The General Commentary Thread

[melimelissa]

Wow, @Angeline is going to be so sad when she deletes y'all. Rhyme something quick!

I try not to choke on the three pires of smoke
As you fill me to fuck me, you hairy old goat;
Treat me and eat me until you're replete; I'm still,
As your hand makes me saucy, Monsieur Harry Hill!

Méli

 

[butters]

you're giving him something of a reputation, there

 

[HarryHill]

I try not to choke on the three pires of smoke
As you fill me to fuck me, you hairy old goat;
Treat me and eat me until you're replete; I'm still,
As your hand makes me saucy, Monsieur Harry Hill!

Méli

View attachment 2365267

Oh, you are a good girl.

 

[HarryHill]

you're giving him something of a reputation, there

I got lost on the three pyres of smoke though

 

[Angeline]

Hi BigTitsBitch. Your poem today in the fantasy challenge thread is lovely, so beautifully simple and direct. Is it your translation from Catalan? I noticed the Catalan because my kids' great grandfather was from Barcelona so I have a little (very little) familiarity with the language.

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

I know a woman more beautiful than any other;
But she remains faithful to her husband.

For her I have written my best verses;
To her I sent gifts of gold and rare garments;
But she remains faithful to her husband.

I pray for her always,
And she is my only consolation;
But she remains faithful to her husband.

To her husband she remains faithful:
But at night, when she sleeps,
Her face is turned toward mine.


Jo em conec una dona mès bella que totes altres;
Mes ella es romà leal al seu marit.

Per a ella m’havia escrit els millors versos meus;
A ella m’havia enviat coses d’or i mantes precioses;
Mes ella es romà leal al seu marit.

Sempre jo em reç per a ella,
Quina es l’ ùnica consolació meva;
Mes ella es romà leal al seu marit.

Al seu marit es romà leal;
Mes en sa nit quan es dormà,
Sa cara seva es tornà per a sa meva.

– After Meshullam da Piera
1980-99

( O )( O )

The poem is Kabbalistic.

The husband is Hashem.

The woman is the Shekinah.

Kabbalists and Islamic Sufis are dedicated to prayer at night.

The trope of "the dark night of the soul" refers to the inevitable coming of dawn.

The version is in the Mallorcan variant of Catalan.

When my Big Domme read this she thought it referred to an extramarital affair. Filthy minds think alike.

Thank you for the compliments.

( O )( O )

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

Hi BigTitsBitch. Your poem today in the fantasy challenge thread is lovely, so beautifully simple and direct. Is it your translation from Catalan? I noticed the Catalan because my kids' great grandfather was from Barcelona so I have a little (very little) familiarity with the language.

I didn't notice this. Sorry! Yes, the text is Catalan, in the Mallorcan variant. I was in Mallorca.

I am a Catalanophile. I know Catalan literature pretty well. I consider Ausiàs March, who wrote in the Valencian variant, to be the single greatest influence on me as a writer.

I'll see if there's a suitable translation of March on line. It's work to do a new version.

Do you like Catalan food? That's a topic.

Of recent Catalan poets, I have a couple of anecdotes.

Salvador Espriu has a poem with a ref to Franco. The worst enemy the Catalans ever faced.
In the poem Espriu quotes the alleged New Testament judgment on Jesus by the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem: "at times it is fitting and proper for a man to die for the people, but the whole people must not die for one man."

The ref was also employed by the Cuban exile writer Heberto Padilla to refer to Castro.

A young San Francisco aspiring poet came to a mag I edited with some translations from Spanish, including the Padilla poem.

The SF poet, a graduate of Taquería Menu College of Gringo-Hispanic Dictionary-Lottery Translation, with millions of alumni in the U.S., had rendered "pueblo" as "town," so that the verse read "at times it is fitting and proper that a man should die in a town, but a whole town must not die in one man."

Which is catchy, but less so than Chomsky's "colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

I corrected the translation, published it, and paid the young writer a handsome fee. He came roaring into my office complaining that I changed his translation!

Which doesn't bear much on Catalan literature. I have a more lachrymose anecdote about the Espriu quote from the NT but am keeping that to myself for now.

J.V. Foix was a very great Catalan modernist -- as an art critic he discovered Dalí, Miró, and Tapies. He translated Breton into Catalan.

But Foix was also the only Surrealist aside from Dalí to embrace active fascism in the 1930s. That was a strange development in Catalan politics: Catalan nationalism split between a very large and leftwing (not anarchist) majority and a very tiny fascist group. The fascists sided with the left in the Spanish war

A similar development occurred in the Irish Republican movement. W.B. Yeats sided with the fascist Blue Shirts.

