CoCo, you are entitled to your opinion like everyone else. I still stand by the poem and it's message. However i'm surprised you support Hairy Tick in his attack on this thread on the lousy little poets, you did not make comment on this.
Best Regards......Georges
Open Season on the Lousy Little Poets.
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George.Wright
- Posts: 1874
- Joined: Mon Jul 08, 2002 3:37 pm
- Location: Bangor, N.Ireland
An Observation
"A mannered style is like eccentric clothing: very few writers can carry it off, but one is enchanted by the rare exception that can." -W.H. Auden
"Back in 1912, [Ezra] Pound wanted to alter the 400-year-old course of English poetry. Since the beginning of the Renaissance, English poets had been developing and refining the 10-syllable iambic line -- the ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum line used by Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. Pound hated the iamb. It's almost as simple as that. And he eventually succeeded in making the old, classic iambic pentameter verse forms outmoded. But he didn't succeed in coming up with new forms to replace those old forms. The result is that, as Solway suggests, modern poetry has become synonymous with free verse. Even Verna Lee Hinegardner, the former poet laureate of the great state of Arkansas, writes free verse. (Not to pick on Hinegardner, particularly.) And that does mean a lot of slant dribbles of print and dyslexic kindergarten exercises, and so on. It's gotten to the point where the few people left reading poetry can't stand to see one more free verse poem about some funny or awful incident that happened in the poet's life. This has meant poetry has become even less of a serious literary form than 100 years ago, when it was already losing its hold on the intelligent reading public. I don't know how to remedy this, except to suggest that we need critics of poetry even more than we need poets. We need critics, first of all, who can tell good verse from bad, and who then can act as collaborators with poets, guiding the reading public through the wilderness of various forms and pointing to the genuine triumphs of language that some poets have wrought."
- Philip Marchand
Taken from E-VERSE which I know some of you get.
We really should be able to discuss this on an objective level. There is nothing more personal than poetry... we engage on a gut level. But there ARE standards one can point to, analyses to be made. At the end, I may still dislike your poem... or love it.
Pax vobiscum
Babz
"Back in 1912, [Ezra] Pound wanted to alter the 400-year-old course of English poetry. Since the beginning of the Renaissance, English poets had been developing and refining the 10-syllable iambic line -- the ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum, ti Tum line used by Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. Pound hated the iamb. It's almost as simple as that. And he eventually succeeded in making the old, classic iambic pentameter verse forms outmoded. But he didn't succeed in coming up with new forms to replace those old forms. The result is that, as Solway suggests, modern poetry has become synonymous with free verse. Even Verna Lee Hinegardner, the former poet laureate of the great state of Arkansas, writes free verse. (Not to pick on Hinegardner, particularly.) And that does mean a lot of slant dribbles of print and dyslexic kindergarten exercises, and so on. It's gotten to the point where the few people left reading poetry can't stand to see one more free verse poem about some funny or awful incident that happened in the poet's life. This has meant poetry has become even less of a serious literary form than 100 years ago, when it was already losing its hold on the intelligent reading public. I don't know how to remedy this, except to suggest that we need critics of poetry even more than we need poets. We need critics, first of all, who can tell good verse from bad, and who then can act as collaborators with poets, guiding the reading public through the wilderness of various forms and pointing to the genuine triumphs of language that some poets have wrought."
- Philip Marchand
Taken from E-VERSE which I know some of you get.
We really should be able to discuss this on an objective level. There is nothing more personal than poetry... we engage on a gut level. But there ARE standards one can point to, analyses to be made. At the end, I may still dislike your poem... or love it.
Pax vobiscum
Babz
Hermitage, I take your point and I do understand why and how others have been offended or shocked by the angle George has taken recently. However, without making any judgement as to the literary merit of George's "dance" poem I can say that I am not particularly offended. During the 70's I was taken with the music of Frank Zappa and much of his lyrical writing I thought was challenging and it made me consider the way American and western society operated under its expoused laws and moral codes. Many people, I know found Zappa offensive and vulgar but I found him to be enlightened and courageously creative quite apart from being a ground breaking composer in the realm of rock music.
As to your example;- I see what you mean but I think one's personal values determine how one might react with regard to offensive or acceptable standards of taste. Some decades ago Jagger and Richards wrote a song dealing with the very example you suggested. The title is "Brown Sugar". No doubt many found the song offensive but it still stands today as a classic song from the times in which it was written about a sensitive issue.
What I do find offensive, vulgar and obscene is murder, gratuitous violence, war, hatred and self righteous political, social or religious crusades.
Regards, Witty Owl.
As to your example;- I see what you mean but I think one's personal values determine how one might react with regard to offensive or acceptable standards of taste. Some decades ago Jagger and Richards wrote a song dealing with the very example you suggested. The title is "Brown Sugar". No doubt many found the song offensive but it still stands today as a classic song from the times in which it was written about a sensitive issue.
What I do find offensive, vulgar and obscene is murder, gratuitous violence, war, hatred and self righteous political, social or religious crusades.
Regards, Witty Owl.