I, for one, don't want you to leave cassia. I think you add quite a bit here, whether or not I agree or disagree with any given style is fluff. It doesn't matter. As you say, we write what we like to read, though I tend to write differently than what I enjoy reading, I do incorporate certain... color.... that I couldn't help but pick up from my favorite writers and even my favorite people, some of whom couldn't write a paper describing their own house. It's context sensitive. Also, it is effectual. So while I write this I rarely actually expect people to read things just because I wrote it. People will read and read into, what they wish. I have no control and wish no control over that fact. Don't sell either yourself or your poetry short just because a few people didn't like it. I'd have quit years ago, LOL, perhaps I should quit NOW if I had done so. Even if you're merely quitting this board, I consider it a loss to us and to you. If none of us could stand up to criticism, we couldn't stand behind our own work right?
Second.
Prophecy is not political. Oh, in this day and age it may be to some degree but only as it is twisted and used by the media. The Christ Himself could arrive and he'd be turned out as a charlatan. No Joke, that. Some allusion can be a grand thing in any given writing, especially novella type but too much in poetry, or any given text, is like going to a party and having 5 people in the corner talking about old times. You walk up and attempt to join this apparently scintillating conversation and then realize that you could never understand what they are discussing due to the fact that you never shared any of these experiences. So you ask to explain and are met with cold stares and the universal, "Huh. Guess you weren't there." and they turn their backs to you and continue onward.
I prefer to think that I wax far more in the beautacious than in the political. In fact I believe I've only written two pieces of true socio-political flow in my life and I think that only one of those has made it here.
Too much allusion is for the cliquish. And while that is harsh, I firmly believe it. It can be used, and in many cases HAS been used overwhelmingly to produce literature of the highest order but literature designed solely for the peers of the writer, and usually not even most of them. You are correct that in a great many poems, the word associations are indeed hyperpersonal, but allusions cannot by nature be anything more than flights of fancy. I have always respected both yours and FinsburyPark's ability to quote other writers in the manner that you do, but sometimes I feel it gets in the way of how you really feel. I could never quote another author and say, man, that is 110% ME. They can come close but dammit we're all individuals, let's say our own thing. I have no idea why that always fries me so but it does. My AP English teacher always did that and she always graded down for those of us who thought for ourselves. That is the type of academic literati that I have zero place for. She hated my poetry; it had "too much style (too MUCH style?) and not enough structure. Where is your meter (well some of them are in 6/8 or 4/4 but who cares, that's how they ended up, it was not intentional), where are your matched lines, where is your symmetry (there is a top, bottom and a middle, that's all the symmetry anything on this earth really has), where is the rhyme AND the reason... Pardon me? Did you even read?
Third.
A poem does not necessarily have to be understood by a taxi driver, but neither should one feel that they have to "dumb down" their vocabulary (what an awfully condescending phrase, you have to lower yourself to someone else's poetic level? honestly.) just to get their point across. That's not fair to anyone, that philosophy. Just write what you feel. If you feel you must use hypertechnical vocabulary and sussed up and conjointly created words to express what you feel then by all means, that is YOU then and you are being honest and heartfelt and the keyboard will agree with you.
But can you see how such poems filled with allusion can seem false intentioned? It almost suggests: look ma, I can write! Look how beautifully and cryptically I can write. It's gorgeous ma, but only the others will get it, it's just for us.
why are the masses so wrong to talk to? aren't they the hands that tell the time of this modern world? If we can affect them, then we shall most certainly affect the academics of this land. And that is the sort of thing we all look to do. Words that stay. Words that embed. Words that, in fact, draw themselves upon others' minds. Do I, because I choose to use third and fourth tier vocabular instead of sixth and seventh, do I really communicate my meanings any less than someone at the top of the ecumenical and etymological food chain? Are my poems or anyone else's really any less because of that? If so, then I call that elitism. I have read some of the finest work that I have ever had the privilege to read on this particular board and while none of it is Shakespeare (and I use that in the sense of style NOT in the sense of quality, in fact I have enjoyed many pieces in here far more than I have ever enjoyed Shakespeare that most famous of script doctors...), I don't really care. I read and they were beauty. It is of course, again, context sensitive. All perspective. And we all know how I babble on and on about perspective, specifically mine because I am quite sure that I am a biblioegotist. Or at least that "word-smith" with self esteem issues. LOL.
bah.
the fact of the matter is this. you DO fit here. You are a poetess of the highest order. You have reasons for your work and I enjoy reading a lot of it. Sure some of it doesn't agree with me but have you ever read a writer where just every piece is INCREDIBLE and MINDBLOWING and PARADIGMSHIFTING? no. nobody can do it. Genius is the art of maintaining consistent originality. Not CONSTANT but consistent.
