Poetry Forum

It was a no, this time, but the rejection letter was very warm.

Cheers for the comments chaps. I'll consider the first verse's punctuational asceticism. k-j: I agree with most of your points - good pick-up on redolent especially. I'll change that, "light" and "countless" in the next draft. Peter: I wondered about "yuck!" - I'm torn,...

Wittgenstein actually thoroughly privileged experience - not out of any empirical philosophy but because it's only by living our language games that we come to any meaning (and even that is numinous). I'd imagine there he's saying - we won't know if the sun will rise tomorrow until we experience it...

Thanks for doing the digging there Bri. Ludwig Wittegenstein says the same thing as she does, but puts it better: "It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise." Mind you, he was probably a nut too! Mic I'm sure Wittgenstein ...

I think the growing success of PG alumni in magazines is suggestive.

brianedwards wrote: Don't you dare take this excellent discussion to PM.

Am I "losing" that badly Brian?

Am I aware of the entry requirements? The sole actual "entry requirement" is the eternal election of God - "not by works but by his call". If we are *all* separated from God by our sin, then none of us by doing a thing can make the right reparations. So simply being able to say &...

Hi The theory of (say) how the valve works is indeed not the thing itself, not being a valve. Nobody supposes otherwise. Of course sometimes a theory may not be completely accurate. But sometimes is. We can hardly count all scientific theories as in any sense "lies" simply because some co...

I have been published in Other twice, and on both occasions I was informed the day after the panel. Did he give you a date for the panel? If he said December I guess you'll hear this month. B. He said the December panel, but expected a decision the first half of this month - I suppose no further co...

Select Samaritan wrote: Isn't he in Hell, or at least Purgatory? There's no peace outside of Heaven.

As if I know the number of the elect or am in a position to do anything but entreat in hope.

But seriously, I was really referring to the impending zombie apocalypse.

k-j wrote:It has fire fighters in it?

I wish, if it did maybe it wouldn't have all those matriarchal aesthetics!

(Mitchell's dedication is to fire fighters etc.)

Right you are. Agreed on all points. Have you read Gilgamesh ? I've picked it up once or twice and flicked through and not seen much in it from a poetic point of view... the same for the Egyptian book of the dead and the Popol Vuh... apart from its sheer antiquity and status as a foundational story...

I read Rasselas and thought it was awful. Apparently Johnson knocked it out in about a week and I'm not surprised at all. I hate novels that aren't really novels at all, just expositions. Candide is better although I was a teenager when I read that... these kinds of books are better for kids than g...

Incidentally what is it about the "beginning stuff" which you know "can't be proven"? Why can't it be proven? You might be right of course, but can you prove that it can't be proven? Next you'll be quoting Irigaray with approval over the whole e=mc2 being sexist thing ;). I don'...

Sorry, don't understand the sense in which, say, long established theory of how a heart valve work is a lie. If your chemist friend knows it to be a lie I am sure they would be very interested round at the cardiology department. Don't see the metaphorical descriptions is standard statements of it e...

Well, I quite enjoyed this. It did engender a response from me - a whimsical smile, if that's appropriate. I could make a warm comparison to a Wendy Cope poem but I won't .

Version 1.5 Durham, Michaelmas Term 2011 October is preserved in amber syrup, the wind passes mute, the garden empty and my fork lances the loam, a trinity of tunnels appearing in dim relief. I heft it; the earth trembles and the mud tumbles out, the resident weeds launching from the path abruptly,...

Absolutely beautiful, though I'd on the whole agree with the crits so far. I'd add that "I will slowly cast off my flesh set sail on a course of indigo toward a single day's remembrance." feels a little bathetic and follows the pattern too much - Halloween, Guy Fawkes, then Remembrance day...

How quickly does one tend to hear back about an editorial panel decision? I had one that Rod put forward (in October) to the December panel and I was wondering when I might expect to hear back one way or another.

Enjoyed the rhyme throughout, enjoyed the theme, especially enjoyed the ending (though it reminded me of "High Windows"...).

Bravo!

A man of rare genius and verve and an incredibly entertaining writer. Rest in peace.

To quote a postgrad chemist friend of mine, "Science is the best lies we've got yet for explaining why physical things happen". That's no insult to science; he is really pointing to the metaphorical nature of scientific descriptions of phenomena that Padel and Brian have pointed out. And a...

Great stuff, Japanese Edwards! It does seem there is a PG "style" (neo-formalism? lol) that appeals to the quirkier mags like Other and Snakeskin.

Mad Uncle Jasper's Death is in issue 181 - http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/.

And here I was reading Suzanne's "anon" as "soon". How Shakespearian I am...how noble, how poetic!