[Lightning Bug]

LOL, Mary. I think we have a winner!

:O.)

Bugsy

[Jan D. Hodge]

Mary wrote: "Your critique fills a much-needed gap in the literature."

Hmmmm . . . Is this a clever way to indicate that your imagined respondent has trouble with logic? Is there such a thing as a "much-needed gap"? Or might he/she have meant: "Your much-needed critique fills a hitherto obvious but somehow previously overlooked gap in the literature"?

[Michael Cantor]

Many thanks for your feedback on this poem. You make several good points. I will look at those parts of the poem that you have identified as areas for improvement.

[Quincy Lehr]

Dougsie et al.,

I think that you my have misconstrued the particular modalities of praxis in my last post. Rather than negiotating the semiotics in a Saussurean context, my piece instead interrogates the very processes of arbitrariness itself, based on tropes of bewilderment and stupefication.

Does that clear the air?

Bill Pemberton III, Attorney-at-Law

[Michael Cantor]

Tugsy - Neither Mary nor the lamb are intended to have a metaphorical connotation.

Slugsy - I am not dogmatically opposed to varying the repetends, but in this case I feel it works better if they don't change.

Mugsy - I think this is a question of regional usage. "Pulling the train" has a meaning in the States which might not exist in Australia, but I considered this, and tried to cast the expression within context in S6 so as to make the poem clear. I think I'll wait to see how other critters respond on that one.

Hugsy - Yes, I agree - it probably would not have taken place within a home schooling environment, but that was not the point of the poem.

Rugsy - of course I respect women - my mother was a woman.

Pugsy - well, sometimes PETA goes overboard. It was only a poem. Can you scan the stuff and e-mail it to me? I'll forward it to my attorneys.

Bogsy - when I say I "harvest my life" for my poetry, I has speaking in the broadest possible sense. This one was pure fiction. Sorry, but Mistress Strict and Madame Stern do not exist, there is no Great Hall of Discipline, or Cellar of Pain and Humiliation, and consequently there are no directions to be provided. But thank you for the photograph. The saddle is very becoming.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited July 04, 2006).]

[Janet Kenny]

How nice to have a response that's longer than my poem.
I realise that there needs to be more biographical background for the frogs since they do jump out of that line.

Since you feel the need to know more about why the cat was there I will endeavour to answer that problem, within metrical restrictions of course.

I'm sorry if you feel that my poem is maudlin. The death of a fish is hard to deal with.
Thank you for quoting your own wonderful poem beneath my own.

I will post a revision once I have absorbed your many helpful comments.

[Jason Kerr]

Dougsie,

Thank you for chiming in. I'll be giving careful consideration to your comments re the "fluff" and "excess baggage" in the poem.

Janet,

Thank you, and yes that was a little unclear. I think the new stanza will make S34 a little less obscure.

Thanks,
Jason

[Carol Taylor]

Thanks, Janet. Dougsie, I'm glad you like my poem and I appreciate your suggestions, though I wrote this in 1955 and am rather reluctant to change it, especially since I don't care for modern poetry anyway and think the only good poet is a dead poet.

To any others who may have commented, I pasted the thread into Word and had my wife delete your annoying comments so I wouldn't have to read them. But thanks anyway.

[Larry Powers]

Your words are "as the buzzing of flies in my ear", as Sinuhe often said, in "The Egyptian" by Mika Waltari.

--Larry

[wendy v]

Dear everybody, thank you for helping my poem. I am so glad I finly found a sight where the people are intellengent and will tell me the truth about my poem and help me learn and that is why I am hear even if it really is to bad nobody realy understood that it was a poem about my spiritual plane because I have had a lot of it and everyone seams to care only
about the typoes and the comas and the meater
which is hard to understand any way and I no in my heart it is not my best work and doesnt have enough images like you said but I am so glad you told me because I shouldnt have posted it becuse it already got publsished in an impotent magazine and thankyou for all you're help because next week I will post a much beter one. it has a butterfly in it. and many other images to.
with all my love
Suzie

PS Micheal Cantor thank you, but what does pffa stand four ?