I was in Barcelona when Foix died. The weather was terrible: heavy rain. I was alone and depressed. The Catalan media had giant headlines about Foix's death.

I mentioned the death to my authorial partner, the Catalan historian Victor Alba. His reply? "Fucking fascist! Fuck him!"

I am grateful to you for the opportunity to write on this. These are my favorite topics in general literary affairs. I recently had a fruitful discussion with another SF poet about the Marchian tradition. And I once had wild sex with a lovely man from Valencia, to whom I quoted March while in flagrante delicto.

I do not grasp why this site is run as it is. It makes no sense to me that a comment on a poem would be moved somewhere other than the poem. But my complaints here are legion and there's nothing I can do about anything except libel and threats.

Again, thanks.

( O )( O )

 

[Angeline]

I didn't notice this. Sorry! Yes, the text is Catalan, in the Mallorcan variant. I was in Mallorca.

I am a Catalanophile. I know Catalan literature pretty well. I consider Ausiàs March, who wrote in the Valencian variant, to be the single greatest influence on me as a writer.

I'll see if there's a suitable translation of March on line. It's work to do a new version.

Do you like Catalan food? That's a topic.

Of recent Catalan poets, I have a couple of anecdotes.

Salvador Espriu has a poem with a ref to Franco. The worst enemy the Catalans ever faced.
In the poem Espriu quotes the alleged New Testament judgment on Jesus by the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem: "at times it is fitting and proper for a man to die for the people, but the whole people must not die for one man."

The ref was also employed by the Cuban exile writer Heberto Padilla to refer to Castro.

A young San Francisco aspiring poet came to a mag I edited with some translations from Spanish, including the Padilla poem.

The SF poet, a graduate of Taquería Menu College of Gringo-Hispanic Dictionary-Lottery Translation, with millions of alumni in the U.S., had rendered "pueblo" as "town," so that the verse read "at times it is fitting and proper that a man should die in a town, but a whole town must not die in one man."

Which is catchy, but less so than Chomsky's "colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

I corrected the translation, published it, and paid the young writer a handsome fee. He came roaring into my office complaining that I changed his translation!

Which doesn't bear much on Catalan literature. I have a more lachrymose anecdote about the Espriu quote from the NT but am keeping that to myself for now.

J.V. Foix was a very great Catalan modernist -- as an art critic he discovered Dalí, Miró, and Tapies. He translated Breton into Catalan.

But Foix was also the only Surrealist aside from Dalí to embrace active fascism in the 1930s. That was a strange development in Catalan politics: Catalan nationalism split between a very large and leftwing (not anarchist) majority and a very tiny fascist group. The fascists sided with the left in the Spanish war

A similar development occurred in the Irish Republican movement. W.B. Yeats sided with the fascist Blue Shirts.

I was in Barcelona when Foix died. The weather was terrible: heavy rain. I was alone and depressed. The Catalan media had giant headlines about Foix's death.

I mentioned the death to my authorial partner, the Catalan historian Victor Alba. His reply? "Fucking fascist! Fuck him!"

I am grateful to you for the opportunity to write on this. These are my favorite topics in general literary affairs. I recently had a fruitful discussion with another SF poet about the Marchian tradition. And I once had wild sex with a lovely man from Valencia, to whom I quoted March while in flagrante delicto.

I do not grasp why this site is run as it is. It makes no sense to me that a comment on a poem would be moved somewhere other than the poem. But my complaints here are legion and there's nothing I can do about anything except libel and threats.

Again, thanks.

( O )( O )

And thank you BTB for this educational and entertaining post.

I don't know much about Catalan culture: my link to it came from my ex-husband's family. His father was a real sweetheart (unlike his son but that's another story!) and a fantastic cook. He did make a few Catalan dishes. There was always Pa amb tomàquet (chunks of good bread rubbed with garlic and tomato), he sometimes made fricando (a sort of Catalan beef stew with mushrooms and ground nuts), and in Spring he'd grill green onions and serve them with this delicious sauce...I think it was called Romescue? I'm probably butchering that spelling. Sorry!

I don't know March but now intend to read up on him. I am familiar with the Chomsky quote: first heard it in a uni course in transformational grammar. As I understand it, it illustrates that a line can be grammatically correct but meaningless. I also find it poetic. I know Chomsky wasn't writing it as poetry but, to me, it's an interesting idea that poetry can be good without explicit meaning. That's not the way I write nor want to but it could support some more sound-centered stuff I've read, for example.

