battlefield life

velvet I site
velvet I site Posts: 192
edited August 2005 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
A man rakes leaves into
a heap in his pard, a plie,
& leans on his rake &
burns them utterly.
The fragrance fills the forest
children pause & heed the
smell, which will become
nostalgia in several years


i wrote this one last tuesday, it might need some racket-wrenching but i think i kind of like it.. whatever it is.

Battlefield Life


A myth remains about this land
Of culture deep
And growing man
For ‘morrow’s day and ‘morrow’s night
That still tomorrow Nature might

Enjoy the pomp
Our nation loves
This land of fire and
Ring of delight
Conjoined together in a ruse of light

We mind the factories and the shops
To bake the bread and farm the crops
As time rolls on
The human map
Ascends to sunlight draped in black



all suggestions remain extremely welcomed, so please, feel free to rain on my parade (which in respect to mr morrison i have tried to keep not-soft, because let's face it, we need to actually accomplish something or 2010: watch it go to fire!, and i doubt anybody really wants that..).

adieu.
change begins with discontent.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • eden
    eden Posts: 407
    i wrote this one last tuesday, it might need some racket-wrenching but i think i kind of like it.. whatever it is.

    Battlefield Life


    A myth remains about this land
    Of culture deep
    And growing man
    For ‘morrow’s day and ‘morrow’s night
    That still tomorrow Nature might

    Enjoy the pomp
    Our nation loves
    This land of fire and
    Ring of delight
    Conjoined together in a ruse of light

    We mind the factories and the shops
    To bake the bread and farm the crops
    As time rolls on
    The human map
    Ascends to sunlight draped in black



    all suggestions remain extremely welcomed, so please, feel free to rain on my parade (which in respect to mr morrison i have tried to keep not-soft, because let's face it, we need to actually accomplish something or 2010: watch it go to fire!, and i doubt anybody really wants that..).

    adieu.

    I have no suggestions.
    Its brilliant...
    Reminds me of the old Master Poets actually :)
  • eden wrote:
    I have no suggestions.
    Its brilliant...
    Reminds me of the old Master Poets actually :)




    you're not supposed to say things like that.
    change begins with discontent.
  • you're not supposed to say things like that.


    seriously i'm not trying to be rude, that was one of the kindest things anyone has ever said about something i have "created". kind of reminds me of this time i went to a movie.. it's so hard eating popcorn when your date doesn't want any, and every bite tastes so good but you have to slowly crunch and chew and let the butter dissolve in your mouth so as not to chatter in her precious little ear that is so close to you you just want to reach over and whisper in it and nibble on it and go to town on her silky-smooth neck until you spin her head around enough to meet and taste her mouth.. and sometimes run-on sentences are kind of like poetry to me, but i'm more of a prose guy than a true poet.. my poems are best in photograph form, or so i tell myself.. because before the movie she told me my photogrpahs were amazing, and i let her.

    so i suppose i'll allow your comments eden, but only if you truly accept my gratitude! i'm a master by no means, a mere rookie in this room of poetic form, but i'm getting more comfortable sitting on the floor, and i rather enjoy the view! thanks again for your kindness, it truly sparked some needed confidence on this day.. err 4.30am [i just woke up--i even sleep like a weirdo!]

    did i just quote myself what is with that?

    also i added the morrison not to be cool like him but because i want to start a really big fire soon, if anyone wants to help.. lemme know!
    change begins with discontent.
  • i dont know if you're some kind of new old master or whatever, perhaps you are, but i think you talk too much.. my suggestion is to quit trying to turn poetry into a novel and get one with it already.

    having said that, this poem made me feel warmer inside each time i've read it.. thanks for writing it and sharing it with me :)
    i'm a thief... and a liar...

    see Ed's church?--he's breathing fire.....
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    There are no poetic masters on the Internet. Mainly poetasters. However, we learn from each other how to appreciate good poetry through our own meagre efforts.

    As for this piece, it's not too bad but it doesn't grab me. I think the capitalisation in the line beginnings could go. Also, get rid of those 'morrows. They're over inflated archaisms that scream of amateurish self-consciousness.

    Just my honest opinion.
  • eden
    eden Posts: 407
    There are no poetic masters on the Internet. Mainly poetasters. However, we learn from each other how to appreciate good poetry through our own meagre efforts.

