From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Another Poem for Marek & Marie to crucify
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1992Nov11.010138.2491@news.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 10 Nov 92 22:46:34

In article <1992Nov11.010138.2491@news.acns.nwu.edu> marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski) writes:

   In article <1992Nov11.002813.1630@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jjimenez@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joel A Jimenez) writes:
   >
   >   As our paths now part, my only Love,
   >   I truly tell you this:
   >   Every night when the sun sinks down,
   >   My heart will be in bliss.
   >
   >   Wherever you are or come to be,
   >   (I tell you this is true),
   >   Whenever the stars cast down soft light,
   >   My heart lies there with you.
   >
   >                 - Joel A. Jimenez
   >
   >                        6/8/92
   >                       10/8/92


   I pass.  Happy clicheing, to you... until we meet again. :)

   Incidentally, it is possible to make an art form of cliches, as Laurie
   Anderson does in her performance art.  You just have to be a bit more aware
   than this.  Your poem, recited during Lucinda Child's dance might be
   riveting, no thanks to you, though.  

				   -- Marek

I want to express some sympathy for the cliche user but not too much.
Take "Every night when the sun sinks down".  I don't know if I have
seen those exact words before, but I sure have the impression that
I have seen them.  But suppose the author of the poem and the
recipient aren't tired of them.  Then maybe it's ok.  However, more
likely the author has seen the expression and is merely using it
without much thought.  Then it is like using a long phrase when a
phrase will do.  Thus the content of the last two lines of the first
first is just "At night I'm happy" even though that doesn't rhyme.

In my collection of copied quotations I found three occurrences
of "this" at the ends of lines of poetry, and one of them rhymes
"bliss" with "this".

    If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
    If there is none, he made the best of this.
     - Robert Burns, On a Friend, Epitaph on Wm. Muir


    Posterity will ne'er survey
    A nobler grave than this.
    Here lie the bones of Castlereagh.
    Stop, traveller, and piss.
     - Byron


    By the time you swear you're his,
    Shivering and sighing,
    And he vows his passion is
    Infinite, undying ---
    Lady make a note of this:
    One of you is lying.
     - Dorothy Parker

None of these strings out the meaning in the way of the example.  By
the way, Lord Castlereagh (pronounced as if spelled Castleray) was the
British Foreign Secretary at the time of the Napoleonic wars.  I don't
know why Byron, who outlived him by only two years, disliked him.

There is a further grumble about imprecision.  Perhaps the poet
doesn't become happy at sunset but only later.

It seems to me that plenty of the poetry posted here suffers
to some extent from the same faults, although cliches of meaning
are perhaps even more common than cliches of wording.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.