Poetry Forum

Hi Tony,

Hmm! I particularly like the first stanza, which just goes to show you. I like the title too. I'd keep they can, myself, it has a good rhythm to my ear, and curiously, i read the last word as garbage.

Oh - and this:



Cheers,
John

I agree, this is one of my faves of yours. And pelagic is a fine word.

Cheers,
John

Hence the four dudes - I'm seeing double!

I may have finished off the champagne supply.

Cheers,
John

That btw was champagne and some dude dancing four times. I don’t know why it wouldn’t post - another of life’s mysteries!

What if I am?

Lovely vocabulary, Phil! I also very much like "Be a flightless god."

Cheers,
John

Very interesting! And Jack White learned a lot from Led Zep, of course. Here's another version:

It does indeed! And its downsides. I am generally up two or three times a night, and then by the early morning.

Cheers,
John

Hi Phil,

I'm glad you enjoyed the rider and the steppe! The Tien Shan mountains are just south of Almaty, they crop up as you wander round town. China is the other side. And I remember that rider, as I gazed out over the steppe from the night train between Almaty and Astana.

Cheers,
John

And this ...



And I suppose I should put in this one I was mentioning:

The last line of this poem just came back to me:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... -innisfree

Cheers,
John

The Constant Moon Night comes into its kingdom. The blue gauze that hides the heavens from us has dissolved, and I can see the zodiac at work upon our destinies. The great machine turns through the quadrants as beneath its gaze, the town is sleeping. It is 2 a.m. Off to the East lies China now, beyo...

Thank you, Tristan, glad you enjoyed it!

Cheers,
John

Hi Tony, I like the idea of this. There's a story that MIT hackers, back in the days when hacker meant something else, had a favorite Chinese restaurant whose menu in ideograms began to fascinate them - they wanted to decipher that code. So they came back with a Chinese-English dictionary and were a...

I know what you mean. I used to jump from rooftop to rooftop, forty feet up, when I was ten. Glad not to be doing that now.

Cheers,
John

Hi Caleb,

I like the update.

Cheers,
John

Thanks Phil! Yes, fashion is a funny thing, and art in its broadest sense is its primary home. The C20th certainly saw its share of fashions. Built-in obsolescence, really.

I like that favor-flavor detail! Unconscious, I think.

Cheers,
John

I like the title btw.

Cheers,
John

Good night, Caleb! Sweet dreams!

Cheers,
John

Hi Caleb, I think you want to have shouted at the start of S2? I think this is very interesting introspection, but it spends some time not being a poem as I undertstand them. It's more like a chat at that point. If you want to try trimming, I think it might pop more? Experiments can be revelatory! C...

Thanks Caleb, it's an old poem, here because as you see, it cites this old Chinese fable. I'm glad you liked it. As you say, the fable has nothing to do with reality - one assumes no painted crab in fact scuttled off the wall back in the day. So, I'll quote Whistler instead, who sued Ruskin for libe...

There's a story about a famous Chinese painter summoned by the emperor to show his skill. So he is set up in a studio and given ten years, the emperor being a patient man. Ten years later, the emperor returns and asks if the painting's ready: there's a big wall with a curtain in front of it, presuma...