If there were a password-protected Deep End, I'm pretty sure I'd be much more Sphere-active. But I don't think invitation-only or Poet in Residence is the way to go with a PPDE.

Thanks, Nemo, for your cinematic (or possibly sit-com) essay on the State of the Sphere. Fabulous.

I am the Poet in Residence. Poet Laureate manque. That ought to have a little dingus on it.

And you Ann of course.

That's very true, Jayne. And perhaps rather odd, since of all the forums, that is the one where we are, literally, most in competition with one another. But what we actually get in D & A is helpful advice as to how we might improve a phrase here or there, or correct the metre without changing the sense, which for me is what "workshopping" should be - none of that "This poem is awful, and if I'd written it, it would be completely different and much better" stuff that, alas, sometimes pollutes the non-Amusement forums. I exaggerate, of course, but I'm sure you recognize the phenomenon.

As the man said, Jayne, even nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

"As the man said, Jayne, even nostalgia isn't what it used to be."


Yes indeed. Nostalgia feels so recycled nowadays.

As for that Nemo, man can he write on both sides of the ledger. Well said.

What you say is very true, Brian. Drills and Amusements is the jewel in the crown, partly because of you.

I often swing over to D&A for amusement and diversion, commodies becoming scarcer by the moment in this rapidly deteriorating world political picture. So D&A wit is all the more valuable, and John, Annie, Brian, and the crew are much appreciated!

And yes, Nemo, you have your finger on the pulse and I agree. I could add something, but it would be of interest mainly to other college instructors as well as teachers and psychologists (ie about certain media and computer games and their seemingly debilitating consequences for verbal expression in those who are at it many hours of the day), but it may or may not be relevant to the Sphere.

I'm with Terese on this one. Maybe light verse/parody doesn't involve as much ego and doesn't invite ad hom comments.

Of Two Minds

This is your superego calling,
Who finds your conduct quite appalling.
do da dirty do da sin
dump da pussy in da bin

To raise us from the primal swamp
We must curtail the instinct’s romp.
why dont we do it in da road
up ya bum ya moral code

A sense of civic duty needs
To govern all our words and deeds.
when da neighbour make me sick
whack him with a great big stick

A man is not a mindless clam:
‘I cogitate, therefore I am.’
you da boring fart dat reasons
me da id thing for all seasons


Basil Ransome-Davies

Kudos to Basil. Thanks for that, Mary.

Susan

Yes, wonderful!

The following also seems relevant--to me, if to no one else. Below is a link to an image of Apollo (the civilized, cultured superego), sedately playing his cithara, while the satyr Marsyas (the rude and nude id) gets down with the aulos flutes thrown away by Athena (the central figure). When Apollo and Marsyas had a music contest judged by the Muses, Apollo was in danger of losing until he changed the rules: according to one version of the myth, he required each competitor to play his instrument upside down; according to another version, he required each competitor to sing while accompanying himself on his instrument. Either way, after Apollo rigged the competition to favor his own way of making music, he won the right to have Marsyas flayed alive...which is clearly a metaphor for the overly harsh and dismissive critique we sometimes see on the Met boards.

(Warning: nudie picture)
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythol...rsyasNAMA.html

M. A. Griffiths wrote the following poem after receiving one too many critiques (in another online workshop) advising her to trim all her "unnecessary" modifiers, regardless of what this did to the meter and flow of the piece:

Marsyas

My song was ripped and flayed
when they cried ‘strip it bare’.
Behold its keening bones;
the muscles bleed elsewhere.

Ah Bazza. He should be Poet Laureate except that I don't think he would want to write poems praising the Royals. Whereas I...

The Queen, the Queen
Is a great human bean.

When do we get a book, Bazza. We wait impatient for the day to dawn.

Yes, I remember Bazza's piece. It made me snarl and wince - not because it isn't excellent or funny (it's both), but because it gave me the disquieting and unwelcome suspicion that Bazza may have an even filthier mind than my own.

I was asked to comment so...
 

I came.

I saw.

I concurred.

Bazza is, of course, one of the masters of the misnomer "light verse." My previous oversight was very naughty. Ouch.

My major plaint with Ransome-Davies' tender lines is that he didn't say "whock" instead of "whack". It's a much thumpier vowel sound.

