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Captain Cannibal (Free verse) by Lenore Murder!
Have you ever heard the like
As they always do in stories of a shipwreck found at night?
Where survivors are floating for days on a raft;
I remember the ghastly bits on the mast
Where the last surviving sailor had helped eat the whole crew;
He claimed he was the captain it was a good joke too,
Depends on whoâs the victim;
The point of view counts for a heap in such things,
Youâd laugh yourself sick to know what it brings
Starvation holds water better than your boat,
When every plump and tender sailor keeps your stomach afloat
No roast albatross for dinner
For they gave you the slip,
Your only choice left,
Potluck or the dip
All that last night,
He sailed upon sluggish water,
Covered with rotting flesh,
Rank and stagnant pools of seamen
Whispered by ghosts of dead comrades
Carried on moonlit currents,
All the water black with blood and shadow,
Drifting westward homeward bound
He came so near to broken, but his soul would not sink down
Though he killed them as they lay there,
And gnawed upon their bones,
The tide of might had risen and brought him safely home
Up the ladder:
The Young Girl From Khartoum
Down the ladder:
Friendship thrown away
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 5.8333335
Posted: January 25, 2004 8:47 PM PST; Last modified: January 25, 2004 10:07 PM PSTWeighted score: 5.2241178 Overall Rank: 4305 Comments:
I feel like I should say more on this: although I am totally in favor of poems that tell stories (I personally am working on a poetic style that is only nouns and verbs,) I don't feel like this poem tells enough. There's only one possible meaning (not counting the aforementioned seamen,) so it doesn't hold up to repeated readings. Take a closer look at that famous albatross poem. It's an extended (though clumsy, yes,) allegory - or more than one, but mainly about respect for nature, etc. You don't have anything but events, which are not even presented in the end as anything shocking or weird. Yeah, you start with Murder! which is grabbing, but it just peters out. He eats the bones and goes home. Look for ways to make it mean something more. That's about it.
It is because of people like you, who are notorious for their ability to seek out the delicate nuances and subtleties of allegory and then miss the point by roughly nine light-years, that I find I should probably whip something up to animate the story of my poems in a thought balloon.
On the other hand, perhaps without these brilliant critiques I would still be scratching out drivel on birch bark with a burnt stick.
Without going to far into our oh-so-protected details of educational background and profession, let me just tell you that if I miss the 'point,' a whole lot of people are going to miss it too. Sorry to sound so damn stuck-up. And you don't know who 'people like me' are. By the way, I feel forced into being entirely critical, which I didn't intend. "Starvation holds water better than your boat," is really good. The rhyme and rhythm are good throughout. I really like the scansion of the lines and a lot of the images. I think Captain Cannibal is a silly name, but you can pull it off (Lord knows there be sillier names here.) If the meaning is some 'Alive'-type you-have-to-eat-to-live crap, you would do well to consider adding something more. That's all.
Why be ambiguous?
Why don't we each launch into a thousand-word treatise detailing the riveting minutia of our daily lives? Let us know each other better. Or we can both remain unfashionable, disreputable enigmas. I guess my poetry is just another example of how far I am out of the loop. All I can hope for, I suppose, is the moment when my special brand of poetry takes over the world. I encourage you to hold your breath for that particular day. Also, perhaps it would prove beneficial, if we all here at poem ranker, purposely avoided reading many of the âclassicsâ of poetry just so that we can formulate no opinion at all instead of one that is completely wrong. Please note the means by which I intersperse comedy with tension and respond accordingly.
Hey guys, don't argue! This is poemranker, a place where people can post their poems and know they will receive CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, ok? So stop tearing down each other's work and why not try to find the positives?! Great!!!!1
I stick with my original judgment. Lenore has chops, just needs polishing. The things people think are poetry aren't really. I think we can agree on that.
