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6010. Crafty Critter - 11/3/2007 6:24:55 AM Hi Seamus,
I would like to answer you in order. You made a statement about your years here and how someone might see you as a misogynist. I have not been here for years, so I don't know about that. As to "dropping in here" I guess a person has to start somewhere and I for one was curious about the poem. Plain and simple.
As I stated each and every time, I was NOT trying to be sarcastic, mean, rude or otherwise. Just curious. You didn't answer me when I wrote to you, Alistair did, and I answered him with what I previously had been thinking about the poem. And yes, it was well meaning.
Goodbye message ? I say Chao all the time.
Hit post ? If you mean "hit" as in kill it, or put it down, no. I don't know you well enough to expect you to "care" . I was only asking you about your poem. Just because I'm new here, you are accusing me of making "hit and run posts" ? Stalking ? Aren't those harsh words just because I asked you some things about your poem that I didn't understand ?
You mentioned that I had never spoken to you before...true. But doesn't a person have to start SOMEWHERE ?? I WAS JUST ASKING YOU A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS.
I'm JUST someone who is interested in poetry TRYING to understand different facets, the makeup, the why's, where's and how's of poems that people write. I wasn't trying to "hit" on your work. I suppose people trying to learn more about poetry is not welcome here ? Is that what you are telling me ?
And, just for your personal information, I am a student who is just beginning to write, to learn poetry,to want more out of life. More than anyone in my family has ever done before. At least I am trying. And just because you have issues with me asking you questions about why you wrote certain things in the poem the way you did, does not give you the right to accuse me of "stalking", "hitting", "hit and run posts".And I will say this to each and every ONE of you.......you might think me "ignorant" and "lame" as NuPlanet called me. I don't think so, I'm learning, so I ask questions as anyone would do. And I hope and pray that whenever I meet someone new on a board, that I have enough graciousness about me to give that person the benefit of the doubt before I blast them for something they didn't really do. 6011. NuPlanetOne - 11/3/2007 1:39:02 PM C.C.
Bravo! Excellent account of yourself. That you are neither lame nor ignorant is quite irrelevant. That you have returned and are now properly introduced is what is most relevant. Experiencing a momentary flash of Seamus' ire is well worth the trade-off if you in fact are serious about the appreciation of things poetic. Though he does not instruct, the structure and complexity of some of his offerings, if studied, will become a worthwile learning experience. Therefore, you have the benefit of the doubt and I apologise for my slander. 6012. Crafty Critter - 11/3/2007 4:09:02 PM Thank you NuPlanetOne. And, it's nice to meet you BTW. Apology accfepted.( Smiles here ) 6013. Seamus - 11/3/2007 7:18:37 PM It’s never so “plain and simple” as you make it, CC. You make some mistakes in your reasoning and come to some unfounded conclusions, but I don’t think there is any thing about them that cannot be made right by discussion if you are truly interested.
I’ll assume that what you indicate about yourself is the case. If so, you are quite like me…I too am learning about poetry and, as you say, “[wanting] more out of life”. I imagine it’s the case with any of life’s worthy pursuits—one never truly “learns” it, it’s the journey not the destination and all that. But for anyone who truly wants more out of life, I can eagerly say that poetry is an excellent pursuit. That, in fact, makes for a very workable jumping off point for what poetry is—poetry wants more out of life!
You say you are student. Welcome to the club! I am a student too. But I imagine you mean that you are of the “books and classes” variety of student. Highly valuable, that. Take arkymalarky. Please! But seriously, I am eternally envious of her students—I wish I might be a “books and classes” variety student in one of her classes. Her students cannot possibly understand what a dedicated, intelligent teacher they have in her. Writers love readers who love writing. And she’s more the writer herself than she allows.
And another thing—NuPlanetOne’s is among the most gentle, beautiful souls ever to people this planet. In fact, he was not truly slandering you. He does not actually think you “ignorant” or “lame”—rather, his words came from an almost reflexive move to defend me. Why would he do that? Because he knows me, as you do not. And I’m deeply humbled. In his second post, directed to you, you see precisely what he thinks. That is what you should go with.
You say this:
And just because you have issues with me asking you questions about why you wrote certain things in the poem the way you did, does not give you the right to accuse me of "stalking", "hitting", "hit and run posts". This is nonsense. Of course I have the right to do. Just as you have the right to ask questions, make comments and “start somewhere”, I have the right to react as I have, whether you approve or no. With no desire to condescend, I will say that if you are being sincere, then you are simply not aware that yours is how so many stalking-type attacks occur. An apparently new loginid. An unprompted claim that you are not being sarcastic, which in and of itself is extremely revealing, as it presumes an awareness of the possibility of ulterior motives. “Would you care to explain yourself?”-type questions, instead of the much more neutral manner of stating your own interpretation of the poem, including the connotations that CC, not Seamus, assigns to “jays”.
