Anti Poetry

[bogusagain]

you where right, you would not see it as a cliche, so of the rest is anon bait
who or what is this rotsak?
assumed it was you, as it was that you mentioned Ernesto Cardenal

Rotsak was an old name I used for erotic poems but it only lasted for two poems before I got bored with it. Or maybe, I just didn't have the erotic poetry in me.

 

[bogusagain]

Actually, Rotsak's poems fit into ome definitions of anti-poetry. Maybe I should have carried on with him. I was going to turn him into a character with a salacious imagination, and explore sex and socio-political ideas through him. He bored me though.


Fish-n-Chips

Serve me up
I’m fish and chips
she said, meaning
She was more honest
than haute cuisine
served up with French snobbery

Shake on salt-n-vinegar
rub it in so it hurts
She was a basic meal
in need of condiments
but no less a feast
for that

Clawing
the greasy appendages
of hot potato and ripping
the crisp batter to expose
the white flaky heart
As I satisfied my alcoholic hunger

All this and more
The simmering anticipation
of gourmet promises and
her licking clean my fingers
with another sort of hunger
in her eyes

two beers

I held up two fingers
and ordered two beers.
The black woman sat next to me,
who I had met minutes before
on the Lage Erf Brug
shuffled her behind

She had pouted and smiled.
I raised my eyebrows,
sex or dope?
'A night in heaven hon.
a night in heaven.'
Her Surinamese accent, a thick wad of cotton wool,
filled the smoky air

'I'm good for a beer, just a beer.'
She loped behind me,
her hips swaying from side to side
Her thick thighs looked eager to crush,
as she sat and positioned
her mammary glands on the bar

'You not from here son?'
she sung-songed her way through idle chit-chat
before landing me with a punch
'Maaan, I'll be genteel met u
you t'in enough to break.'
I was out of my depth!
I ordered two more beers

 

[HarryHill]

two beers

I held up two fingers
and ordered two beers.
The black woman sat next to me,
who I had met minutes before
on the Lage Erf Brug
shuffled her behind

She had pouted and smiled.
I raised my eyebrows,
sex or dope?
'A night in heaven hon.
a night in heaven.'
Her Surinamese accent, a thick wad of cotton wool,
filled the smoky air

'I'm good for a beer, just a beer.'
She loped behind me,
her hips swaying from side to side
Her thick thighs looked eager to crush,
as she sat and positioned
her mammary glands on the bar

'You not from here son?'
she sung-songed her way through idle chit-chat
before landing me with a punch
'Maaan, I'll be genteel met u
you t'in enough to break.'
I was out of my depth!
I ordered two more beers

..
I had a woman say she wanted to pick me up and carry me away, luckily there were no dark alleys or alcohol involved. liked it. (the poem)

 

[twelveoone]

Anti-Sonnet

The Bride

Damn'd You! I was alone. I had learned to
speak, to laugh. A laughter that mocked like the
sound of splitting ice and you knew what with
I was inbrued, as you chased across the
icy waste to avenge your wedding night. Your
fear, a race of monsters? Hah! So to the
end wrought, your mind populated by the
thought of your betrothed killed by your begot.

Herr Gott, the cold has a bite. A frost has
formed in your eyes frozen vater. You are
cold; feel the human warmth I felt? Now's the
time - your corpse, your work shall be sizzles on
ice, nothing but wet cinders. Horror? A
foolish tale, like your two lines, best forgot.

One rhyme, begot/forgot, in prime key position. Horrible enjambment because 12(?)of the lines end in a unambiguous unstressed syllable. Most of the lines begin on an
unambiguous stressed syllable(with and end are questionable). It should not matter while read - it should read rather fast. It is also very linear, not a common tactic for me. It follows none of the tactics commonly employed in either free or syllabic verse. It is in a formal verse structure (a sonnet - shell) but follows none of the rules, grammatically in places it is awkward.
Technically it shows a BETTER than average degree of competence in its word choice and it is harder to write this way (original and not templated). It is written to a voice that shouldn't exist. A case of the material fitting the form. So what is it?
Now if I throw this over in new poems, what will the reception be
from the asshole anon (where did I steal this from?) or the tazzbot that crawls around?
the crowd that confuses poetism for poetry?
the crowd THAT KNOWS the AB of poetry but forget the alphabet doesn't end there?
It is just simply unlovely writing...
Too wordy, We'll fix that
Damn'd You...your begot...Herr Gott...best forgot

Now where did my H's go?

