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Unread 04-07-2024, 08:27 AM
Carl Copeland Carl Copeland is offline
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Very interesting, Tony. I did find the density a bit off-putting, as Jan suggests, but perhaps it’s expressive of the microcircuitry. A few random thoughts:

Deus ex machina

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glenn Wright View Post
I’m trying to figure out a way around “synth.” Am I the only one bothered by this?
Before I decide whether it bothers me, what does it mean? Synthesizer music? I’ve been watching “Picard,” but that sense, while tempting, doesn’t seem operative here.

An intelligent machine constructed from death does sound scary, but death is of course the state of having lived. Poets can make such shifts, but I think I’d be happier with something along the lines of “Who built this life from nothingness.”

I love the word “doorjambs,” but I don’t know how to scan it here. A trochaic inversion in that spot is awkward and makes an off-beat rhyme with “lambs.” A spondee also sounds off to me. You might try “jambs” all by itself and an extra syllable elsewhere in the line.

I’m also not sure what you’re getting at with the “no one unscrewed” lines—another way of saying that the doors are no doors? It is interesting how you shift from a negative no one (there was no unscrewing) to a positive no one that did release and breed beasts. (I wonder about shifting the responsibility from ourselves to “Nothing,” but that’s a moral and philosophical debate I’m unprepared for.)

I’m not sure how the Yeats allusion operates here. You say there will be no rough beast with blank gaze, while I would have expected that to be the beast emerging from the labyrinth (Minotaur?).
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