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| a possible dialog start? help yourself geckodrome 14 Oct 08 8:34AM | Thread Closed |
tell me what poetry is then. it's not an airy-fairy thing, i think, something beyond language. it's an active process isn't it, and can't it be defined in language at the moment and for the moment? that is, that the definition needn't be universal, just effective? it seems to me that that's possible because we're creating the poem and we know the creative moves which were used for the poem. what i think is contentious in what i'm saying is only the idea that poetry critical is transparent for us: we are able to talk as poets, talk about how and why we made a poem.
if it is something beyond language though, how can you respond to a critique? wouldn't they all be valid, since you wouldn't be able to understand the poem in any language way? that it would be as cryptic a document to you as it would be to anyone else? and, if you did know the secret of the poem, why would you keep it from other poets here in poetry critical? it's not like this place was any competition site for becoming published or famous -- that is, nothing said here about our writing could have any effect on the world of consumer, and what consumer world could give-us-a-nice-day about.
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself geckodrome 14 Oct 08 8:44AM | Thread Closed |
you may have a problem with 'commercial' in this -- reacting immediately to the word without realizing that that's not the goal of poetry which i'm imagining for us. i simply couldn't think of any other reason why and artist wouldn't want to talk about the creative process unless they were afraid of giving away trade secrets -- magic formulae -- and creative is the only thing in the world which is really ours, which is really 'us'. the outside world and consumer values have no effect on us, but only because we're not writing to be published -- we're not creating a self for us out of someone else's labor. we exist as poets because we write poetry, and we write poetry on as much as we feel we've actually written a successful poem. our ideas of success involve self-conscious reflection on what we knew before we wrote the poem and what we know after we wrote the poem, if you see what i'm saying? that writing the poem is an experience too, and that experience is the creative interpretation and presentation of our reality over whatever reality we'd thought we'd experienced. that seems pretty obvious to me, that we're only as real as we make ourselves.
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself netskyIam 14 Oct 08 8:54AM | Thread Closed |
http://w3t.org/c/all burned
My friend Jones was married just a year ago tonight.
Jones'ey is a man who has an awful appetite.
His wife went to cooking school and tried so hard to learn.
When he comes home for a meal, she says, "It's all burned".
"So, honey, cut yourself a piece of cake and make yourself at home.
I'm sorry that I can't cook steak, but cake is more high-toned.
You swore by stars above, dear, that you could live on love, dear.
So cut yourself a piece of cake and make yourself at home."
Peeps, it's a song from shellac disk that I rescued from dead Mr. Graham's rubbish pile when I was 14. Having known the lyric for forty years now, I feel it should be submitted for your consideration.
joey is "wifey", but of course!
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself netskyIam 14 Oct 08 8:57AM | Thread Closed |
let's try that link again but use instead,
reliable, safe, clean tinyurl:
tinyurl.com/3s5jak
Cut Yourself a Piece of Cake
(and make yourself at homo)
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself geckodrome 14 Oct 08 9:11AM | Thread Closed |
tell me what poetry is then. it's not an airy-fairy thing, i think, something beyond language. it's an active process isn't it, and can't it be defined in language at the moment and for the moment? that is, that the definition needn't be universal, just effective? it seems to me that that's possible because we're creating the poem and we know the creative moves which were used for the poem. what i think is contentious in what i'm saying is only the idea that poetry critical is transparent for us: we are able to talk as poets, talk about how and why we made a poem.
if it is something beyond language though, how can you respond to a critique? wouldn't they all be valid, since you wouldn't be able to understand the poem in any language way? that it would be as cryptic a document to you as it would be to anyone else? and, if you did know the secret of the poem, why would you keep it from other poets here in poetry critical? it's not like this place was any competition site for becoming published or famous -- that is, nothing said here about our writing could have any effect on the world of consumer, and what consumer world could give-us-a-nice-day about.
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself unknown 14 Oct 08 9:32AM | Thread Closed |
Most people don't seem to want to explain their poems. It's sometimes so frustrating, because I don't like reading puzzles, and whenever I ask for something to be clarified I always get the same response, telling me I'm old, or too dense to figure it out. Why all the mystery? Don't we want to help eachother become better writers, write better poems?
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself geckodrome 14 Oct 08 9:39AM | Thread Closed |
"keep the change cinderella"
you want to see the comment section in this. i asked to have mong's comments deleted -- they were gratuitous, not about the dialog -- he'd never commented on the poem, just broke in and attacked me. those comments are still up, mods -- you didn't take them down.
if you can't be fair then i can't trust what i have to say to remain posted. if i can't know that some possible reader is going to see them and be inspired to start a dialog then i can't really justify writing any comments here and i will leave the site to whatever you think it's supposed to look like and how it's supposed to function.
i hate unfair people.
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself geckodrome 14 Oct 08 9:48AM | Thread Closed |
i think the confusion is profound and not remediable. it stems from a misunderstanding of what poetry is, and a misunderstanding of poetry critical's function. for me it's a critical dialog where the most profound discussion has to be on the nature and practice of critique. most people are using it as a poetry show off place and tease. it probably has to be that way -- there are only so many poets at any time -- and the word poetry attracts cockroaches, the fat being that they're going to post half-written stories in a safe place with no judgment, while at the same time totally wrathful about their rating score... they want both no competition and only competition. the proof of it all is how inarticulate they are in their critiques and how mute their are to critique on their work. there's a couple of smooth guys working the room here -- people who've got the style down and have no soul and simply write and post from vanity. they write well enough, and if it weren't for the trochee's, this place would have no significant body of work at all. if it's just poetry night club or gentleman's lounge then that's got to be the truth of the place and i have to accept it. it's an ugly and debauched scene though, with no chance of purity and, at best, only a few sophisticated comments from english as a hobby writers and supercilious toads.
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself netskyIam 14 Oct 08 9:53AM | Thread Closed |
joey, it's just very hard for many of us to follow the thoughts you express here at times.
Sometimes you express beautifully, clearly. Other times it looks like an uncapitalized mass of unbroken words, little or no paragraphing. And sometimes the thoughts seem to be contradictory of themselves.
One example from a posting above:
QUOTE
what i think is contentious in what i'm saying is only the idea that poetry critical is transparent for us: we are able to talk as poets, talk about how and why we made a poem.
--end quote---
Of that long sentence, only the second half, the half after the colon, makes full sense to me; it's a simple, digestible, proposition:
"We are able to talk as poets; talk about how and why we made a poem."
(I put a semicolon in place of your legal comma)
Now go from that one thought: whether we are, or are not able to talk about how and why we made a poem.
Myself? I can always explain the what-and-why for any of my poems.
Some other people, cannot. Next up? There's so much bramble to cover in any one of your poetry talks. They are not easy to read, nor to follow the intent of your train of thought.
That's how I see it, anyway. Small bites, chew well, then we swallow or spit back? And then you offer another small and -clearly- written posit?
Reid
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| re: a possible dialog start? help yourself netskyIam 14 Oct 08 9:58AM | Thread Closed |
One bite at a time:
QUOTE:
tell me what poetry is then. it's not an airy-fairy thing,
----end quote.
My opinion: I think poetry can be almost anything, from "airy-fairy" to boldly masculine,
to spiritual or godly, or limerick-y, or pithy or silly or serious or a video with verbal cues or, or, or, a recitation of verse to a total stranger, but not in verse form;
in free form making of conversation, pleasant or amusing, we find one of the many uses for poetic skill:
compacted thought, or metaphor,
would I were a bird...
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