The poem you are so concerned about is no more a statement that I wish violence on women than Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was an indication that he found children tasty when served with a gravy. Speaking of rights, poetry isn’t all denotation—and you have no right to assume one is. I have a history—you would do well to give me credit for it next time.
As I said, I am assuming you are being sincere. If you are, you will try to understand what I am saying. You will learn why your astonished protestations of innocence do not scan for me.
You’ve told me something about you, now it’s my turn. As I said, I’ve grown less naďve. It’s been from necessity—I am grown quite tired of being the ever polite, ever apologising person who suffers attacks quietly—attacks formatted exactly as your comments were. Most of my life I’ve rolled over for precisely your manner of “how dare you!” reaction, as if I’d done something wrong. Well, no more. You say you weren’t attacking me, that you are the unfortunate victim of a sincere approach that just appears to be insincere. Too bad. If you don’t want to be seen as attacking someone online, then avoid all of those things I pointed out above. Read me, learn me, comment about YOUR OWN responses to a poem I’ve written (again, that is the honest way to do it, not “what do you mean by”-type statement/questions).
You will be astonished how fast I respond positively to such an approach, even when what you say is that you don’t like something I’ve written. If you want to stay and do that, then welcome. We can each learn from one another.
6014. Seamus - 11/3/2007 8:40:35 PM Pioneer
(for Poig)
Her crabappled fingers are freed
by ruminations of celtic dances.
She's forgotten threats of rocky thorns
on all those hybrid teas whose soil she'd loosened
or how asphalted gravel would stick to palms and knees
as she weeded through razor ferns.
Hearing a wayward wryneck's que que que
drop through the oak dwarfing the day porch,
she hums a love song, but doesn't know why.
Her fingers tremble when she passes the table
where bright papers and bright mirrors
glitter among the many glasses.
Hands often inked from hulling walnuts
or milk sticky from the weeping bracts
of cypress spurge now caress
full life only in her dreams. In them,
hints of hot grease and onions waft through the porch,
where she is detailing eggshells with stars and moons in blues, greens, golds.
She sings while she paints and waits for him—
a song of children moving in peregrine circles
as a summer day breathes.
Seamus
[smaller font to keep S6L3 from wrapping. With "blues, greens, golds" I seem to be stuck on asyndeton lately, but I also think it works here.] 6015. arkymalarky - 11/3/2007 10:15:33 PM Seamus, you are such a dear. 6016. NuPlanetOne - 11/4/2007 2:25:11 AM Seamus,
That one is lovely, endearing, very nice.
6017. NuPlanetOne - 11/4/2007 2:26:39 AM I suppose i should have used html in the first place to link my 'Rachel' poem to take advantage of the Halloween aura while it was still current. In any case, the piece, and it is a rather long read, is here. 6018. Crafty Critter - 11/4/2007 3:17:56 AM hi NuPlanetOne. I read your "Rachael" and found itto be just wonderful. Is that particular type of poetry called a Monody ? 6019. Crafty Critter - 11/5/2007 12:14:01 AM Seamus,
I don't know whether you are "of a certain age" or just touchy, but after reading what you said to me in your last post, I wouldn't care to learn anything from you.
I picked this board because it looked small and everybody sounded like they were nice to each other and friendly and I was scared of posting. Now I know why it’s small, newbie’s aren’t welcome here. In the time it took for the Gatekeepers to straighten out my password and to get me in here, I have not seen one new person. And that has been for three months or so now. I looked at the poems on before I decided to post anything. None of the poems looked very interesting to me -- hay going to church or something in one. I came from a farm, and believe you me, hay ain't that interesting. And then a bunch of really old fashioned dirty words in the other. And those words were not respectful of women, no matter what you say.
I finally decided to ask about the third one. You wanted me to say what I saw there. It looked like one of those notes from a serial killer you might see in that TV show I watch called "Numb3rs". So I thought how cool if somebody was really writing a murder story like a poem and maybe and this was a poem from it. You talked in it about killing women and that you still couldn't erase them. And you used numbers and codes. What was a normal person to make of that? It looked that way to me. I was hoping to find out what the code meant so I could write what I thought about the poem, but I didn't get that far. Where I live, when you say “effin”, we usually mean it for the “F” word. And jay is used in a different context as well.
I'm 18 years old and I have to pass English 101 and write about a couple of poems so I can pass. I thought I might learn something on a chat board. I never expected such hateful answers.
You said 'learn from me" -- and that is rude and looking down your nose at me. What could I possibly learn, considering what you wrote to somebody who doesn't know you from Adam's housecat?
