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Gather, a spring challenge

I awoke this morning with the notion to come say goodbye and thanks, and you are welcome all, and how much I enjoyed being a part of this, and to ask Angi to unstick this thread, but I was too late; it's already in the porcelain altar, so, I'll give it a final flush and let it swirl away.

one final thought though... I would love to see some of the poets on interview threads like the ones that were done before

Magnetron said:
* aims for Harry's noggin; winds up and pitches a well rounded Idaho spud *
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.. :eek: I know
 
Hahaha I had the same final thoughts as Harry on odd objects it wasn't until subsequent reads I grasped the different layers.
 
5ed this was 9 me of the strongest challenge pieces for my liking. Well written with out going over board on the emotion you allow t he reader yo empathize with your characters. Could Probably Be trimmed but it deserves a 5 and in my opinion a H
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Saw this comment on my entry, The Bird's Nest, this morning (thanks todski28!) and the last line reminded me that it wasn't until after entering the challenge that I realized HH had said all entries had to be 20 lines or less.

For some reason, I had misread it and thought all entries had to be exactly 20 lines (which, even then, was a challenge for me to get down to). I think that's why I have such a great appreciation for the smaller works like Bloom, which packed so much punch into so few words.
 
posted for tio

legerdemer

G............
Anything But Spring

If I send out my heart to meet his,
waltz they together, float in the dance,
or two-step Western swing exuberance?
Will our hearts return in one piece?

Speak they in tangled tongues,
bemused, aloft, a-soar?
Or will they drift becalmed,
without a harbor to call home?

I do not dare to ask too much,
nor settle for too limited a dream.
Do not wish to mire in the mud, nor fly
too close to Icarus, draw flame from his sun.

What say you now, oh silly heart that beats
and gives no rest from dreamy flighty springs?
I hear your words, as soft as whisperings.
You tell me, “Anything but spring
or any new beginning fling.

“No more, you’re too old, too few years left.
Let ridicule and distance save you from your self.”
And yet… hope remains.
 
Too late to revive this one for talking about poems?

"Somewhere, Something Incredible"

The title came from one of my favorite Carl Sagan quotes, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

I wanted to write something about the intensity of modern electronic communication (it's instant and always on) with its very tenuous nature - it has minimal physical existence for something that's grown so important. The first part that came to me was the image of signals bouncing off of satellites and being broadcast out into space, billions and billions of them radiating out from our little blue marble of a planet. I'm an American in my early 30s - for me, there's no thinking about space without thinking about Carl Sagan. The loose rhyme scheme was an accident - something I realized had happened in the first stanza that I liked and would repeat.

As for the most frequent questions I got, both on the thread and in private, here's what's up with that reference to Mr. T: I'm an American in my early 30s. When I first became aware that TV signals were being broadcast out from Earth in all directions and that they could be received by far civilizations in their original form, even if life on Earth had passed those shows by long ago (Thanks again, Dr. Sagan!), Mr. T was everywhere. The thought that he still *is* everywhere if you go a few light years out from Earth was too hilarious to pass up.

The third stanza was a contrast of the permanence and weight of the words exchanged in contrast to the tenuous medium of exchange described in the second stanza. Someone earlier in the thread (greenmountaineer?) said something about the images pushing out and pulling back in, which was delightful for me - exactly what I was going for.

The last stanza ties back around to the two main ideas in the first, Carl Sagan ("We are made of star stuff.") and the view of Earth from far away, ringed by the "petals" of communication signals. I liked using the two different connotations of "anything but spring" as a call-back but not a full repetition.

Enough of you had AMoveableBeast tagged for this poem and me tagged for any one of his that I'm definitely never going to murder anyone on the Orient Express and try to get away with it if any of you are on board! AMB is my general inspiration and writing partner for prose pieces. Early in the year, I wrote a poem to amuse him while he was waiting somewhere boring. Since then, we've been shooting poems back and forth, some posted to Lit, some not, like a loose, boozy conversation. "Somewhere, Something Incredible" is a spiritual response to "Flight of The Intrepid Goddess".
 
