[Yves S L]

Hello Julie,

I will respond later, but, really, I am not self-deprecating. I do not put the effort into literature that I interpret serious people, like Keats, put in. I would like to write more iambic pentamenter but it is difficult to get enough content, because I am not that inspired these days. Here I can sort of conceive an entire world that gives me enough content to write enough iambic pentameter that I can better understand how it works. Iambic pentameter is only something you can understand when you are forced to keep on finding lines and phrases again and again and again, and you are trying to avoid monotony of texture and sound and mood. There are levels of skill to everything. I compare myself against folk in anthologies, because they provide a consistent standard of achievement. For example, Auden's sestina, “Paysage Moralisé”, is astonishing to me for how he managed to conceive of it in the first place, and then pull it off. I imagine that the man just absorbed so much literature that he had the most gigantic bag of poetic tropes ever.

Maybe other people think they are writing gold everytime they post a poem, but I am really not that impressed by msyelf (though sometimes I think my technique is glorious before I hit the anthologies again). My Elvis sonnet, though, that was a proper poem, a sonnet that I would match with any sonnet anywhere, anytime. I happily beat my chest to that effort. I think this poem could do something interesting, but also I would understand if folk thought that it was not very good. I imagine reactions to this verse would vary quite a lot, even reactions to specific passages.

The poems are an experiment in the sense that I am trying to do something different each time, and I have a specific technical focuses with each effort. There was a period of time when I was trying to absorb the feeling of pop songs into poems, which folk generally did not take that seriously, but it taught me a different way to phrase lines, a different way to evoke emotion, gave me another tool in my toolbox. Do folk think poetry is so easy, that you just sit down and write something new, because you want to, without any preparatory work? For myself, I have to constantly be trying different approaches and angles of attack.

Hopefully I have expressed enough ego.

[Yves S L]

Hello Julie,

So for me, I found it more interesting to write a poem that was less a man howling at the moon all the time, but had retreats, and circumlocutions, and deflections, distancing and coming close, as well as moment of straight -out blurting your feelings and hurt, my interpretation of "saying it slant", a continuation of my last narrator, who was interpreted as being inauthentic and not coming out with it. Poetry as only one heart sincerely confessing to another is uhm ... yeah! I have never truly been into confessional poetry, though I accept its role in broadening the amount of things one can talk about, and, generally, expanding the box of poetic tools.

Obviously, you are speculating about autobiographical content, and that is cool, but also I have spent my whole life listening and observing people: different kinds of shame are everywhere in our porn-addicted culture, and people are out here getting publicly shamed all the time in a world of social media.

Addendum: All poems are persona poems. Like what are you doing talking in iambic pentameter anyways?

[W T Clark]

This is funny! The latest version has the most intact swing between riffs, although I wonder how the Dante scene is precedented by the previous witch-conversation (— a great blast: that "virgin sacrifice by the dozen"!) I see how it is precedented by the later fucking-riff, but not by the previous ones. Although I now wonder at the poor wretch's desire to fuck the ghost in juxtaposition with his squeamishness over the v. sacrifices. Is the incline into explicit sexual desire too great and sudden? It is nice practice. I remember your Elvis sonnet with admiration and nostalgia ...

Hope this helps.

[Yves S L]

Cameron,

Dollars to donuts, you of all people would see the play. I miss the Elvis sonnet sincerly. Your questions about the swing between the riffs is interesting. I will have to think about that and get back to you while I contemplate the balance.

I like your ghazal. I will try to find something to say.

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Yves.

I'm not wistful for more obviously autobiographical content, but for a more obvious sense in your thread responses that you take your own poems seriously. If you don't, why should anyone else?

It's none of my business whether any poem is informed by the poet's firsthand, lived experience. (I once told a poet that I liked her poem about a bike accident, and she mentioned that she had made the whole thing up, which didn't change in the slightest how I felt about that poem's ability to testify to the truth.)

But I do care very much if we are being asked to spend time critiquing a poem that is regarded by its author mainly as iambic pentameter practice — or some sort of casual experiment with this or that effect — rather than as a real, full-fledged poem.

I hope I'm mistaken in taking your frequent statements of humility about your work as evidence that it doesn't mean much to you.

I'm not a fan of confessional poetry, despite the fact that much of my own work having been interpreted as such. I mentioned confession here only because your narrator is confessing to a sexual obsession with (literal or figurative) ghosts, and later to having lied about the violent nature of that obsession.

After the poem's mention of the Internet, I did briefly wonder if the ghosts at the window might actually be a reference to online porn, which has obvious relevance to a lot of people. But I decided it couldn't be, because the narrator had also blamed his ghost problem on a very specific cause — namely, a witch he had cut off in traffic within the past week. Since porn obsessions tend to be of longer standing than that, I decided that a more literal interpretation was more likely, and that things in the poem should be taken at face value.

Frankly, I don't think the presence of the witch is doing the poem any favors in any version of the poem. The less of that red herring, the better for literalists like me.

I do like the title "Temptation," which seems to have disappeared after Version 1.10. I hope it's still there.

I either missed your Elvis sonnet, or I'm forgetful in the wee hours of the morning. Would you mind sending it to me via PM, Yves?

[Carl Copeland]

Hmm, I was going to ask for the Elvis sonnet too, but now I’m worried. When I clicked on “Quote,” I got:

The web page has been blocked by the Restricted Internet Content rule. Reason: the web resource belongs to the Adult content content category.

R-rated I can deal with, but an X-rated Elvis sonnet might be too much for me! ))

[Yves S L]

In all my dreams I see the face of Elvis,
when he was pretty as a girl. O Elvis,
why did you have to age? A song by Elvis
is always playing in my head, since Elvis
first came into my life—my blue-eyed Elvis.
I tried to sing just like my idol Elvis,
but soon was told I sound not much like Elvis.
I paid for surgeries to look like Elvis,
but soon was told I look too much like Elvis.

I take my wife to bed, dressed up as Elvis,
and pleasure her with hips that move like Elvis.
She soon cries out the lovely name of Elvis.
During all this she wears a mask of Elvis.
I weep when she takes off the mask of Elvis,
the act implicitly insulting Elvis.

[Yves S L]

Brief stop, will be back for proper replies.

Carl, I think it is because I used the p--n word maybe.

Julie, I don't think a fair assessment of one's own ability is humilty. I care enough about the poems to create them. Yeah!

[Carl Copeland]

Kinky, yes, but not X-rated. And not like any sonnet I’ve ever read. Cool, Yves, thanks!

[Yves S L]

Carl, I have really experimented with sonnets!