Hah, we'll end it on a happy note, there are another four lines that explain the cryptic your work, It ends:
so weiß, so weiß, so wunderschön
so kiß my aß PoetGuy

icy waste is a cliche
icy waste is a mondegreen and also suggestive of sterility

to UYS: knew/inbrued,chased/waste, wrought/thought

 

[bflagsst]

PoetGuy is best. Whoever was writing under that name deserves to be revealed, or at least interviewed in a thread. PoetGuy is love.

 

[twelveoone]

PoetGuy is best. Whoever was writing under that name deserves to be revealed, or at least interviewed in a thread. PoetGuy is love.

War is Peace, besides this is the anti-poetry thread, what are you doing here? 52 pick -up, poem a week sound a little familiar? PoetGuy's fans or yours seem to been heavy in that nasty de-H program. Me, Chip, Vjrose, annaswirls all seemed to have had some harassment. Such fine memories.

 

[bflagsst]

Anti-poetry isn't even a thing so far as we can call the anti-folk movement a thing in music. It's so uninteresting, the most mundane thinkers thinking. Any blank verse and/or prose-poem is anti-form/anti-traditional construct, you don't have to get too fancy.

Go to any poetry magazine from the last ten years, click on the first poet, look at the first poem. There you go, anti-poetry:

http://lapetitezine.org/issue_26/zach_buscher_pillow_talk.htm

http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n-15-content/diana-arterian.html

http://www.breadcrumbscabs.com/downloads/BCS_Issue26.pdf

How to Give Your Best Friend to Death
by Heather Askeland

i. Remember her body is not your city to govern. She has painted
fresh divider lines on every highway. Your crumpled dress of a
spine awaits tomorrow's trash pick-up. The creek bisecting the
town center swells at your feet.
ii. They say hearing is the last sense to leave. Gently thread a wire
of lullabies through her ear's soft bass.
iii. The oxygen machine is a waltz. Remember the laughing
afternoon she belted along to your stumbling guitar. Her breath
was a song then too.
iv. Her mouth isn't waiting for you. Squeeze three drops
of water between her drought lips.
v. Don't pray for rain. She is already half mermaid.
vi. Her shoulder is still warm. Hold it like a feather. Draw her
tattoos into a V of sparrows.

---------------------------------------
These people writing these poems think they're doing something modern or even post-modern or even po-pomo. But it's just surrealism that the legends like Joyce Mansour, Eluard, andre Breton, Char, Maria Martins, Tristan Tzara invented and perfected 80 years ago.

 

[bogusagain]

Anti-poetry isn't even a thing so far as we can call the anti-folk movement a thing in music. It's so uninteresting, the most mundane thinkers thinking. Any blank verse and/or prose-poem is anti-form/anti-traditional construct, you don't have to get too fancy.
.

Don't worry about it. Traditional artists said exactly the same thing about the visual arts now the traditional arts are reduced to mainly hobbyists.

Traditional poets appear to be on te same trajectory if you look at the sale of their poetry books. I'm not sure what the situation is in the states but in Britain, the anti-poets have outsold academic poets by hundreds to one.

A snapshot year highlighted by Cambridge University showed that 90% of peotry books sold in the UK were published by Faber & Faber. 67% of those books were by one poet, Seamus Heaney. Most top critically acclaimed poets sell between 2-300 books. That just about covers their family, friends, university and a couple of libraries.

Even academic poets claim there is too much poetry. Hugo Williams saying 147 poetry books published in 2010 was just too many books, most published because they existed, while poet Don Patterson said only about 30 books a year are worth reading.

In the USA there are around 900 regular buyers of hardback poetry books and around 2,500 regular buyers of softback poetry books.

You could take the position which many academic poets take, that 'good poetry' (their term) needs protecting (like Opera) or you can take a more positive position and accept poetry isn't connecting with the general public and needs to consider why it is being ignored. I suspect Adrian Mitchell was right when he said 'Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people.'

Basically, everyone writes but no one reads poetry.

* EDIT TO ADD If you buy poetry books regularly (I used to), especially by academic or 'good ' (their term) poets, you end up buying the same poems over and over again. Now that is fair enough if you are happy to read the same poems until they disappear up their own semi-colon.

However, we should not forget, the best writers in the English language were populists.

