What A Poet Needs?

[Tsotha]

I have the gun.
And pretty sure i'm the second of the three non poets.

Hey, I must be the third.

 

[twelveoone]

Hey, I must be the third.

Uh-oh, The Third Man
You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
- Harry Lime
God you really are a Doppelgänger.
Care for another whirl?

 

[Tsotha]

Uh-oh, The Third Man
You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
- Harry Lime
God you really are a Doppelgänger.
Care for another whirl?

noun: whirl

1.
a rapid movement around and around.
synonyms: swirl, flurry, eddy
"a whirl of dust"
frantic activity of a specified kind.
"the event was all part of the mad social whirl"
synonyms: hurly-burly, activity, bustle, rush, flurry, fuss, turmoil, merry-go-round
"the mad social whirl"
a specified kind of candy or cookie with a spiral shape.
plural noun: whirls
"a hazelnut whirl"

I am unsure whether you're offering to make me dizzy (probably by talking of this poetry nonsense), inviting me for some type of frantic activity or offering me candy.

 

[twelveoone]

noun: whirl

1.
a rapid movement around and around.
synonyms: swirl, flurry, eddy
"a whirl of dust"
frantic activity of a specified kind.
"the event was all part of the mad social whirl"
synonyms: hurly-burly, activity, bustle, rush, flurry, fuss, turmoil, merry-go-round
"the mad social whirl"
a specified kind of candy or cookie with a spiral shape.
plural noun: whirls
"a hazelnut whirl"

I am unsure whether you're offering to make me dizzy (probably by talking of this poetry nonsense), inviting me for some type of frantic activity or offering me candy.

now that would be 11 on a 10 scale creep-o-meter

No just another observation from the ferris wheel.
Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays. - Harry Lime

 

[pelegrino]

Uh-oh, The Third Man
You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
- Harry Lime
God you really are a Doppelgänger.
Care for another whirl?

now that would be 11 on a 10 scale creep-o-meter

No just another observation from the ferris wheel.
Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays. - Harry Lime

I must see that film again, but...


1201, are you suggesting we need a renaissance somewhere in here?
Who is going to play Michelangelo's and who the cuckoo clock's part?

Tsotha, take the money and run.

 

[pelegrino]

REMEMBERING A SWISS LOVER

cuckoo clock,
suck my cock,
thank you dear,
all is clear,
you can go,
who's to know
of your grace?
Is there still a human race?

HARRY LIME'S THEME

Michelangelo was bend,
and subservient to no end,
Harry Lime maybe is wrong,
ta ta ra ta ta: that song!
Doppelgänger of us all,
there you are!
This world's so small.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Nice poem!

A big home with a pool and bowling alley in it
care takers
long sleeps
unending supplies of smoke and booze
a study, stacked nice and neat
solitude
juicy burgers, pizza slices, steak and wine
premium coffee shops
quality porn
good clothes, nice shoes
excellent health care
financial security, lots of money
shopping sprees
sexy chicks to date and fuck
frequent vacations
lots of sunshine near ocean
no jobs, idling all the time
good poems from other poets
sexy art shows
publishing parties
with good looking room fillers
tons of humor and laughter.
​

TOKUQINN

This is an entertaining, light, cute poem (not every poem has to be right away GREAT--there is room for poems like this one, which bring a smile to many readers, although not to all of them). There is this word fuck, but nobody should object to it at Literotica, and especially those of you who truly abuse language and aesthetics.

I see that UnderYourSpell has protested. I think, UYS, that this is a misunderstanding. I'll write to you, UnderYourSpell, in this thread, in another post.

I'll even add to TOKUQINN's poem an old Chinese classic, as a companion, still in the same thread. This Chinese poem is not using any 4-letter words but it has similar spirit in common.

 

[Senna Jawa]

MEETING IN THE ROAD (about 100y BC)

I'll present you with a Chinese poem from more than 21 centuries ago. It was translated by Arthur Waley. A funny thing--Western critics, including Waley, made some sceptic remarks about oriental poetry. However, when you applied the same standard to Western poems then you'd conclude that almost all Western poems are just junk!

MEETING IN THE ROAD


In a narrow road where there was no room to pass
My carriage met the carriage of a young man.
And while his axle was touching my axle
In the narrow road I asked him where he lived.
"The place where I live is easy enough to find,
Easy to find and difficult to forget.
The gates of my house are built of yellow gold,
The hall of my house is paved with white jade,
on the hall table flagons of wine are set,
I had summoned to serve me dancers of Han-tan,
In the midst of a courtyard a Cassia-tree,--
And candles on its branches flaring away in the night.​

About 100 BC
translated by Artur Waley



Arthur Waley's Comment: Han-ten was the capitol of the kingdom of Chao, where people were famous for their beauty.

 

[todski28]

Clearly I have no Damn idea on what poetry is at all, of all the things that you have commented on favourably senna I didn't expect this piece, I guess I should quit and save myself further embarrassment.

 

[Senna Jawa]

I didn't expect this piece

By TOKUQINN or the Chinese one? (Hey, tod, no need to get hystericski).

 

[todski28]

By TOKUQINN or the Chinese one? (Hey, tod, no need to get hystericski).

Sorry for the heads ver reaction, I meant tq's poem. Some things confuse the bejesus out of me and I found this piece of little note to myself. It interests and confuses me that some one who's opinion I respect would say the opposite, which makes me question at what I am doing, how I am going about things and essentially gave me a reflexive what the hell moment.