I'm delighted you wrote the above, stlgoddessfreya (St. Louis? I spent a delightful week at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in 1978, but that's a different story.) The problem I had with "Mr. T" was it was too pop culture. While Carl Sagan at the time may have been the same, he spoke to a broader theme. There's a difference between "I pity the fool..." which turns quickly into a cliché after you hear for the third fast forward to the umpteenth time compared to taking us to the farthest reaches of the universe in the reader's imagination.

Had it not been for the iconic "Mr. T"(no offense. I thought he was pretty cool in the series.) I would have chosen "Something Incredible" because that's what love is IMO: It takes us to the farthest point of the universe in our imagination but comes down to earth in the smallest of places between two people.
 
stlgoddessfreya said:
Too late to revive this one for talking about poems?

"Somewhere, Something Incredible"

The title came from one of my favorite Carl Sagan quotes, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

I wanted to write something about the intensity of modern electronic communication (it's instant and always on) with its very tenuous nature - it has minimal physical existence for something that's grown so important. The first part that came to me was the image of signals bouncing off of satellites and being broadcast out into space, billions and billions of them radiating out from our little blue marble of a planet. I'm an American in my early 30s - for me, there's no thinking about space without thinking about Carl Sagan. The loose rhyme scheme was an accident - something I realized had happened in the first stanza that I liked and would repeat.

As for the most frequent questions I got, both on the thread and in private, here's what's up with that reference to Mr. T: I'm an American in my early 30s. When I first became aware that TV signals were being broadcast out from Earth in all directions and that they could be received by far civilizations in their original form, even if life on Earth had passed those shows by long ago (Thanks again, Dr. Sagan!), Mr. T was everywhere. The thought that he still *is* everywhere if you go a few light years out from Earth was too hilarious to pass up.

The third stanza was a contrast of the permanence and weight of the words exchanged in contrast to the tenuous medium of exchange described in the second stanza. Someone earlier in the thread (greenmountaineer?) said something about the images pushing out and pulling back in, which was delightful for me - exactly what I was going for.

The last stanza ties back around to the two main ideas in the first, Carl Sagan ("We are made of star stuff.") and the view of Earth from far away, ringed by the "petals" of communication signals. I liked using the two different connotations of "anything but spring" as a call-back but not a full repetition.

Enough of you had AMoveableBeast tagged for this poem and me tagged for any one of his that I'm definitely never going to murder anyone on the Orient Express and try to get away with it if any of you are on board! AMB is my general inspiration and writing partner for prose pieces. Early in the year, I wrote a poem to amuse him while he was waiting somewhere boring. Since then, we've been shooting poems back and forth, some posted to Lit, some not, like a loose, boozy conversation. "Somewhere, Something Incredible" is a spiritual response to "Flight of The Intrepid Goddess".
Click to expand...

Thank you for the explanation, as someone that couldn't quite pick between AMB's work and your own, I just have to say, you two can WRITE!

I guess I had better do some research on Carl Sagan, unfortunately some of the references were lost on me but hey that's reader fault. if it wasn't for the Mr T image though I believe this would have been stronger, it seemed to make a mockery of the write, it was subtle, not a blaring mistake but if the final thing I envisage is Mr T then this one image overpowered the rest of the message, in my opinion.
 
greenmountaineer said:
I'm delighted you wrote the above, stlgoddessfreya (St. Louis? I spent a delightful week at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in 1978, but that's a different story.) The problem I had with "Mr. T" was it was too pop culture. While Carl Sagan at the time may have been the same, he spoke to a broader theme. There's a difference between "I pity the fool..." which turns quickly into a cliché after you hear for the third fast forward to the umpteenth time compared to taking us to the farthest reaches of the universe in the reader's imagination.

Had it not been for the iconic "Mr. T"(no offense. I thought he was pretty cool in the series.) I would have chosen "Something Incredible" because that's what love is IMO: It takes us to the farthest point of the universe in our imagination but comes down to earth in the smallest of places between two people.
Click to expand...

todski28 said:
Thank you for the explanation, as someone that couldn't quite pick between AMB's work and your own, I just have to say, you two can WRITE!

