Poetry here.

What is art? What is beauty?

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Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

-1- wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:12 pm I only write now when the inspiration comes, as opposed to earlier times, when I wrote only when inspiration struck.
I stopped writing poetry completely. Prefer to read some but never again write any. What I do regret is having lost a lot being very careless on what happened to it after I wrote it. To me they were just temporary bagatelles and dispensable. Thinking back, there are some I really regret having lost and there's only a few left to remind me of what the others were like.
-1- wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:12 pm I hated poetry all my life until I read a poem by Richard Tillinghast, "The Table". It changed my attitude about poetry, turned it around 180 degrees. That was oh, I don't know, at around the turn of the century. Maybe.
For me it was music that served as impetus. In comparison, poetry worked only as a secondary spark plug stimulator.

I sometimes wrote "reply" poems, meaning poems used simply as responses to other poems I felt strongly about. One such depicts music as being the bedrock of poetry, a view that became fixed the more music I listened to. Sound it seemed to me, can express a more organic philosophy than the cerebral kind read in books; it's primeval power to affect is more direct and words can only float on its sea of vibes modulating each other.
-1- wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:12 pm I decided some time ago, that writing poetry is really easy, and writing good poetry is so hard, it is well neigh impossible.
This is true since anyone can breakup a bunch of fancy prose into lines of so-called poetry or just free-wheel it line after line without consideration whether there is such a thing called context. Most of the poetry written now-a-days is just rambling garbage. Talent is rare while genius is almost impossible. I often wondered what makes words so difficult to write when arranged as poetry. It wasn't always like that!
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-1-
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

Dubious wrote: Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:57 am
-1- wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:12 pm I decided some time ago, that writing poetry is really easy, and writing good poetry is so hard, it is well neigh impossible.
This is true since anyone can breakup a bunch of fancy prose into lines of so-called poetry or just free-wheel it line after line without consideration whether there is such a thing called context. Most of the poetry written now-a-days is just rambling garbage. Talent is rare while genius is almost impossible. I often wondered what makes words so difficult to write when arranged as poetry. It wasn't always like that!
There are exceptions. Even today. I used to post around a -- can you believe it -- Craigslist forum. There was a guy (or gal... let's be democratically sexist) of any gender, whose every utterance was in poetic form, and pearls and goblets rolled off of his lips. (Pen.) He was a natural. Context was just the topic of the forum; but the form was reminiscent of Keats. I loved reading him. Then from one day to the next, he disappeared from there. I can't remember his handle.

Contrast to that... I belonged for two years to the Poet Society of London, Ontario. Boy, the dilettante, such as myself, were bad. But the featured poets, who have got national and international fame were completely incomprehensible. And bad at the same time.

Bad is the colour of the day, it seems. Flavour du jour. Poems are like good micro-brewery produced beer: You know it is good when it gives you a throbbing headache.
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

-1- wrote: Thu Nov 22, 2018 10:55 am . Poems are like good micro-brewery produced beer: You know it is good when it gives you a throbbing headache.
In that case I'll never know how good it was because I won't be able to read the rest of it!
Dubious
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Passing Strange...

Post by Dubious »

....
Last edited by Dubious on Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by -1- »

True content, nicely put! The rumination of old age. The rationalization of cognitive dissonance we call "life" on a scale larger-than-life.

The rumination and inner debate over regrets stems on one hand needing to face up to face a final judge (this is a primal urge, not a religious consideration), because humans have perfected in their species the need to adhere to fair trade.


The other hand is that we expect the course of our lives to be lived as if a lifespan was a good novel. Relax at the end, reap the rewards, and suffer punishment if warranted. Just like in any good book. Beginning, setting the conflict, establishing the hero, the protagonist and the antagonist; complexifying the basic problem; resolution; declaring justice served or winning a fight by the hero.

This is what we'd like to see our lives lived as, but in reality it's nothing like that. So we ruminate, to smooth over the cognitive dissonance between what we expect life to be like, and how it has turned out.
Dubious
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Dubious »

Thanks for the reply.

The ancient Eastern belief in reincarnation evidently gives us another possibility of perfecting ourselves in each new edition to conclude, if successful, in some kind of Nirvana. That's one interpretation and the one that's most absurd. Where are the laws that would cause that and why would they be arranged like way! All of these religious beliefs with a god or without are so blatantly human which is easy to tell because their so stupid.
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attofishpi
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Re: Passing Strange...

Post by attofishpi »

Dubious wrote: Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:20 am Passing Strange...

Where among the mystery spaces
Lie the laws to perfect our state?
Where among all other places
Do we reemerge to share past fate?

Why should one's life reiterate
To redeem its course of error?
Time creates and obliterates
An unfolding felt as terror.

Passing strange that this life should be
Another loop to make things right.
I can't recall a prior me
Less perfect than I am tonight!
I like this, but oooh if converse to atheism I feel it would have gone for so many more verses. just my thoughts


Grand Father Time

Time speaks to me
like a restless man
of too many thoughts
thoughts that are fraught
with knowing too much
and so little
i take my time
it abides by me
as i sip on the essence
of lost memory
it keeps me warm
and i get pittance
to labour on
time's piss ant pawn
Is time a man?
We know it not
events occurring
flicker here
flicker
flicker there
missed her
Mr who?
Miss?
Misses?
I like you,
we did both, you and i
did and our soul did
cry
in our youth, masters we were
but now sent adrift
seeking the shore
and i ashore you not
this shipwrights knot
lets caulk the seams
breathe
for we will sink
with our dreams
to fathom below
deeper we'll go
into the fathoms
darker still
where light retreats
and glazes our gleam
blinding us again
the time
the light
that emits
no more
usurped
the mass
the priest
the chalice
bedded now
into a
watery
ground.
Dubious
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Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 7:40 am

Re: Passing Strange...