Learn to be so paranoid that I accuse a one time post of being a stalker? Learn to be so defensive of my poem that I can't be polite enough to answer a couple of simple questions about what kind of code you were using without throwing a fit? Learn to be rude to other people and accuse strangers of attacking when all they did was ask a question about something they didn't understand in a poem that was posted on the internet for anybody to read that wants to? Learn to discourage people from outside this board from posting? Learn be mean to people and make them feel bad or stupid?
No thanks. If you're some kind of poet, I don't want to be anything like you. I love poetry but, I don't want to even read another poem at this point. Maybe I can get a tutor in the English lab or maybe a student will help me or maybe my teacher if she has the time. But I won't be asking somebody like you ever again. CC
6020. arkymalarky - 11/5/2007 12:45:58 AM If that's what you're looking for, please don't run off. Why don't you throw something out that you're working with in class and we'll walk through it together? 6021. arkymalarky - 11/5/2007 12:46:58 AM What are you studying in class right now that you have questions about or want to discuss? 6022. Seamus - 11/5/2007 5:31:58 AM None of the poems looked very interesting to me -- hay going to church or something in one. I came from a farm, and believe you me, hay ain't that interesting. And then a bunch of really old fashioned dirty words in the other. And those words were not respectful of women, no matter what you say.
I'm thrilled, CC, to have you talk about *your* thoughts and reactions to the poems.
I absolutely respect your opinion that you find the one tedious and the other disrespectful. I've been inclined myself to wonder if hay going to church isn't too boring, so having another opinion confirm my worry is useful for me in considering where to go with that one. The second one, you don't like the words, and I also respect that. I note only that one should be careful not to equate narrator with writer. Once any writer lets a poem go, even if for comment as here, it belongs to the reader at least as much as it belongs to the writer. That is why you should indicate what your reaction is, just as you have finally done here, rather than asking the writer what is meant. A poem doesn't mean what a writer thinks it means--it means what the reader thinks it means. That's why a poem never means one thing, because there may be many different readings. Once you indicate your reaction, the writer can decide whether changes are needed or not, based on those comments. (btw, the really old-fashioned dirty words are very much in use today by irish teenagers, so maybe it's the irish who are old-fashioned.) But those words are the narrator's words.
Doesn't mean you need to like them, and I respect your opinion that you do not. It is *useful* to me to know what reaction a poem is getting. I may or may not make changes based on that type of reaction.
In this case, the poem was selected by an online poetry community's judge for inclusion in the IBPC international "best of" competition for a two-month period, so I won't be able to make any changes to it until it is judged in that competition.
You are mistaken if you think I'm offended that you don't like these two poems or the effin' one that has engendered so much controversy. Would it help you to know I don't think it's very good either, now, if ever? I'm not at all hurt or upset that you don't like it or anything else I write. Once again, your reaction is feedback to me as to how it is communicating. I can take that into account as I revise. I can promise that if you stay and get to know me, you will find there is no harsher critic of my writing than me--things I write often end up being defended by others against my own dissatisfaction with them.
Not at all sure certain what my age might have to do with anything, but I never said that I was here to teach you. If you look again, you will see that I said we could learn from each other. I've always felt that way. I learn from readers and I learn from other writers, such as you. So, I benefit if you stay and participate, because I gain from it. And were I you, I'd never want you to be some kind of poet like me--I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I do not know what English 101 is...are you at university? I certainly hope this is not an introductory level class, because your writing is quite sophisticated, interesting and absolutely error free for your age, and your talents would be wasted in a basic level class.
We'd love to have you stay and participate. 6023. Crafty Critter - 11/5/2007 8:18:22 PM Thanks E1. Here's the deal. I quit school after my mom and dad split up a couple years ago but my dad says that if I want to keep the car he bought for me that I have to finish. So I went back, got my G.E.D. and now I am taking all of my general studies at a two year Tech school. Seamas, English 101 is basic English Composition. My plans are in Nursing and I want to continue to write on the side. I am moving in with my dad until February starting this weekend and he doesn't allow me to use the computer except for school work so, before I leave I was going to ask how I can make this poem better. I wasn't told to write it in any certain way, just to write a poem about an emotion and I picked Greed. I have to turn it in by Friday. Hopefully, I will get to talk more before I leave. If not, it's been ,well, ODD ! Smiles ....CC
Greed
This is the path
Of unrighteous woe,
Neither gleams, nor blooms
No, not this road.
Despair is its tree
Gloom, it’s rose,
Maker of mischief
Fog soon grows.
Shades of contempt
Waltz shamelessly by,
Snarling and envy
Fill the sky.
Anger and pity
Just hang around,
While judgmental crafts
Swiftly abound.