I this this poeme is quite good. It has pirates, ghosts, rotting flesh, bones, mutiny, floating on the sea at night, etc. The main things wrong with it are it gets progressively more vague and pretentious toward the end, and the first line is rubbish.
And no one else has commented on the pools of seamen. That's weird.
"stagnant pools of seamen"? The only thing missing from this poem is the well thought out use of the word 'gay'. What's this poem about? I liked the 5th stanza. Much wittier than the rest of this ballad. But seriously, what is this poem about? What insight are you trying to convey to your audience?
Woo-hoo. See above.
Gay...You're right! I like it. What is the poem about? Well clearly itâs about an intellectual giant who delicately intertwines the secrets of the cosmos and truths about the very nature of man. Or at the very least that is how I see it. However, itâs not all that important for me to convey a particular meaning. Rather I think it better to have the reader find his or her own meaning.
Why is that better?
It is better. Lenore has an obligation to make himself/herself understood. Otherwise it's entirely masturbatory poetry. Which is fine, but the fact of its being posted on this site means he wants somebody to read and understand it. I'm fine with the idea that poetry can be purely personal, but on the ranker I've got to judge by the standards we've all subscribed ourselves to - to wit, that poetry will be ranked. Lenore, what if everyone who read your poetry thought you were a fascist or racist? Clearly, if enough people thought it, then it's in the work. Is it our obligation to try to understand your ambiguous intention, or your obligation to make sure (if you choose) that your intention is understood?
Where you said "It is better", did you mean "It isn't better"?
No. It IS better.
Better to have the reader find his or her own meaning as opposed to having the author convey a particular meaning?
Better not to have Lenore explain to us how to interpret his poem, because it should stand on its own, you nit. Oh wait, I just did that two days ago. Ooops.
You say that, but if you actually read the conversation you will see that where zodiac says "It is better" he is in fact, possibly accidentally, referring to Lenore's statement:
"However, itâs not all that important for me to convey a particular meaning. Rather I think it better to have the reader find his or her own meaning." By 'convey' here, Lenore doesn't mean 'convey to the reader after they have read the poeme', it means 'convey to the reader in the poeme itself'.
I understand that, and think poems should stand completely alone, which your poems, Dark Angel, usually do. As far as you having a bunch of meaning in your poems I cut you (or one of you, anyway,) a lot of slack because you are as they say a prophet of old, and Naughty. Lenore is neither Naughty nor a prophet. He's asking to be ranked by Mature standards.
Holy Jesus Christ on a stick, you're right! Lenore IS committing heresy in his statement, and zodiac in his laudable zeal to tromp down heresy whereever he sees it is inadvertently committing a subtle Error of Doctrine. This is how the Satan of Poetry deceives us! He i not an enemy to be taken lightly.
Apparently not. But it seems to me darkangel's 'why is that better?' is a skeptical one, with which I answer it IS better for the reader to find his own meaning. And even better if that meaning is the same as the author's.
That's 44 comments on this poem. Can we be done now?
I completely disagree with your logic.
First I do not feel obligated to make my poetry understood. Believe it or not I could care less about that. Secondly a majority opinion does not necessarily imply truth. If it did I would resign myself to the fact that Jesus is in fact the Son of God. While I do personally get off on being ranked, I get even bigger jollies from the variety of interpretations.
That's fine. But I don't understand why you get off on being ranked, without caring whether or not you're understood. Perhaps you fancy yourself persecuted or some such? You stand alone, Byronic in your singular vision, against us hordes of savages? History will vindicate, and so on? That's fine, too. If you wanted advice, I was happy to offer some. It's clear that's not why you post, though. Rather, that you intend for us all to be edified and entertained by your singular (and already perfected) vision. I should also make clear that there's no clause, word, etc., in this poem that confuses me or invites alternate interpretations. That's part of the problem.
And some people - including Byron, I think - draw persecution. It's not a virtue.
How can I be so misunderstood?
