Stinky Flowers

Lest we drive Tim to drink
with the crap that we're posting,
uncritical crits
and the shit that they're toasting,
o brothers, o poets,
please hear my request:
pause, take a breath, think,
give your fingers a rest.

But never back down
From your thoughts and opinions--
We are, after all,
Kindred poets, not minions.

When the crits aren't so good, since the critters are bad,
And their brains have been washed with more beer, I'll be glad
To enjoy without whining a fine verse or two
Which I wouldn't have written as well were I you.

Deleted due to its poor taste.

[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited June 29, 2008).]

* reworked and moving to TDE soon *

[This message has been edited by Mike Todd (edited June 28, 2008).]

Hello, I've never been here before, but Slipp alerted me to this discussion. All very good stuff! Shaun, I think your quatrain is marvelous. Pinions. Minions. In tribute to all of you I shall post my two line response to one of Shaun's dreary Petrarchan sonnets.

Working Girl

With bandoleros crisscrossing her tits,
"Puerco," she snarled, and blew her pimp to bits.

yr lariat, Tim

Tim,

I would love to have alerted you but I didn't. Was it some other "Mike" (no other "Slipp" I presume)? I'm posting this only so as not to take what isn't mine.

Very best as always,
Slipp

I'm not sure what the assignment is here, Martin. Is this where we post throwaway verses aimed at fellow workshop members who are pissing us off? I find that writing bitchy sonnets is a great way of blowing off steam, and over the years I've accumulated quite a few. Here are some of the better ones. They're not necessarily fair to their targets, but they seemed so to me at the time.


How to Be an Internet Martyr

Choose an issue: trivial, preferably.
Pontificate about it at great length,
insinuating all who disagree
are cowardly, and you're a tower of strength.

Be rude to someone who deserves respect.
If anyone complains, assume they're irked
because you disagreed and were direct.
Trust me, I've seen this done, it's always worked.

Interpret all debate as cruelly personal,
all motivation for dissent as hate.
Use every clumsy arrow in your arsenal
to twist, exaggerate, manipulate.

Should anyone's impatience bruise your pride,
pretend you're Jesus being crucified.


At the Poetry Workshop

"Your sonnet breaks the rules!" she gasped, appalled,
wringing her hankie in a fit of pique.
"Trochees are fine at first, you understand,
but this--heavens! Out of control! Such bald
disregard--you've lost your head. What cheek!
And those horrible anapests! Dear, let me give you a hand!"

She tore my draft to pieces, grabbed a pen,
and helped me write another, smoother piece
exhibiting such regularity
I'd never need my FiberCon again.
Cliches? Okay! The metrical police
prefer predictability, you see.

She fiercely followed every rule she could,
except the ones that make a poem good.


Fenster the Formalist

"Dear Rose," he opened condescendingly,
"Your so-called poem fails to float my boat.
It doesn't showcase virtuosity
with rhyme and meter. Poetry should tote
that bale and lift that barge! You've heard the quote
from E. A. Robinson, who never stooped
to mere vers libre for, he said, he wrote
badly enough already. Don't be duped
into complacency by Modern hacks
who, mostly women, gays and PhDs,
produce a plethora of "verse" that lacks
the artistry that's present in a sneeze.
In short," he said dismissively, "dear Rose,
it isn't metrical, therefore it's prose."


Professor Poopshoot's First Post to the Gazebo

Undoubtedly, the so-called "critics" here
will not appreciate my subtle humor,
for irony's a dying art, I fear,
and foreign to the average baby boomer.

I'm certain, too, illiterates will carp
because my verse is layered and allusive,
and sadly, most of you are not too sharp,
which renders all your verdicts inconclusive.

Nevertheless, noblesse oblige demands
I educate you--an unpleasant duty--
and post some poems no one understands.
How could you, when you have no sense of beauty?

Now get to work, dear scribblers, and critique
my piece. Your five-page essay's due next week.


The Sonnet as a Vehicle for Family Values

A sonnet is a venerable thing,
and should be used for venerable themes,
like thoughts you think when little birdies sing;
moderate thoughts, of course, no strange extremes.
Poets are those who always got straight A's:
no nasty past, no freaky fires fanned.
Sex isn't nice. Bring back the good old days
when Swinburne's kinky poetry was banned.
Don't mention pederasty, or philandering,
or cunnilingus, or fellatio.
To speak of such realities is "pandering";
true poets have no fire down below.
Beauty is truth, but only to a point,
and only if you've never smoked a joint.


Here's one I wrote when I got locked out of the Sphere (2002? 2003?) due to a technical glitch and assumed I'd been banned.

