Poetry Critical - TurboSwami - 2009-2011 - 3 of 4 (w/ Comments)
The Sirens
turboswami
Sirens sing up a fragile mask for danger,
1
and the dogs run out to jump and smell and know.
2
The dogs, like men, love the scent of a beautiful woman,
3
and will curl to protect a voice so delicate as hers.
4
Clothed in the glistening of the night sea, they call,
5
call from a place somehow beyond the rocks,
6
just beyond all a man could ever know.
7
Each man dies trying to protect her that he can never hold.
8
* Stop being dramatic. Your cheese is getting sweaty in the living room, you’d best eat it before it softens. Eat it all up!
* Don’t hunch over like that. So you have to fight gravity a bit harder than other kids your age, you mustn’t show it!
* Oh my God! You walk like you have a board up your ass. Hurry up!
8 Sep 09
Comments:
this is cool but i wish it were longer. maybe just one more stanza of what happens next.
*sirens sing diamonds so bright they blind men’s eyes from the frightening scene of surprize that echos the demise of men like them
- justagirlx3
Yea, all the guys died.
Seemed like the end.
Maybe if you think of my comment as a 3rd stanza.
- turboswami
ditch the footnote. we already have a cheese prince poet here
as for the poem, melodramatic and false.
- unknown
Not a constructive critique.
- turboswami
So Long, So Long, Slowly On...
turboswami
The fists of the little men were not curled so tight
1
when they were infants
2
when they cried openly just to be held.
3
And if I cry openly
4
will you hold me again?
5
If I fall to your lap,
6
collapse to your feet
7
will you hold me again?
8
For you knew I was a little man,
9
you knew what none of them knew
10
You knew I was really so small
11
that I would climb inside you to sleep.
12
And if I die openly,
13
would you cry for me again?
14
If I fall to your lap,
15
collapse to your feet
16
will you know me again?
17
Remember that song I sang you,
18
about how far loneliness can reach
19
and curl into a shell.
20
and blind your memory
21
so you dont know which home
22
you’re in at night.
23
And if I sing openly,
24
would you feel with me again?
25
If I fall to your lap,
26
collapse to your feet
27
will you hear me again?
28
There’s a careless love
29
and there’s a careful love
30
and their gaping difference
31
can be hidden in a dress like yours
32
for only
33
so long
34
8 Sep 09
Comments:
and there is also living in the closet.
- unknown
There’s a careless love 29
and there’s a careful love 30
and their gaping difference 31
can be hidden in a dress like yours 32
for only 33
so long
ha HAH.
- Liliana
this could be a song it reads so smoothly
nice job
- justagirlx3
Yea, living in the closet is always an alternative.
I hear its warm and safe in there. ; )
- turboswami
A Full Moon Fever Memory
turboswami
A figment of a harsh shard retracts its head with a dissonant hiss,
1
The lush rolling hills are interrupted by sudden fear.
2
The insects, burrowed in their dark nests,
3
click and chatter about larvae, curled fat and fetal white.
4
The frain fell with my frail refrain,
5
and cooled, with a sizzle, the fire seeing beneath the serpent’s hood.
6
I’ll tear open like a tomb with a stretch of awakening
7
and breath full like another first.
8
Like when my thirst was first quenched by the cool air I opened into.
9
Long ago, I remember,
10
and long before even still, to a stillness I felt I was before feeling,
11
Lay beside me there, my love,
12
lay beside me and we’ll age a thousand back
13
and I’ll love you still the same, through a thousand faces.
14
I’ll love you, still the same. I love you, still the same.
15
I love you, still the same. I am, and you know I am as I was,
16
And smile to remember all I was, with warmth please.
17
I am a stalk which has bore that bright blossom (“Don’t Say Stalk!”)
18
I wilt inwards around fragility, while others stand tall.
19
24 Apr 11
Comments:
Good!
- unknown
Fill A Voice With Remnants
turboswami
Like a long time mother-friend, you leave me cared for and loved.
1
A closing and opening knowing, hinge grinding on fear of attachment.
2
Respect these drifters as goddesses, riding a precious secret.
3
Their long trailing strings are histories that sting with wisdom.
4
Stored old scores, I collapse into tired stories, disassociated.
5
I fill a voice with remnants, and they are like many hot embers.
6
With beauty to fuel, charm to catch fire this tired passion.
7
I offer my archive like a wall, decorated with decades forgotten.
8
24 Aug 11
Comments:
high-level critique in a workshop like this is about asking you what you think is wrong with this poem. do you want to go there?
