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Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
I get the not wanting to derail so I'll just echo thanks for the thoughtful/thought-provoking post and reading recommendations. I personally enjoy the process of wrestling words into formal structures and have a strong preference for reading poems with simple lyrical metre but that doesn't at all mean I look down on other forms. I was just absolutely convinced that what you'd written was free verse and I guess you've persuaded me otherwise. :v:

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flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Forgotten British Rule

We don’t wear armour suits in parliament.
We should practice archery once a week,
then drive our geese through London’s city streets.
These rules, still in force, many remember.

Forgotten her Majesty’s government’s
Official Department for Transport is.
In particular their Highway Code’s
most forgotten Rule One Hundred and Three.

Signals Warn and Inform other persons
of your intended actions on the road.
Road Users should always give clear signals
With plenty of time before changing course,
stopping,
or moving off, remembering one thing:

Signalling does not give priority.

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

Maugrim posted:

I get the not wanting to derail so I'll just echo thanks for the thoughtful/thought-provoking post and reading recommendations. I personally enjoy the process of wrestling words into formal structures and have a strong preference for reading poems with simple lyrical metre but that doesn't at all mean I look down on other forms. I was just absolutely convinced that what you'd written was free verse and I guess you've persuaded me otherwise. :v:

I will say this- beyond the ten syllables per line, I don’t see any obvious structure to the poem. Am I missing something obvious otherwise? Some intrinsic syllable stress pattern, etc?

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


sephiRoth IRA posted:

I will say this- beyond the ten syllables per line, I don’t see any obvious structure to the poem. Am I missing something obvious otherwise? Some intrinsic syllable stress pattern, etc?

Nope. At least, not to my knowledge. I lean very heavily on ear because, again, I am lazy and impatient. (Also chances are if it sounds bad to me, it's gonna sound bad to someone else.)

But again, any constraint is as arbitrary and intentional as any other. An abecedarian doesn't have any obvious structure beyond each line starting with the next letter, etc.

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
Ammon's Tape for the Turn of the Year was written on a roll of adding-machine tape, which determined the length of each line as well as the length of the poem itself.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
hey actual real serious logistics post

can we please have a consistent submission deadline? at least on the same day (timezones rnt too important unless someone's doing like AUS/EU time), ideally same # of weeks between prompt and submission (aka, it's always the sunday the week the prompt is posted or the sunday afterwards). its been annoying that it's been scattered so much and creating a pattern helps people realize "oh hey wednesday is poemdome day, time to write" vs. "oh god what day of the week was it and how many weeks after was it? i already looked at the prompt like 3 times to check but i cant remember because it always changes" <-- thats me btw im dumb as poo poo.

ideally, id prefer not on sunday as that conflicts w/ thunderdome, but as long as its consistent, i really dont care, but having a standard "this day every time" would help me (and hopefully others) immensely. id also personally prefer if we kept it either every week or every other week consistently rather than sometimes longer, sometimes not

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Yes, I agree. Would a Wednesday Deadline/Thursday Winner Declared/Friday New Prompt schedule be objectionable to anyone?

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
i dont think setting a strict "judgement this day" is good, just try to do ur best to get it in by 1-2 days after u close submissions (3 at the latest imo), and then winner can prompt up relatively quickly after that

im basically suggesting emulating td but i mean td has been going strong for god knows how long so if it works dont fix it ig

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


How bout Mondays for deadlines then? That makes it the 17th.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
Surrealism crits

also, general hint, this week a lot of people capitalized the start of every line for some reason. this made some of them read more awkwardly than necessary. you dont have to do that. you probably shouldnt

Saucy_Rodent

i think this is a decent attempt at surrealism, and i like the sinister tone this takes as a response to tate’s, but the larger issue with this poem is that the line breaks are just very, very bad. im all for short, abrupt lines and im all for experimentation with different formatting, but it doesnt work in this piece because it causes the poem to read very poorly. esp when u try to read it out loud, it feels very staggered and awkward. it’s almost there to actually work -- some of the interruptions help build up the darker vibe, but too many times it just feels annoying to read, especially out loud.