    As for this piece, it's not too bad but it doesn't grab me. I think the capitalisation in the line beginnings could go. Also, get rid of those 'morrows. They're over inflated archaisms that scream of amateurish self-consciousness.

    Just my honest opinion.

    How can you say theres no poetic Masters on the internet?
    And I didnt say she WAS a Master, I said it reminded me or was "reminiscent" of the old style poetry.

    I bet the most talented poet in the world as we speak is sitting in some dingy house in a far off land and no- one will ever see his work.

    Poetry/ art is SO subjective that who can really say?
    Ive read poems on the internet Fin, that were far more accomplished in my opinion than some of the modern published poets whose books I own.

    Ive been writing myself and studying the Masters since I was 15 , an her poem - albeight rough around the edges was very good at its base.

    And I think "self consciousness" is at the root of ANY good poet.

    Also, just my humble opinion ;):D
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    eden wrote:
    How can you say theres no poetic Masters on the internet?

    Er, well if there's another Yeats out there I'll keep surfing the web. ;)
    eden wrote:
    And I think "self consciousness" is at the root of ANY good poet.
    And at the heart of every bad poem. Not that this poem is bad. It just needs tweaking.
  • eden
    eden Posts: 407
    Er, well if there's another Yeats out there I'll keep surfing the web. ;)

    And at the heart of every bad poem. Not that this poem is bad. It just needs tweaking.

    Haha...Touche' my friend ;):)
  • There are no poetic masters on the Internet. Mainly poetasters. However, we learn from each other how to appreciate good poetry through our own meagre efforts.

    As for this piece, it's not too bad but it doesn't grab me. I think the capitalisation in the line beginnings could go. Also, get rid of those 'morrows. They're over inflated archaisms that scream of amateurish self-consciousness.

    Just my honest opinion.



    yes i agree with most of this judgement.. although i like to think i am quite professional at being self-conscious. the capitalization was actually accidental from typing in microsoft word and pasting here, and over-inflated archaic-ness is a fancy of mine, albeit unbecoming of "mature" poetry.. see "mature conventions" are the aim of my work, as i wish to burn them all to hell, to speak in your language of modernity or postmodernity or whatever it is supposed? to be called these 'days'.

    thanks for your input!
    change begins with discontent.
  • i dont know if you're some kind of new old master or whatever, perhaps you are, but i think you talk too much.. my suggestion is to quit trying to turn poetry into a novel and get one with it already.

    having said that, this poem made me feel warmer inside each time i've read it.. thanks for writing it and sharing it with me :)


    what a douche.. i'm glad you feel warm inside, but that's hardly the point..

    i hope your photography is much better than your art-criticism.
    change begins with discontent.
  • Er, well if there's another Yeats out there I'll keep surfing the web. ;)

    And at the heart of every bad poem. Not that this poem is bad. It just needs tweaking.


    eden, hey thanks for the defense! 'tis lovely to see some debate arising here o'er me archaic speech! and don't fret, i'm not scared of the ole english rabbit here. btw, i'm not a she.

    and if i were yeats, i would probably pack-up, move down south and hide my head in the sand, just another sad old man, dying of cancer aaahhhh aahhhhh..

    sorry, i'm insane and yesterday was the end of my prescriptions.

    have a nice day!
    change begins with discontent.
  • lovin kind
    lovin kind Posts: 268
    me of the breath farm i drive by when i visit my old home
    i feel like saying hello and goodbye
    i wonder why there could be such a place
    maybe its for the people who are misrepresented by youth

    either way it has to be done again
    thanks to everyone who can read what i write without having to say something mean
  • lovin kind wrote:
    me of the breath farm i drive by when i visit my old home
    i feel like saying hello and goodbye
    i wonder why there could be such a place
    maybe its for the people who are misrepresented by youth

    either way it has to be done again



    you think i need to redo the poem?
    change begins with discontent.