I'll pass along some of the Catalan info to my kids. They'll appreciate it. They've connected with a few distant relatives in that region. My eldest has become good friend with a relative with connections to Pau.

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

And thank you BTB for this educational and entertaining post.

I don't know much about Catalan culture: my link to it came from my ex-husband's family. His father was a real sweetheart (unlike his son but that's another story!) and a fantastic cook. He did make a few Catalan dishes. There was always Pa amb tomàquet (chunks of good bread rubbed with garlic and tomato), he sometimes made fricando (a sort of Catalan beef stew with mushrooms and ground nuts), and in Spring he'd grill green onions and serve them with this delicious sauce...I think it was called Romescue? I'm probably butchering that spelling. Sorry!

I don't know March but now intend to read up on him. I am familiar with the Chomsky quote: first heard it in a uni course in transformational grammar. As I understand it, it illustrates that a line can be grammatically correct but meaningless. I also find it poetic. I know Chomsky wasn't writing it as poetry but, to me, it's an interesting idea that poetry can be good without explicit meaning. That's not the way I write nor want to but it could support some more sound-centered stuff I've read, for example.

I'll pass along some of the Catalan info to my kids. They'll appreciate it. They've connected with a few distant relatives in that region. My eldest has become good friend with a relative with connections to Pau.

Pa amb tomaquet is the quintessential Catalan item.

How America works will always be defined for me by a visit to a Catalan restaurant in California. Pa amb tomaquet was on the menu. In Barcelona it would be rounds of bread with a thin layer of tomato, just fine for a tapa (top) perched on a flute of cava (Catalan sparkling wine.) In Cali it was a loaf of bread cut lengthwise and loaded with tomatoes.

Which is fine, but I prefer the simplicity of Catalan traditional food like butifarra amb mongetes (lamb sausage with white beans) and spinach with raisins and pine nuts.

Roasted leeks with romesco and aioli is a classic.

On my last visit to Barcelona in 2007 I was upset at the takeover of the restaurant scene by nouvelle.

This is my coauthored book on Catalan history:

Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism: A History of the P.O.U.M. in the Spanish Civil War https://a.co/d/2JlgjDi

You should definitely look into March. This is the best translation:

https://a.co/d/7cIvhqc

When I first heard the Chomsky line in class I raised my hand and said "I'm a surrealist poet and the line is poetic."

I used it here to suggest that writing without obvious clear meaning is better than writing that undermines meaning, like thinking "pueblo' should be translated as "town."

I would now parse the Chomsky utterance to mean "ineffective ecological solutions are waiting urgently." Perfect sense; true; prophetic.

That's why I'm glad to say I No'am.

( O )( O )

 

[lc69hunter]

Poetry does not get the love and attention it deserves her on Lit. I have several authors as favorites who do nothing but poetry, erotic or non-erotic. It is an art that I envy.

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

I agree. I have been criticized here for not posting stereotypical smut.

My poems receive few if any comments.

My poetry is my main literary area of achievement.

This site is deceptive. I, a transwoman with a Wikipedia page, who ran for office in San Francisco, was and still am consistently described here in weird vocabulary of which I know nothing, but which presents me as someone faking being trans. For Trumpist ends.

My pix were described as lifted from someone else and I was derided as ignorant of the internet. Yeah geniuses, I was at USIA when the WorldNet was created by DOS, I run a website, and at my site I am consistently tracked by the Russian Internet Research Agency.

Re my pix: they are processed by Madonna's publicity people. Madonna was a pop artist known before the arrival in the world of Trent Reznor, symbol of romantic eros and its fulfillment, as developed on this site

But of course I know little of the knowledge imparted by 4chan experience to those who dominate this site and legitimize gross hatred and genocidal comments about the trans condition, including calls for cutting the bodies of intersex people.

( O )( O )

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

A comment on one of my stories exercised me greatly. It said “I’d be happy to read [this] without the sex.”
So, was I writing a good story that didn’t need the sex? Or was the sex superfluous? Was the sex only for my own titillation?
In the end I found myself writing longer and longer stretches without erotica because it became harder and harder to justify its inclusion in the narrative.
When all is said and done, it’s the story that matters most (IMNSHO)
This is where a fault line opens up between those readers who want to get themselves off as efficiently as possible and those who want to read an engaging tale.

