The Critical Poet

Robert Frost ku?

Steve Parker — Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:08 pm

Author: Steve Parker

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:08 pm

Hi, fg. Like some of this, but not sure about the repetition in ku and don't see any reason for 5/7/5. But if that's your thing then fair enough. Don't buy 'strewn' as some sort of 'strewen' diphthong, though. The tongue has to move between two distinct vowel sounds for it to be a diphthong. The tongue only moves out of the 'oo' in 'strewn' to move into the 'n'. Anyway, I guess you modified your initial point to say it's just a long syllable, which it is, but does it constitute two morae? Not sure about that. But I do get the idea of using punctuation as morae. That's not a bad idea.

Actually, the repetition is kinda growing on me. And it IS a pretty good image of the divided trail. Maybe more Dante than Robert Frost, though... Pretty sure Virgil is about to arrive to grasp your hand and lead you through the Inferno.

Steve.

Ballad Quatrains II

Steve Parker — Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:24 pm

Author: Steve Parker

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:24 pm

yes quick let's hide from Daniel lest
he shows more than we'd like
I'll hide underneath this chair
you crouch behind the bike!

Hurt your brain on the Cinquain Train

Steve Parker — Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:20 pm

Author: Steve Parker

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:20 pm

chagrin
distorts his face
he'd attempted the jump
but his horse had dumped him right on
his rump

Limericks!

Steve Parker — Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:04 pm

Author: Steve Parker

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:04 pm

a lady from the old East Riding
dealt her cheating husband a hiding
a few blows from his wife
made him run for his life
from her righteous and fearsome chiding

Toasting The Future

doubletrouble — Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:29 pm

Author: doubletrouble

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:29 pm

Hi Sun,
of course the illogic of this was what I was going for--the implausibility of any of this happening to make a peace ever.
the smooches couldn't possibly sink anything--just thought the ground opening up on the military industrial complex a good
metaphor for hell, but then the idea image was not so cool when a real jet struck into the side of the pentagon on 9/11 and people died there. Somebody probably knocked the thinking cap off my hard head long ago. I'll fix the apostrophes--was
being lazy with capitals and all--meaning this for a slam contest or to be read aloud. thanks for chiming in, paul.

Sex and Love in Post-Christian Circumstances

mananaan — Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:30 pm

Author: mananaan

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:30 pm

You don�t fuck around with love,
you fuck within it. Nobody told me
when I was a dumb young ma-ma-man
and this truth eluded me, I sorta took
sharp notice of the girls, we always do,
and went for the one-night stands.

Sex without love is like, I don�t know,
spaghetti without any sauce on top,
sushi without the fish, steak without
potatoes & two veg: ham without eggs,
chips with no salt and vinegar.

It just doesn�t do you, it leaves
you feeling insubstantial, hardly fed
or watered at all, a drooping dahlia
in the garden of life. Maybe a begonia.
This (you think) is no bloody good at all.

So then you get married. Sick and tired
of dating, you propose to the next sexy
thing that comes along, a girl you rather like
in the hope that , having said she likes you too,
things will more or less work out OK.

Generally, they don�t.
If you have kids it gets even worse.
But �but sometimes they do!

It�s like betting on the red and black
at roulette. Sometimes you are lucky,
sometimes you are not. Hell of a way
to set up a lifelong partnership.

You just get tired of dating girls
and going through the same old fandango.
I think that�s what drives most mediocre guys
like me, and you, Bubba, to say
you want to get married or what?

Dreadfully romantic.

Surprisingly, girls usually say yes.
Lotsa pressure coming down on the other side,
especially after you meet the family.
You can see why they want to get away
and you, ya booby, are the escape chute.

It�s a 50-50 proposition, taken all in all,
and love can grow. High school sweethearts
are not normal, they end up murdering one another
with alarming frequency. Killing children as well
which I distinctly dislike, leave the kids alone

so they can grow up to be serial killers
or recipients of the Pulitzer or Nobel Prizes.
I just hate the idea of parents who have
totally fucked up their own sorry lives
dragging their children down with them.

Magda Goebbels may you rot in hell,
poisoning all five of your children!
Not just you � all who did the same.

I think there should be neighbourhood comfort ladies
ringing at your doorbell, ding-dong.
I can run upstairs and fuck your husband, if you like,
and save you the grief and trouble. We accept
Visa and Mastercard, but, I�m sorry, not American Express.

Amexco is notorious for delayed payments.
If you have one of their cards, get rid of it.

Similar services should be available for ladies
thanks to Equal Rights legislation: we can send Roland
around when your husband�s at work, or even
when he�s at home peering through a hole in the wall.
Our condoms are double-strength and guaranteed.

So what hath sex to do with love?
A lot, a lot, a lot!
But sometimes very little.

