage boy that someday he will meet a real woman with whom he can live out the fantasies he used to have when he masturbates to the woman in the black velvet painting in his uncle's house, the one where the woman is posed with her side to the viewer, exposing one full breast, the face mostly hidden 'neath her loosely falling hair and a raised arm. It hung in the upstairs hallway, beside the framed roadmap of Texas from 1957 (a memento of the roadtrip that marked your uncle's coming of age). You would often linger there, to impress the image in your mind, when you passed it on your way to the musty-smelling upstairs bathroom of your uncle's house to wank, hoping your parent's wouldn't notice that you were needing to go to the bathroom every half hour.
let's see, you've got the credentialled academic who not only teaches poetry for a living but is no slouch himself at writing it calling your bluff, the child prodigy who all agree has an ungodly talent for wielding the very sort of obscure and difficult imagery you would LIKE to lay claim to chiming in with her thumbs down, and the bitter old stodgy hack pointing out why they're saying what they're saying and illustrating how your so-called deep allusions can easily be turned to any trite interpretation the reader decides to make up off the top of his head...if you've any real balls instead of just saying fuck you, you'll say fuck you and then defiantly take these few little words you've written and come back in a week having turned them into an actual pome that means something. To the reader.
33 comments
I'm sure any monkey with some caffein and refrigerator letter-magnets could do better.
Here's a 6 so you don't hurt yourself
umm... if you had read it, the title actually is -- Unwed
& my username is --- gilded in gold...
meh.
-9-
"the X are gilded in snow" means "the X are covered with snow, which resembles something covered with gold."
That means you now have "the X are covered with gold, which resembles something covered with gold." Great!
It would probably help if this poem made a bit of sense.
it's not supposed to make a ton of sense. i leave a lot up to interpretation. i like unpainted.
"i leave a lot up to interpretation." Bow'ls! say I. I get all flummoxed and constipated just trying to imagine where you learned to parrot such a useless phrase. Yes, a poet can leave a lot up to interpretation, and some very famous poets (i.e., W.C.Williams) made whole careers out of this sort of addleheaded guffing. But first you need to be a halfway decent poet, which means if you start your poem with an image like a roadmap, it has to go somewhere. Your "velvet" might work, if you gave more of a hint that the roadmap is worn down to vellum-softness by use - but you won't; you'll expect me to do all the associative work that you haven't done. And then I'll run into "nameless", "unpainted", and "a movie" right after that, none of them building on each other or even fitting very well with each other, and I'll reach the correct conclusion, as I have, that you have no idea what you're talking about. In short, _______.
Hey, and thanks for not talking down to me about what poetry is and isn't in the future! Have a nice one!
i am really sorry that you don't like to mentally work while you read poetry, or my poem. i am sorry you like to be spoon-fed. and that you have such strict rules about what it should be, and are not free to have more than one idea about it. i would hate to go to a museum or a gallery with you!
and thanks.. for the constructive criticism. i hope if you actually are a self-deemed expert in the realm of poetry-writing / interpretation (because there ALWAYS is interpretation, varied by reader, uncontrollable) that you come across alittle better to others ... in order to help them... anyway.
I, for my part, am really sorry that you don't like to mentally work while you write poetry, as it means we have another week of reading this sloppy hash before you vanish forever from our hallowed halls without so much as a leaving rant.
And I'm not a self-deemed expert in poetry-writing or interpretation. I'm a society-deemed semi-expert in it, having recently received a Master's in Poetry from an accredited Poetry School.
When you "leave things to interpretation" by having a complete thought (or image), from which you excise details to pare the thought (or image) down to the size and shape of a few stanzas, while leaving signposts for the astute reader to reconstruct a complete thought or image for themselves: that is a valid exercise. We all agree to call that poetry.
When you have an INcomplete thought, from which you jot down a few random phrases/images, from which you then demand that the reader construct their own complete thought, that is not a valid exercise. Assume a reader does construct a complete meaningful thought for themselves, engendered by your dribbled phrases -- should they ascribe to you any credit? for what? a cowpatty lying in a pasture, whose folds and texture happen to resemble the shape of a lovely young girl's buttocks might also engender a sudden vivid intense rush of imagery in the mind of a passerby. Ought they then to deem the cowpatty a genius? We agree to call such writing "mental diarhea" or "meaningless dribble" to distinguish it from the more difficult to write and more meaningful to read "poetry"
HTH, Goad Esq.Po.Et.Ry
In any case your pome is quite decipherable: it expresses the adolescent yearnings of a teenage boy that someday he will meet a real woman with whom he can live out the fantasies he used to have when he masturbates to the woman in the black velvet painting in his uncle's house, the one where the woman is posed with her side to the viewer, exposing one full breast, the face mostly hidden 'neath her loosely falling hair and a raised arm. It hung in the upstairs hallway, beside the framed roadmap of Texas from 1957 (a memento of the roadtrip that marked your uncle's coming of age). You would often linger there, to impress the image in your mind, when you passed it on your way to the musty-smelling upstairs bathroom of your uncle's house to wank, hoping your parent's wouldn't notice that you were needing to go to the bathroom every half hour.
and I want it to.
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