This will be ugly

[twelveoone]

for ishtat

He could not see the blue sky
Think of this as a potential line of poetry, all that it implies? Out of context, good or bad? I assume most of the better poets would think this has the making of a disaster. What kind of magic do you have to do around it to save it?

Here is another question: What is it like to turn your back on someone?

Think about that while I indulge in a bit of doggerel.

The hearsed moon traversed
a gunmetal sky
No stars nor even clouds
comprised this lonely universe
that only I thus cursed
would question why

Lets cut to the quick, real quick, particulates. Probably a summer combination of pollution, pollen and water vapour. That's August for you, to give us enough to brown out the blue, so it comes close to the colour "gunmetal".
Thanks GM.

I have reservations about the ethics of this poem, I am going to post an excerpt without link. I want you to remember in recommends I referred to it as a vastly superiour piece if writing, or he was very lucky.


I remind you greenmountaineer is a very good writer as such, he knows there is a difference between the writer and the protagonist. Some who think of the "specialness of poetry" do not know that yet. Despite the synchronicity that is often exhibited, there is a difference and sometimes the writer will draw a break.

Forgiveness
bygreenmountaineer©
Of who for what?

Here I going off on my own, GM can either confirm, deny, or ignore.

The gunmetal sky looks grim,
what little of it is left in February
5:00 o'clock in the afternoon
when a pockmarked moon,
the full man of which rises early,
makes me think of it:

Specific time, still afternoon, a moon rising to a gunmetal sky? This indicates something unusual, an overcast, a front moving though, how extensive is the overcast? It cannot be complete, otherwise you would not see the moon. The moon is highly detailed "pockmarked" and full. The sky around the moon most likely be bright blue. Vapour and pollen levels are down on February.
"Follow the eyes"
This moon, most likely a metaphor, sees where it is headed, the protagonist who has his back to moon, who is reflecting on the moon does also.
Neither would not see the blue sky. This is something the writer knows. Literally, the break between writer and protagonist, Bingo! a cliched line used twice, magically. I also said it ends on an unspoken cliche. The more unfamiliar the presentation or material, the more it needs a somewhat cliched root, see I, the Shadow.

This is what I think the writer is thinking in so many words. As most everything else in the poem is required to double duty. To end.

As said there are problems with this, it is difficult to arrive at without the backstory. And the ethic question, it is not a good subject area, and it is done so well - I saw the horror without the story, the backstory deepens it too much so.
Even though this is cursory on what I think is in the complexity of this, I will not comment on this one further.

 

[twelveoone]

something easier
But one of the more oppressive poems here.

This one by greenmountaineer again

Broken Villanelle

Here the protagonist is an antihero (antihero because he does nothing heroic), a taxi driver driving a woman presumabaly to see her son in a mental hospital. The foils (Maria and Jose)also serve as a setting. Jose is the focal character.
The hero begins to be symapatheic to the plight of Maria and Jose to the point where he begins to feel exasperated with the whole sad sitution.

There are three I's, all of them matter of fact, in chararter, without writer intrusion. There is nothing the hero can do, he is rather helpless.

There is no writer-protagonist overlap. There is no sympathic ploy. Internally it is directed by empathy.

The writer is in total control, in fact he is in a territory that is rather uncomfortable, and outside of the hero's outbursts in character,there are no displays of "poetic righteousness", he asks nothing from the audience, and even makes it difficult for them. There is no pandering here.

You cannot do justice to poetry in two passes, but how does he maintain interest?

Structure and Varience, in part.

This is all in the voice of the driver

S1
taxi driver intro, two lines,
Maria and her sandwich third line

S2
Jose two lines
taxi driver, third line - note context in stanza
this a a sort of inversation

S3 Jose
with exception of interjection
and flows into
S4 which mirrors S3

S5 Maria again
flows to
S6 L1 we find out hero is a taxi driver and Maria's sandwich closes the encasement
and
Goddammit, Goddammit in Allentown!

