Poetry Forum

I was thinking about this before you posted, because I have also been accused of writing 'poetic prose' in some pieces. I read this when you first posted and have been mulling it over ever since, whenever I could find time between family commitments and other RW chores:). Still mulling, but if ever ...

Thank you - you are a darling and you highlighted some of the areas I had doubts about and rather more. I feel rather lazy asking for help but someone I respect told me it was already a 'good' poem but could be better if I tightened it up.

I need help on this one. I think it sort of works as it is but it needs tightening yet I can't bring myself to wield the the razor. Did I see you blush, at that dinner party, When it came out in front of your daughter That we had been lovers, and lived together For several years, and you had one oth...

What is a poem, and aren't they all solutions to puzzles? Whether playing with stress or counting syllables, changing rhyme schemes or finding an end-line to sum the whole thing up we are all doing cross-words in some way or another. I think this is a great mental exercise and has been completed ama...

All the conflicting advice and criticism becomes very confusing. I guess in the end one just has to trust one's own editing. There are no easy ways to get it done, are there?

Thank you for your replies. Mic I don't think anything I write will ever 'move' you anyway as I don't go in for emotional stuff:). Brian, I am glad that you found it hilarious, although that is slightly more of a response than I actually expected. It was intended to be a prose poem, whatever they ma...

The enjambment query wasn't a criticism, I wondered if this was a new form that I hadn't noticed before. I like to use it as a 'shock' and this is lost but at the same time the repetition is quite pleasing. I don't see how you can be too clever for your own good, just blame every else for being stup...

This really brought a personal response I found; it brought back memories of the time I caught a female funnel web at a friend's house and took it back to my flat because there was a research project at the Uni and they needed samples to study their venom. I left her in the flat for a week or two be...

I must be careful, I forget, sometimes that I am not alone in playing with words and using them as multi edged tools for humour, irony or sometimes satirical effect. I come across so many writers who are far better than I will ever be, but many take themselves so seriously. I take the piss, occassio...

Fun to read. A sort of collection of bits and pieces from fairy tales put together as a patchwork quilt that tells its own tale, or should that be tail? The Hound of the Baskervilles is actually more of a Dartmoor legend , turned into a Conan Doyle puzzle for his sleuth and i am sure that there must...

I read this one as a still life composition waiting for an artist/s to transform the image into sculpture, modern art or food. It is just a process:
image input ->transformation -> variable output:). I presumed that the different interpretations were intended.

Very clever, I've no beef with the comments so far. Was it Stro go on off?

Thank you Ben. I feel more at home in this form than with Haiku. I really prefer to use stress rather than syllable count.

It hasn't rained for a week or two, the temperature is up in the 80s there is a hosepipe ban and the lawn is turning brown in places the vegetables are drooping, the lettuce gone to seed, we need rain. It hasn't rained for a year or two, everyday is over 100 degrees the ground is dust and bare, no g...

Emsworth, half way between Portsmouth and Chichester. I see you are in the New Forest. Do you ever come up this way?

To Ben J. You forget your Pascal syntax and dislike recursion whereas I get lost using brackets and recursive calls. You wish to add a semi-colon to the end of every line whereas I need to put a '/' before the program stalls! Prolog: Here is a recursive call in a simple ancestors db: descendent(D,A)...

Ben, I think that in the original Pantoums were unrhymed but some of the European poets do use rhyme schemes. I decided to drop end-rhymes but I frequently use rhymes hidden or embedded in the lines and I guess a few slipped in here:). The only place I dropped the form was the last stanza: So don't ...

Congratulations Sharra, and David:).

Suzanne, I see your point entirely but I was making fun of a particular genre of 'poetry' that does come out with this style of language. It was not a 'serious' poem as such. I was just tired of reading the same rather trite imagery, usually in rhyming couplets. I doubt if I will change this but I c...

I am the stupid one. The auctioneer was selling old books and it is an extended metaphor comparing books and slavery? In which case my remark about the smell on the skin is totally appropriate as the mildew smell of old leather books is very distinctive.

Great poem:).

Another programmer who uses recursion? Hail fellow ..., although I am glad to say I write poetry now and try to forget all about programming, systems analysis, database design and even A. I. I take your point, but suspect that you would have to choose another similar problem to demonstrate rather th...

I query the connotations that you wish the word 'sloven' to carry? I take it that W. W. was using it in the normal way: to describe the auctioneer as being slovenly in appearance, but I do not know the poem. Was he describing a slave auctioneer and are you tying the two together? It seems likely tha...

This is an area of acoustic phonetics that I am not familiar with. Its not a glottal stop, but what is it? What do the imprisoned vowel sounds stand for and what did she have in mind? Why is the wind important and which connotations are the intended ones? This poem takes one back to youth, and winds...

Weren't the 'sidhe' referred to as the 'good' or the 'kind' people as well as the 'little people' to try to keep them sweet?

I'm dual nationality but have family in W. A., N. S. W. and Qld. I was actually born in North London and grew up in the fine socialist republic of Hampstead Garden Suburb. All I can say in my defence is that I did grow up with most of the children of the Labour Party leaders, such as Douglas Jay, Wi...