Thranguy

this is decently fine, but i found myself just thinking, eh. like, it hits surrealism fine, but i wanted more out of this poem. it has some neat lines and ideas, but it doesnt do much with those lines or ideas. it kinda just drops cool ideas but doesnt try to interrogate them in a way to come up with some unique or interesting perspective. it’s nice, but feels a little vacant.

crimea

i think i understood this better than when i first read it, which is fine, poems can be somewhat dense, but i still find myself confused on certain things. i get this is about war and it being bad (which feels somewhat trite, especially given that wading through the obfuscation only leads us towards war = bad which is meh), but i find myself confused on who the speaker is and what exactly he’s talking about. giving us a more clear of the speaker can help us get into their headspace more and make the poem feel more personal.

sephiRoth IRA

i liked “One hundred percent of my life has been filled with violence.” as a conceit to the poem, but i hate it as a line. it completely destroys the ability for the reader to craft their own meaning of the poem, and lays everything out too openly. i have two main issues: one is that i dont think you were able to make your images as sinister as they needed to be to really highlight that life is filled with violence, even if that violence is sanitized. its little too cutesy and silly to really hit right to make us think hey this is kinda bad. the other problem is that, while the images are cool, there’s not a lot of response to the idea. it kinda just plops the idea of a life being dominated by violence, but there isnt much examination of what that kind of life has a person. it just kinda says, yep, that sure is a thing

also cool prose poem :thumbsup:

rickiep00h

this works the strongest as a poem, and i liked a lot of the individual images and ideas here, but it loses the trail near the middle. the skull is cool, but then it talks about three-point lines and something about investing and its like, everything here, independently, is pretty cool and well written, but taken as a whole, i cant quite fit everything together. yeah sure surrealism, but even then, nothing quite fits together, and i cant quite make out a complete understanding of what ur trying to say here. the pieces all here work on their own, but they dont quite fit together into something altogether.

thanks for the prose poem tho :thumbsup:

Antivehicular

there’s a lot of ideas in here i like. the never-cats are cool, and the idea of being haunted by cats that arent exactly sinister is great. a lot of the images are really nice too. i think the only thing is i wanted a little bit more pushing of the ideas, since it kinda felt like, while this is a piece full of good images, it doesnt quite do much else. it kinda just drops these cool images in these laps, and there’s some decent lines that pull at deeper meaning, i.e. “Cotton, you’re the first thing i ever mourned”, but i think u could push this concept a lil bit harder to pull at something larger than just “ghost cats”

good prose poem :thumbsup:

arbitaryfairy

i actually like the conceit of this poem, and even the title kinda made me go errr what? i actually think its not as tasteless as i thought it would be. i like it as a sort of metaphor of teaching something socially inept how to deal with social situations. the main problem is that it fails as a poem. there arent many images and the flow is kinda all over the place, and a poem, to me, is not just about the ideas, but also how the words fit together, and the words are kinda haphazardly thrown together in a way that it makes it difficult to read. i will say my biases lean towards very image-based poems, but even outside of those biases, i think the overall flow of the piece kills it for me, and there isnt much redeeming factors besides having a nice conceit.

cda

every time i tried to do crits i would hit a wall with this poem because i find myself at mostly a loss for what to say so let’s just start. i just dont rly get it -- i think there’s some linking between consumerism/products to childbirth, but i cant quite catch the line of logic here, and it sort of shifts settings very rapidly because there’s descriptions of malls, but then delivery rooms, so i find myself mostly confused with this. idk, i feel like im not quite sure what exactly is going on her, and there’s not enough cool images to keep me engrossed without understanding what’s going on that i feel like im mostly at a loss for what u were trying to go for, sorry

Anomalous Amalgam

i was quite a fan of your first stanza, but it fell apart in the second because u just stopped giving me things to latch onto. “Dress up the porcelain caricature of your best self. / Tell simple lies that snowball into permanent falsehoods. / Let those lies permeate the everchanging tides of our fragility.” are much too vague lines that feel like theyre trying to say a lot but end up not being effective since theyre so vague. the flow between lines is pretty awkward through the first and second stanzas -- theyre all one sentence, which makes each line feel very abrupt, while the two lines that are on sentence “Grime encrusted rayon tunics knit by well-wishing relatives / Can be found for a steal at your local thrift store.” still feels abrupt for some reason, my brain always wants to make a hard stop on after “relatives” which fucks with the flow. overall, i think there’s a good effort here, but some poetic flaws keep it from really working.

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Thank you for the crit flerp!

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit

flerp posted:

cda

every time i tried to do crits i would hit a wall with this poem because i find myself at mostly a loss for what to say so let’s just start. i just dont rly get it

Pretty sure this means I win Surrealism ;)

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Brawl poem (anapests are loving hard, have this weird thing)

Branch Promise

Creak and thrum, the forest groans.
Glacier flows in frosty pond,
yet we grow in mossy thrones.
Melting frost, pale sun has dawned;
shining oak and yew in groves.
Write in roots and stems a song
within the humming of the droves;
live an oath and sway along.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Brawl poem

As Spring Comes.