Is it so terrible, unthinkable even, to post a poem with the only intent being to share it? Thatâs not to say that I donât want or appreciate the critiquing, I do. And admittedly I do get off on watching others chew it up and spit it out or savor its juicy center. It is not that I feel I stand alone as you wrote. Itâs that I feel the poem can stand alone or crash and burn depending on the reader. I simply cannot agree that a poet or artist is obligated to make his or her work understood. Is it not enough to paint for the sake of painting? Allowing the meaning to unfold spontaneously and in the end subjectively? Think of Pollock madly lashing at his canvas, painting so fast that there is little time for forethought. Perhaps to some his finished canvas brought order out of chaos and itâs meaning becomes clear. To others it is nothing more than a canvas covered in haphazardly splattered paint. The beauty is lost or found depending on the perception of the beholder. Regardless of itâs intentional presupposed meaning (or none there of). Am I still completely unable to properly describe what this whole thing is all about? I have no plans or expectations for my poems at all and they only exists because it is what I truly enjoy and is probably the only way some brutal hack like me could ever obtain a public stage, such as this.
sorry, but jackson pollock went to art school. He knew the rules before he broke them.
there has never been an iconoclastic artist who didn't first go through an intense period of learning and absorption, whether in school or self-imposed. van gogh, for example, spent thousands of hours studying paintings, sitting in galleries sometimes looking at one painting for an entire day. You can't break rules you don't thoroughly know. You can't defy tradtions with which you are not intimately familiar. That doesn't mean you are required to devote yourself to studying poetry to play around with writing, or that you shouldn't play with breaking "the rules." By all means, go for it! But it does mean that name dropping famous iconoclasts to excuse the inaccessibility of your efforts, as though you were somehow their peer, when you quite obviously haven't gone through the rigorous and intensive learning and training they typically do is inexcusable and will simply result in people dismissing you out of hand. You see, when you don't actually KNOW the rules, you inevitably break them accidentally, and this shows plain as day, as opposed to when you break the rules for some intent or effect. At least read and absorb Strunk, it's like 30 pages long. Christ.
And yet again I hear the familiar nasal whine of how any artist without any formal training, regardless of actual quality, is the tool of the devil and their work pure garbage.
As an âoutsideâ artist who has been consistently selling my paintings and drawings for the last 15 years, I find your statement insulting and absurd. The hate (and jealousy) heaped upon outside artists and similar hell-bred poets usually degrade from an honest attempt to raise public awareness of alternative technique to remarkably childish verbal slap-fights or internal circle-jerks that make everyone involved look like socially stunted malcontents. And therein lies the crux of the problem. It is virtually impossible at any given time to appraise accurately or conclusively artists/poets who have not been dead for roughly a century. In general the most you critics can honestly hope to do is to enlighten your audience as to what an individual artist/poet may be trying to do, and how his/her art relates to the world. But for you to assign any contemporary artist/poet his place (high or low) in history is pure arrogance. Go ahead and continue to label me for purposes of your own and I will continue to ignore these labels in order to create. Oh and to drop another iconoclastic name⦠Courbet once said âThere can be no schools: there are only paintersâ The same can be said about poets.
Probably the single most devastating stain on your brave point of view is that it is endorsed by rockmage - a savage dunce who, when not posting millions of unbelievably dull one lined comments and voting 10s, spends his time bragging about his lack of any formal training whatsoever. Such people think they are beyond education. They refuse to accept that there are countless other people who are more talented than they are, and who work harder than they do. And when the world proclaims them to be cack, it is the world who is mistaken, not the piece of cack. So by all means, go, be a misunderstood genius, but do not come here and claim you wanna play hard ball in the big leagues. You ain't got that kind of muscle, kid. Now beat it!
You of all poets should condemn dogmatism and categorization.
I'm shocked! Does this mean the scent of death is upon you?
That is to say, you did not invent literacy, neither did you invent rhyme or alliteration or enjambment. All of these help you to write a poem, on what grounds do you think education can teach you no more?