I already commented on the sound of this, and here is a rather common internal structure. External form, GM calls it a Broken Villanelle, but damn it looks and feels like a nine to five sonnet (pun implied) to me.
It is literal, linear (Beginning, middle and end).Sequencial, everything is relatively easy to follow. That is the one consesion he makes to a broad audience. It is unpretty.
I consider it art.

As an exercise try reading it without Maria and her sandwich, it sort of falls apart. The tunafish sandwich sort of roots it. Places something rather normal in a nightmare.

BTW Allentown is now closed. It did not have the worst reputation. Byberry did, it was in Philadelphia.

 

[twelveoone]

One, it is always a mistake to think the protagonist or the first person narrator is the writer. They are the creation of the writer. Although, too many writers bank on that erroneous reader assumption. Poets may be the worst of the lot.
Two, the narration or dialog is in the domain of the story or of the characters.


Am I getting this across?
I can show every variation. GM does an admirable job as a writer, I think Senna Jawa even likes him. His protagonists are not him.

Now I can show you the milkers of the pander cows, all star curdled cheese puffs, some good at there craft, some pathetic, or do you know yourself by now.

 

[greenmountaineer]

for ishtat

He could not see the blue sky
Think of this as a potential line of poetry, all that it implies? Out of context, good or bad? I assume most of the better poets would think this has the making of a disaster. What kind of magic do you have to do around it to save it?

Here is another question: What is it like to turn your back on someone?

Think about that while I indulge in a bit of doggerel.

The hearsed moon traversed
a gunmetal sky
No stars nor even clouds
comprised this lonely universe
that only I thus cursed
would question why

Lets cut to the quick, real quick, particulates. Probably a summer combination of pollution, pollen and water vapour. That's August for you, to give us enough to brown out the blue, so it comes close to the colour "gunmetal".
Thanks GM.

I have reservations about the ethics of this poem, I am going to post an excerpt without link. I want you to remember in recommends I referred to it as a vastly superiour piece if writing, or he was very lucky.


I remind you greenmountaineer is a very good writer as such, he knows there is a difference between the writer and the protagonist. Some who think of the "specialness of poetry" do not know that yet. Despite the synchronicity that is often exhibited, there is a difference and sometimes the writer will draw a break.

Forgiveness
bygreenmountaineer©
Of who for what?

Here I going off on my own, GM can either confirm, deny, or ignore.

The gunmetal sky looks grim,
what little of it is left in February
5:00 o'clock in the afternoon
when a pockmarked moon,
the full man of which rises early,
makes me think of it:

Specific time, still afternoon, a moon rising to a gunmetal sky? This indicates something unusual, an overcast, a front moving though, how extensive is the overcast? It cannot be complete, otherwise you would not see the moon. The moon is highly detailed "pockmarked" and full. The sky around the moon most likely be bright blue. Vapour and pollen levels are down on February.
"Follow the eyes"
This moon, most likely a metaphor, sees where it is headed, the protagonist who has his back to moon, who is reflecting on the moon does also.
Neither would not see the blue sky. This is something the writer knows. Literally, the break between writer and protagonist, Bingo! a cliched line used twice, magically. I also said it ends on an unspoken cliche. The more unfamiliar the presentation or material, the more it needs a somewhat cliched root, see I, the Shadow.

This is what I think the writer is thinking in so many words. As most everything else in the poem is required to double duty. To end.

As said there are problems with this, it is difficult to arrive at without the backstory. And the ethic question, it is not a good subject area, and it is done so well - I saw the horror without the story, the backstory deepens it too much so.
Even though this is cursory on what I think is in the complexity of this, I will not comment on this one further.

That's a pretty good synopsis, 1201. I'm also flattered that you would take the time to do more than a cursory reading of the poem. I would only add that there are a number of spiritual allusions in the poem from the East and the West with enough tension between them intended to question whether there is any guidance in the universe at all: the man in the moon as an anthropomorphic god, "white nothingness" in the Japanese print(Buddhism), forgivemess of "sin," ie., suicide.

Of course, the spiritual, whether you belief in it or not, is by its nature allusive which will always prompt second guessing both in the way it does or doesn't contribute to the effectiveness of the poem and in the mind of the narrator who is just as confused at the end of the poem as he was at the beginning or maybe not, depending upon how one interprets the last couplet.