- trashpoodle
Care to critique the poem, rather than your tedious psychotic goings on about how its not about the poetry but the critic and the critique?
- jharrison
..and you are not asking what the author thinks is wrong with the poem, nor any reader of it either .. but you want a response so you can say what you think is wrong with this poem.
You’re such a language and personality hypocrite, Mike :)
- jharrison
can’t critique the poem until you know what the author is about, what the author wants from the site and the critique. usually it’s obvious, but this one is so naive that i thought i’d better get it clear up front that this isn’t poetry idol.
- trashpoodle
Yes you can critique the poem rergardless wether you know what the author is ‘about’. You are quite a clueless fuck on the subject.
Again, Mike, you do not get to decide what any of this is about. If it’s ‘poetry idol’ then that’s exactly what is is... and there’s a not a fucking thing you can do about it.
By the way . did you ever find that link to the thread where I said what you claim I said about the Japanese? Or were you just lying again?
:)
- jharrison
no, you critique the poem with an idea of what the author is about, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read it at all-you’d be like one of those bimbos who are always telling us we’re writing nonsense.
the only thing true in a poem is the story of the author writing the poem. the rest, all the content and fire-cones, is vanity.
- trashpoodle
No, you critique the poem. I thought you said you ‘blind read’ poetry here .. or is this just another affectative lie to try and make it appear as though you are some sort of pure saintly poetry guru dude guy man?
You’re contradicting yourself in your self delusional evolution.
- jharrison
”the only thing true in a poem is the story of the author writing the poem. the rest, all the content and fire-cones, is vanity.”
Wrong ... though I agree you would know all about vanity. There is no one more vain on this site than you.
Your magic is weak, Mike :)
- jharrison
if the poem isn’t a picture of the poet writing the poem, then what is it? where does the content and form come from? god? direct and immediate?
- trashpoodle
start with the notion that THE POEM is what it’s ALL about. we need know nothing about the poet, or a lil old critic’s psychosis. forget theory, autobiography, and what all else: the words start here and end there, that’s the poem, eye on it, douche.
for you, poodle, this IS poetry idol, apparently.
- unknown
”if the poem isn’t a picture of the poet writing the poem, then what is it?”
It is everything. The poet writing the poem, the poem itself, the words and meaning the reader picks out and feels without any ‘insider’ knowledge, and also with insider knowledge, it is nothing to do with the author, and everything to do with the author, it is the reder making connections with themselves and with another, it is creation of the new out of the old and familiar. It is art that does not need an explaination, but once you read the name of the meaning it changes from the first flush of contact into something not you any more. By ‘knowing the author’ there is no reader, no poem, no poetry ... only the superficial analysis of the creation.
It appears that poetry and the reading of it is far beyond your single issue, small time, redundant linear pyschosis.
Art is beyond you .. art is esoteric and magickal .. not a study of statistics.
Whatever you claim to have learned at this ‘workshopping’ event of yours was a complete pile of donkey shit if this is what you are promoting as the only way to understand, know and learn what is poetry.
You do not ‘know’, that is obvious.
- jharrison
the poem doesn’t exist as a poem until you enter into the mode of ‘poetry reading’-you can read the phone book as a poem, but you’re going to want to know how the book is organized if you want to find your aunt sally. that means understanding how and why the book was published. which means understanding what ‘phone’ and ‘looking up a number’ is about.
so, a poem. you, if you’re conscious and not a beginner, want to know at least what else the poet wrote. and, if you’re a poet, you want to know how the poem got made at all. the poets look first at the personality behind the presentation-look how the words are used and what kind of words and rhythm support the ideas.
the poem is a story about the author writing a poem. there’s nothing else real in a poem except the author’s thought and work.
- trashpoodle
2for you, poodle, this IS poetry idol, apparently”
... and he is so very desperate to win! Simon would sign him up for a one hit generic bland money maker and then dump his ass :)
- jharrison
”the poem doesn’t exist as a poem until you enter into the mode of ‘poetry reading’”
I disagree. This utterly perverse and quite stupid nonsense forgets the very author you are trying to say is the only way to understand a poem.
The poem always exists, even without any readers. There is no need for a reader, only an author who is also the reader.
Your magick is weak, Mike :)
- jharrison
there’s this lower-class notion that literature is upper class and that it’s subjective because it’s upper class and rarefied. a poem is always written by a human, first, and then passed around in stages to the public. the myth of poet is a sick thing, if the myth makes the poet some kind of moses coming down off the anthill and talking about the worker’s duty.