 

[Angeline]

Don't worry about it. Traditional artists said exactly the same thing about the visual arts now the traditional arts are reduced to mainly hobbyists.

Traditional poets appear to be on te same trajectory if you look at the sale of their poetry books. I'm not sure what the situation is in the states but in Britain, the anti-poets have outsold academic poets by hundreds to one.

A snapshot year highlighted by Cambridge University showed that 90% of peotry books sold in the UK were published by Faber & Faber. 67% of those books were by one poet, Seamus Heaney. Most top critically acclaimed poets sell between 2-300 books. That just about covers their family, friends, university and a couple of libraries.

Even academic poets claim there is too much poetry. Hugo Williams saying 147 poetry books published in 2010 was just too many books, most published because they existed, while poet Don Patterson said only about 30 books a year are worth reading.

In the USA there are around 900 regular buyers of hardback poetry books and around 2,500 regular buyers of softback poetry books.

You could take the position which many academic poets take, that 'good poetry' (their term) needs protecting (like Opera) or you can take a more positive position and accept poetry isn't connecting with the general public and needs to consider why it is being ignored. I suspect Adrian Mitchell was right when he said 'Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people.'

Basically, everyone writes but no one reads poetry.

* EDIT TO ADD If you buy poetry books regularly (I used to), especially by academic or 'good ' (their term) poets, you end up buying the same poems over and over again. Now that is fair enough if you are happy to read the same poems until they disappear up their own semi-colon.

However, we should not forget, the best writers in the English language were populists.

I believe the last poet in the USA to sells millions of books was Rod McKuen, so there's your argument for populism. I find his work vapid and shallow, but like you said you have to respect a poet who makes a lot of money. There was a time when McKuen could fill concert halls like a rock star. Of course, America is such a bastion of good taste.

You said in an earlier post that you thought a poet writing with the hope of making money is pitiable and I agree. Ginsberg made a great living but had to create a traveling circus around himself to accomplish it. Our old pal Billy Collins has made a good living from being a poet laureate, but I doubt he started out expecting that to occur. And after that, like elsewhere, it's the academic crawl or race depending on how lucky you are or who you know. To me that is mostly a waste of time that I could better spend writing poetry, but I do respect those who have the ambition to play the publishing game.

 

[bogusagain]

I believe the last poet in the USA to sells millions of books was Rod McKuen, so there's your argument for populism. I find his work vapid and shallow, but like you said you have to respect a poet who makes a lot of money. There was a time when McKuen could fill concert halls like a rock star. Of course, America is such a bastion of good taste.

You said in an earlier post that you thought a poet writing with the hope of making money is pitiable and I agree. Ginsberg made a great living but had to create a traveling circus around himself to accomplish it. Our old pal Billy Collins has made a good living from being a poet laureate, but I doubt he started out expecting that to occur. And after that, like elsewhere, it's the academic crawl or race depending on how lucky you are or who you know. To me that is mostly a waste of time that I could better spend writing poetry, but I do respect those who have the ambition to play the publishing game.

My argument isn't so much playing the publishing game. I wrote about the figures, though they are difficult to assess because publishers don't like to say how few books were sold, to point out poetry's failure to engage even a modest audience, it is really a micro-world. My main point was, poets experimenting and trying to make poetry relevant to a larger audience is no bad thing. bflagsst got my goat when he said anti-poetry isn't a thing, well, it's many things to many different writers so while it technically isn't a thing, it is many things but what most got me was, and I quote It's so uninteresting, the most mundane thinkers thinking. Any blank verse and/or prose-poem is anti-form/anti-traditional construct, you don't have to get too fancy. A typical traditionalist not thinking and accusing people who are at least trying to push the envelope of being unthinking. Art, architecture and theatre and I suspect music but I'm not up on that, had their traditionalists making the same accusations but who got pushed aside? The unthinking traditionalists. No art form stays the same and the unthinking thing about bflagsst comment is, the stuff he champions was once new and probably pushed other types of poetry aside. But I suspect bflagsst is one of those people who likes being an elitist snob and the smaller the inner circle of guardians protecting the integrity of 'real poetry' the better and more smug he feels in himself.

Though it's a pretty bad situation when there are more books published each year written about poetry, than actual books of poetry published. Surely that should concern everyone who claims to be interested in poetry, though maybe not. Many people want to feel special and being one of the last real poets in the world, even if it means being the only reader of ones own poetry, might excite some people.