Thanks to some comments by you and corndog, here's the latest version on my hard drive for what it's worth:

Forgiveness

Official Found Dead at the Police Academy. Foul Play Not Suspected
(AP) Feb. 1, 2011

The gunmetal sky looks grim,
what little of it is left in February
5:00 o'clock in the afternoon
when a pockmarked moon,
the full man of which rises early,
makes me think of it:

That Oriental print, a sumi-e
whose ink and wash bamboo stems
embrace white nothing on rice paper.

Yet all I see is void tonight,
a black absence growing around a moon
hole in the middle. There is no snow
for my bamboo reflection,

brittle as I stare at the universe,
looking for law that governs purpose.
Our planets don't collide after all.
Forgiveness is pure white, is it not,

and bamboo a fast growing plant
that bends towards the sun when it flowers?


PS. I live in northern New England where 5:00 pm in February is just about the time when things start to get dark. I probably should make that more apparent to Lit members closer to the equator. I can see tod scratching his head over that as I write this.

 

[todski28]

something easier
But one of the more oppressive poems here.

This one by greenmountaineer again

Broken Villanelle

Here the protagonist is an antihero (antihero because he does nothing heroic), a taxi driver driving a woman presumabaly to see her son in a mental hospital. The foils (Maria and Jose)also serve as a setting. Jose is the focal character.
The hero begins to be symapatheic to the plight of Maria and Jose to the point where he begins to feel exasperated with the whole sad sitution.

There are three I's, all of them matter of fact, in chararter, without writer intrusion. There is nothing the hero can do, he is rather helpless.

There is no writer-protagonist overlap. There is no sympathic ploy. Internally it is directed by empathy.

The writer is in total control, in fact he is in a territory that is rather uncomfortable, and outside of the hero's outbursts in character,there are no displays of "poetic righteousness", he asks nothing from the audience, and even makes it difficult for them. There is no pandering here.

You cannot do justice to poetry in two passes, but how does he maintain interest?

Structure and Varience, in part.

This is all in the voice of the driver

S1
taxi driver intro, two lines,
Maria and her sandwich third line

S2
Jose two lines
taxi driver, third line - note context in stanza
this a a sort of inversation

S3 Jose
with exception of interjection
and flows into
S4 which mirrors S3

S5 Maria again
flows to
S6 L1 we find out hero is a taxi driver and Maria's sandwich closes the encasement
and
Goddammit, Goddammit in Allentown!

I already commented on the sound of this, and here is a rather common internal structure. External form, GM calls it a Broken Villanelle, but damn it looks and feels like a nine to five sonnet (pun implied) to me.
It is literal, linear (Beginning, middle and end).Sequencial, everything is relatively easy to follow. That is the one consesion he makes to a broad audience. It is unpretty.
I consider it art.

As an exercise try reading it without Maria and her sandwich, it sort of falls apart. The tunafish sandwich sort of roots it. Places something rather normal in a nightmare.

BTW Allentown is now closed. It did not have the worst reputation. Byberry did, it was in Philadelphia.

Without being fully concious of all that you have written here this is how I read it too, the broad audience is one of the most interesting things, he gives no details of the predicament that led to the Allentown drive, so there are multiple ways readers can connect empathetically to the write. Is the character suffering late onset schizophrenia, is it a disease that is worsening like ms, is it a car accident that the character had that left him debilitated etc, there are so many ways to interpret the details of the issue that anyone that has had an experience that ended in that hopeless hospital drive can connect and have their insides turned over.

The emotional connect is despair from the female and empathy from the taxi driver, the moods are contagious in a sense that if you were locked in tight space with someone that was hysterical or even upset it is human nature to be curious and want to help, so you get both emotions shotgun barreled into your chest.

The fear and despair
And
The empathy and discomfort.

Hard piece to read, and doesn't make any apologies nor and direction in which way you should feel.

 

[twelveoone]

Without being fully concious of all that you have written here this is how I read it too, the broad audience is one of the most interesting things, he gives no details of the predicament that led to the Allentown drive,

he was born that way...
José who never could speak any language
made only noise and hardly heard sound.

