[Allen Tice]

Do idle hands do the divell's work?

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Thank you, Michael. Divellicate eh? Wasn't Walker's Rhyming Dictionary the one Byron used? Have you checked the provenance of your copy? Who knows... it may... and does Byron use divellicate anywhere

[Dan Breene]

I too dislike it. . .how about the use of odd and gratuitous sexual details to shock the audience out of its stupor?

[Allen Tice]

Dan, I positively defy you to (in this day adage, at this pint in time), to identify de odd (and sexual) tails that might still shock a torpid audience.

[Dan Breene]

I should have said "try to shock the audience out of its stupor."

[Allen Tice]

An item that I rather liked was the one on size reversal :

The despair
of loving may lead to long plane rides with
little leg room, may lead to a penis full
of fish, a burning chicken, a room filled
with a single, pink rose. Funny, how
we think of it as a giant rose,
not a tiny room.

Apart from the prosy wording that leads to 'leg room', I like the salmon and the final size reversal that resumes with a different use of the word 'room'. That rose v. room part is to me the best, and here I depart from the compiler's scorn.

What stretches my galluses is the 'burning chicken'. Unless it's a code blue cornball sexual allusion, it's a private call to an event of no enormous relevance that's known to one or at most a few readers. BORING.

You choose : a flaming catamite or a bad meal while attention was being paid elsewhere to maybe a rose? Either way, it fails to gruntle.

[Julie Steiner]

Following up on Maryann's. Or leading up on it. Whatever.
I'm adding a title, and annotations. Feel free to join the party.


"Dear Half-Hour of My Life That I'll Never Get Back Again"

I am wormwood. I am gall.
I am supposed to use them all,
these "moves", clichés, etc.
But why. For what. A bet or a


Annotations:
Title: #3 (Abstract epistolary: using "Dear [abstraction or common object]" in title or first line), #18 (The very long title)
L1: (I am X, I am Y--from Stephen Burt's essay)
L2: #14 (Explicit references to poems, especially the poem in question)
L3: #28 (scare quotes), #5 (use of "etc.")
L4: #7 (ending a question with a period)

[T.S. Kerrigan]

I'm not sure "guilt" is supposed to attach for the use of any of these "moves." e.g., ending a poem with a question. I find nothing wrong in Yeats conclusion of "Leda and the Swan."

[Roger Slater]

WRITING MOVES

I fake to the left with an adjective,
then dribble up the field,
then pass off to Mike Metaphor
whose meaning is concealed,

then criss-cross near the goal posts
with Chiasmus -- then I score a
goal with Catachresis
as I'm cheered by Anaphora.