Allen, you, of course, may do as you please, but here in the UK we do not whock.

What, never?

Never, Sir.

We might honk ironically from time to to time but we do not whock.

How do you whock, Allen?

Trust me, John. You don't want to go there.

Makes you blind, does it, Ann?

Even worse, John, it makes you American.:)

(I only used that pesky thing to make it clear that I was joking.)

'Whock' is a transitive verb, not reflexive.
'to whock' : to murmur to, to address a lullaby to, sometimes employing a implement. Benjamin Harrison (once US president): 'I whocked that golf ball a good 325 yards for an easy putt." Babe Ruth (baseball notable): 'I try to whock the ball as hard as I can. It does a body good.' Beowulf: 'Hwock. Hwock!'

The term was originally coined by the poet Fozzy Bear in his famous imperative tryptch "Whocka! Whocka! Whocka!

The Latin ending was, like the Borscht Belt it first adorned, eventually lost.

Oh, goody, the thread's gone silly and I can now post this summation of the State of the Sphere:

http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/cdnd...cba9233b63.jpg

Dammit, Julie, you've been snacking on it again.

Ann, Beowulf, as we have seen, did mickel hwocking but it was in Denmark. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is better that you don't. But you could.

My Korean friend has been wokking food in her mom's restaurant for years.

Where do Chinese chefs swim when they go to the beach?

Near the wocks.

So, is anyone still concerned about the state of the Sphere?

I never was, and still aren't, because clearly it's in the safe hands of a load of comedians, so what is there to worry about? (Notice that I deliberately kept well away from making any comparisons to the idiots being in charge of the asylum! :D Only joking.)

Jayne

"So, is anyone still concerned about the state of the Sphere?"

More so than ever.

Nemo

Lighten up, Nemo.

Alex is asking for donations, as he has to do from time to time, and people wouldn't be helping him to maintain this site if they didn't get any benefit from it.

Seek some heft, Jayne.

Nemo

I don't know what that means (in this context), sorry.

But as people are fond of saying here... Never mind.

Nemo's concern is as genuine as it appears. He is a serious person when it comes to art, as I know perfectly from our mutual interest in Robert Desnos.

So, is anyone still concerned about the state of the Sphere?

I never was, and still aren't, because clearly it's in the safe hands of a load of comedians, so what is there to worry about?

--Jayne, post #150

Comedians and fun are fine, Jayne, and I meant it earlier when I said that you and others were right that there is still good on the Sphere, good people, good writers.

But philosophical gravitas is, to say the least, a dimension of poetry too. In many times and places the ability to express it has been considered the truest sign of greatness or stature in the art.

I have often considered starting a thread here called “Why is formalist poetry so philosophically lightweight?” But then I realized nearly no one would be interested.

That might actually be an interesting thread. I wonder what might happen?

Best,

Bill

I'm sorry the thread went silly. I emailed John privately with my concerns. The only definition I could find online for "whock" was:

Used as an rude, nasty, and extremely offensive and racist term to describe a person of Caucasian descent. It's literal meaning is an ignorant, low-grade, White person. "you ain't nothing but a Whock to me."

Even though I think it might have been posted by a solitary troll, 'avin' a larf (as we say here) I assumed anyone else with any curiosity would find it too, and we'd be off in a direction of sickening flagwaving and tub-thumping and hurt and misery. I assumed that others were wittily attempting to avert such a situation and I blessed them for it.

As so often, I have misunderstood and I apologise.

I'll get me coat...

Andrew, I think you might be surprised. (Or maybe, then again, I would be surprised.) But it sounds like the sort of question that could inspire either defensiveness, open debate, or at least lament. And because it doesn't directly address the issues of poetry, workshop manners, and verbal barroom brawls, you might get some interesting feedback.

Because poetry is not philiosophy, just as it is not religion. BAD poetry is often one or both of these things.

Pope aimed at rhymed philosophy. He achieved splendid rhyme but fell down rather on the philosophy.

We are second-rate sensitive minds, as Tennyson remarked. But then we do not expect Don Bradman (a cricketer) to be a first-rate mind either.

I had thought whock was a past tense of whack in American usage.