 

[twelveoone]

Some statigic considerations

In Broken Villanelle GM has three characters. Why the taxi driver? Why not Maria? From Maria's viewpoint the sympathy ploy could have been easily played. If he had done so, of course the dialogue (really a monologue) would have been different, probably the structure also. Possibly, and GM is a good writer, he realized that it may have been too difficult to get it right. Again this is no slur, I wouldn't try it for that reason.

Suppose the scenario was written dumping the taxi driver and instead as narrator, a social worker( who knows the case) The voice would have been closer to GM's voice, and again the writer and protagonist would be two different people. He could have played the moralist ploy with a certain degree of effect.
The focal character would have have been shifted to Maria, and most likely the internal zig zag structure would have been modified. Most likely the encasement would have been the narrator's open and close, perhaps a true dialogue in the middle. But the tone would have been entirely different, and thus probably the structure.
For what is worth, I think he made to right choice, going for something believable and of interest, without the cheap ploys.
re:
I live in northern New England where 5:00 pm in February is just about the time when things start to get dark.
and unless there was some serious wood burning the sky would have been blue as hell around a pockmarked moon at that time. Unless there is some atmospheric condition, I can't account for. The procession to cloud bank, and the view distracted (not obstructed) is very powerful. Don't downgrade the poem with too much of an explanation, most are not going to see the horror.
I will PM you.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Interesting observation in the above post. I was María's social worker more than 40 years ago when we took José to Allentown.

José probably had an intuitive sense he was with his mother as he nestled into her on the way there but was so brain damaged that I doubt he had any idea his mother would not be seeing him again for quite a while when we left. That was a sad day. I saw the conflict in María's eyes and still remember it vividly.

 

[twelveoone]

Interesting observation in the above post. I was María's social worker more than 40 years ago when we took José to Allentown.

José probably had an intuitive sense he was with his mother as he nestled into her on the way there but was so brain damaged that I doubt he had any idea his mother would not be seeing him again for quite a while when we left. That was a sad day. I saw the conflict in María's eyes and still remember it vividly.

I felt a degree of transference to the taxi driver, i.e. close to home, frustration and a certain degree of distancing.
As said, Allentown did not have the rep that Byberry had (which was bad as far back as 1948), small consolation in that.
The "tone" of the driver was true of the better ones on the field, the ones that remained "human", most do not stay long or they become immune.
Currently, I know someone in that situation, a lengthy drive but no transportation.

 

[todski28]

he was born that way...
José who never could speak any language
made only noise and hardly heard sound.

I guess I am as functionally stupid as I first feared, how the heck I missed that is beyond me
Should hav be just shut my mouth. Thanks for the heads up, I read it three times before I posted here, don't know if I was trying to twist it too much to my own memories of if I forgot how to read.

 

[twelveoone]

Poetry here is roughly divided into two schools. One school that says:
This is what poetry is
The other school that says:
What is[poetry?
I guess at one extreme would be Neo-Formalism, the other would be something like what ever the new thing is like L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. I guess it might be worthwhile to try a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poem once or twice, and if you wrote one limerick you wrote one too many. Alright my prejudice.
There is a third group, Bullshit. If you are new you write Bullshit, you notice I didn't preface it with "school", if you are wise and new, you take from the schools and get out of Bullshit real fast.
The border wars and the skirmishes between the schools can be viewed as more as a sort of forceful cross pollination and sometimes Bullshit even is a fertilizer, just don't bury yourself in it.

GM's title Broken Villanelle can be viewed two ways:
Don't shoot, I know it is not a Villanelle
or
I know what a goddamn Villanelle is, a series of repetitions and it is sad

the Bullshit faction would be clueless.

 

[twelveoone]

Would it feel strange and foreign?

This one bothered me, a little awed. For one the subject is off putting, there is nothing overt poetically, no sonic pyrotechnics, a nice ambiguity at the end. All in very simple language.
The structure is a free verse structure, so look at the line lengths.