Banned from the Sphere

The Spherean sages are prudent and wise,
their advice is a pleasure to hear--
not only on poetry's dotting of i's,
but on weightier issues, like seeming sincere
and refraining from fawning and flattering lies
and abstaining from flaming when boozy with beer
and disdaining ad hominem gutting of guys
(you can rag on their writing, though, that much is clear)
and restraining the yearning to don a disguise
and containing your verses to fifty per year--
though I'm somewhat uncertain to whom this applies,
for I find that I'm banned from the Sphere.

I'm banned from the Sphere: inspected, rejected,
persona non grata, dismissed, disconnected,
they've shooed me away, I've been shunned and neglected,
like one who's infected and pus-y;

tattooed with an A, I'm outré, disrespected,
ignobly ignored by Erato's elected;
though other folks' errors don't get them ejected,
with me they decide to be fussy.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 04, 2008).]

Ha!

What a treat!

Thanks for posting these, Rose!

exhibiting such regularity
I'd never need my FiberCon again.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

Rose,

I so enjoyed these. Such honesty is too rare! What would the Sphere do without your entertainment?!

Anne

Rose, These are so good!!! My favorite "Family Values" !

Thanks. I'd like to read some of you guys's. I bet Michael Cantor has some good ones...if he bothered saving them.

This kind of thing can be fun in a forum like this one. It kinda bothers me when I see stuff like this in magazines, though. It's like, c'mon, must we publish everything we write?

Some of a certain Doctor's published work is at this level. Let's see if I can mimic him in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

The toadies in the universities,
enslaved by Modernism, must obey
the rules: Don't dot your i's, or cross your t's,
and don't, by God, have anything to say.
Pathetic academics (not like me,
the other kind), they worship Ezra Pound,

(1/2 cup)

waging a war against formality,
and driving Poetry into the ground.
True poets know that slant rhyme is a ploy
for cowards, timid formalists afraid
to rhyme outright -- those pussies, who say "Oy"

(3/4 cup)

when critics damn their verse, 'cause it's well made.

(finished cup)

Ack, I didn't make it. (It was a small cup.) Please finish this for me.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 04, 2008).]

My First Crit.

For six whole days it was incubating--
the poem for which the world's been waiting.
Nobody will guess it is my first--
come on, have at it, do your worst!

A hit! At last-- it’s been a day--
a little applause won’t go astray.
What’s this? My meter’s a little off?
Well, far be it from me to scoff,

but a thin-eared bitch of a moderator
has the nerve to say my meters grate her?
Hey! a jennet saying it isn’t rhymed--
it’s a homophone! Is the asshole blind?

And, look at this-- am I to please
some yob in the fucking Antipodes?
An anally retentive myopic gobshite
is actually suggesting I do a rewrite!

And this crit here! Well, they have a quota
of ignorant wankers in North Dakota.
And what about this “Kerb it, quick!
It's jealousy! From a useless prick!


Alright, alright, when I’ve retuned it,
I’ll be back
--The Poetic Wounded




[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited July 04, 2008).]

Ha!

These are utterly priceless.

Nice ones, Jim and Rose!

LOL, Jim.

Forgive me, Tim, but when you were reworking 'Short Shots' ad nauseam, I did write a parody.

SHORT SHITE

To Michael Cantor

Dude with a beard.
Thinks I'm weird.
We've never met,
But chat on the net.

Englishwoman in Southwest France

She texted me a limerick.
It didn't quite scan. Who gives a shit?

New York Call From Terese

We're lining up the features for the fall.
Sounds pretty good--go ahead with 'em all!

Lines About Nothing--In French

Ecoutez,
S'il vous plait.
Va te faire
en coule!

For Dick Wilbur

I've never met him,
Though I've read his stuff.
I'll ask Murphy--
Are four lines long enough?

Dream

Recurring dream.
I had that one again
Where I wake up
Shouting "Lobstermen!"

Some Dude I Knew in High School

We lost touch.
I hear he's doing better
with his wife Maureen
who trains their Irish setters.

So, anyway, before you comment on this piece, I should note that I ran this by a prominent Irish poet (well, more of a drunk with nowhere else to go but the pub--but that's basically the same thing), and he thought it was brilliant. (He offered to fight me soon afterwards, which may take a bit away from it.) I also wrote this in homage to the deeply self-referential style of universally acclaimed poet Tim Murphy, whom I know. I haven't gotten opinions from Rhina Espaillat, A. E. Stallings, Sam Gwynn, Dana Gioia, and the ghosts of Howard Nemerov and Anthony Hecht yet, but they invariably like my work.

