Gather, a spring challenge
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AMoveableBeast
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A lot of excellent poems.
(W) Cruising is particularly strong. It's full of clever turns-of-phrase, enough subtlety to seem evenhanded yet meaningful, and chock-full of positively delightful imagery.
(C) Somewhere, Something Incredible is masterful. Just a slicing comet of a thing. Tight and sharp and littered with technical sleights of hand that are so deft that you barely notice they are techniques at all. This poem is a flu shot from an attractive nurse: straight medicine, and so distractingly beautiful that you don't even notice it going in.
(Gg) The Bird's Nest is a marvelous piece of narrative poetry. So much packed into neat, well-gardened rows. This is an entire story. Evocative and poignant, if the best poetry is getting the most out of the fewest words, this is fantastic writing. Beautiful, heartbreaking, accessible, and bound seamlessly with strands of the human experience.
There are others, but that is enough for now. Very nice, folks.
(W) Cruising is particularly strong. It's full of clever turns-of-phrase, enough subtlety to seem evenhanded yet meaningful, and chock-full of positively delightful imagery.
(C) Somewhere, Something Incredible is masterful. Just a slicing comet of a thing. Tight and sharp and littered with technical sleights of hand that are so deft that you barely notice they are techniques at all. This poem is a flu shot from an attractive nurse: straight medicine, and so distractingly beautiful that you don't even notice it going in.
(Gg) The Bird's Nest is a marvelous piece of narrative poetry. So much packed into neat, well-gardened rows. This is an entire story. Evocative and poignant, if the best poetry is getting the most out of the fewest words, this is fantastic writing. Beautiful, heartbreaking, accessible, and bound seamlessly with strands of the human experience.
There are others, but that is enough for now. Very nice, folks.
UnderYourSpell
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OK silly question time ......... how do I vote? My excuse is I'm partially brain dead at the moment as recovering from Food poisoning! Editing to say I've found out how but another question ........... do I have to vote for 21?
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Dianthus
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UnderYourSpell
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I'd already found it thanks, hadn't read far enough
HarryHill
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yes please select 21 to advance to the next elimination
hope you are feeling better
GuiltyPleasure
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_I'm exhausted.........very difficult to choose, so many good poems and such variety. Kudos to all regardless who wins.
pelegrino
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They are all great entries.
You are all so marvelous and unpredictable authors!
It is very hard for me to choose. I've started the elimination process with two points to guide me:
1. The cheekiest.
2. The closest to my heart.
But that does not mean that I eliminate at all the ones I'm leaving out. I intent to come back to them and set some of them to music as this could be one great song cycle: ANYTHING BUT SPRING, through the perception of so many perceptive people.
C "Somewhere, Something Incredible" so far seems to me the most perfect in terms of handling technically the language used and perhaps displaying an elevated emotional maturity… but with W "Cruising", Gg "The Bird's Nest" as pointed out by AMovableBeast above, and some others coming very close seconds.
I'm having fun trying to guess the authors, I mean the ones with whose work I am familiar, (please, forgive me for all my mistakes, but I'll have a go).
I thing "C-Somewhere, Something Incredible" has the style of Greenmountaineer.
Well, that's a start, what do you think?
You are all so marvelous and unpredictable authors!
It is very hard for me to choose. I've started the elimination process with two points to guide me:
1. The cheekiest.
2. The closest to my heart.
But that does not mean that I eliminate at all the ones I'm leaving out. I intent to come back to them and set some of them to music as this could be one great song cycle: ANYTHING BUT SPRING, through the perception of so many perceptive people.
C "Somewhere, Something Incredible" so far seems to me the most perfect in terms of handling technically the language used and perhaps displaying an elevated emotional maturity… but with W "Cruising", Gg "The Bird's Nest" as pointed out by AMovableBeast above, and some others coming very close seconds.
I'm having fun trying to guess the authors, I mean the ones with whose work I am familiar, (please, forgive me for all my mistakes, but I'll have a go).
I thing "C-Somewhere, Something Incredible" has the style of Greenmountaineer.
Well, that's a start, what do you think?