 

[bflagsst]

The 'traditional construct' now envelops surrealism, a little dadaism if it even exists, most of the prose poetry that's published. I still buy poetry books. Oni Buchanan 'Must a Violence' was released in the past year, quality work.

Listen to this. The last book of poetry I purchased was by this guy.

http://fishousepoems.org/archives/richard_siken/war_of_the_foxes.shtml

He's pretty much the norm now, the book I bought was poetry, it was a little popular five years ago -- entitled: Crush. The link above contains a poem with no poetry in it, it's just contemporary prose.

Back to Ms. Buchanan. She is a good poet. Here is her version of anti-poetry:

http://www.conduit.org/online/buchanan/buchanan.html

I went to the Museum of Modern Art a few years ago and saw this:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1360225971/a-dictionary-story-art-book

None of these three things is poetry. Anti-poetry is either traditional poetry as developed in the early to mid-20th century or it's prose or it's plain jane word cut n paste art. Take these three works I posted above individually, I've read them thoroughly, I bought the dictionary book...taking them for what they are, not even measuring them as poems, they all suck as art.

I am elitist if it means poetry can remain a thing separate from prose or the absolute garbage that is the visual arts circa 2013.

 

[bogusagain]

I am elitist if it means poetry can remain a thing separate from prose.

No. You are elitist because you are conservative. In an age where borders merge and boundaries dissolve, holding onto the past can be comforting but it remains the past and you can't go back. Old ways are a security blanket but little else.

Change is something we all have to deal with. I started out as a sculptor and painter and had to face the fact, the advent of the computer changed the game, just as photography 150 years ago changed the game. It's something we all have to deal with.

The internet, texting, twitter, whatever the platform, they brings to our attention all sorts of different ways to use language, there isn't just prose and poetry, they are just false definitions for something that cannot to be defined. All prose poetry is rubbish until someone creates great poetry with it, twitter is banal until someone creates something good with it but then, poetry is banal unless someone reinvents poetry and stops retreading the same old warn path, which is my point. Repeating everything because it was once great, isn't repeating its greatness.

Like Angela Merkel going to the Bayreuth festival we can all pretend to be cultured by living in the past. The real creative people have digested, respect, appreciate the past and look towards the future by working towards it in the present.

 

[bogusagain]

Anti-poetry is either traditional poetry as developed in the early to mid-20th century or it's prose or it's plain jane word cut n paste art.

It's just a term that is a misnomer. just like post modern architecture isn't post modern architecture but neo-modernism, anti-poetry is experimentalism, a recognition that poetry has to modernise and be relevant to today's culture or fade away or be preserved in aspic like so much opera is.

 

[The_Fool]

stilted concept
so what if I run around with scissors
Fuck you....and you


I really don't care


she amused me yesterday
when she pissed her pants
she should know when to stop drinking
and quit letting strangers finger her

I don't understand?


I didn't care yesterday
i might care today
but don't count on it

...

count on me to not smile at a stranger

 

[The_Fool]

It's just a term that is a misnomer. just like post modern architecture isn't post modern architecture but neo-modernism, anti-poetry is experimentalism, a recognition that poetry has to modernise and be relevant to today's culture or fade away or be preserved in aspic like so much opera is.

There is no such thing as poetry

 

[twelveoone]

Anti-poetry isn't even a thing so far as we can call the anti-folk movement a thing in music. It's so uninteresting, the most mundane thinkers thinking. Any blank verse and/or prose-poem is anti-form/anti-traditional construct, you don't have to get too fancy.

Herr Gott, I scare you don't I, bubie?
your begot
best forgot

paraphrase on what you said a few years ago

you don't have to get too fancy...

the holy sonnet, corrupted by inversion, is it or is it not?, now that was a bear to write, parts had to written backwards, true is is primarily prose minimal tools (internal rhyme) but what about the last four lines? over in new poems (I hope)
"softly falling snow" - no objections? Why did I put that there? Suffixed even.
line length?
the last line?
in flames intoned "so weiß, so weiß, so wunderschön."
careful with the quote, and what does it mean?

Now we have a so-called newb, who does a great job of surface structure and colouring between the lines.