Fenster the Formalist here (you all know that the epigrammatic voice is often exaggeratedly arrogant and that the narrator here is not neccessarily myself):

More Than Slant

Insouciant rhymes, each leaves the other pairless.
Are they "without a care" or merely careless?

Too Far

A product of Miss Moore’s judicious brain—
“Not in Latin, not in shorthand, but in plain
American which cats and dogs can read”—
Her compliment to Williams. Do we need
The lesson she implied? We’ve learned it quite.
Poetry’s now what cats and dogs and can write.

Their Criterion

About my verse they say, “Nobody talks like that”.
Of ballet do they say, “Nobody walks like that”?

Witless

You say I’m no Ben Jonson and it’s true:
No more, no less, Ben Jonson than are you.

and one that self-deflates:

The Muse Distributes

The epigram will best display his wit.
Its couplet length can fully compass it.




[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited July 04, 2008).]

Ha! You evil, evil man. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Editing: That was to Quincy. Not that the rest of you aren't evil.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 04, 2008).]

Fun thread--just what we need!

Here's one I wrote about a different forum, years ago:


There’s a feisty detached intellectual
And a lady who sleeps on the beach
A Vietnam vet and a French soubrette
And delusives who drool while they preach

A rhymer from sweet Carolina
A writer of villanelles
A humor exponent and sometime proponent
Of Scarlet Pimpernel

Some post for renown or for money
Some post from volcanoes for free
Some say they must honor the dithyramb
Others their coterie

They know what it means when a klbut is keyed
Or a threnody laid to a triptych,
A line that went wrong or an African song
In a rhyme scheme that lacks an encryptic

And nothing works quite like a cabriolet
In the face of soliloquies
You can fly to Bombay or Calloo-Callay
Where no one has quite that disease

And we’ll shout out our songs from the parapet
We’ll sing a cappella in rondeau
For the only pretense is inconsequence
And the only expense braggadocio.

Just a quickie while at work...

You crit my poems, call 'em shit
And, disinclined to pick a nit,
You deem my querulous defense
As naught but righteous arrogance;
It's fine, though -- honest! I don't mind:
I know your aim is not unkind,
It's just the nature of the 'Sphere,
And, after all, that's why I'm here!

Encounters in a Poetry Workshop

1) The Toady

Will only critique poems by ‘Staff’
“Lick a stamp and this is great”
Unaware he’s made a gaff
The ‘poem’ is a note from staff to state
“Guidelines that you must pay heed to”.
(Toadies think they never need to.)

2) The Entertainer

Likes attention to his post
Truth is never of the essence.
“It made me laugh” is what he most
likes to hear of his excrescence
When criticised his voice is terse
“It’s really hard to write light verse”

3) The Formalist

"Your rhyme is poor , you’re missing a stress
it’s only prose"— says the formalist
No work of merit will he bless
or praise at all if an iamb’s missed.
He’d sell his soul to the devil in Hell
to write a decent villanelle.


4) The Free Spirit

Has half a thought and lets
It run and run and run
And run and run
Proving to his satisfaction that poetry consists
of line
breaks.

5) The Space Cadet

A sensitive soul obsessed with the space
he employs on the page while quietly lamenting
he’s not a real poet but dreams of the place
he might achieve with better indenting.
Margins and capitals are his fortes
that and a liberal use of clichés


6) The Wise-ass

Is conscientious in carefully noting
all your grammar and typo mistakes.
He fixes your spelling, corrects your misquoting
and give his opinion on making line breaks.
He advises your effort is not worth the cost;
“It was handled better by Auden and Frost”.

7) The Show-off

Your poem invariably “Starts too early”
He’s a liberal sprinkler of “imo’s”
Tell him you think you’ve been critted unfairly
and he’s liable to lecture that you’ve “Written prose”.
Then just as you think that his discourse is run
he quotes his own poem to show how its done.

8) The Incredible Sulk

He’s really a 'gentleman', modest and meek
but looses his cool when he’s cut to the quick
by a less than fulsomely-praising critique.
from “Morons, stupid ill-read and thick”.
When he isn’t resigning he gets himself banned
but always returns with his cap in his hand.

Some more oldies:

There once was a lass named Fiona
in a former life called Desdemona;
her old lord and master
had threatened disaster,
but then she rebuilt her persona.

There once was a lass named Alicia
who sang of the Greek Dionysia—
of Samothrace Nike,
Eros and Psyche,
and times she got lost in Tunisia.