Exchange of seasons over rolling moors.
Harsh winter’s final winds drink our skin’s heat.
This warmth spring’s early beaming sun restores,
along bright fields of golden waving wheat.

This path whose earth does fill the tread of shoes,
bears marks of those who fell before my walk.
Wet earth that slips like grease, and thus I choose
to tread the grass’ green emerging stalks.

To crest hills tall and face blue open sky,
where roaring winds like waves do crash and flow.
Embrace this tide with open arms that I
might dance like purple creeping phlox below.

I hold the winter’s winds at season’s end.
All seasons, harsh or fair, are welcome friends.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021

Maugrim posted:

a pleasant meter such as iambs or anapaests

Funny how that worked out

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
Thank you for your submissions, both of which I have enjoyed. Judgement will be forthcoming this evening.

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
Azza BambiRoth IRA brawl judgement:

This is close! As I start writing this, I don't yet know who I'm going to award the win to, although I have an initial slight favourite. I enjoyed both poems and both more-or-less hit the prompt.

sephiRoth IRA - Branch Promise

Interesting title, odd enough that it made me look for some kind of wordplay, although if it's there I'm not clever enough to find it. From the mention of glacier at the start I assumed this was a coniferous forest in a cold country, but then later you mention oak and elm which typically inhabit temperate biomes. After many readings, I still didn't feel like I'd fully grasped the story you're telling - at least not from the words themselves.

Fortunately, there's more to this than just the words. This poem is largely written in trochees - a foot consisting of a stressed, then an unstressed syllable, the reverse of an iamb. Where iambs are free-flowing, bouncing you easily onto the stressed syllables, trochees are ponderous, weighty, grandiose. Which isn't what I asked for in the prompt - but I forgive you, because it's a perfect choice for the poem you've written. It evokes the unstoppable march of the seasons, the slow heartbeat of the forest. Combine that with the sonorous vowel sounds you've incorporated, and this poem echoed in my head in the booming voice of an ent. It's a reflection on the long slow existence of trees, with a hint of the promise of spring.

quote:

Creak and thrum, the forest groans.
Glacier flows in frosty pond, into, surely - unless it's a really tiny glacier
yet we grow in mossy thrones. "yet" doesn't deserve a stress so the rhythm stumbles here.
Melting frost, pale sun has dawned;
shining oak and yew in groves.
Write in roots and stems a song
within the humming of the droves; why "within" rather than "in"? An odd departure from the metre. Droves of what?
live an oath and sway along. I don't know what "live an oath" means

Azza Bamboo - As Spring Comes

A much more straightforward offering in terms of the story it tells, and appealing to me as a lover of hill walking. You've got one big stumble in the rhythm, and several cases of awkward wording and word order to try and retain the rhythm. But you've also got some pleasing imagery and I liked your final couplet a lot.

quote:

Exchange of seasons over rolling moors.
Harsh winter’s final winds drink our skin’s heat. the rhythm stumbles here on "drink our"
This warmth spring’s early beaming sun restores, "beaming" adds nothing here, find a more interesting word
along bright fields of golden waving wheat. adjective order - see below

This path whose earth does fill the tread of shoes, "does fill" is a common but super clumsy way to stick to metre, you should try hard to avoid it
bears marks of those who fell before my walk. on first reading this sounds as though you're killing people by walking over them
Wet earth that slips like grease, and thus I choose
to tread the grass’ green emerging stalks. adjective order
I found this stanza out of whack in tone compared to the rest of the poem. But on reflection I like the juxtaposition. Sometimes we look up and enjoy the beauty of the countryside. Sometimes we have to watch where we're putting our feet.

To crest hills tall and face blue open sky, adjective order
where roaring winds like waves do crash and flow. "do crash" ew
Embrace this tide with open arms that I awkward place to end the line. And I don't think it's you dancing, but your hair and clothes, right?
might dance like purple creeping phlox below.

I hold the winter’s winds at season’s end.
All seasons, harsh or fair, are welcome friends. This is nice :unsmith:

Adjectives! You've got lots of them. In places where you've got several on the same noun, the ordering often seems to go a bit skew-whiff, even when it's not necessary to fit the metre. I don't know if this is a deliberate attempt to sound more poetic, but it's probably best avoided. Here's Mark Forsyth in The Elements of Eloquence, a lovely little book I happen to have on my desk here, in the chapter on hyperbaton (the rhetorical trick of messing with word order):

Mark Forsyth posted:

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote his first story aged seven. It was about a 'green great dragon'. He showed it to his mother who told him that you absolutely couldn't have a green great dragon, and that it had to be a great green one instead. Tolkien was so disheartened that he never wrote another story for years.