The scent of death has been upon me for many years now, lingering intently about my groin, like the shining lobster that got wedged behind my fridge; a prawne-like vulture circling its prey. As the days come and go, and the green trees of youth fade to browne, I am left cold, and alone. Naked against the black oils of time, slick to the skin, and wishing my absurdly dry exoskellington had absorbed less balm. Death is before me now; death and oblivion. And then nothing will matter, save for the final cry of anguish as my Wheeled Chair hurtles off the cliff, and my wither'd backside soaks into dust, fusing with the very essence of nature, finally fulfilling its soiled destiny.
Dark Angel's use of language shows prodigious knowledge of the rules of English. He can describe shit in sentences so elegantly and wittily constructed that I--and I haven't the slightest hint of a scatological fetish anywhere in my being--enjoy reading about shit. His limericks are, in fact, limericks. His sonnets are, in fact, sonnets -- breaking the rules only purposely, and to great effect generally. His limericks aren't limericks and his sonnets sonnets by accident, or even because he's talented (and he is talented), but because he crafts his language. He's certainly mastered and has a full awareness of rhythm and rhyme...in short, he's absolutely the wrong person to cling to in your pursuit of this benighted notion of yours that you're a foot soldier in the freedom fighting poetry army battling to save the world from dogmatism and categorization by eschewing all technique.
No it can't. And that's not what Goad said. Look, you fool, my patience is wearing out. YOU ARE NOT THE OUTSIDER HERE, YOU FUCKING DORK!!! YOU ARE WRITING JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!! WE MAKE THE SAME COMMENTS ABOUT EVERYBODY ELSE!!! We're not elitists here, you loser! We say all the same things about each other's work as we did about yours; and when we get comments along the line of what you've read here, we take them with good faith or good humor, which apparently you can't manage, which is why you've been treated so harshly here, you ignorant cockless twit. JUST SHUT UP! SHUT UP!! THIS NORMAL, BORING POEM IS NOT WORTH ALL THIS JIBBER-JABBER!! You fucking 'outside artist' - get a goddamn brain. All artists are outside to some extent! And inside to some extent, which you have shown by identifying yourself with the most popular powerful group of visual artists in the world today - the fucking outside artists! But that's the goddamn problem: YOU CAN'T FEEL LIKE YOU'RE MAKING ART UNLESS YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE FUCKING PERSECUTED AND CONTROVERSIAL, you stupid shit! You're not, except as much as you've courted persecution with your brash and ignorant comments. Read over the comments here and you'll find most of them said something like 'nice normal poem, a little boring though.' And you've defended it like it was the bleeding Waste Land. Get a goddamn clue! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET A FUCKING CLUE! And as far as poetry-as-painting goes: can't you see a million differences?! Words have to be ordered, they have to be arranged (some of the poems on this site of course excluded.) You can't just fling letters against a canvas and call it a poem YOU BLIGHTED TWAT! GO WRITE ANOTHER GODDAMN POEM AND STOP WHINING YOU SAD SAD... damn! I'm out of epithets. Let somebody else take up the call. I'm getting the hell away from this poem.
Guys, guys, look at us. Squabbling. Bickering. Like children! It never used to be like this, guys! And just think: this whole fight could have been avoided if Lenore had just had the vision, the singular vision, to include lengthy references to husks in this piece. I stand vindicated in all my opinions, as expressed on this page and others, but now it's time for the rest of you to look at yourselves. Where did you go wrong?
At the end of the day it all comes down to humility. Humility, and a healthy respect for my opinions. Thanks for listening, -10-
HOLY SHIT! LOL
Read what I wrote again, then read what you wrote again, and see if you're not (on second go-round) able to see how completely you misinterpreted what I was saying.
