[Skip Dewahl]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

Cross-posted with Orwn.

Marion, thank you for your encouragement. I can always count on you to recognize when a bad poem is good. Why did that fun thread have to end?

Michael. I'm Janice. You usually say such smart things, and I usually understand immediately how smart they are, so I am perplexed why I don't get the wisdom of what you are saying now. Besides which I am not very good at math and I am wondering which Moderator Designate is going to keep track of eligibility and infractions. But don't let me discourage you, on second thought, do let me discourage you.

Skip. Good thinking and I will keep Dream at Daybreak in mind as an alternative title (or possibly Daybreak Dream, or Dreamday Break.

Actually I was thinking about calling it Flarf Barf.

Come on, let's work on it:


Workshop poets spurn the bums' mattresses
Outside, passenger planes again disgorge
the trapped of bad mood, hog-sounds,
read-wroth:

God, what an airy translator
with her empty doggerel stunt,
comes over like eye-dreck refuse
written in surly-skewed letters,
that the fans feel her anguish in kind.

let's drown the old bore,
or gang-haul through window:
grant light from darkness

[Janice D. Soderling]

My bad, for misleading you, Skip. But Terry has put up a serious request for a serious discussion and his thread is being high-jacked.

Mea culpa. My apologies for being frivolous and leading members astray.

[Skip Dewahl]

No, no, you are one of the nicest multifaceted ladies on this board. I was just bored with nothing to contribute, and when I give in to that feeling, I get silly and reckless.
Why everyone hasn't finally banded together to protest my inadequacies, is either because I stay away long enough not to bother with, or, like you, the members are just too nice for such drastic remedial action.

[Julie Steiner]

A forum for some fresh ideas and perspectives when the poem is in trouble and the poet realizes it but can't figure out what to do.

I don't think I've ever posted anything BUT this type of poem, on either TDE or Metrical. For the most part, I've been pretty happy with the intensive care received there.

[Janet Kenny]

How about a forum for just-born top-of-the-head poems?

There's a sticky saying "no poems in GT". OK How about a forum where spontaneous poetry can develop. Sometimes conversations in poetry. New, fresh poems similar to sketches by a painter? No limit on numbers of posts etc. A genuine scribbling pad?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Actually the sticky title is "About Poems on GT".

But after rereading the sticky, maybe I should add that the spur-of-the-moment text I posted above was intended to jocularly illustrate the difficulties of fixing a poem in any way except the way we do daily in the regular forums. Hopefully only a died-in-the-wool Flarfer or a very kind critter would confuse it with a real poem.

I am starting to feel like a nay-sayer but (sorry, Janet) this idea presents the same problems for me as the "Sucking Poem" forum. It siphons away some of the workshop strength to open a "Kiddies Pool" poem forum beside the "Today's Inspirational Thought" poem forum. In other words it dilutes participation in the creative forums already existing and opens for ego-enhancing fluff and flarf.

It seems to me that spontaneous poetry, sketches and poem development belong to a pre-workshop stage or perhaps in a blog if one wishes to document the rise and flow of their creative powers.

Why open a Repair Shop for things that aren't broken?

Mine is only one opinion though, and I may be an inane voice crying shriily in the poetic wilderness.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Janet Kenny

How about a forum for just-born top-of-the-head poems?

I've used other poetry boards for this, and over the years I've seen a number of people do the same. I can also see the sense of the "no kiddie pool" stance. Each of us should take his or her own revising ability as far as it will go, since every posted poem is a request for expenditure of time.

Terry's initial request was for a way to deal with work that we know is troubled. To me, the most interesting thing about the responses on the thread is that some of us don't distinguish between old, blocked, frustrating pieces and everything else. I'd like to ask more questions of those folks. Do you get the answers you feel you need if you simple post those pieces without additional explanation?

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

To me, the most interesting thing about the responses on the thread is that some of us don't distinguish between old, blocked, frustrating pieces and everything else.

I think I am one of those people, but it isn't that I don't distinguish between levels of quality, messiness, completeness, or whatever, but that I see the workshop as a place for seeking help for the whole range of problems.

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

I'd like to ask more questions of those folks. Do you get the answers you feel you need if you simple post those pieces without additional explanation?

Yep. See my current TDE thread. It was a frustrating, overworked mess that I had gone over so often through the years that I couldn't even remember why I had made most of the choices I'd made. I certainly didn't have much of an idea about what was good or bad about it. So I made the best draft of it I could and put it up. Three days, forty posts, five pages, and seven revisions later, I have a much better grip on it. For me, it was an incredibly productive exchange. It doesn't always go quite as well as that, but it does always prove worthwhile and helpful, for me.

David R.