I guess I had better do some research on Carl Sagan, unfortunately some of the references were lost on me but hey that's reader fault. if it wasn't for the Mr T image though I believe this would have been stronger, it seemed to make a mockery of the write, it was subtle, not a blaring mistake but if the final thing I envisage is Mr T then this one image overpowered the rest of the message, in my opinion.
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I disagree, substitute mr t with any iconic early tv character (perhaps a quote) don't know why but I'm thinking of Jimmy Stewart flying through the either
 
i liked mr t in the piece.

for me, it placed the piece smack in the 70's/80's and introduced a sense of the absurdity that's such an integral part of humanity; it worked in contrast to the enormity of space time/distance, as though it represented this tiny planet and its inhabitants, how mankind as a civilisation reaches out, broadcasts its existence like a beacon into the future.

T could have been replaced with any number of substitutes, i suppose, such as a star trek reference, dukes of hazard, whatever... but it tickled me that mr T's iconic phrase 'pity the fools' was used because it makes me think of the minds that might receive that message: if they're picking up all the nuclear/horror/racist stuff being broadcast at a similar time, maybe mr T's message might be an important one after all....
 
butters said:
i liked mr t in the piece.

for me, it placed the piece smack in the 70's/80's and introduced a sense of the absurdity that's such an integral part of humanity; it worked in contrast to the enormity of space time/distance, as though it represented this tiny planet and its inhabitants, how mankind as a civilisation reaches out, broadcasts its existence like a beacon into the future.

T could have been replaced with any number of substitutes, i suppose, such as a star trek reference, dukes of hazard, whatever... but it tickled me that mr T's iconic phrase 'pity the fools' was used because it makes me think of the minds that might receive that message: if they're picking up all the nuclear/horror/racist stuff being broadcast at a similar time, maybe mr T's message might be an important one after all....
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My main quibble with it was that the character of Mr T is such that it overpowered the rest of the piece there was so much more in the poem but my leaving imprint was of the Mohawk and the repeating phrase I pity the fool. I think it was too powerful, or conversely this reader got too fixated on the main symbol that stood out to me. Which is once again reader fault
 
todski28 said:
My main quibble with it was that the character of Mr T is such that it overpowered the rest of the piece there was so much more in the poem but my leaving imprint was of the Mohawk and the repeating phrase I pity the fool. I think it was too powerful, or conversely this reader got too fixated on the main symbol that stood out to me. Which is once again reader fault
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hi tods :rose:
it's always gonna be very subjective :) worked for me because of the journey it took my thinking on - it worked in counterbalance, clearly it didn't for others. i wonder which image would have worked best for most people - culture/age/gender will all weight how any one image/character might come across. tricky stuff this poeming :D
 
butters said:
hi tods :rose:
it's always gonna be very subjective :) worked for me because of the journey it took my thinking on - it worked in counterbalance, clearly it didn't for others. i wonder which image would have worked best for most people - culture/age/gender will all weight how any one image/character might come across. tricky stuff this poeming :D
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10'000 things so I've been told ;)
 
todski28 said:
More than one of us here does :) bet he never expected that :p
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perhaps he found a board that rewarded him more in his own journey as a writer looking to improve. dunno.hope he drops back in though.
 
legerdemer said:
mmmm... Who're you speaking of, for us uninitiated relative newbies?
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They are talking about Twelveoone who in addition to some outstanding poetry you'll find in that link, wrote many threads dedicated to the understanding of poetry construction and design... I miss him too :eek:
ETA: A funny motherfucker too :D
 
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HarryHill said:
They are talking about Twelveoone who in addition to some outstanding poetry you'll find in that link, wrote many threads dedicated to the understanding of poetry construction and design... I miss him too :eek:
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Thanks, yes - I remember some of his comments from when I was here before and mostly lurking.
 
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