The reason for Tolkien's mistake, since you ask, is that adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can't exist.

(The whole book is written like this, it's such an easy read and I thoroughly recommend it.)


gently caress, I've really gone on here haven't I? Okay, here's your judgement. sephiRoth IRA takes the win because, for me, their poem evoked a consistent mood and used the metre to support the content really well. But Azza's poem has plenty of good in it too. Thanks guys.

Maugrim fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Feb 14, 2020

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Firstly, Thank you for the crit! Your edits are spot on. In my head I was considering the promise of regrowth, to live out the oath of progressing through the seasons. That said, I know gently caress all about plants and did no research whatsoever, so thanks too for giving me a biology pass :)

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Thanks for the crit. I don't get this word order stuff and I'm rearranging the words around the French knife not really seeing that it sounds insane at all. Nonetheless I'll try to abide this rule because the language is full of this arbitrary crap I don't really get.

Is there an explanation for why or how it's wrong? I ask because the author of your passage relies on the assumption that anything else sounds insane, and I'm not getting that. I'd rather understand what's going on than have to sit with the list, checking my adjectives every time.

Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Feb 14, 2020

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
The example he created with the whittling knife is over-egged for the sake of humour, frankly. When you have that many adjectives you sound insane regardless of the order! It's easier if you just look at two adjectives - the "green great dragon" example (which is why I expanded the standard meme quote to include it).

If phrases like "green great dragon", "old little lady", or "whittling French knife" don't sound odd to you, there may be something unusual about the way you process language. I'm not gonna tell you to sit down with a list every time you use multiple adjectives, don't worry. At any rate the three examples in your poem - "golden waving wheat", "green emerging stalks", "blue open sky" - are less egregious than any of those, they sound subtly wrong to my ear but not insanely wrong.

Maugrim fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Feb 14, 2020

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


There actually is a list of adjective order but I don't remember it off the top of my head.

Stealth edit: quantity, opinion, size, age, color, shape, origin, material, and purpose

As with literally every rule of linguistics/grammar, this is a descriptive definition, ie, the way that people tend to naturally order things without knowing "the rules." So using things out of order isn't *wrong* but it will sound *odd* to most speakers of the language and may be hard to parse for meaning.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
To be fair I've had a working class upbringing in an old dying industrial town and now I work in factories with mainly people who don't speak English as their first language. I wouldn't be surprised if I process language differently to the kind of degree-having city dweller that normally writes the books we read. I might just have to use a list.

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


I didn't say anyone had to follow it, just that it exists. ;)

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

imo most of the examples you've got in that poem don't sound "wrong" so much as they sound like a deliberate choice for effect.

The underlying idea behind these adjective-order rules is that you're grouping things that are important. That's why, in the case of the little old French knife, French comes last. It's what has the most influence on the noun being described. It's also why "little" and "old" go together, because they're both about the 'state' of the noun. When you say "golden waving wheat", my brain's reading that as "the waving wheat is golden" as opposed to "the golden wheat is waving". And when you say "the blue open sky" you're saying the openness is more fundamental than the blueness. It's perfectly valid to say that, as long as you're aware that's the effect you're producing.

Also, when you're using participles (adjectives made from verbs ending in -ing) word order becomes important for distinguishing where the verb applies. A good example would be "pungent burning stench" versus "burning pungent stench". Neither is incorrect, it's just a matter of what they're emphasizing. A tire fire is a pungent burning stench. Fresh vomit is a burning pungent stench. In the first, the burning stench is pungent. In the second, the pungent stench burns.

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
I Was Received Into The Church

My Dear Lord Cardinal -
Last night I was very much tempted
with a hard, absent heart.
Carried a taper to the altar.
Went forward as if I might fall dead.
I feel a human sadness.
What do I fear?
In how many ways is this life
what I most desire?

My Dear Lord Cardinal -
You must be tired
with this unfortunate affair.
I am very sorry
that you should be troubled
with ecclesiastical gnats
I find to infest chiefly high places.
Sad tidings travel so fast
I fear you will have heard all I have to tell you.

My Dear Lord Cardinal -
Received all sacraments.
A great plague of tongues
gives me much disquiet.
Tell me in what way
I may hereafter offend.
Much as I am enjoying Rome,
I am counting the weeks
to be at home again.

Excerpts taken from the personal diary and correspondence of Cardinal Henry Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, c. 1851-1857

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
The Treasures of Peterborough Abbey

pronunciation guide for non-British readers:
Ely – “Ee lee”
Peterborough – “Peter bruh”


William of Normandy
strides into England: he
swears he is rightful king -
takes the land promised him -
All know these measures.