 

[AlinaX]

A lot of readers here love finding an actual story to sink into, and extended sex scenes very often distract from the plot - especially if the author has basically slotted a sex scene into a gap because they know it's an erotic story site and readers kinda expect a bit o' hanky panky like.

ETA: Whether reading or writing, I like to get into the sex quickly, but very often my stories just surf the waves of sex instead of diving deep.

 

[Angeline]

Hello poets. How's your July going? Is it horribly hot where you are? It is where I am. Hot as a crotch as I believe Bob Dylan sang in one of his songs. But I digress. I notice that there are but eleven days left in the month, which means it's almost August. We need one poet to volunteer to lead a challenge then. Who wants to do it? It's an easy task as you've seen: just come up with a prompt and post it between August first and fifth. Easy peasy. Maybe someone new is ready to give it a try. Remember if nobody volunteers you're stuck with me. So c'mon now. Someone...anyone, just let me know. The poets will be most appreciative of your initiative.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Since the heat is melting streets like butter, how about a 'melting form' challenge? We all have been frustrated with forms before, why not try to reshape them under the summer sun?

 

[Angeline]

All of August? Challenge: Write a poem using these words, 'As funny as a one handed man...' Example- As funny as a one handed man doing dishes, any form, extra points for an American sentence.

This is a good idea, especially for American Sentences imo. We already have a second challenge leader for August. You could put this in a separate thread and let it be an extra challenge if you want.

 

[Angeline]

Since the heat is melting streets like butter, how about a 'melting form' challenge? We all have been frustrated with forms before, why not try to reshape them under the summer sun?

That's an interesting idea. I was thinking of Melt as a same title challenge if no one volunteered, but puddle_girl came to my rescue and picked up the second challenge for next month. You could do the melting form for September or just post it now in a separate thread. If Harry posts his and you do yours, August will be busy with challenges lol. That's a good thing!

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Well, who says September won't be even hotter than August...
Enough time to polish that challenge.

 

[Angeline]

Well, who says September won't be even hotter than August...
Enough time to polish that challenge.

Thanks Snow! I'll put you down for September.

 

[HarryHill]

And Harry please

Ready to go ty @Angeline

 

[tristantrotsky]

This poem will end with a whimper not a bang...

 

[Bigtitsbitch1000x]

Excellent. Publishable. No change.

May i recommend THE STORY OF O and a now rare book called BLAZE OF EMBERS by Pieyre de Mandiargues?

( O )( O )

 

[Elle4u2use2]

https://www.literotica.com/authors/Elle4u2use2/works/poetry

 

[I_AM_ONE_OF_YOU]

scent: petrichor
sight: open fields
sound: cars honking
taste: rain drops
touch: hot


It's amazing how itchy
The tall grass is on my body.
It must be after 3pm.


I can hear the cars stopping,
At the end of the open field,
At the traffic light.
One angry car threatens another,
with a honking
to move along.



But I’m comfortable, yet itchy
Lying naked here.
In the wide-open field
where I undressed and
Let you.



When the clouds finally squeezed
Their last rain drops
And the rustling of the grasses
silenced after you finished.



I smell it now.
The petrichor,
Of the grasses
The fumes,
of the cars going by.
And your sex.
Our sex.
It all lingers upon me.

This hot September Monday.


scent: burnt marshmallow
sight: fire
sound: laughter
taste: sugar
touch: soft

This is so well written, and so apt for the literotica boards. Well done.

 

[Angeline]

Dear Poets,

Is this a misplaced love letter? Not really although it's tendered with . Thank you for all the great August poetry and for keeping the forum brimming with your words, rhymes, ideas, laughs and music. Special thanks to the new folks who chose to post here this month. We're glad you're here. The August challenges have gone really well so thank you Harry and puddle_girl for coming up with those. And thanks to all who've posted in my flash challenge. That's a lotta love!

We should be set for September with challenges on board from 29wordsforsnow and XMarilynX. Those will be posted no later than September 5th (but if either of you want to post between now and the 1st, go for it!)

There are a few spots open to lead challenges from October-December. If you're interested in taking one of them let me know. Post your interest in the Leader Sign Up thread or message me and I'll add your name. And if you haven't led a challenge yet and are thinking about it, please volunteer. It's easy and I'm always available to help out if necessary.

It's not too early to think about 2025! Anyone want to do a poem a week again or more challenges like this year? Ideas for themes? Something new? Drop your suggestions and opinions in this thread.

Thanks again. As Margaret Atwood said in her fine poem, Spelling ~

A word after a word
after a word is power.