As we had a previous NPR'er who walked off the job, when confronted with one of mine, but not before Mentioning one by another with a certain incestual relationship, so a former mod PG II feels obliged to mention it but only by prefacing it by telling me I'm full of shit.

Now, where did my H's go?
removed by some neo-form thug, who wants to make the world save for poetry or
posertry
one alt at a time
as for PG1, that must have been upsetting that I did so well, and I wasn't even involved, some part of the picture is missing, either I can't write and somehow I'm fooling people, or perhaps they can't really write and somehow they are fooling people.
Actually both statements are true, it is tricks and manipulation, or technique if you prefer.
Your side the AB of poetry, blind to the C, as I yet to see a successful response to any challenge posed. I do rather well at parsing and questioning PG did rather well at positional abuse, and sarcastic asides. But guess who he ran up against.
My H's removed, you created a monster, all politeness removed

"so weiß, so weiß, so wunderschön."

 

[twelveoone]

There is no such thing as poetry

point?
shall we tear down the sign PF&D
replace it with posertry falala and diarrhea?

 

[twelveoone]

Repeating everything because it was once great, isn't repeating its greatness.
.

No, but it is a great way of faking it.
ever notice the SOS from the cobwebbed corners?

 

[The_Fool]

point?
shall we tear down the sign PF&D
replace it with posertry falala and diarrhea?

If you can't define it, it must not exist. I make that statement because there is no single definition that fits. You can tear down what ever you wish. PF&D is a label that means something and nothing.

 

[bogusagain]

If you can't define it, it must not exist.

That's not true. Some languages of tribes int he rain forest have a vocabulary of as little as 500 words. There is a whole encylopedia of stuff they can't define with language which we know exists.

The problem with rigid definitions is that you will end up with the poetry police telling you what is and what is not poetry. You could simply define prose from poetry if you feel it needs to be differentiated, prose is the use of language to communicate information and concrete ideas while poetry is language as art.

 

[bronzeage]

I get it now.
Anti poetry, antifreeze, Auntie Mame,
antidisestablishmentarianism.
Anti-heroes never shave and anti-poets never edit,
punk poets who scream at the mowhawked crowd
yur knot the boss of me
cuz I don't care so much it's all I care about.
It's clever, that's what it is,
that two edged sword of the intellect,
not quite smart, not really brilliant and so far from genius,
clever is the word.
Clever is a Balzac bronze carved from soap
and made into a table lamp. Clever.
Not Balzac, not much of a lamp, useless as soap,
but so clever.
The formless form, the edgeless edge,
not over the line, just tripped over the line.
As dark is defined by the absence of light,
let it be defined as the absence of poetics,
but it can't be killed, every severed hydra head spawns two,
every fractured poem breaks at the seams
and drips through the floorboards into the crawlspace of literature,
waiting for the ghost train of the tenure track
to declare it new and relevant.
So very clever.

 

[bogusagain]

No, but it is a great way of faking it.
ever notice the SOS from the cobwebbed corners?

I noticed them.

Maybe this thread wasn't a very good idea or it was just put too clumsily saying, why not push the boat out and experiment, why keep regurgitating the past. We inhabit a new century with new technology, the world is changing faster than ever, why stay in the 20th, 19th, 18th, 16th century or whatever, when the world is in the 21st century.

It's not a case of dismissing the past, its a case of not living there.

 

[bogusagain]

cockroach

you crawl around my head
like a resident cockroach

night
after
night
after
night​

cancrelat schabe cucaracha blatta barata kakkerlakker
Whatever the language there is no beautiful word for you

you are not beautiful
you are hideously perfect

with your almond eyes
your straight nose
and your full lips​

yet something about you jars

your waxen countenance?

your febrile smile?​

is the sole purpose of your existence
to convert human wreckage into excrement?

am I a victim of your hate war?

what are you? misandrist?
separatist?
pissed-off bitch?​

‘The great question...
which I have not been able
to answer despite my thirty
years of research into the
feminine soul, is
"What does a woman want?"*​

I never did know what you want

you had it all but wanted more

you came as easy as April rain

but you was as unforgiving as a drought

aren’t there any ways of killing you
which don’t involve murder?

can I get you out of my head
without resorting to suicide?

