Poetry Forum

Thanks all, I'm not sure what message I'll take from this. I wondering if you're all reading something different into it from what I intend... Or maybe it's because I know the subject matter better...

Hmm, maybe one to sit on for a while.

Thanks!

Ian

I realise it would not say all of what you want to say. But I like the poem that consists simply of the first four stanzas. Seth Yes, there is something it that. I was thinking of those as the introduction, a sort of volta at the end of those four bits... Then a slightly different theme until the l...

Antikythera, and other mechanisms Captain Τιμόν(*) views the device Caesar has ordered strictly, that no one turns the handle —the technikós(***) Αλέκος(**) staggers slightly in the swell, his hand upon the opened crate— nobody is to see events from future time laid out. The Gods alone know this by...

Thanks all, The overall critique that the parts of this don't sit easily together may be valid. For me there is a sort of link, but it is perhaps about the relationship between SciFi and the so-called "real world" rather than any specific aspect of the world. This may not come over to the ...

The day science fiction is obliged to save the world The day science fiction is obliged to save the world the alien fleet decloaks, apologises; says— it isn't us, it's them— and takes their vinyl collection back into hyperspace. The day science fiction is obliged to save the world a mutant traffic ...

Hi Sheila,

Similar thoughts to NQS from me...

Ian

Enjoyed, not 100% sure I understand the end, are you saying the daughter inherited scepticism from you? And thus calls the holy water "nothing" (meaning "nothing special")? Is the first strophe entirely necessary as a set up? Could you start with the striking bathroom image and o...

Very good. Ray called this a form, is it a "formal" form? e.g. does it have a name?

Ian

Enjoyed very much.

"and" instead of "but" in the final line? To make it more a consequence than a quibble? After all, isn't loneliness the natural companion to greatness?

Ian

Of this I am certain. That the universe is full of matter Colon instead of fullstop? Lose the "that"? and gravity pulls all matter together. Don't repeat "matter" so soon? "things" or just "all together"? That the expansion of the universe has not been slowin...

Second bite: There are some puzzles in this wonderful piece which may well have been thrown to us as wabi-sabi-style bones to chew on . . . Perhaps I can persuade the poet to give us a close reading of at least L4 by spilling my own version of what I think is going on. Have I explained enough above...

Thanks all, A couple of people question "prime of the flow"... but all I mean is the obvious (I thought it obvious) e.g. "life". Prime as in main part, a parent is (or was once) the main part of your life, and flow as in river as in time as in life, etc etc... NQS -- I like "...

Hi all,

Sorry, the board's been down and after that I've not been paying attention.

I'll try to reply properly and thank people tomorrow...

Ian

Or the set of all sets that cannot be used to form paradoxes...

Thanks Seth! I maybe agree with you on the end, it is just that ending on "we're done." felt too abrupt...

Ian

Coming to naught All zeros are the same zero, they say scribbling on the whiteboard in that winter's day seminar. Your car was iced and bitter that morning as you chipped out of your bed and drove away from the news of a parent rubbed out slowly from the prime of the flow. Where do you go, when mat...

OK, it seems to be back now... weird...

Something seems to have gone awry... I can see that post in "view your posts" but not in the forum.

I must rush now, but later I'll try moving it elsewhere and back, that might fix it...

Ian

An off-series prompt again:

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/05/nepowri ... there.html

I've never been prompt, and indeed I used no prompt for this...

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/05/napowri ... ge-on.html

Crayon wrote:

bodkin wrote:From Marie Lightman's "irrational robot" prompt...

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/05/napowri ... ience.html

Good one, robodkin. One of my favourites of your many strong poems for NaPoWriMo. And I think I understood almost all of this one.

Thank you!

T minus 3, don't ask what prompted this:

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/05/napowri ... s-and.html

From Marie Lightman's "irrational robot" prompt...

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/05/napowri ... ience.html

Thanks JJ, I wondered if you'd appreciate my 25th one also...

I did yesterday's "space" prompt...

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/04/napowri ... space.html

Not really from any prompt...

http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/2017/04/napowri ... thera.html