[diprinzio]

Hilarious, Maz.

I'm posting this one again= I'm trying to be the first person to write a poem hated by EVERYONE in the world.

I wrote this one a while back= pre-emptive excuse for suckiness

I wrote this one a while back= ...and since I have no new ideas and cannot refrain from posting, because it's my entire life, I give you this... therapy referrals welcome.

I wrote this one a while back= I was 6. Wasn't I precocious?

I wrote this one a while back= Yesterday I felt really immature.

I wrote this piece [of shit] a while back: break out the longbows and nock your arrows, mates, I'm wearing my favorite bullseye tee-shirt!

I wrote this one a while back= I'm ahead of my time. Does the world appreciate my genius now?

[Alexander Grace]

I think this could be drastically cut = I don't really like poetry and I try to read as little of it as possible, but I write it because otherwise no one listens to me at all

[winter]

from the critic

I haven’t read the other comments = I have read the other comments, but haven’t anything to say other than what they have already said.

from the writer

Sorry this didn’t work for you = It works damn fine, but you just don’t get it, do you?

[Jim Hayes]

Perhaps an appropriate occasion to re-introduce my experience in the movement.

Encounters in a Poetry Workshop

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.)

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
“Its really hard to write light verse”

The Formalist

The rhyme is poor , you’re missing a stress
it’s only prose— says the formalist
No work of merit will he bless
or credit if an iambs missed
He’ll sell his soul to the devil in Hell
to write a decent villanelle.


The Free Spirit

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

The Space Cadet

A sensitive soul obsessed with space
laid out on the page while quietly lamenting
he’s not a poet but dreams of the place
he could achieve with better indenting,
Sensitive insights are his forte,
that and being a dab-hand at cliché

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’s read your lines and smugly advised
they are anticipated and anthologised

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 on lineated prose.
Then just as you think that his discourse is run
he quotes his own poem to show how its done.

The Incredible Sulk

He’s really a nice chap, 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
and always returns with his cap in his hand.

Jim Hayes

[Mark Allinson]

Jim!

That is fabulous!

The Incredible Sulk! - My God I am exposed!!!

Thank you Jim, I am keeping this one.

Priceless.

------------------
Mark Allinson

[Michael Cantor]

Jim - marvelous! You encouraged me to think of two other types - The Hitchhiker and The Sprinkler

I really like this, and - excuse the intrusion - but I thought you might get a kick out of mine on the same theme, written some time back = What a great opportunity to (a) post that villanelle I finished last night, and (b) hint that I was there first!

= I can't write too good, so I resort to liberal use of symbols and shorthand to underline my points (LOL).

Michael Cantor (who knows it's really hard to write light verse)



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited July 07, 2005).]

[winter]

Hell at the Poetry Workshop

Tonight, no demons stay to stoke
the fires, but lousy poets burn
a lifetime’s jotting at a stake

crafted from worthy and well-worn
tomes of junk. On a topmost skewer,
among fag ends and belching cairns,

Dante smokes, condemned to bear
performances from every workshop
hell has spawned, the worst manure,

the crap - rhythm kings from rap
alley, rookies who’d hook a headline
to a haiku, spewers-up

of bland, spoon-fed Shakespearian
sonnets, bumblers daring to dabble
with terza rima who can’t rhyme

properly, know-alls who babble
and bore, the Lower-Case-Obsessed,
lunging manuscripts from the rubble

of their lives, some sad to cast
those sentimental timepieces
away, others agog at the blast

their verses failed to ignite. Their faces
drift upwards, bereft of mercy,
longing only to change places -

by some feat of necromancy
swap the rhymes they used and abused
on the ring-roads trod by Dante’s

shoes, with his – and so confused
they’d choose a painful death by flames
before the feeding of them. Roused

by the rabble that bedevil his name,
by a flame that licks up his boots
and sucks at the petroleum,

Dante rolls the last cigarettes
in hell and hurls them at the crowd
who’ve already used their last lights,

and eyes the scramble on the ground.

[diprinzio]

I'll come back to this when I have more time= Uh, uh. Ain't gonna happen. This counts as a crit.

I'll come back to this when I have more time= I have to break a large bone sometime in my life. I'll read it in Intensive Care.

I'll come back to this when I have more time= Consider it a partial payment for the crit you gave me. When, by reading the other critter's remarks I figure out what the fuck you're doing with this one, I'll second some really safe objection. Won't even click the revision, so don't bother on my account.

ROFLMAO= I smirked.
LOL= I actually considered laughing.
FYI= Dumbass.
BTW=Dumbass.

Thanks for starting this, David, it's given me some laughter. Jim, Michael, funny, though it's a little sloppy, Jim (probably the point).


[This message has been edited by diprinzio (edited July 08, 2005).]

[Rose Kelleher]

Jim,

Let me quote my own poem to show how it's done Here's my take on The Formalist (written after a scathing critique of one of my rare attempts at free verse):

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."


p.s. "Thank you for your comments" = "I'm going to pen a resentful sonnet about you later"


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited July 08, 2005).]

[Tom Jardine]

This is the worst jibberish about nothing I have read in ten years. = This is the worst jibberish about nothing I have read in ten years.