Post by Dubious »

attofishpi wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:12 pm I like this, but oooh if converse to atheism I feel it would have gone for so many more verses. just my thoughts
Appreciate the response. This and few others are just replies to other poems on the subject. Sometimes verse was used as a critique on other poems. I've kept these unintentional ones short and to the point. They don't sound like any of the primary ones I wrote.

Your poem has a lot of good lines in it but I'd understand it better if they weren't so broken up. To me form expresses thought as much as what it actually says.

I took the liberty of "conjoining" some of the first lines in a way which to me completes the thought more effectively. Of course, that's subjective and each is master of his own poem.

Time speaks to me like a restless man
of too many thoughts
thoughts that are fraught
with knowing too much and so little.

I take my time, it abides by me
as i sip on the essence of lost memory
it keeps me warm and i get pittance
to labour on time's piss ant pawn.

Is time a man? We know it not!

>>>
Grand Father Time

Time speaks to me
like a restless man
of too many thoughts
thoughts that are fraught
with knowing too much
and so little
i take my time
it abides by me
as i sip on the essence
of lost memory
it keeps me warm
and i get pittance
to labour on
time's piss ant pawn
Is time a man?
We know it not
events occurring
flicker here
flicker
flicker there
missed her
Mr who?
Miss?
Misses?
I like you,
we did both, you and i
did and our soul did
cry
in our youth, masters we were
but now sent adrift
seeking the shore
and i ashore you not
this shipwrights knot
lets caulk the seams
breathe
for we will sink
with our dreams
to fathom below
deeper we'll go
into the fathoms
darker still
where light retreats
and glazes our gleam
blinding us again
the time
the light
that emits
no more
usurped
the mass
the priest
the chalice
bedded now
into a
watery
ground.
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attofishpi
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Re: Passing Strange...

Post by attofishpi »

Dubious wrote: Sun Nov 25, 2018 1:34 am
attofishpi wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:12 pm I like this, but oooh if converse to atheism I feel it would have gone for so many more verses. just my thoughts
Appreciate the response. This and few others are just replies to other poems on the subject. Sometimes verse was used as a critique on other poems. I've kept these unintentional ones short and to the point. They don't sound like any of the primary ones I wrote.

Your poem has a lot of good lines in it but I'd understand it better if they weren't so broken up. To me form expresses thought as much as what it actually says.

I took the liberty of "conjoining" some of the first lines in a way which to me completes the thought more effectively. Of course, that's subjective and each is master of his own poem.
Thanks Dubious. Yes, I know you are a keen exponent for a particular form within a poem. Personally, I like breaking it down further, the way I do, I like my attempts at poetry to be more punchy. The other thing I do, which you may have noticed, is, I find poetry in its written form a good way of playing with and breaking down words within the English language where further rather unnatural depths to its logic can be comprehended.
To read the poem orally, would fail my intent on much of what I write.
Walker
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Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: Poetry here.

Post by Walker »

Free verse, free fall, free lunch

Space Has No Ground To Fall Upon
The monkey in space can fall on a limb
Can howl his soundless monkey ouch

In space the limb can fall on a trunk
Equal and opposite to the monkey kick
In space the elephant and the trunk
Weigh the same as a mouse

No matter how strong the sappy desire
A tree that falls in space won’t land
On landing ground or pad

In space

Grounding and ground are just concepts
Thoughts grind like grounding
Like a memory of the ground that was
Like the storybook
Flickering in shadows from the fireplace

Thoughts of the ant
And the grasshopper's wintry cost
Flickering shadows on the cave wall

In space
All is free fall

Time but not alone would tighten
All into rhythmic rhyming order
With similar meaning in the differences
Walker
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Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: Poetry here.

Post by Walker »

Space Has No Ground To Fall Upon

The gesture creates the world
Space monkey falls on a limb
His mouth howls a soundless monkey ouch

Space limb falls on a trunk
Falls hard, like a monkey kick
In space

Full trunks of memories
And elephants remembering
Emotional support mice

Forget the takeoff
Dread the landing
The slow fall

No matter how strong the sappy desire
A space tree can’t land
Without landing ground or pad

Trees fall forever
In space

Grounding, ground, concepts grinding
Grinding thoughts as real
Real as old ground memories
Real as the old storybook
Real as ancient, flickering shadows

Thoughts of the mouse
Thoughts of the ant
Thoughts of the grasshopper's wintry cost
Shadows flicker on the cave wall

In space
All is free fall

Time but not alone would tighten
All into rhythmic rhyming order
With similar meaning in the differences
Walker
Posts: 14245
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: Poetry here.

Post by Walker »

Halloween, a playful reminder

Thanksgiving, glad to be alive

Christmas?

The real ghosts arrive

To see through your eyes
Dubious
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A short essay on man

Post by Dubious »

....
Last edited by Dubious on Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Walker
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by Walker »

That's pretty dang good with sparks of brilliance.

The devil who's seen his graceless rule
staged and looped since time began
knows himself not half so cruel
as the sixth day wonder God called man.
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attofishpi
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Re: Poetry here.

Post by attofishpi »

Yes, Dubious, nice poem - although I would not have been adverse to just one more verse! :D
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