There once was a poet named Fi
who sang like the three Lorelei;
sailors paid her an ox
or they wrecked on the rocks,
except for her favorite, Bry.

There once was a poet named Boots
who harvested giant breadfruits;
then she etched on the pits
all her bits and her crits,
and fed all the rest to Paiutes.

There once was a fellow named Bob
whose interests were rather macabre;
his favorite scene
was to play guillotine,
and trim inch by inch from a snob.

Lots more too. I have one about Jim Hayes, if he wouldn't mind...and having met him, I know how untrue it is!

I'm glad you posted those, Jim - I did this spin-off in the voice of one of your characters.

The Lament of the Incredible Sulk

(After Swinburne's "A Leave-Taking")


The Incredible Sulk

He’s really a nice chap, modest and meek
but loses his cool when he’s cut to the quick
by a less than fulsomely-praising critique,
from morons, stupid ill-read and thick.
When he isn’t resigning he gets himself banned
and always returns with his cap in his hand.


Jim Hayes – “Encounters in a Poetry Workshop”


Let us depart, my poem; they do not hear.
Let us depart, logoff, and quit this 'Sphere;
across the screen I'll slide your shameful file,
and try to forget you were written, for at least a year,
or for at least a fairly long while.
Though we sang a song, precise, and sweet to our ear,
they would not hear.

Let us withdraw, sign off; they do not know.
Let us post elsewhere; perhaps give the Gaz a go;
full of free versers, I know; but what help is here?
Here is no help, only friction, stress and woe,
and feet being stamped till they ring and echo in our ear.
And should Yeats himself logon to say "it is so",
they would not know.

Let us unboot, and retire; they do not care.
Though we wrote a song of gold being beaten into air,
or where coral or amber studs love's pleasures prove,
or a song of how to love either the brown or fair;
though we write like one who made the angels move
down from the heavens to listen, risking despair,
they would not care.

And this one was inspired by a PM to a third party, written by someone we all know well, and shared with me. The subject in the poem is NOT a well-known member.


PM


Fuck you, you petty ugly little fuck!
How dare you curl that worm-thin lip at me!
If only you could see the way you suck
the pleasure out of life, you creepy flea!
But I have doubts that you could ever be
aware enough to know the rotten smell,
which makes your nostrils twitch in savage glee
of righteousness, boils from your private hell.
An “ignoranus” is a word coined well-
describing all your charms, you stupid arse!
You shouldn’t risk a fart, you might expel
your sulphur-smelling mind in the gas you pass.
I’ve met some nasty twats in cyber space,
but you’re the first with zero fucking grace.

I love them all, but especially yours, Mark.

Critique

Incinerate this poem
stir and pulverize the ashes
put them in a sealed hyper-oven
inside a high tech vacuum chamber
and turn it all to plasma gas until the gas
gives off a heat of burning adverbs so intense
it melts the oven, and the oven too will vaporize.
Entomb what’s left within a stainless steel capsule
sealed in lead encased in concrete, sink it in the deepest
ocean trench, or load it on a rocket aimed at space and fired at
escape velocity precisely calculated to deposit it on one of Saturn’s
moons.

Also,
if anybody finds a line worth saving or picks a word or two and says
here is your poem rebuild from this and just ignore what all those
assholes say I like your images and this one needs some work
but never give it up; then they and all their family shall be
rounded up, the seed shall never propagate, and sent
to some unknown place beyond the reach of writing
instruments or held in solitary in the most secure
and Super-Maximum of Federal escape-proof
penitentiaries where the walls are eight
to ten feet thick and the jailers all
unlettered mutes.


[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited July 04, 2008).]

Brilliant, Michael!

"Never Mind”

To smooth a rift, no words seem more felicitous
Than these, whose drift sounds golden and solicitous
Yet covers everything from Cheers, my friend!
And please don’t trouble more, to why pretend
It’s worth the time or effort or pretense
To sift your fill for any trace of sense??

A range which tells the otherwise inclined,
We have a lode of issues . . . never mined.

Frank


[This message has been edited by FOsen (edited July 04, 2008).]

LOL! These are great. Michael, yours should have its own thread so we can link directly to it as needed from TDE.

"But Why Then Publish?"

But seriously folks—
How do you tell a 'writer'
Who thinks your crits are jokes
His shit could not be shiter?

If nits won't turn his head
Faint praise may find a way.
Let him be publishéd
And damned is what I say.

[This message has been edited by Mike Todd (edited July 05, 2008).]