Misogyny's Morning Wood
byTrixareforkids©

There are two that are three syllables long
I should stop
but she doesn't, look what she puts between them
...to four of the five senses...
Like I do
Now if you read this with stops at the end, there is almost a seething effect, but she is intersecting this with something else.
It is "it"
I think I counted 19, 6 of them at the end of line.
Take a look at the two long lines.
There is a real undercurret of seething alienation that almost threatens to explode.
I think I said once you don't need may tools, (like three) if you use them well.
Simple unabtrive repition, pacing, ambiguity, all on the right spots.
Admirable. I'm still awed.

 

[twelveoone]

external zig zag in a linear story
One from each school.

 

[todski28]

external zig zag in a linear story
One from each school.

It is the linkage to the title the "it" being misogynistic what ever the he'll, at least that is the way I read "it" the reference to wood was phallic, but also can be used as club to bash the reader over the head with. I didn't count them but when I was reading each one felt like a finger thrust into my chest.

 

[twelveoone]

It is the linkage to the title the "it" being misogynistic what ever the he'll, at least that is the way I read "it" the reference to wood was phallic, but also can be used as club to bash the reader over the head with. I didn't count them but when I was reading each one felt like a finger thrust into my chest.

you'll have to discuss that with the writer, I just try to parse it.
pay attention to the pattern in each, there maybe something you can use.
in the bye and bye, I will copy yours, get back to you.

 

[butters]

hope it's not out of place by being late, but this is what reading GM's Forgiveness felt like to me:

The gunmetal sky looks grim,
what little of it is left in February
5:00 o'clock in the afternoon
when a pockmarked moon,
the full man of which rises early,
makes me think of it:

That Oriental print, a sumi*-e
whose ink and wash bamboo stems
embrace white nothing on rice paper.

Yet all I see is void tonight,
a black absence growing around a moon
hole in the middle. There is no snow
for my bamboo reflection,

brittle as I stare at the universe,
looking for law that governs purpose.
Our planets don't collide after all,
and if forgiveness is pure white,
why then his gunmetal end ending life?

February - the month infamous for having the highest suicide rate. just that one word brings the dark, brings the cold, brings despair. February at 5pm and there's little light left in a sky devoid of colour, the actual phrase 'gunmetal sky' creating such a cold, metallic picture, a slight sheen as if the sky's carrying moisture it's not yet ready to drop.

an early moon, pockmarked - pockmarked makes me see the white face of the officer 'pockmarked' by a bullet wound and the word 'full' makes me see a body that had been full of blood but now white-faced, pockmarked by a bullet wound and the incredible sumi-e image you've placed there has me seeing the stark patterning of blood splashed with force against floor/wall, like the inked bamboo, streaks then the foliage - ugh, it's hard to look at. black on white, like the man's mind before the act, no grey areas to soften the contrasts. I admit to focusing more on the imagery and missing some of the religious allusions both of you refer to, though i did get a feel for the honour-killing, forgiveness sought with a more modern metal. but yes, a horrific scene, and so cold - the snow, even in its absence, makes this colder... the snow might have given a softer layer, snow can be beautiful. there's nothing beautiful about what the narrator's looking at.

the image of the white face (as i read this) surrounded by a spreading pool of darkness - emptiness, an unfilling, a less-ness if that even makes sense.

'brittle' worked so well imo - it evokes stiffness (physical and emotional, the cold (again of both p&e), and makes me fill in with 'if you don't bend before the winds of life you will snap'.... no snow. no snow to soften. such a hard piece to read. i had read it and meant to comment but - argh, it had such an impact. sometimes space is needed to be able to form coherent thought from the emotional 'noise'.

'looking for the law that governs purpose' -something most of us seek or have sought, and a not too heavy handed tie-in with his being a law enforcement officer.

i admit to feeling i'm missing the true meaning behind 'our planets don't collide after all', unless it is that forgiveness (the distant, cold white moon) and self-judgement didn't collide to soften the ultimate act of suicide and that the man's death was as nothing in the universe, just another emptiness.

reading and re-reading, i got to feel the poem (for me) ended here:

There is no snow
for my bamboo reflection,

brittle as I stare at the universe,
looking for law that governs purpose.


apologies, gm, for bringing this so late to the table.