The Chinese piece I enjoyed far more.

 

[Senna Jawa]

To UnderYourSpell (and TOK and etc)

Is that all women are to you .......... a good fuck?

UYS, who is you? (I see only the lyrical subject).

Today, the majority of people who have contact with poetry are authors. And the majority of poems which they read are poems written just a few days earlier by their fellow Internauts. You may be different by we are all affected by this atmosphere.

In the preInternet times majority of people involved in poetry were readers. (They loved poetry, and--on average--they understood poetry way better then today's Internet crowd; BTW, today's Internet poets are not Internet poets ). These preInternet poets read almost exclusively the poets in print, and their poems published some years earlier. On average--but only on average--those earlier poets had better language, were more professional, there were just fewer of them, because they had to go through a system, to pass by it. But ithe discussion here is not here about the level of older and today poetry.

The attitude to the author was different. The author was basically an abstraction. I doubt that in those days, and under the old circumstances you would get excited about an author, one way or another. Certainly you would not feel any personal, intense emotion (well, youngsters might dream romantically about some authors, but never mind). One got excited by poems, and the author would be only a sum of their poems. An author would exist only via poems. In other words, one should be excited by the lyrical subjects, and not by authors.

Today we should have the same distance to the author as always, today too. Otherwise poetry would lose its sincerity. You need artistic freedom. A POOR poem is something else. But, UTS, you didn't object to the poem What A Poet Needs? on the artistic ground.

There is certainly more than one way to interpret the lyrical subject, why not. But there was no reason to get the author into these considerations. TOKUQINN didn't give us any such pretext. There are some (POOR!) poems which force you into taking a stand about the author. This was not the case here.

Myself, when reading What A Poet Needs?, I saw a guy lying at a swimming pool, half-dreaming. So he let his imagination free. So let's not be that politically correct. Guys occasionally, and it's far from unusual, may feel even horny... and it doesn't have to be more than that.

Frankly, this poem is very mild, I'd say that even extremely mild. In many poems the scenes, the phrases, ... everything, is much harsher. I am surprise that this poem got attacked for its (after all minimal) erotic content.

**************************

There is a fundamental distinction not only between an author and a lirical subject, but also--equally important--between the qualities of the poem and on the other hand the so-tospeak the material of the poem. The scene can be a stinky mudd, where a horse is dying, and... and so on; and the poem can be beautiful! By the same token, the lirical subject can be crude, stupid, dishonest... while the author can be fair, wise, humane, ...

***************************

Let's look at the hm-critical line: sexy chicks to date and fuck. It is really a cliche. But this is not an author's cliche. Author simply reported about the quite common cliche among guys (even among women too) which even you must acknowledge, even if it does not concern you personally. It's part od the poetic job to reflect reality. And that's what the author here did.

***

Oh, well, a couple of days perhaps and I am about to leave.

Regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

Some things confuse the bejesus out of me and I found this piece of little note to myself.

I can only guess your doubts. TOKUQINN's poem is very straightforward. I knew somewhat advanced poets who could not tell the difference between simple/naive, and primitive/crude/simplistic. When they see a sincere poem they assume that it is nothing. And they may miss poetry. TOK's poem is not quite mature artistically (relatively to the Chinese poem) but it's still on a good orbit. Sure, one could work on it a bit more. If my my Praxis and Companion threads didn't get destroyed, I would treat some related moments of the two said poems in those threads (possibly I would copy here one more poem from the same Chinese collection).

I kinda owe you a discussion of your poem (about violence). I was not sure that you wanted it. I thought about the issue of extremal cases in the past, and then again after your poem. That was one of the reason that I was not in any hurry to continue, I was still thinking, while it looked that... I don't know, I didn't feel welcome. I decided to tell you at least this much

 

[todski28]

I can only guess your doubts. TOKUQINN's poem is very straightforward. I knew somewhat advanced poets who could not tell the difference between simple/naive, and primitive/crude/simplistic. When they see a sincere poem they assume that it is nothing. And they may miss poetry. TOK's poem is not quite mature artistically but it's still on a good orbit. sure, one could work on it a bit more. If my my Praxis and Companion threads didn't get destroyed, I would treat some related moments of the two poems under the consideration in those threads (possibly I would type one more from the same Chinese collection).

I kinda owe you a discussion of your poem (about violence). I was not sure that you wanted it. I thought about the issue of extremal cases in the past, and then again after your poem. That was one of the reason that I was not in any hurry to continue, I was still thinking, while it looked that... I don't know, I didn't feel welcome. I decided to tell you at least this much

Though the events are part of my life I need to be able to seperate emotional ties to the words to better myself as a poet, they are after all just words organised to attempt expression and emotional connection to a reader group.

I appreciate the time you took to write out your thoughts on TQ's poem it helped shift some of my perceptions, although I still dislike the poem, it made me look at what I was reacting too the poet or the piece.

 

[Magnetron]

If my my Praxis and Companion threads didn't get destroyed, I would treat some related moments of the two said poems in those threads (possibly I would copy here one more poem from the same Chinese collection).

They only appear destroyed in your mind.

How they appear to everyone else is a different story.

This should help "restore" your hoops .... I mean .... threads : http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1017982

Anyway, its nice to see you out and about commenting on something other than the furnishings in your own little bunkers for the last 5 months.