- trashpoodle
”if you’re conscious”
You’re not ‘concious’, Mike... you’re deeply psychotic.
- jharrison
”there’s this lower-class notion”
wow... wandering off into class disctinction and tertiary insults.
You’ve lost this one, Mike .. if this is all you have to offer .. or are you being your dauighter again now, and will start calling us peasants?
- jharrison
or was that pheasants? ... I didn’t take much notice of your lies and deciets...
- jharrison
look how fucked people are reading ‘do not go gentle’-thomas recorded how it’s to be read, but people still think it’s about shrieking like a castrated pig because you’re going to die. what thomas said was that his dad was a fool to whine about death, after doing nothing all his life except practice being dead.
that’s the reading of the poem: dylan thomas created this from nothing, invented poetry. it’s not the same poem joe bet-wetter has in his head when he first sees do not go gentle... you have to watch the poet write the poem: it’s the only way a genius poet can read a poem at all. why would we want, as thomas said, a cheap ‘rub and a tickle?’
- trashpoodle
”if the myth makes the poet some kind of moses coming down off the anthill and talking about the worker’s duty.”
.. perhaps that’s exactly what the poet is .. are you trying to tell us that the ‘bard’ (not WS) did not change reality and decide destiny?
Are you telling us that words do not shape thought and reality and can alter perception?
Words without an author are still just as powerful as those with an author.
This gimmick you offer that the critique must be critiqued by the critic is a blind-spot, a dead end, a meaningless diversion from the art.
As all critics are failed artists, the title Critic fits you so very well, Mike :)
- jharrison
”look how fucked people are reading ‘do not go gentle’”
oh, do shut the fuck up, you limp dick. :)
- jharrison
joe bed-wetter has every right to post a poem on this site and not have you say they have no place here.
every dry-sheet and bed-wetter has a place on PC.
- jharrison
they have that right. they also have to live with the fact that they’re not in kansas anymore.
you’re not either, but you’d melt because it rains so much.
- trashpoodle
Of course they have the right. It is not your place to say if they do or do not have the right.
Once you understand that very simple equation, you’ll be a far better human being... well, it will be a start to becoming one.
- jharrison
”they also have to live with the fact that they’re not in kansas anymore. “
Again, you do not decide if this is Kansas for them or not. If they choose to engage or ignore you it is not up to you to decide why they have done that or who they are for doing it.
This psychotic arrogance of yours is the only stumbling blockm to you actually understanding.
You are not the denominator of reality, kanas or otherwise.
- jharrison
why should the truth be kept from them? you don’t become a poet by writing what everyone expects you to write. you have to find your own way through the history of poetry and then find a style and voice of your own. sometimes, at accidental times, someone like rimbaud can have a voice at 15, but that’s because no-body else was writing french as though it were english. he surprised them. if you read rimbaud, you read most of his stuff as not poetry at all, just toy-boxes for a homeless museum curator.
- trashpoodle
why should the truth be kept from them?”
Turth is always fine. This is not about the truth. This is about your opinion on what you think is the ‘truth’.
Your ‘truth’ is not reality, nor is it the only truth. You are not god.
- jharrison
On the one hand you have intimated in previous conversations that all poets can benefit from being in a varified poetic workshop such as PC, even if they are very young and new to the form.
On the other you are telling people they should perhaps think about trying some where else as your standards of what you think PC is all about isn’t exactly for them, as they possibly wouldn’t be able to understand it, nor dela with it.
Mike ... you are the consummate incarnation of the fucking hypocrite... and your story about krishna and comparing your current level of writing to that of the ‘wrong notes’ being played is utter shit, and you know it is ... and if you don’t know what shit it is .. you are far more seriously fucked in the head than I realised.
- jharrison
it is the truth. this is poetry critical, not poetry american idol. the truth of idol is that idiots vote for what they like. here, you set your poem up with other poets, other good readers, to see how you can keep away from idiots; you see how poets read your poem.
the only point in posting a poem here is to publish it. p.c. is the first venue, but not the only one. it is good, when you’re young, to publish-it gives you enough credibility to enter into poetry discussions. what’s good about that, is that you’ll be an idiot in the discussions and go away from them and write nasty poems about everyone. that’s how you first start to walk with words, instead of letting them walk you. later, you learn how to talk about poetry, and you go back into the discussions and learn what people were really saying. maybe, like me, you can publish critical comments and only write poetry when you have to write a poem.
when you’re young, you think that everyone’s a poem and you’re their pencil. ( you notice how they always want to edit you, personally, the way you act? ) that’s what poetry critical and poets can do for real poets. help them edit by reading the poem.
the beginners and all can come here and compete with consciousness, but they run from that and compete for rated instead.
