themes (lists of poems)

[Senna Jawa]

Stories on Literotica have a fine classification and descriptions. We have only erotic/nonerotic division. Let us mantain in this thread finer lists of links to poems according to certain, special themes (let's avoid erotic and sex as list themes 'cos that's what majority on Erotica is). To start with I'd like to suggest the following topics:

1.Homelessness and extremal poverty
2.Art & artists (including writing & writers)
3.Travel, emigration
4.Sport and games
5.Alcohol & drugs
6.Family
7.Sickness, injuries, handicapness
8.Geographic locations

U may add more. but each list should start with at least four titles.
A poem doesn't have to be completely devoted to the given theme to appear on the respective list. It may even appear on several lists.

Post in this thread full lists (not just additions, updates) but only those which U happen to expand in your post by additional titles of your or other authors' poems. (When a topical list gets large it may acquire its own thread).

Regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

"Homelessness and extremal poverty" theme list

Hm, silence. Perhaps the requirement of 4 poems is hard to meet in the beginning. Let's start our lists even with three poems. Also, poems may be group according to their devices or style, e.g. we may have a list of sonnets (but if poems which use simile or alliteration are to be group together then only those which use simile or alliteration intensively, since these r such common devices; a list of poems which use alliteration heavily can be fun!).

"HOMELESSNESS..." list:

               time on your hands
               willow girl (5 poems)
               You passed me by

I was not sure about celebration. Perhaps U can decide whether or not it belongs to the theme on an occasion of an update. I'll submit more poems on homelessness anyway

Best regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

come on

I thought that the sentyment expressed by Judo was common around her(e), namely, that subdivision into erotic-nonerotic is not adequate. Poems gain A LOT when combined into collections. Ok, let's have it easy. Just post links to some of your poems, and attach to them their theme. Then we will get the thematic lists of poems out of these postings. Wouldn't U be extra pleased to read a poem after a poem on a given theme, to see how different authors treat the same issues or form?

An easy to collect list would be   short forms.   Say, any poem with no more than 12 short lines or 8 long lines may qualify as "short form" (if there are a lot of them, then the list can be subdivided into finer lists later). By the same token we could list   extensive poems,  which would mean, say, poems with at least 30 long lines or at least 50 short ones (never mind details at this time).

Come on, let's do it, it should be fun.

 

[WickedEve]

If I correctly understand what you're saying:

If you start out doing all you propose on just this thread, then it will be difficult for anyone to find anything. (someone may not add to one topic for days or weeks and you'd have to search through pages of posts to find the topic you want)
Why not start a new thread for each topic now and not later. That way we can add to it whenever we have a poem that fits into that category. (not many of us have 3 or 4 poems on homelessness at one time) And to keep it from getting too cluttered, poets should only post title and link.
You should give it a try and see if it works. But start out with a few topics to see if there is any interest.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I really like this idea, but some of the categories you propose seam too constriving to really have more than three or four poems on it.

Geografic Locations should be simply Settings or something like that, for example...

And aren't you forgetting the three most significative themes in poetry anywhere? Love (and yes there can be non-erotic, non-sexual poems about it, most of them are in fact), Friendship (or simply relashionships between people, for crying out loud) and Society...

Form, style and devices could also make good ways of arranging the poems, I agree with Judo on that one, and it would definitly be easier to get done than the thematic separation.

And I think Eve's idea of having individual threads is a good one. Just don't start making new threads like crazy. I propose that we add poems to the lists in this thread, even if it's only one at a time, until a category has at least 10 poems and only after that, make it into it's own thread.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: If I correctly understand what you're saying:

If you start out doing all you propose on just this thread, then it will be difficult for anyone to find anything. (someone may not add to one topic for days or weeks and you'd have to search through pages of posts to find the topic you want)
Why not start a new thread for each topic now and not later.

U'r right, the way U say is simpler.

Do U or anybody know how to copy many links from the board to another post in a simple way? Because from time to time it would be good to have all links related to a theme in one post, in alphabetical order )). But to do it one needs to copy links which others got in earlier. I know how to do it but my method is just a bit laborious (not too bad though).

Thank U, WE, for responding,

 

[Senna Jawa]

Judo & WickedEve, thank you for expanding thematic link lists. I hope that they have potential, that they will be integrated with the main Literotica Index page.

BTW, in addition to thematical lists, participants (gurus first! ) may start they own anthologies (link lists) of their favorite poems by different authors. I find the Literotica ratings and view-scores poetically not significant, it is rather a statistical curiosum which says in general more about the Literotica readers & Literotica system than about the poems. But link lists by gurus and others, who r seriously into poetry would be interesting. Each such non-random list would have an added value to it!

Let me make a few remarks:

0.the thematic link lists will help to find poems, will enhance the quality of reading poems, will assist discussions about poems.

1.There is nothing wrong with romatic/erotic/sexual themes . Just let's subdivide this grand Literotical theme into several themes narrow enough for the link lists to be useful.

Remark: When the number of poems is high then either the number of lists gets uncomfortably high or the size of lists. Then one needs a tree structure of themes and subthemes. It may even be combined with a matrix system. One dimension may be the subject of the poem, another its artistic form or the length of the poem. (Sorry for the premature distraction, let's have a few lists first).

2.A comment, if any, before the link list should be short (so far so good);

3.The format of the link lists should be standard and the links within a list should be ordered but I am not sure which way. Is alphabetical order according to titles preferable to the alphabetical order according to the authors? I have started the first way but most likely the second method is better.

4.Would it make sense to precede the longer link list of poems (one per line) by a contigous (one html line) list of links to author profiles?

There were twenty nine more remarks but I forgot them . Let me finish with theme propositions (one and the same poem may belong to several of them):

0.Alcohol & drugs
1.Art, artists, language (including writing & writers)
2.Country life, city life...
3.Emigration, immmigration...
4.Family, children
5.Geographic locations
6.Homelessness & extremal poverty
5.Music
6.Politics, history, wars...
7.Professional life
8.Science
9.Sickness, injuries, handicapness
10.Sport and games
11.Travel, driving, sailing, flying...

That's a dozen. In the other dimension we may have:

A.Short forms (perhaps this one should be subdivided into more specific categories)
B.Extensive poems.
C.Sonnet
D.Villanelle

etc.

Best regards,

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Senna Jawa

Quick suggestion.

Edit your first post and add links to the different list threads as they are being created, otherwise we'll soon lose track of them.

I'll be back soon with some links of my own.

 

[WickedEve]

BTW, in addition to thematical lists, participants (gurus first! ) may start they own anthologies (link lists) of their favorite poems by different authors. I find the Literotica ratings and view-scores poetically not significant, it is rather a statistical curiosum which says in general more about the Literotica readers & Literotica system than about the poems. But link lists by gurus and others, who r seriously into poetry would be interesting. Each such non-random list would have an added value to it!

Yes, this would be interesting, but I'm wondering about the pros and cons of making a "favorites list."

I do agree with this statement of yours, SJ: "I find the Literotica ratings and view-scores poetically not significant, it is rather a statistical curiosum which says in general more about the Literotica readers & Literotica system than about the poems."

I've seen some very good poetry and some very poorly written poetry together on the top list. I learned months ago that the list was meaningless as to whether or not a poem was well-written.