Poetry Forum

"Steamboats" has made an excellent response. Stephen Spender once wrote that: "The relationship of the poet with his public should be through his poetry and not his biography." You have started your relationship with me. Thanks.-Ron Price, Australia

Contemporary relevance and timing, are important factors in the success of some poetry. You've got it here.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania

"A poem, like literature, is a quest for its essence," G. Josipovici, The Siren's Song: Selected Essays by Maurice Blanchot(Indiana UP, 1982, p.114) I sense you are on your way to that "essence" is this particular poem.-Ron Price, Tasmania

"To have the virtues of good prose is the first and minimum requirement of good poetry," T.S. Eliot in T.S. Eliot: The Poems, Martin Scofield(Cambridge, 1988, p.169). You are on your way to good poetry, steamboats.-Ron Price, Australia

To keep this thread alive, to provide readers with a quote from Maugham, a quote I have found useful, and to wish you all well for 2015, I leave you with: "There are three rules for writing a novel or an autobiography. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.-Ron Price with thanks to Somerset ...

I just dropped in after being away from this site for many moons. I've posted some 20 times at this site, got some useful feedback, but I just realized I have not contributed using the "2 crits for 1 post" formula. Belated apologies; I'll make up for that today to open this new year 2015.-...

It has been some 8 years since I was last on this thread. What a lot of water under life's proverbial bridge in that time. Risking saying too much, and ering on the side of "too much information" as I already have for some readers here, I'll add some more introductory information. But I'll...

THINKING OF YOU, BORIS Part 1: The famous Russian poet Boris Pasternak(1890-1960) said that to be a great poet it was not enough to write poetry. One must also “contribute in some vital way to the life of the times.”1 It is essential that such poets, Pasternak emphasized, “respond submissively to th...

I just saw your note, Suzanne, and after 2 and 1/2 years, I'm not sure a response is worth it. I'll do a little reading and posting here for the time being. Thanks for your thoughtful comments.-Ron

Part 1: Errol Flynn, an Australian-born film actor, was popular for his romantic and action roles in Hollywood films and also for his flamboyant lifestyle. Flynn was born in Hobart Tasmania more than 100 years ago, on 20 June 1909.1 I write a prose-poem as a sort of quasi-eulogistic, personal remini...

It has been about a year since anyone has posted in this thread, but allow me to add the following personal comment on this fine writer. More than four years later I've done a little editing of this post and added more on Greene's novel The Burnt-Out Case in a quite personal context.-Ron Price in Ta...

You play with words well...good use of the colloquial, of poetic narrative and still the reader reads with some sense of "what's going on here?" That is important to me as I read a poem, if not to all readers. Gerald manley Hopkins once wrote that "the poetic impulse was strong feelin...

I'll check out those others on the site who recommend their ideas in a more succinct fashion. Thanks. As far as a 'Baha'i consciousness' is concerned, you might like to try the site: bahai.org. It will provide a taste.-Ron

It looks like the title of this site is an appropriate one for me: "poetsgrave." Point taken. -Cheers!-Ron

I realize that the above posting is somewhat long for many readers. I have tried in the above to limit my posting to as brief a section of my 400 page book as possible. Roger White died 12 years ago and I would encourage readers to try his poetry on for size. His books are available at several sourc...

Good practical advice. Leave it with me.-Ron

I have come across the name Bilston here in Tasmania, but not an editor of a book of poems.-Ron

It's comments like yours that encourage me to stay with poetry and incline me to leave my prose in the 'Ron Price Appreciation Society,' a very small group that never meets. A mockery is made of autobiography unless the writer can find some language adequate to his privacy and his solidity. I'm stil...

There are probably two reasons I overload the system. One is a lifetime of applying for jobs and my posting is a leftover from those job application days. The 2nd reason for my type of posting is to counter the endless introductory pieces that tell me nothing about the person introducing themselves....

Emily Dickinson once wrote that: "there is an inner consciousness from which we cannot rescue ourselves."(Emily Dickinson Personae and Performance, Elizabeth Phillips, Penn State UP, London, 1988, p.148) It has always seemed to me that writing is a matter of externalizing that inner consci...

I trust this is short enough. I will watch the feedback and, if it is encouraging, I will keep it at its new length. Otherwise I will shorten it even more. I'll watch.-Ron

The last full-blood Aboriginal died out in about 1876. There are, of course, many indigenous Tasmanians with partial(1/2, 1/4, 1/16th and 1/32nd, etc) indigenous blood. My wife is not among them. As you may know indigenality has become quite a complex question. But then, if you and I go back in our ...

My autobiography is now over 1000 pages. Here is the first 1 or 2. __________________________________________ "Not beginning at the Beginning...." :arrow: Preamble My individual journey from the promised land, from my home in Canada, my home town in Burlington Ontario, from one promised la...

EMPLOYMENT AND ROLE POSITIONS HELD: 2015 TO 1943 2015-2009-retired and on an old-age pension 2009-1999-Writer & author, poet & publisher, online blogger & journalist, reader & scholar, editor & researcher; retired teacher & tutor, lecturer & adult aducator, taxi-driver &a...

This is the first chapter of a 400 page book on the poetry of Canadian poet Roger White(1929-1993). the entire book can be downloaded at http://www.juxta.com/ But here is part of the first chapter. I'm sure this post will be too long for many readers and I encourage them to skim, scan and simply sto...