  • and if i were yeats, i would probably pack-up, move down south and hide my head in the sand, just another sad old man, dying of cancer aaahhhh aahhhhh..

    sorry, i'm insane and yesterday was the end of my prescriptions.


    yeah, who would want to win a nobel prize for poetry?

    at least you know you're crazy, saves me the time of pointing it out.
    i'm a thief... and a liar...

    see Ed's church?--he's breathing fire.....
  • i enjoyed the intention of this poem, but i agree about the archaic words. the "old masters" wrote with these words because it was the language of the time, not to be cute. To be post-modernist there needs to be a reflection on the act of using these words, almost the juxta-position of the cliche. At least that is my understanding of post-modernism. On a side note, i really liked the flow of the piece and the imagery was good, solid, not extraordinary.

    As for there not being true master poets on the internet i'd most likely have to concur, but looking at it from an autotelic standpoint the internet is still an invaluable resource.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

    -- Omar Khayyam
  • i enjoyed the intention of this poem, but i agree about the archaic words. the "old masters" wrote with these words because it was the language of the time, not to be cute. To be post-modernist there needs to be a reflection on the act of using these words, almost the juxta-position of the cliche. At least that is my understanding of post-modernism. On a side note, i really liked the flow of the piece and the imagery was good, solid, not extraordinary.

    As for there not being true master poets on the internet i'd most likely have to concur, but looking at it from an autotelic standpoint the internet is still an invaluable resource.


    not that i disagree entirely, but what exactly is the language of "the time"? should i rethink my poetic outpourings in the vein of Larry the Cable Guy?

    archaic words are only such because no one presently has found a way to utilize them with strength, and i'm not suggesting that i have, but i am also not afraid to try.. and try i will continue to do.

    also, post-modernism is a bogus term that describe a genre of aesthetic thought. modernism can not be defeated, for everything 'present' is inherently 'modern' all the time.. that is: Nature is new every day, thus every day is manifest as modernity. Post-modern thought is merely recognizing this fact and seizing upon it to create art that tweaks the modern-precedents..

    and back to archaic words and old masters.. old masters remain masters because no one new has topped their acheivements with language, which, btw, are only masterful because they themselves found, "in their time", new ways to deploy old language tricks, such as syllable reduction. such words only became the language of such "archaic times" because poets and artists of those times acheived such new-found feats of expression with old-forms of language. although language evolves, it never really changes that much.--hehe i just wrote that!

    i don't mean to argue with such intelligent and clearly constructive [positive-minded] criticisms, really i appreciate every comment anyone makes about my pieces (except that mother-bleeping Dreams in Red, hate that guy)..

    but welcome to my "Battlefield Life". ;)
    change begins with discontent.
  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    also, post-modernism is a bogus term that describe a genre of aesthetic thought. modernism can not be defeated, for everything 'present' is inherently 'modern' all the time.. that is: Nature is new every day, thus every day is manifest as modernity. Post-modern thought is merely recognizing this fact and seizing upon it to create art that tweaks the modern-precedents..

    Nice debate topic. Modernism (at least in Europe) was a largely bourgeois reaction in the arts and the newer social sciences, from about 1880 to 1930, to the collapse of religious certainty, the growth of a scientific uncertainty principle, and the effects of Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud on constructions of individual and social consciousness, identity and agency. It redefined concepts of "The New Woman", the decadant and the homosexual (a term first used in a psychiatric dictionary as late as 1900). It registered the effects of Western anxiety about the state of the British Empire, the metropolitanisation and increasing complexity of 'the modern mind' in an era of burgeoning mass communication, and most powerfully it responded to the cataclysmic effects of the First World War on economy and class. The experimental form of modernism - incorporating alienation, fragmentation and depersonalisation of the individual subject through exploration in language of the Freudian unconscious - was a massive reaction to a perceived chaos and spiritual malaise in a wartorn, metropolitanised Western society.
    The form was avant garde until about 1933, when socio realism came back into prominence largely due to the social urgency of the rise of Hitler in Europe. What had defined modernist politics was often a kind of cultural fascism and exclusivity, an elitism that stretched literary form and content to its limits as much to preserve high art for a select few (such as the Bloomsbury group) as to find new ways of expressing massive change. The more socialist, realist and politically committed poetry of the intellectual left of the thirties replaced the preoccupations of modernism. New poets such as Auden, Spender and Cauldwell thought at the time that poetry should be accessible for political value, should alert people out of their complacency and serve a purpose for social good. This trend in the arts towards social prescription is not what one might mean by post-modernism, though.