I have disappeared your image from photographs
your name has been scrubbed from all correspondences
I have disposed of all items I associate with you
and I drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes without labels
just to forget you

all residual memories and undeletable data
have been banished to the dusty recesses of my mind
but still you insist on ruminating
amongst the embarrassing excesses of my memory
nesting in the candor and the information that remains

I have reduced my world
to a single room

but still my world
is too large

still you enter
through unseen cracks

I feel you scratching in my skull
you are an infestation

KAKKERLAKKER!

 

[bogusagain]

cockroach

you crawl around my head
like a resident cockroach

night
after
night
after
night​

cancrelat schabe cucaracha blatta barata kakkerlakker
Whatever the language there is no beautiful word for you

you are not beautiful
you are hideously perfect

with your almond eyes
your straight nose
and your full lips​

yet something about you jars

your waxen countenance?

your febrile smile?​

is the sole purpose of your existence
to convert human wreckage into excrement?

am I a victim of your hate war?

what are you? misandrist?
separatist?
pissed-off bitch?​

‘The great question...
which I have not been able
to answer despite my thirty
years of research into the
feminine soul, is
"What does a woman want?"*​

I never did know what you want

you had it all but wanted more

you came as easy as April rain

but you was as unforgiving as a drought

aren’t there any ways of killing you
which don’t involve murder?

can I get you out of my head
without resorting to suicide?

I have disappeared your image from photographs
your name has been scrubbed from all correspondences
I have disposed of all items I associate with you
and I drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes without labels
just to forget you

all residual memories and undeletable data
have been banished to the dusty recesses of my mind
but still you insist on ruminating
amongst the embarrassing excesses of my memory
nesting in the candor and the information that remains

I have reduced my world
to a single room

but still my world
is too large

still you enter
through unseen cracks​

I feel you scratching in my skull
you are an infestation

KAKKERLAKKER!​

*Freud

You could fit in any quote you want, how about....

A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.

Bill Cosby


If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.

George Bernard Shaw

 

[bflagsst]

Herr Gott, I scare you don't I, bubie?
your begot
best forgot

paraphrase on what you said a few years ago

you don't have to get too fancy...

the holy sonnet, corrupted by inversion, is it or is it not?, now that was a bear to write, parts had to written backwards, true is is primarily prose minimal tools (internal rhyme) but what about the last four lines? over in new poems (I hope)
"softly falling snow" - no objections? Why did I put that there? Suffixed even.
line length?
the last line?
in flames intoned "so weiß, so weiß, so wunderschön."
careful with the quote, and what does it mean?

Now we have a so-called newb, who does a great job of surface structure and colouring between the lines.

As we had a previous NPR'er who walked off the job, when confronted with one of mine, but not before Mentioning one by another with a certain incestual relationship, so a former mod PG II feels obliged to mention it but only by prefacing it by telling me I'm full of shit.

Now, where did my H's go?
removed by some neo-form thug, who wants to make the world save for poetry or
posertry
one alt at a time
as for PG1, that must have been upsetting that I did so well, and I wasn't even involved, some part of the picture is missing, either I can't write and somehow I'm fooling people, or perhaps they can't really write and somehow they are fooling people.
Actually both statements are true, it is tricks and manipulation, or technique if you prefer.
Your side the AB of poetry, blind to the C, as I yet to see a successful response to any challenge posed. I do rather well at parsing and questioning PG did rather well at positional abuse, and sarcastic asides. But guess who he ran up against.
My H's removed, you created a monster, all politeness removed

"so weiß, so weiß, so wunderschön."

I doubt there are any neo-formalists in these parts targeting you, mein ubermensch. UYS is the closest to resembling a neo-formalist, and I'd bet she isn't taking the time to down vote your poems, mask ISP, create new email addresses and new lit names to down vote 1201's poems. I don't know that that strategy would even work. I've been around for some time writing and submitting stories and there isn't much that can be done post-2006/7 to manipulate the voting.

So there are likely a few, if not many, voting down the handful of poems that you used to have on your submissions page that had acquired an H. You've seen the idiocy and the nastiness with the folks complaining over the years about their scores, their H's etc. so why do you fixate?

Poetguy is the supreme poet of Literotica, whether he/she said something snide to you or not. Now who is challenging you? Who says they're a superior poet to you, looking for a challenge? I've looked for folks to write against now and then, but I don't think I've challenged anyone for a few years.

post script: your new poem is okay with a side of coleslaw, but it bothers me that the Monster isn't speaking French or even a Miltonian English as the family from which he learned to imitate were certainly not countrymen of Victor.