Forget the Deep End. This is where it's at, the action I mean. Many of these are a scream. Closest to my bones, Quincy's hilarious Short Shots. I am amazed at how this thread has taken off and stolen all the thunder and with from the Sphere. Too much brilliance to acknowledge, to bow to, to make genuflections to. But I am very glad Rose and Michael are jerking off here and not patrolling the streets of Southie with AK-47's. I wrote a poem about the spring migrations of songbirds to our former orchard. Only recently did Maryann Corbett tell me it is in fact a poem about the Eratosphere:

Envy

The cock oriole perches
atop a catkinned limb,
whistling as he searches
for hens to mate with him.

Deep in the woods a veery
puffs up his creamy breast
to serenade his dearie,
outsinging all the rest.

Contestants in our orchard,
ambitious warblers throng,
tiny poets tortured
by one another’s song.

Slipp, I confused you with Martin Rocek. Sorry.

Do you remember this one, Timmy, from a few years back?

You posted the following poem on TDE, but I felt there was another side to issue.


Doggerel

A bitch is born to suffer—
get stuffed, get big, and whelp;
eat shit, and raise a litter
without the top dog’s help.

She loathes her concrete kennel,
the scrum between her paws,
the shrieks, the stench—infernal!—
two hundred scrabbling claws.

And him? A weekend hunting
grouse with the yapping pack,
while she collapses panting
from his progeny’s attack.

They’ll bite the teats right off her!
Feeding time again?
Just let her find a feather
stuck to his muzzle. Men!

Emperors


Some birds are built for pleasure,
while some are made to wait;
but she gets all the leisure
when Emperors come to mate.

She drops her bundle quickly
passing it to her man,
who stands there looking sickly
because he knows she can.

And then she’s off to frolic
and eat her fill at sea,
while starved and melancholic
he wishes he were she.

He shuffles ‘round in darkness,
near-frozen while she’s swimmin’,
and in his wintry starkness
you can hear him mumblin’ - “women!”

To continue in the same vein as Tim and Mark...

Husbandry

Some are not meant for mating:
No progeny deserves
Its parents compensating
For angst and fraying nerves

By eying other cattle
Or straying from the flock
To escalate the battle
In sexing other stock.

No, husbandry's a science
That has its kinks and flaws--
A masculine defiance
Can compromise its cause.

So why then do they do it?
Why wreck a happy house?
Just 'cause you want to screw it
You needn't call it "spouse."



[This message has been edited by E. Shaun Russell (edited July 05, 2008).]

Marky, that was Alan's poem, and I remember it and your riposte very well.

Neophyte getting into the spirit here. This sonnet is best declaimed by an in-heat Rottweiler afflicted with a very slight bark-impediment, thus rendering the rising intonations of his wuff a little comical.

DOGGEREL ~ A SONNET

~ In Classical Dogalese ~

Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Wuff-wow bow-wuff wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-wuff
Bow-wow wuff-wow wuff-wuff bow-wow wuff-bow
Wuff-wow bow-wuff wow-wow bow-wuff bow-wuff
Bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff bow-wow wuff-wiff
Wuff-wiff bow-bow wuff-bow bow-wuff wuff-grrrr
Grrr-wow bow-wuff wuff-grrr bow-wuff bow-wiff
Bow-grrr wiff-wow wuff-wow bow-wuff wow-grrrr
Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Wuff-wooo bow-woooo wuff-bow bow-bow wuff-wooo
Wooo-grrr bow-wow wuff-wiff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Bow-wooo booow-wuff wuff-waff bow-wiff bow-wooo
Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-waaaf
How-bow bow-how wuff-when bow-iff iff-laaaf.

The Shakespearean rhyme scheme is well handled, John, but the meter is doggedly metronomic (a few substitutions, or at least a caesura or two, would have helped), there's no real turn, and I can't follow your syntax in L14; so that the poem strays badly, and - despite some good use of repetitions - ends up sounding like so much dogma.

Michael,

Excellent advice. I was hoping to have concealed the dogma, but you very astutely exposed it. I'll work on the meter more, maybe muzzle my enthusiasm, and of course try to infuse more grit into it.

Cheers,

John

This is for Quincy and definitive:

Bard with Beard

Thoughts re beard:
Short beard fine
Beard like mine
Long beard weird
Short beard right
Short beard tough
Weird beard rough
Weird beard shite

How Much Time Does It Take To Write a Poem Anyway?

His poems need a week of strain
Before they're lovely verse.
In twenty seconds, with less pain,
Most others don't do worse.

Frank,

Your poem reminds me of a funny article I read:

Poetry By the Numbers http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=181684

***Not a bad idea - it's like 'Paint by Numbers', carrying the idea of Cantor's recent poem about poetry software, sort of.