    Postmodernism is perhaps best termed ultra-modernism. Postmodernism is not a reaction to the concept of modernity itself. It's more of a reappraisal of much of the form if not the class ideology of modernism in the contemporary contexts of both theory and artistic/literary/musical/architectural/cinematic practice. It rather takes many of the formal and thematic concepts of modernism and situates them in the mainstream of popular culture, taking them away from the elite. For example, the film "Pulp Fiction" uses devices of flashback, flashforward and intertextual allusion. Those techniques are familiar to us all now: but in the modernist era they were used in books that didn't sell outside of a specific class.

    This isn't a definition of terms but a description. Hope this helps.

    Cheers. :)
  • Nice debate topic. Modernism (at least in Europe) was a largely bourgeois reaction in the arts and the newer social sciences, from about 1880 to 1930, to the collapse of religious certainty, the growth of a scientific uncertainty principle, and the effects of Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud on constructions of individual and social consciousness, identity and agency. It redefined concepts of "The New Woman", the decadant and the homosexual (a term first used in a psychiatric dictionary as late as 1900). It registered the effects of Western anxiety about the state of the British Empire, the metropolitanisation and increasing complexity of 'the modern mind' in an era of burgeoning mass communication, and most powerfully it responded to the cataclysmic effects of the First World War on economy and class. The experimental form of modernism - incorporating alienation, fragmentation and depersonalisation of the individual subject through exploration in language of the Freudian unconscious - was a massive reaction to a perceived chaos and spiritual malaise in a wartorn, metropolitanised Western society.
    The form was avant garde until about 1933, when socio realism came back into prominence largely due to the social urgency of the rise of Hitler in Europe. What had defined modernist politics was often a kind of cultural fascism and exclusivity, an elitism that stretched literary form and content to its limits as much to preserve high art for a select few (such as the Bloomsbury group) as to find new ways of expressing massive change. The more socialist, realist and politically committed poetry of the intellectual left of the thirties replaced the preoccupations of modernism. New poets such as Auden, Spender and Cauldwell thought at the time that poetry should be accessible for political value, should alert people out of their complacency and serve a purpose for social good. This trend in the arts towards social prescription is not what one might mean by post-modernism, though.

    Postmodernism is perhaps best termed ultra-modernism. Postmodernism is not a reaction to the concept of modernity itself. It's more of a reappraisal of much of the form if not the class ideology of modernism in the contemporary contexts of both theory and artistic/literary/musical/architectural/cinematic practice. It rather takes many of the formal and thematic concepts of modernism and situates them in the mainstream of popular culture, taking them away from the elite. For example, the film "Pulp Fiction" uses devices of flashback, flashforward and intertextual allusion. Those techniques are familiar to us all now: but in the modernist era they were used in books that didn't sell outside of a specific class.

    This isn't a definition of terms but a description. Hope this helps.

    Cheers. :)



    yeah thanks for engaging. i think your paragraph about post-modernism is essentially the point i was trying to make. sure it may not be a direct "reaction to" modernist theories, but it is an off-shoot of the modernist 'avant-garde' projects, and yes, Pulp Fiction is a great example.

    as for the modernist history you know details far and above my historical knowledge, kudos, there's just so much to read!

    it's interesting to me though how you desribe the effects of this transition [from modernism into realism] on poetry, perhaps because it seems to have largely effected many of the fine arts in general. my thinking has been that the only way to counter the political fascism that results from the "reality" that there is a cultural elitist strcuture (in order to improve the mass of civilization this would be desired) is not to engage the arts in politics, but to engage politics into the arts...

    the question also arises: what is a postmodern poem? i mean, what is its structure?

    the very notion of something being 'postmodern', say as pulp fiction with its progressive mode or presentation, is very difficult to conceptualize in poetry, because unless we're writing sonnets and stuff there is already a sort of freeness to poetic expression.. or maybe you see the history differently?


    :)
    change begins with discontent.
  • Nothingbetter
    Nothingbetter Wichita, KS Posts: 570
    That's pretty cool. I like the story it paints.
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  • eden
    eden Posts: 407
    That's pretty cool. I like the story it paints.

    I like the story your sig paints :)
    where is it from....