The Descent

[flyguy69]

Dante spends time
on critics who lack spine--
obsequiousness borders obscenity.
For there is a pit
leveled with shit
where flatterers spend their eternity.

 

[Du Lac]

wickedly witty dear fly!
on my scale of critical thought...

two strokes and a cock slap good!

du~

 

[twelveoone]

Dante spends time
on critics who lack spine--
obsequiousness borders obscenity.
For there is a pit
leveled with shit
where flatterers spend their eternity.

well-ll cover me with splatter
I've been gulty of such flatter

I've seen the light, Mister Fly
I'm though being Mr. Nice Guy

 

[champagne1982]

Dante spends time
on critics who lack spine--
obsequiousness borders obscenity.
For there is a pit
leveled with shit
where flatterers spend their eternity.

Cease your servility! To master the art
is to exhibit the will to simply start
to earn the credentials
to show poets potential
of calling wind "gas" and not farts.

 

[RhymeFairy]

Dante spends time
on critics who lack spine--
obsequiousness borders obscenity.
For there is a pit
leveled with shit
where flatterers spend their eternity.

Is this what
they would want?
Are we guilty
of this crime?
Ask,
ask yourself.
Look deep.
Do you know who
You are?

In the mirror,
shimmering images of
thoughtless prattling,
tongues
teaching the deaf,
blind.
What do you teach,
Really teach?

Show us this golden image.
This godlike immortal being,
who knows and sees all
yet teaches,
nothing.

Nothing, sits
by the wayside
only to sit.
Watch as time passes,
friends leave.
They have left you
behind.

Watching, teaching
the thoughtless,
or being taught,
by the thoughtless?

You decide.
Who are you?
What do you teach?
What or who,
have you,
left behind ...

 

[Tzara]

well-ll cover me with splatter
I've been gulty of such flatter

I've seen the light, Mister Fly
I'm though being Mr. Nice Guy

You know,

Well, twelve was never nice.
Oh one was ever ice.

Who gained from this device?
Not fly boy. But the price

was war: art driven downward
until the text begets the floor.

Can we do something else?
Like poetics talk, I yelp?​

I would really like to move on to talk about something relevant to this forum. Like, "what the fuck is enjambment and how the hell does it work?"

Duckie said Fly's latest poem did this well.

To the extent that I understand this, I agree. It flows really well. Quite frankly, I don't know shit about poetry. (If that is news to any of you.) I can read a definition of enjambment and see it in Fly's poem. I think I see it, anyway.

I would rather we spend our time talking about this kinda thing, helping out those of us who are trying to learn something from those of you who know.

I am having sooo much of an I'm there with you dude moment with Senna Jawa of all people that I think I will say something obscure and superior and nasty and then disappear for awhile.

Or maybe not.

Can we all fucking get back on track here?!

Geez.

And to think I am wasting my God-given genius in this place!

Maybe I should pan my spermia elsewhere.





Sorry.

Call me in the morning. I may be happier then.

Carry on.

 

[jthserra]

We'd all do well to enjamb....

and then come back in the morning, or in my case in the evening...

 

[Angeline]

You know,

Well, twelve was never nice.
Oh one was ever ice.

Who gained from this device?
Not fly boy. But the price

was war: art driven downward
until the text begets the floor.

Can we do something else?
Like poetics talk, I yelp?​

I would really like to move on to talk about something relevant to this forum. Like, "what the fuck is enjambment and how the hell does it work?"

Duckie said Fly's latest poem did this well.

To the extent that I understand this, I agree. It flows really well. Quite frankly, I don't know shit about poetry. (If that is news to any of you.) I can read a definition of enjambment and see it in Fly's poem. I think I see it, anyway.

I would rather we spend our time talking about this kinda thing, helping out those of us who are trying to learn something from those of you who know.

I am having sooo much of an I'm there with you dude moment with Senna Jawa of all people that I think I will say something obscure and superior and nasty and then disappear for awhile.

Or maybe not.

Can we all fucking get back on track here?!

Geez.

And to think I am wasting my God-given genius in this place!

Maybe I should pan my spermia elsewhere.





Sorry.

Call me in the morning. I may be happier then.

Carry on.

Enjambment and form poetry.

Form: Glosa

Glosa on Coole Park

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

But now they drift on the still water
Where once they rushed in tides,
Silenced by a distant daughter,
Lake’s mistress who abides

Mysterious, beautiful,
Laurel crown and empty hands.
Is this prison? Was she dutiful,
Married to the stands

Among what rushes they will build
Their nests, companionable in pairs,
While she alone and wise, stilled
By moon ennui declares

By what lake’s edge or pool
She might have made her home,
Or known how gentler rule
Might keep her safe as starlight’s dome

Delights men’s eyes, When I awake some day
From ancient dreams to find that dawn
Reveals a feather, will I shake away
Sleep from my limbs, and with a yawn

Exhale memories, unfold these wings
To flight, release hope to another day
And soar skyward as hours cling
To find they have flown away?

 

[bogusbrig]

Enjambment and form poetry.

Form: Glosa

Glosa on Coole Park

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

I hate Yeats and having been brought up in the countryside I hate that too.

Every year the autumn skies would piss
And the path to school
would be like treading through shit
The bleak winds would howl
and the men would hide their eyes
under hats pulled down
As they fought their way
to the labour exchange
For myself I have other plans
When I am of an age to escape
There's a tarmac road
That leads to the city
Full of lofty concrete towers
Where lights dazzle at night
In a universe full of life

 

[Angeline]

I hate Yeats and having been brought up in the countryside I hate that too.