I believe there are a few geniuses (horrid grammar but oh well, deal with it) on this forum.
I didn't mean to upset, or to offend, and I still don't mean to. I do have very strong opinions about prose and verse though and I suppose that just rings through here. If anybody ever asked me what I thought poetry was, well, it's described on one of Radar's threads around here somewhere. And I stand by it as my reason for writing.
Please don't leave cassia. 'Twould be a waste. And I'm sorry if i said anything to make you go. It wasn't my intent.
I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane. I'd like to see the traction I keep.
Cassia, you go and I'll get dyaogirl on your case!
I love you. I mean that. And phishgod.
I don't mind setaside's point at all, though, about my work. I have the same attitude as he does to poetry, to the literary theory and criticism I write. I know all the jargon, can apply it precisely, but without falsifying my points I try to be more lucid as I get more experienced, because I fear that in being over technical I'm excluding my readership.
But when it comes to poetry on this board, you're my favourite...there IS no-one to compare. Stay on...stay on!
You should never leave a forum because people say they don't understand you. They do. They just don't realise it yet.
I think everyone needs to lighten up a bit! What would have happened if I'd put one of my complicated poems up on the board!
When it's summer we'll be out in the park... we'll stroll back to our pcs to type our poems and post them to the board, and we'll leisurely stroll away again, sit out in the garden, watch the stars....
Sitting in with the dark and the ice outside is getting to people. Let's relax. Let's think about luuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve. Ah said lurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
I'm in lurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
We's all in luuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
Anybody else finally gotten over all those fokked up past relationships? Anyone else caught up in a new, real, all-time-best spiral into oneness with someone and marvelling at the way the old thoughts that sentiment was syrup go out the window at these beautiful times? Anybody got anything happy to proclaim?
I think there's reflection in cassia's work, but she laughs with the kind of joyous heart that beats only in the free-est of spirits, the poet. Her words are summer to me, to phishgod, to BE, to Yellow.....and to dyaogirl.:)
Comments
i like what you said
write what you like to read and maybe you'll find an audience...
you said a lot of good stuff
that makes me say
dang... that mofo crazy... just like me
First.
I, for one, don't want you to leave cassia. I think you add quite a bit here, whether or not I agree or disagree with any given style is fluff. It doesn't matter. As you say, we write what we like to read, though I tend to write differently than what I enjoy reading, I do incorporate certain... color.... that I couldn't help but pick up from my favorite writers and even my favorite people, some of whom couldn't write a paper describing their own house. It's context sensitive. Also, it is effectual. So while I write this I rarely actually expect people to read things just because I wrote it. People will read and read into, what they wish. I have no control and wish no control over that fact. Don't sell either yourself or your poetry short just because a few people didn't like it. I'd have quit years ago, LOL, perhaps I should quit NOW if I had done so. Even if you're merely quitting this board, I consider it a loss to us and to you. If none of us could stand up to criticism, we couldn't stand behind our own work right?
Second.
Prophecy is not political. Oh, in this day and age it may be to some degree but only as it is twisted and used by the media. The Christ Himself could arrive and he'd be turned out as a charlatan. No Joke, that. Some allusion can be a grand thing in any given writing, especially novella type but too much in poetry, or any given text, is like going to a party and having 5 people in the corner talking about old times. You walk up and attempt to join this apparently scintillating conversation and then realize that you could never understand what they are discussing due to the fact that you never shared any of these experiences. So you ask to explain and are met with cold stares and the universal, "Huh. Guess you weren't there." and they turn their backs to you and continue onward.
I prefer to think that I wax far more in the beautacious than in the political. In fact I believe I've only written two pieces of true socio-political flow in my life and I think that only one of those has made it here.
Too much allusion is for the cliquish. And while that is harsh, I firmly believe it. It can be used, and in many cases HAS been used overwhelmingly to produce literature of the highest order but literature designed solely for the peers of the writer, and usually not even most of them. You are correct that in a great many poems, the word associations are indeed hyperpersonal, but allusions cannot by nature be anything more than flights of fancy. I have always respected both yours and FinsburyPark's ability to quote other writers in the manner that you do, but sometimes I feel it gets in the way of how you really feel. I could never quote another author and say, man, that is 110% ME. They can come close but dammit we're all individuals, let's say our own thing. I have no idea why that always fries me so but it does. My AP English teacher always did that and she always graded down for those of us who thought for ourselves. That is the type of academic literati that I have zero place for. She hated my poetry; it had "too much style (too MUCH style?) and not enough structure. Where is your meter (well some of them are in 6/8 or 4/4 but who cares, that's how they ended up, it was not intentional), where are your matched lines, where is your symmetry (there is a top, bottom and a middle, that's all the symmetry anything on this earth really has), where is the rhyme AND the reason... Pardon me? Did you even read?
