From: donz@uiunix.ui.org (Don Zirilli)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: why Instead is bad writing / Marek
Date: 7 Jan 93 15:34:28 GMT
Organization: UNIX International, Parsippany, NJ  07054

In article <1993Jan7.083525.13601@news.acns.nwu.edu> marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski) writes:
>[content: writing in style, not hoping to annoy]
>
>>>              Instead of Growing Old With You
>>>              ----------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>              I wish my lips to touch your eye
>>>              Where flowers I placed in your hair
>>>              Who bargain for shadows that lie
>>>              On your face would not their darkness dare.
>
>Specifics?  Here:
>
>1.  "darkness" -- Really?  Truly?  Is the shadowed person in harsh light?
>Possibly on the moon?  In space?  whatever happened to the softness due to
>ambient light?  What is the approximate albedo of a softly shadowed skin
>(i.e.  with a flower or two vs. a mine shaft)? is it close to 0, i.e.
>"darkness"?  

This is a fun exercise for beginners, i.e. trying to think about what 
"really" happens with shadows, etc.  It's nothing one needs must get stuck
on.  

Could we possibly be the recipients of "darkness dare" for the
>cheap thrill of convenience/alliteration/sexiness of "darkness".  We all
>know "darkly" is the sexiest extant poetic word yet, thus my line of
>questioning....

This implies that I'm leaning on the word "darkness" too much.  This is
funny, because I often think you lean too much on the words "nipples" and
"cunt", when you use them in your poetry.  I guess each poet has his/her
favorite words.  Oh well.
>
>2.  "who" -- Usually reserved for persons.  Are flowers persons?  I suppose
>it helps to animate them; a form conceit?  

Now, this is worth thinking on.  Perhaps "that" would be better.  

After all, they must "dare".
>Daring is another Monday Night Football sexy poetic word.  

See my comment on "darkness"

What do you get
>when you put a cliche with a cliche?  a megacliche.  _Megacliches 2000:
>power your poetry into the 17th century_.

I rather like 17th century poetry.  And that's what this is, more or less. 
Deal with it.
>
>3. "instead of growing old with you" -- What? You abandon me for a mere
>moment of sticking a dead weed in my hair and slobbering over my blinded
>eye (and mascara runs, you know!)???  

This is precisely the fun of the poem.  I wouldn't like it if not for the
title.

Why did i marry you in the first
>place?  I.e., is this poem even self-consistent in content?  Seems not.  

Sure it's self-consistent.  The question is, does it make "sense."  My 
poems don't make sense (At least, they shouldn't be used as self-help 
books would be used).  Once again, deal with it.

It
>tries to be so precious that it becomes a self-parody when you pull back
>from the hole in the tree the tinkering with meter/rhyme/conceit bore to
>apprehend the forest... 

it is self-parody to an extent, but not so much as to render it a bad poem.
>
>4.  "kiss/eye/flowers/darkness/dare/bargain for ("both virgins did we buy,
>we buy, we buy; god if I saw her now" -- Anthony Phillips)/hair/face/shadows"
> + others (nearly *every word in the poem*)

Yes, dead words strung together like pearls.

>-- Hey!  Where is velvet and lace and wine and roses (never mind the condom
>full of love (TM)).  Must we, must we, must we be subjected to this *stuff*?
>How close to writing a new line of greeting cards do you want to get to, Don?

So close you can almost feel the plastic/paper, but then it disappears,
shimmering.

>Couldn't we, couldn't we, oh couldn't we get the same conceit and zee art of
>clockverk meter (great clockverk -- tells 5 timezones depending on how you
>look at it; but what the hay, it's *nebulous*, mon, it's, like,
>*am*big*uous*...) -- with, say, praying mantises (always thought they were
>so cool and so coolly green), fresh dill, blacksmithing, and flutes.
>Oh, and smudges of soot on warm warm, naked naked clavicles, please...

Oh, please stop throwing your words at me.  It's unattractive.  I can list
not-normally-used-in-poems words, too.  This is another good exercise for
beginners.  You may think I am a beginner, but I'm up a level.  I'm now
an acolyte, which puts me on par with you and keeps me from having to take
home your little exercises and skip TV for my own good in order to get my
Marek homework done.  
>
>		-=-  -=  -==--=---=-- -  - ==- -==- ---
>
>My objections center on the abuse of language on several levels at once in
>order to accomplish some gymnastics.  Perhaps had the end result been less
>unnatural or fresher my criticism would have been muted to the point of no
>response or, gasp, favorable silence (learned this technique from a mutual
>friend of Don and mine. :)).  Besides, it looked too damn cute and I had to
>cry wolf to warn the impressionable youth of rap.  Smiling aside, on general
>principle, I regard as kitsch any writing that unnaturally stretches the
>language,or renders it canned, and, given a sufficient level of expected
>skill on the part of the writer, fails to produce fucking amazing language
>(notice the benign use of the verb to fuck).  Language is the means and the
>end of writing.  Language is the canvas, the paint, the space, the
>building, the reason, the perceptions, and the accounts receivable.

This paragraph is not useful.  You use words like "unnatural", where natural
is defined as what pleases you and unnatural as what does not.  Same goes
for "fucking amazing".  I strive for "fucking amazing language" in most of
my poems.  I've risked obscurity and censure to achieve "fucking amazing
language," so I'm certainly not going to be impressed by someone else who
claims to have such a goal and implies that I am "fucking around."  Oops.
Did I say imply?
>
>Fucking around (badass use of the verb to fuck) with rhymes, meter, rhythm,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>punctuation, conceits, Shakespeare -- are possibly means, some of many, and
>too often, sadly limiting in themselves, for weaving language.  Oh, and one
>more thing: The old saw about "show, don't tell" is a newbie prescription.
>Witness Marie's "Persephone" or any story told by a people (oral tradition)
>to see it contradicted with spirit.  Storytelling is the root and the
>horizon of poetry.  Even if you think yours is an evanescent Harvard Square
>image, it is a story, situated in human spacetime, because on the receiving
>end a human is taking it in and situating it, making sense of it -- or not,
>which would be your fault whenever that happens, pal (meaning you, gentle
>poet/reader, not Don in particular, though he is gently included).

I completely agree.  That's why I don't think it's necessary to 
"realistically" describe flower-shadows.  And Marie's "Persephone" is a 
positively brilliant poem.  I loved the profound melancholy of its feminist
revisionism.  The poem is squarely in a tradition, by the way, as surely as
my poem is in the tradition of the 17th century.  This does not make it a
bad poem.
>
>obligatory :) for anyone in need.

I certainly don't need it.

One final note, this flaming has been great fun.  I hereby relinquish my pose
as Humble Flameless One.  I did try to get to the point, however, and erased
much flamage that seemed ultimately irrelevant though perhaps superficially
clever.
>
>				-- Marek
>

Yours,

Posthumous O'Toole


-- 
Chucklehead awaits the return of his .sig

Aaron Radomski, where are you???