Every year the autumn skies would piss
And the path to school
would be like treading through shit
The bleak winds would howl
and the men would hide their eyes
under hats pulled down
As they fought their way
to the labour exchange
For myself I have other plans
When I am of an age to escape
There's a tarmac road
That leads to the city
Full of lofty concrete towers
Where lights dazzle at night
In a universe full of life

My family was from New York City. I grew up right outside the city and spent much of my childhood there.

I like Yeats and Bukowski and Burroughs, too.

City Heart

Concrete poured and steel
beamed the only grass here
parked central to a thousand
glass eyes watching the world
half-lidded rectangulated

behind terra-cotta flowerpots
car ballets dance en glissade
symphonies beep conducted
in red green blinks changing
faces come go but keep

moving talk like belonging
somewhere so Pippa passes
and God's in an after hours
club on 52nd Street waiting
drinking Campari and Soda

I don't know meadows canyons
horses trot steaming past
dawn and brownstone stoops
rain shined the patently black
avenues slicked and squeaking

down to caverns to turnstiles
tokens pass the day swallowed up
roaring forward I don't know
the nature of open sky I know
cityscape geography I know you.

 

[bogusbrig]

My family was from New York City. I grew up right outside the city and spent much of my childhood there.

I like Yeats and Bukowski and Burroughs, too.

City Heart

Concrete poured and steel
beamed the only grass here
parked central to a thousand
glass eyes watching the world
half-lidded rectangulated

behind terra-cotta flowerpots
car ballets dance en glissade
symphonies beep conducted
in red green blinks changing
faces come go but keep

moving talk like belonging
somewhere so Pippa passes
and God's in an after hours
club on 52nd Street waiting
drinking Campari and Soda

I don't know meadows canyons
horses trot steaming past
dawn and brownstone stoops
rain shined the patently black
avenues slicked and squeaking

down to caverns to turnstiles
tokens pass the day swallowed up
roaring forward I don't know
the nature of open sky I know
cityscape geography I know you.

I'm not denying your right to like him but such poets fill my heart with dread.

I was born into a very rough area of Liverpool but when I was three we moved to the countryside and I was too young to articulate why and it's too long ago now other than to conject but I loved the lousy neighbourhood I was born into and missed it terribly when we moved.

That poem reminds me how my heart used to yearn for the city.

 

[Angeline]

I'm not denying your right to like him but such poets fill my heart with dread.

I was born into a very rough area of Liverpool but when I was three we moved to the countryside and I was too young to articulate why and it's too long ago now other than to conject but I loved the lousy neighbourhood I was born into and missed it terribly when we moved.

That poem reminds me how my heart used to yearn for the city.

Woody Allen said in the film Manhattan that the landscape of the city seemed like a huge stage set to him when he first saw it. I've always understood that. I remember going to Radio City Music Hall with my dad and sister around the age of 7. I felt like I was an extra in paradise. I never forgot it.

http://www.nytix.com/repository/broadwaytheatres/radiocity/radio_city_large.jpg

Now I live in the countryside, outside a small college town. It's beautiful but feels so isolated, and the winters are like being on the tundra. I understand you and don't feel compelled to defend liking Yeats. I love his vision and insight, but I do think of his writing as a painting of an idealized place--utopia--that I have come to know (from living here) is not anywhere near real.

 

[annaswirls]

Is this what
they would want?
Are we guilty
of this crime?
Ask,
ask yourself.
Look deep.
Do you know who
You are?

...

give it to me rough baby

 

[annaswirls]

I enjambed my toe on
the old cellar

door to your heart.

 

[flyguy69]

A lesson in enjambment from Canto XVIII: the eighth circle, second ditch (Ciardi's translation)--

106   As a result of the vapor the banks had a cap          
            Of crusted mold, disgusting to both eye
         And nose.  The bottom of this second gap

109   Was so deep that only by climbing high
            On the arch could we see all the way down;
         And from this perspective we could spy

112   Souls in the ditch who were plunged in brown 
            Excrement, very likely flushed out
         From human latrines.  I could see a crown

115   So smeared with shit that I was in doubt
            Whether it was the head of a priest
         Or a layman.  "You up there!" came a shout

118   From below.  "Why are you so eager to feast
            Your eyes on me?  Am I really the best
         Example in this ditch of a filthy beast?"

121   "I've seen you with your hair dry and not so messed;
            If I remember rightly, you're from Lucca," I said,
         "Alessio Interminei; I watch you more than the rest  

124   Because I recognize you."  And he beat his head  
            As he spoke: "Those flatteries which always
         Slid so easily off my tongue before I was dead

127   Have plunged me down here."  "Lean forward and gaze,"
            Said my guide, "at that filthy, disheveled slut,
         The one who squats and stands and never stays

130   Still while she scratches her butt
            With her shitty fingernails.  That whore you
         See there is Thaïs, who like an animal in rut

133   Once listened to her lover's question: 'Do you  
            Thank me very much?' and agreed:
         'Yes, enormously.'  But I think our view

136   Of this pocket is as full as we need.

Clearly Dante's breaks (in translation) are driven by the rhyme structure, but it is remarkable how clearly the breaks reinforce the poem. This poem, probably more than the other two parts of the Divine Comedy, led T. S. Eliot to proclaim "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third"