Third.
A poem does not necessarily have to be understood by a taxi driver, but neither should one feel that they have to "dumb down" their vocabulary (what an awfully condescending phrase, you have to lower yourself to someone else's poetic level? honestly.) just to get their point across. That's not fair to anyone, that philosophy. Just write what you feel. If you feel you must use hypertechnical vocabulary and sussed up and conjointly created words to express what you feel then by all means, that is YOU then and you are being honest and heartfelt and the keyboard will agree with you.
But can you see how such poems filled with allusion can seem false intentioned? It almost suggests: look ma, I can write! Look how beautifully and cryptically I can write. It's gorgeous ma, but only the others will get it, it's just for us.
why are the masses so wrong to talk to? aren't they the hands that tell the time of this modern world? If we can affect them, then we shall most certainly affect the academics of this land. And that is the sort of thing we all look to do. Words that stay. Words that embed. Words that, in fact, draw themselves upon others' minds. Do I, because I choose to use third and fourth tier vocabular instead of sixth and seventh, do I really communicate my meanings any less than someone at the top of the ecumenical and etymological food chain? Are my poems or anyone else's really any less because of that? If so, then I call that elitism. I have read some of the finest work that I have ever had the privilege to read on this particular board and while none of it is Shakespeare (and I use that in the sense of style NOT in the sense of quality, in fact I have enjoyed many pieces in here far more than I have ever enjoyed Shakespeare that most famous of script doctors...), I don't really care. I read and they were beauty. It is of course, again, context sensitive. All perspective. And we all know how I babble on and on about perspective, specifically mine because I am quite sure that I am a biblioegotist. Or at least that "word-smith" with self esteem issues. LOL.
bah.
the fact of the matter is this. you DO fit here. You are a poetess of the highest order. You have reasons for your work and I enjoy reading a lot of it. Sure some of it doesn't agree with me but have you ever read a writer where just every piece is INCREDIBLE and MINDBLOWING and PARADIGMSHIFTING? no. nobody can do it. Genius is the art of maintaining consistent originality. Not CONSTANT but consistent.
I believe there are a few geniuses (horrid grammar but oh well, deal with it) on this forum.
I didn't mean to upset, or to offend, and I still don't mean to. I do have very strong opinions about prose and verse though and I suppose that just rings through here. If anybody ever asked me what I thought poetry was, well, it's described on one of Radar's threads around here somewhere. And I stand by it as my reason for writing.
Please don't leave cassia. 'Twould be a waste. And I'm sorry if i said anything to make you go. It wasn't my intent.
I love you. I mean that. And phishgod.
I don't mind setaside's point at all, though, about my work. I have the same attitude as he does to poetry, to the literary theory and criticism I write. I know all the jargon, can apply it precisely, but without falsifying my points I try to be more lucid as I get more experienced, because I fear that in being over technical I'm excluding my readership.
But when it comes to poetry on this board, you're my favourite...there IS no-one to compare. Stay on...stay on!
You should never leave a forum because people say they don't understand you. They do. They just don't realise it yet.
the history of this board dictates that people leave the second they get recognised and the second they are indeed understood...
is this one of those?
I will miss her.
I often strive for understanding I sincerely hope she finds happiness wherever she goes... and may she find it within herself as well.
There seems to be a sadness within her work.
love,
seta
And if I'm not understood, then I can only say qijhvdnmloshhjkjenijoijobefws to that.
Cassia, we luvv ya. Come back. It's too quiet already!
When it's summer we'll be out in the park... we'll stroll back to our pcs to type our poems and post them to the board, and we'll leisurely stroll away again, sit out in the garden, watch the stars....
Sitting in with the dark and the ice outside is getting to people. Let's relax. Let's think about luuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve. Ah said lurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
I'm in lurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
We's all in luuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve.
Anybody else finally gotten over all those fokked up past relationships? Anyone else caught up in a new, real, all-time-best spiral into oneness with someone and marvelling at the way the old thoughts that sentiment was syrup go out the window at these beautiful times? Anybody got anything happy to proclaim?
I think there's reflection in cassia's work, but she laughs with the kind of joyous heart that beats only in the free-est of spirits, the poet. Her words are summer to me, to phishgod, to BE, to Yellow.....and to dyaogirl.:)
she's loved on this board.