First of all, I wasn't talking about your painting, how could I have been, I know nothing of it. I was talking about painting only to continue with your own analogy. I also wasn't, and haven't, commented on this pome. I have no comments for it. The use of language, though there are problems here and there, is certainly far above that of the teeny poets I typically rail on. I could offer comments on language use, but you've hardly shown yourself amenable to receiving them. I purposely included van gogh in the discussion, because he HAD no formal training (you complete fucking idiot). He did, however spend a FANATICAL amount of time studying and learning to paint. Secondly, how were able to miss the fact that I was not in any way heaping hate and jealousy on "outside artists" but on the contrary expressing admiration and respect for the great lengths the REAL iconoclasts (as safely judged by history) go to to attain their unique skills. Judging from your basic ability to put together English sentences, I'm pretty sure you didn't actually read my comment. It would be difficult for me to imagine someone with at least that much ability for writing to have such a complete lack of ability to comprehend my (I feel) rather lucid and level-headed comment.
You're all wrong, and you're all grotesquely ugly freaks. None of my poemes are open to interpretation, or any sort of guff like that; they merely relate factual events and experiences that befell my childhood years. Granted, I do have three poemes on the Worst list, and said poemes have been there for almost two years now, but that doesn't mean my opinions aren't valid! All opinions are valid, even the invalid ones! Sure some poemes are open to interpretation, and they might even be good poemes, but why can't a poeme just be a description of something? What's wrong with communicating something specific in a poetic way? The idea that a poeme is necessarily better because it is open to interpretation is buncombe. People just say that because they listen to art critics and nod knowingly, and then prance around the place saying things like "Huxley's 'nappy' is a bold encapsulation of the cultural effluence stagnating a leaking society". Pish! Fipsy! Buncombe!
Huxley's 'nappy' may well be all those things, and more, but there is one thing Huxley's 'nappy' is not: It is not a proof that vagueness is a necessary characteristic for good art. Husks are.
I'm sorry about the worst list. I don't think anyone can be replaced on it now because the poems aren't ranked the same way these days, and they cycle through the 20 most recent too fast. And there's rockmage's 10s. If it makes you feel better, we never try to interpret your poems. We are mostly responding to Lenore's comments along the line of "you...miss the point by roughly nine light-years" and others, by which he marks himself as a different sort of animal.
You do not feel obligated to make your poetry understood? that's preposterous. Words are for making things understood. Even "The jabberwocky is understandable, or anything ee cummings. Anyone who dabbles in the arts is obligated to make something,(thought/emotion/experience)wh
Good to see you back. Where have you been?
Thank you it's good to be back and nice to see everyone is still here. I've been watching Oprah. She taught me something too. Being a powerful Woman means a whole boatload of hard work and sacrifice. But what kind of an idiot would I be to go through all of that? So I decided to go back to writing poetry.
zodiac was talking to god'swife. I daresay he isn't pleased to see you back, otherwise he surely would have addressed his comment to you. I'm so sorry.
LOLTTM
That's like saying I cook, but I don't feel obligated to make the food edible, or nutritous. And with that I'm off to the kitchen. Time to make an after-school snack, and start on dinner.
I see. Well then, you should make this poem cry-out with wit. Go back and do the whole thing over again. Try reading anything -=Dark_Angel=- for inspiration. Please get rid of the stagnant pools of seaman, please?
Belay that order. The stagnant pools of seamen must remain.
Saboteur!
By which I mean, I'm always surprised at you, -=Dark Angel=-.
Have you seen "The Fog"? (This is where dark bagel comes along and goes "I am fog!!! blargh!" and then toots the horn on the side of his ass wagon).
This should be a pimple, I think.
Interesting read, if somewhat ghastly.
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By Gods, I have a whole boatload of other oddball grammatical anomalies that, apparently, are just waiting to become kitschy and, dare I say, even cool if only I have the personal fortitude to do nothing about any of them for long enough. That's right, I am the future. If that doesn't terrify the ever-loving stool from your body, you haven't read enough of my poems.