- trashpoodle
the poem is a word-object, not a sponge. you can say it might be a sponge, but that’s the fun of words: you can say anything!
how you say them is culture and literature. how you invent them is poetry.
- trashpoodle
”it is the truth.”
No it’s not, as I described above .. it is YOUR opinion of what you think is truth .. and is based on hypocrisy.
YOU do NOT get to decide who participates in this site, nor why they have decided to particpate.
It is not ‘truth’. It is your fucking filthy shit-filled hypocrisy :)
- jharrison
”the beginners and all can come here “
Agian, this has nothing to do with YOU, nor why they are here, nor what they decide to participate in.
But, why is anyone bothring to talk to you... you’re such a psychotic fucked in the head pedophile loon you will never learn beyond your tiny insignificant world.
- jharrison
you’re not much of a scientist, but you’re a lousy philosopher too. the thing is in words; words are noises attached to moments. moments fill when they’re needed, empty when they’re useless. there’s no happy-god in the empty moment, as a good buddhist like you knows. it’s only void. the sound in the void is illusion, and a poem is a fine illusion for us, because we really like poetry.
i don’t know what you like. probably food.
does this thing printed on the page exist in any other form but words? that’s the question here always, but one you’ve not even begun to know is the truth of poetry.
- trashpoodle
this is probably the only hard-core poetry discussion on the net, so think before you answer. does the poem have a soul? can the soul of the poem exist outside of words? is the poet that soul’s vessel, or, instead, it’s own reality, spazzing out words as poems because it can’t speak for itself?
- trashpoodle
is this poem called ‘Fill A Voice With Remnants’ or ‘Mike Bauer Wanks’?
you hypocrite :)
- jharrison
’this is probably the only hard-core poetry discussion on the net”
omg, you really do believe your own hype... hard-core ... LOL .. what a fucking lunatic you are :)
- jharrison
jenni, it’s already happened. people have written about me already. it’s what kids looking for a thesis topic do, and, if they can discover an under-represented writer or artist and keep them, they get a career.
- trashpoodle
”does the poem have a soul? can the soul of the poem exist outside of words? is the poet that soul’s vessel, or, instead, it’s own reality, spazzing out words as poems because it can’t speak for itself?”
All redundant first year questions with no answers. You’re no poet. You’re a critic. All critics are failed artists.
You never got beyond first year remedial theory :)
- jharrison
’jenni, it’s already happened. people have written about me already’
This is a lie. If it’s not a lie then post a link. I mean a serious link .. not some comment by you saying how you’ve been included in someone home-made zine.
That’s not ‘serious heavy weight published’. You know, like those ‘serious heavy weight published people you were workshopping with when you were pretending to be your own daughter on PC.
- jharrison
When actually challenged to proved any actual proof you usually come up with some ropey link to some blurry picture of some Uni where you claim to have got a degree.
When actually challenged you go flaccid and withdraw.
You have nothing, Mike, other then your claims, which mean nothing.
- jharrison
provide #
- jharrison
Wow. Yes, I post here to be read, and yes...to improve as well. I see very few genuine critiques on the site though. Cliche and fluff saturates, and is celebrated.
I honestly dont know what you two are on about, but it sounds deeply set and it got my heart beating faster just reading it. ;) Some good points on both sides, but I’m not about to dissect those 42 comments!
- turboswami
I am curious what you felt was “so naive” about my poem, though, Trashpoodle. To simply refer to someone’s writing as unsophisticated or ingenuous seems like an offensive thing to just blurt out without any specific example.
Not to sound defensive. The poem is too wordy and, despite the division, still feels somewhat disjointed. I really wanted to say
”You leave me cared for and loved.
You leave me.”
but 4 lines is kinda a thing I was aiming for.
I guess you could say 4 lines is “what I’m about.”
- turboswami
it”s not constructed with poetry consciousness, it’s mouthing while typing and looking for a story. a poem has no story to tell except the author writing it. this story is pretty simple-word after word and then look for some fancy words to keep it arty. it’s in a form, but it’s a story-telling form and maybe out of a children’s book idea of ‘tell me a story’.
what a poem does is combine all the senses at once into a conscious reading, and this one simply narrows the mind to follow the tale.
- trashpoodle
That is not a critique I can do anything with, I’m sorry.
That is merely an incorrect definition.
- turboswami