UnderYourSpell
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I've only got 14 ....... and yes not so bad today thank you
butters
High on a Hill
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made my choices and will come back later today with a few comments - not indepth stuff yet as i want to save that for pieces that get through.
there's some very interesting writing going on and quite a few of those that appeal most are in the double-letters, but i love the solidity of A, C's opening and where its following lines take me, and the brevity of Cc. lots of others as well but more later. plus i like my own
there's some very interesting writing going on and quite a few of those that appeal most are in the double-letters, but i love the solidity of A, C's opening and where its following lines take me, and the brevity of Cc. lots of others as well but more later. plus i like my own
butters
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glad to
hear you're feeling a bit better, annie
the way i chose was an envelope, a pen, and read through each poem... i wrote down the letter if i kind of liked it, with a question mark next to those i was less sure of. by the time i read them all i had about 28, so i revisited the q-marked pieces and eliminated most of them. that left me with 22, so then i read through them all again, ticking those i definitely wanted to vote on till i found one i liked but not as much as the rest. strike. job done.
trouble is, the next round is going to be way harder and i'll have to be a whole lot stricter in able to choose! there'll be blood on the forum's floorboards as we all cull.
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butters
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K has some great phrases! they leap off the page, state 'here i am, remember me!' especially in the first half of the piece. again, though, it's those initial lines that demand my attention and the rewards keep right on coming.
I've a winter's will
Cold and long as January
Packed tighter than a post-Christmas budget
Too dense to be salted by any pleading tears
I am married to frost, fortified with isolation
Loyal to layered clothing and cracked skin
I have chopped desire on the ax of reason
And piled the dry bodies high by the stove
I've a winter's will
Cold and long as January
Packed tighter than a post-Christmas budget
Too dense to be salted by any pleading tears
I am married to frost, fortified with isolation
Loyal to layered clothing and cracked skin
I have chopped desire on the ax of reason
And piled the dry bodies high by the stove
butters
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L? lolol
After dilly-daffying away the morning sunshiny
He mumbled in the most jumbled of mutters,
Well, ain't that just motherfucking swell!
At the overflow from my inspirational well
That unfortunately began to fill up his potato cellar
Where his lovely Butters had gone nutters
After dilly-daffying away the morning sunshiny
He mumbled in the most jumbled of mutters,
Well, ain't that just motherfucking swell!
At the overflow from my inspirational well
That unfortunately began to fill up his potato cellar
Where his lovely Butters had gone nutters
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butters
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W's a fascinating vignette - totally captures believable characters in only the first lines, and sets up that duality between what they might aspire to and reality.
Cruising
Her cruise is a magazine ad
of an oversized martini glass
filled with something coppery red,
dog-eared to read later on the deck
while sipping a cup of Earl Gray tea;
his will be an Old Fashioned glass
next to a book he'll never read.
Cruising
Her cruise is a magazine ad
of an oversized martini glass
filled with something coppery red,
dog-eared to read later on the deck
while sipping a cup of Earl Gray tea;
his will be an Old Fashioned glass
next to a book he'll never read.
Ballot_Box
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that's all for now
hope some of you other people will step up with a few comments of your own
They are mostly still trying to decide which move on. (my guess) It's early in the week yet and I'm sure as the pressure of choosing half of the 42 entries comments will soon be forthcoming.
Get your ballot in before you sleep an Sunday, 3 May 2014 (12:00 CDT) Poems moving on to the second round will have ADVANCED edited in to indicate the choices for the next elimination round after the votes are counted and confirmed on 5/4/2015 and the ballot reset for 10 semifinalists. questions?
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greenmountaineer
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I thought C, "Somewhere, Something Incredible," was very good. (Sorry, pelegrino. I'm not the poet; I wish I was.)
Carl Sagan, the TV celebrity astronomer, starting the poem set the tone of the narrative. When I think of astronomy, I think of the universe expanding and contracting, and the poet is very expansive at the beginning of the poem but the end left me with an image of intimacy between two lovers.
Intended or not, I thought a few longer lines with shorter ones was a neat visual reminder as well.
I confess I was puzzled by the inclusion of "Mr. T," given how effective Sagsn, that other TV icon was in the context of the poem.
A very enjoyable read nonetheless.
Carl Sagan, the TV celebrity astronomer, starting the poem set the tone of the narrative. When I think of astronomy, I think of the universe expanding and contracting, and the poet is very expansive at the beginning of the poem but the end left me with an image of intimacy between two lovers.
Intended or not, I thought a few longer lines with shorter ones was a neat visual reminder as well.
I confess I was puzzled by the inclusion of "Mr. T," given how effective Sagsn, that other TV icon was in the context of the poem.
A very enjoyable read nonetheless.
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butters
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MirrorsImage
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I keep going back and reading them ... there are so many good ones!!!!
AMoveableBeast
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I agree with this. It is...somewhat misplaced. But it is such a good line. Could you cut it?
It's his cosmic pity--television signals on weary legs, old episodes of the A-Team sending gold-chained B.A. Baracus bouncing off of planets in other solar systems, pontificating about his empathy for fools light-years away.
At least that's how I read it.
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