DetailsThe poem, its numbers, and the conversation.

Puritans

Member since 2004 · Posted 20 Mar 2004 · Edited 20 Mar 2004 · 17 comments

A windy warm summer night like this is no good for prohibition - it unravels the dreams of Christian women (rungs on a rope-ladder, a scarecrow hung in a broom-closet) and pulls them in their formidable night-dresses out into quiet hallways, to kitchens animate with moonlight, stirs their tongues on the cool white skin in the sugar-bowl, long and tenderly as greedy kisses.

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17 comments

[n/a] deleted user 20-Mar-04/3:20 PM Reply

Alright, I admit it, was one of them, with unraveled dreams on warm summer nights in kitchens animate with moonlight, but the rest I don't get, and maybe don't want to.

[n/a] zodiac › deleted user 20-Mar-04/3:30 PM Reply

My wife sleepwalks to the kitchen late some nights and eats sugar out of the bowl. It seemed an appropriate opposite image for my Catholic-raised self-denial and pleasure-delaying. How do I make that more clear?

[n/a] deleted user › zodiac 20-Mar-04/3:40 PM Reply

Then why the (. . . )? and how is sugar in a bowl like skin? It almost works because of the last line. And what makes her nightdress formidable or its formidableness important? Yes, I'm picky, seeing as I know what you mean now.

[n/a] zodiac › deleted user 20-Mar-04/3:50 PM Reply

(weird guilt-ridden Puritan dreams.)

A Puritan woman's night-dress is formidable to protect her from her husband's (and her own) sensuality - which, as you should know, is shameful and wicked.

I don't know why sugar is like a skin. I just imagined what it's like to touch it with a tongue. And I wanted it to be sensual. I guess if I have to explain it, though, it didn't work. I'm trying to make less sense recently, but not too little.

[n/a] zodiac 20-Mar-04/3:34 PM Reply

Oh, and thanks, richa, for letting me try out your style. I couldn't work in any woodland animals, though. Or A#P#P#L#E#S.

[10] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 20-Mar-04/4:48 PM Reply

Mediocrity code: 20841404

-6-

[n/a] zodiac 20-Mar-04/5:06 PM Reply

Rhyme/intentional-line-break code: AB-BCCD-ABCD-A.

Why don't you look it up, -=Dark_Angel=-?

[10] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › zodiac 21-Mar-04/3:01 AM Reply

'Bowl' doesn't rhyme with 'pull'. Check and mate.

[n/a] zodiac › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 21-Mar-04/4:33 AM Reply

It does in the Southern United States.

(1) Wipe.
(2) Weep.
(3) Repeat as desired.

[n/a] zodiac › zodiac 21-Mar-04/4:52 AM Reply

The point is, I've written something like a thousand rhyming poems since high school. It's getting hard for me to find new rhymes or structures. My line breaks are arbitrary in that I try to make the rhyme come at an unexpected part of the sentence, almost never at the period or some tidy clause-end. But if I didn't have rhymes I would have no idea how to line-break. Really. I've tried, like in that dreadful 'Joe-Joe', but it feels like utter bullshit to put in breaks where there's no reason to. I respect a lot people who write good free verse (including some here), but I can't understand how they don't feel like flaming bullshit poseurs doing it.

[n/a] Goad › zodiac 23-Jan-05/11:36 AM Reply

you can break based on rhythm. You can break an image in two, to overload the separate parts, creating synergy. You can break to make the pome parse awkwardly, because awkwardness is the feeling you're going for. You can break where you breathe, to create a sense of inevitability. You can break in syncopation with where you would breathe in speaking, to create a sense of breathlessness.

I'm not claiming that I do any of these things myself of course. I break by using 2d10 to roll a letter count for the line.

[8] Shuushin 20-Mar-04/6:14 PM Reply

Meaning aside - which is fine, the flow of this is a few extra words past something that I might like very much.

It has a musical flow to it that I often strive for.

But I'm not thrilled with some of the simple descriptors and imagery - while the cadence is melodic, the language is uncomfortable.

Does that make sense?

windy warm
formidable
long and tenderly - could do without those, in particular.

[n/a] zodiac › Shuushin 20-Mar-04/9:03 PM Reply

Thanks. I'm working on it.

[n/a] Fear of Garbage 23-Mar-04/11:04 AM Reply

alright first of all before I get angry I have to say I respect you very much as a writer, and as someone obviously much younger, I even look up to some of it.
But there is absolutely no way that I could ever let myself feel like a "flaming bullshit poeser," just becasue I don't write many things that rhyme. There's just no ground for it.

[n/a] zodiac › Fear of Garbage 23-Mar-04/11:19 AM Reply

I'm sorry, Fear of Garbage. Utterly seriously. That's not what I meant. And I was fucking around to begin with. I meant what I said, though: I respect and admire people who write without rhyme, though I don't know how to do it myself. You should know I think you do it very, very well.

[10] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › Fear of Garbage 23-Mar-04/4:18 PM Reply

No, you're not a "flaming bullshit poeser"; you're a "deep and meaningful poete" -10-

[n/a] Goad › Fear of Garbage 23-Jan-05/11:45 AM Reply

you are an incredibly pretentious little flaming bullshit poseur. You write about things about which you could obviously know nothing, as the haughty spoiled little 17 year-old you are. All your images are needlessly opaque, probably because you create them by pulling magnetic poetry from a hat, and the reason you don't write many things that rhyme is because you have only a very clumsy command of the English Language and because your grandmother took your rhyming dictionary away from you after you wrote that pome about her in the hospital.

P.S. Please send as much more of your flaming bullshit poetry to this address: "GoadToad@hotmail.com" as you possibly can, as soon as possible. I need it. Uh, for a, uh...study. That I'm doing on pretentious child prodigies. Er, that is, poseurs.