Anger

mananaan — Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:13 pm

Author: mananaan

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:13 pm

Paul again,

I do understand the references: Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman for you (the USA?) and Yeats and Heaney for us (Ireland?) Sounds like a tag-wrestling match ...
OK, OK, let's not be silly (not now, anyway) but can't you see this is not what it's all about? We have absorbed poetry in our apprentice stages which is not constrained by national boundaries in any conceivable way. Anything in the English language no matter where it comes from is shared by all of us. Even a lot of stuff in foreign languages is becoming open to us thanks to really good translations from other European languages and even from the Japanese and Chinese -- to which I add my own rather modest contributions. And why? Because there are brilliant fuckin poems out there (I am thinking primarily about the Chinese) and I can read them and I don't think much of the translations so far.

I mean, what are we doing?

Mmm. Good question! Can't say we're doing this for money ....

Anois,
Bren

praying over hot dogs

doubletrouble — Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:44 pm

Author: doubletrouble

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:44 pm

Hi Octo,
�yeah, the hotdogs line/phrase rocks. the rest could use just a little pruning or perhaps just a pinch of salt of the earth and mustard to keep it from dripping off fat into its sappy ending. like most of it though. paul

The Taste of Neon

doubletrouble — Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:24 pm

Author: doubletrouble

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:24 pm

Hi Forgotten,
other than the "here" all by itself in the first line which I detest as an opening, and why I am not short of being opinionated on that score, I love this poem. Its end is great. It pains me even to say this morning I wrote a poem to my girlfriend because it was Fat Tuesday yesterday-I compared her to neon and to a New Orleans street after rain in summer so I am afraid you stole my thunder--my poem was for her eyes only though--so it matters little that you beat me to the punch--but it is funny how images blow through this forum and collectively like leaves sometimes and bodies--the images mingle. I even had her stretching out too. my fav of yours is that stretching out like a peninsular of clouds--so cool. cheers, paul

Through the Eyes of a Potato

lilygirl2011 — Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:36 pm

Author: lilygirl2011

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:36 pm

Thanks for the nice words and funny little additions! �Daniel--you rascal you! �hehe, and Amanda, I think I may try to work in Kathleen into the poem. �I thought one of these days I would compile these all together and read them to my kids and have them draw the pictures for them! �Would be a fun keepsake for their kids some day! �Anyways, thanks again and glad you enjoy them. �Any requests? �Have a topic I could write a silly poem about? �Give it to me! When I run out of ideas I write about serious things and thats no fun!

snow-ku

doubletrouble — Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:27 pm

Author: doubletrouble

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 2:27 pm

Hi Weaver,
�this is a good poem, a short one for a zine that takes shorts. It isn't a haiku at the moment, even a senryu in this rhetorical format; doubt that it needs a 3 line format if you keep the verbiage. Really it is about an idea where "history is your heartbeat" as my Professor Everett Hoagland �who is anthologized in Black Voices In America used to say. A musing with deep meanings but not in a moment. Maybe it could work as a ku in the moment if you have an
act of doing something simple like shoveling off your walkway and not sure it matters if you show the walk or driveway. too many "I's" for a ku of courseat the moment
haiku are egoless mostly.

I detest snow-fall--
until the shovel lifts atoms
that stopped Hitler dead

the idea here is of course that energy never dies--the same atoms composed of snowflakes are the same ones that stopped
Hitler on the Russian front. it may be that this is still senryu but does it matter. everyone's taste is different.
If you keep it as is, why not:

whenever I begin to detest snow-fall,
I remember how it stopped Hitler dead.

this is a strong couplet, as strong as I ever saw given the subject matter.

cheers, paul

This is the forum for anything goes...

ForgottenSin — Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:50 am

Author: ForgottenSin

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:50 am

Hello,
Isn't this forum named after the Dadaist poet game Exquisite Corpse? And if so, was it a stylistic choice to misspell it?

Just wondering.
J.

Googlelove

mananaan — Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:12 am

Author: mananaan

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:12 am

Seven and forty days ago
you put impossible demands on me,
saying I could go to the bar you work
but I was never to talk to you,
you were afraid of losing your job.

I could call you at certain times
and you would be so happy and bubbly,
but I was never to meet you in town.
You said people were always watching
and you were a poor Chinese student.

You were so wraithlike, so achingly lovely,
I rather reluctantly agreed to go along.
For seven and forty days, the phone calls
from me to you, from you to me,
and I�m thinking what the hell is this?

In the end I wrote you some e-mails
in Chinese, using Google Translate,
and abruptly the phone calls ceased.
I can't decide to this day, whether
it was you, or those bastards at Google!

CURRENT STATUS OF THIS SITE - PLEASE READ

boardflak — Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:37 am

Author: boardflak

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 6:37 am

Forgot to add back then that I got my bookmarks changed.