 

[greenmountaineer]

No apologies needed, butters, for your very insightful comments, particulary regarding "brittle." Bamboo is strong but pliable and is represented in the print drawn in charcoal gray whereas everything is black and there are only allusions to white (absence of snow on the ground and a pale moon, which probably would have been a better word choice). The narrator is utterly confused and trying hard to make sense of it all.

 

[Trixareforkids]

It is the linkage to the title the "it" being misogynistic what ever the he'll, at least that is the way I read "it" the reference to wood was phallic, but also can be used as club to bash the reader over the head with. I didn't count them but when I was reading each one felt like a finger thrust into my chest.

I've met very few men who consider themselves misogynists, and the piece that I found misogynistic wasn't by someone whom I'd consider a misogynist. That was why I found it so troubling.

What I was trying to convey by using "it" rather than you/he/him was the pervasive nature of misogyny. It's general acceptance and the 'it's okay because he didn't mean any harm by it attitude that both men and women have developed/adopted that perpetuates the small crimes making the larger ones easier to rationalize.

And I actually feel I need to do an edit of the ending because I do not believe that anyone should "accept it as part of you"

It's a horribly unpopular subject because like religion it's so ingrained and indoctrinated in nearly all of us that most people do not know how to speak of it without recrimination. Which is precisely why it's so pervasive and generally accepted.

In your comment on the submitted piece you said "...there is however nothing erotic about this piece." If only that were true.

If you read it with the thought of Misogyny as a name, a person then it reads as an odd but entirely sexual piece. Which was part of my commentary. The title came after the piece with much though to ensure that it WAS read as a piece on misogyny. My hubby's comment on titling it was to not make it obvious so that it didn't cause any waves and that cemented my, at that point wavering, determination to ensure it wasn't left ambiguous as I'd originally intended it to be.

The beginning is quite normal, a guy wakes to morning wood, snuggles up to his partner and gives it a go, the partner accepts, but then there's a twist. Some would consider the twist erotic while others would find it repulsive, no different than say anal sex or sex with bdsm elements.

This twist, or finger in your chest, is the knife twist that I feel nearly any time I'm in mixed company. I let the decent guys slide for the most part as society being what it is, if I didn't, if I called it every time I saw/felt it, people would run from me and I'd have no one to talk to or flirt with, lol. Doesn't make it right, and that's what I wanted people to feel. The 'that's not right'. Simple, direct language, I've found, is always best for conveying unwelcome ideas to a broad audience. Short lines bring the punch, convey the speed of thought.

 

[twelveoone]

What I was trying to convey by using "it" rather than you/he/him was the pervasive nature of misogyny. It's general acceptance and the 'it's okay because he didn't mean any harm by it attitude that both men and women have developed/adopted that perpetuates the small crimes making the larger ones easier to rationalize.


If you read it with the thought of Misogyny as a name, a person then it reads as an odd but entirely sexual piece. Which was part of my commentary. The title came after the piece with much though to ensure that it WAS read as a piece on misogyny. My hubby's comment on titling it was to not make it obvious so that it didn't cause any waves and that cemented my, at that point wavering, determination to ensure it wasn't left ambiguous as I'd originally intended it to be.

The beginning is quite normal, a guy wakes to morning wood, snuggles up to his partner and gives it a go, the partner accepts, but then there's a twist. Some would consider the twist erotic while others would find it repulsive, no different than say anal sex or sex with bdsm elements.

This twist, or finger in your chest, is the knife twist that I feel nearly any time I'm in mixed company. I let the decent guys slide for the most part as society being what it is, if I didn't, if I called it every time I saw/felt it, people would run from me and I'd have no one to talk to or flirt with, lol. Doesn't make it right, and that's what I wanted people to feel. The 'that's not right'. Simple, direct language, I've found, is always best for conveying unwelcome ideas to a broad audience. Short lines bring the punch, convey the speed of thought.

I wish to remind Trix, in a not too subtle way, that if these were tiffs or ploys, they are not worthy of consideration, the rational is one thing, the execution another.
No subject here is comfortable, which is a point, there is courage on the writers part, and the flower up the ass crowd who tends to view poetry as that, will walk away.