Deceit and treachery
Ride a wagon here,
Take one and all
For what they hold dear.
Rage with jealousy
In the dead of night,
Claim your soul
Without struggle, nor fight.
Travel this road
With care my friend,
Don’t dance in the dust
Most call mayhem.
CC
October, 2007
6024. NuPlanetOne - 11/6/2007 4:55:59 AM C.C.
'Greed' was a good first draft. The emotion you chose is a powerful one. Perhaps the most powerful one. And as such it incorporates and instigates a display of pretty much all the major categories of emotions. When you think about it, love, which might win the number one spot in a poll of what people would consider the most powerful emotion, is quite similar in ferocity to greed by virtue of the fact that the act of loving very often becomes a need to want all of the thing or person you love, and even more and forever more of it. In your poem you found yourself having to run through the various modes of emotion that were triggered by this one primal emotion, such as despair, gloom, contempt, anger, deceit and treachery. You did this because unconsciously you realized that these other strong emotions are, in your poem, step children of this greed you are trying to warn others off. Look at your poem. Don't try to ryhme anything. The first weak spot was when you tried to ryhme rose and grows in the second stanza. Try changing 'Fog soon grows' with something that helps the 'Maker of mischief' line sound more greedy because having recognized that these other strong emotions are driven by greed, you should avoid a throwaway metaphor, or an attempt at one, especially containing fog, as greed is a clear and focused entity. Then try the same process on the following stanzas and continue to link all these emotions to the fact that they are borne out of greed. In any case, were you to hand that poem into me I would have to pass you just as it is. But do work on it and let the others offer some help as well. 6025. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 11/7/2007 12:50:08 AM Please excuse the intrusion, but I was curious to see how the poets and word-junkies might respond to my attempt at visual poetry.
[This is the final version of the catalog, so please flag a screw-ups if you spot any before it goes to press at week's end.]
6026. Seamus - 11/7/2007 4:17:52 AM It's no intrusion, Wiz. That is one breathtaking collection. Nothing but admiration and wonder from these quarters. 6027. NuPlanetOne - 11/7/2007 4:37:00 AM Wiz,
As a word junkie I found the intro to the collection brilliant. Really, quite an elegant piece of writing. And as not so much a vagabond, but as the son of an Italian immigrant, my longing for the antique home of my paternal forbears, borders more on a yearning I had often observed in my father's mien when friends or relatives would talk of a recent trip back home to the Old Country. I do believe in visual poetry, it is a non-phonetic rendering of those same conflict stained or joy filled wondrous moments that need an outlet and memorial. The visual arts, as well as literary, music, dance, stage, film, oratory, et.al.,(in some defined order), are the statuary embodiments of those imaginings. And I have a paticular fondness for the Graphic Arts, as you described them, having dabbled briefly years ago with ink on rough hewn paper. But your querry is how as a poet, I or others equally self described might evaluate your attempt at an example of visual poetry. It goes like this. Were I to stroll casually through a well orchestrated gallery within a peaceful setting with my favorite Borolo in hand viewing these monoprints, it would be much the same as if I were sipping a wonderful Tawny Port by a fireplace reading a good poem. Going along from print to print would evoke, for me, the same quiet and private renderings that are suggested in frozen time on the face of each picture. So in that sense, it is poetry. More so, because they are a collection of similar ideas even though each one might provide a tangent as to close itself off. But they do ultimately hold to a theme that reaches back to the begining as in the way a poem should explain its purpose by providing some sort of connection to its premise. Oh, did I say I liked the prints? I do. Very nice. 6028. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 11/7/2007 6:36:24 AM Yikes--I wasn't expecting an embarassment of riches--thanks. Being dyslexic, painfully self-conscious of my writing skills and a very sloppy reader, this thread has always represented a snazzy restaurant I might get thrown out of–but this repast has been most enjoyable!
6029. NuPlanetOne - 11/23/2007 5:27:51 PM A Moment's Peace
What thanks are these
If you please,
We give again
Of course, to the Lord
But not for all we have
But for what
Lies ahead
I have more moments
To breathe, than some
Who are gone
And I wonder,
Gone where?
And I fear
They are gone again
And I hear
Are born again
In remembering
In recalling
Their faces
The times we had
Together, the dreams
We shared, the effort
And significance
And I see it
As I pass the potatoes
In blushed cheeks
And exuberant conversation
That this is the reward
The prize
We are thankful for
Even bitter animosities
Blink off intermittently
For a second
A feeling of inclusion
A moment of gladness
An awareness of purpose
By all means, thank you
Lord
But here, amidst
The jangle of China
And after Grace
Having had the luck
To sit and marvel
At the feast
At least
I had the moment
And now wish,
Uncertain,
For what lies
Ahead.
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