The other main reason I posted these three, is I regard them as genius. Poets challenging themselves (and the audience), but backing it up with an underlying structure.

GM's frustration of the Villanelle, genius.
Trix's variation of the line length in support of the words, along with the interference of "it", threading its way, genius.

Again, my commentary is truncated. But, I do not think I am reading too much into these.

And I actually feel I need to do an edit of the ending because I do not believe that anyone should "accept it as part of you"

the ending as is, lends a variety of nuanced feelings to the rest of text.

In your comment on the submitted piece you said "...there is however nothing erotic about this piece." If only that were true.

again, the tyranny of labels, classification, any Art as Art tries to break free.

Again, just my opinion (which is a fucking redundancy)

 

[Trixareforkids]

I wish to remind Trix, in a not too subtle way, that if these were tiffs or ploys, they are not worthy of consideration, the rational is one thing, the execution another.
No subject here is comfortable, which is a point, there is courage on the writers part, and the flower up the ass crowd who tends to view poetry as that, will walk away.

the ending as is, lends a variety of nuanced feelings to the rest of text.

again, the tyranny of labels, classification, any Art as Art tries to break free.

Again, just my opinion (which is a fucking redundancy)

No, not tiffs or ploys, experience as learned from speaking to and dealing with people who'd rather not hear what you have to say. Realizing that you have to be unrelenting in getting a point across and that it's best done in short, simple burst, oft repeated. The piece was written in a 20-30 minute blast with almost no tweaking, a pure (ha!) translation of a feeling.

The word 'accepting' is bugging me, as it's the general acceptance that prompted the piece. I'll keep thinking about it.

 

[twelveoone]

what part am I not making clear?
The structure fits the words very well, I've wadded though a ton of shit, seen a lot of things this was a WTF in caps, means something is going on.
I consider that Art.
If you can make it better, do so. Be careful of the overwrite, next one will be an example of too much overwrite. Starting something and getting distracted.

 

[twelveoone]

What is genius, consider asking:
1. Did I think of it?
2. Do I understand it?
3. How long would it take to duplicate it?
4. Did I think of that?
5. What would be the result, if you rewrote?

Here is what I came up with, on regards to the two poems.
1. No, writer is half of the way there
2. Mostly, anything better than kind of, is a plus.
3. look I know most of the tricks they are using, but it would take time, writer moves up 3/4 of the way there
4. Ah, no. GM's modification in Broken Villanelle , and the interference pattern with line length in Trix's Misogyny's Morning Wood, not in a million years. Writer now at 99
5. Assuming I could, I probably would wind up with close to the same poem.
Writer's here, genius. Allowing of course for a little title inflation.

 

[Tsotha]

Interesting. I think it is one of Trix's weaker poems.

This poem carries a message, "It" is a stand in for either cum or misogyny. So what does that even mean? "Misogyny is sex"? Or perhaps, "misogyny is like a man I don't want to have sex with, but don't bother pushing away"? Is that relly the message you were trying to convey?

You're talking to me in this poem, but who am I in it? I'm confused. When the poem says it is going to smear "it" on my face, what is it smearing? Cum? Misogyny? What if I do indeed put my mouth where my words are (BA-DUM-TSH!) and revel in miso... I mean, cum?

I consider the metaphor very poor, for this reason. I'm drawing the venn diagram of the people for whom it would work, in my head, and drawing blanks. Note I didn't criticize the subject itself — that was deliberate and took quite a bit of effort.

 

[Trixareforkids]

Interesting. I think it is one of Trix's weaker poems.

Ooh, I'm interested to hear why and what you consider to be one of the strong ones and why. PM me or just put it here or in one of my threads if you have time.

 

[Tsotha]

Terminal Girl's Last Words to Hope - unlike "Misogyny's morning wood", this poem actually gives me a reason why "Hope" should be despised. There is something to connect with, here, even if you've never been in this state where hopelessness becomes preferable to hope.

In misogyny's morning wood, my reason is... what, exactly? It has a cock, and cummed?