Four years later he
orders a travesty:
from all the monasteries
in that fair land to seize
all of their treasures.

Hereward – outlaw he –
camped on the isle of Ely,
hears of the monarch’s plan –
summons his outlaw band,
sails to the abbey.

“As I love God,” quoth he,
“No cur of Normandy
shall have the smallest pin
sacred to God within
Peterborough Abbey.”

Monks they refuse his plea,
suffer him no entry:
so from the walls they dash,
burn all the town to ash,
burn the monks’ houses.

Through burning gates they break,
drive out the monks, and take
crown of the Lord divine,
crucifix, coin and shrine,
golden and silver.

Drag they this hoard from there –
haul it to Ely, where
Danish ships bear it forth
back to their homeland north,
safe in church stow it.

Afterwards

through their own carelessness,
and through their drunkenness,
in [but] one night the church
and all that was therein
was consumed by fire.


- From the Peterborough Chronicle, A.D. 1070 – as translated here

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
I just realised the sub deadline was changed to tonight so I didn't have to rush that

O wel

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

Maugrim posted:

I just realised the sub deadline was changed to tonight so I didn't have to rush that

O wel

:same:

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
pre:
DMT

I should start off by saying 		       	        that I did not emotionally 

or mentally prepare 			        	for this trip in anyway

this experience happened 		              	nearly a year ago 

and while some of the smaller 	              	        details may have slipped

from memory I believe 				  	what I experienced that night 

was powerful enough 			        	that I can still describe 

what happened to me 			        	with the detail and accuracy 

that I feel this trip 			        	report deserves

about two months ago 			         	I obtained two grams 

of DMT 						  	I was elated after 		

several years 					  	of searching for it

I took the DMT 					  	by sandwiching it 	

between two layers of dried 			  	mint leaves	
						
in the bowl of a glass bong			  	I put some dry 

tobacco in the body 				  	of the pipe 

along with some spice				  	in the kitchen I heated 

the pipe over the gas hob			        smoking is painful 

and stupid and 					  	I don’t enjoy any of it

the disadvantage of my method 		         	seemed to be that it led 

to quite some wastage				  	I spend all day mowing 

for my job                                              and suddenly 

these two still frames 	         	                of my boss and the mower 

I use at work flash 				  	through my brain 

like moving snapshots 				  	I knew 

a rising of consciousness 			        awareness of colour 

very effective now				        a vast purple coloured 

dome-like structure	 			        covered in fractal patterns 

extremely beautiful 				  	a valve of colour

then this feeling came over me 		         	a feeling I was seeing 

an ancient place					I had broken through 

excited happy and euphoric 			  	this did not last

I feel as if I can’t breathe 			  	whatever is left 

of my body isn’t functioning 				there was no longer a grid 

as if someone shattered it				I had strong spotlights 
	
on the ceiling 						pointed to my head	
			
I began to surmise 				      	that my technique was probably	
			
flawed and wasteful					I notice for the first time 			

two horses grazing 					in their pastures						

I felt my body again					there were walls a door 					

I was on a couch					the main thing I have taken 	

from this is a very					strong sense of my own mortality				

all I could think about 				for the next few days was 					

what in the hell happened to me				the rest of the evening is spent 

with grilling eating 					and laughing with Anatoli

different than before -- the light is gone out		no ill effects afterward.

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
formatting that was a bitch. everything taken from erowid trip reports.

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


Subs closed!

Winner is cda!

Crits tomorrow!

Anomalous Amalgam
Feb 13, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Doctor Rope
:negative:

Failed this one... sorry!

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


Crits!

Azza Bamboo
I enjoyed this quite a bit on a gut level; I laughed pretty well. Unfortunately, I found it hard to make a human connection in this one. It definitely qualifies as found poetry, and well done in my opinion, but it isn't terribly interesting in a documentary way. Whose story is being told? What do connect with on a human level (beyond irony, I mean.) So: enjoyable but not quite what we're looking for.

sephiRoth IRA
If I could declare co-winners, I would have. I really enjoyed the breaks in this one particularly, as it still felt epistolary, but with the heightened sense of timing and tension poetry gives. Craft-wise, great. My only real quibble is with, as above, the documentary portion. While the humanizing quality is definitely there, I think an Archbishop is pretty high up in the list of people whose stories have been told and told well already. That said plenty of docupoetry deals with exactly that sort of level of public official, so like I said, minor quibble.

Maugrim
I was feeling this one pretty well until I landed on "hereward" immediately followed with a poetic inversion and got pulled out of a relatively natural syntax. I appreciate the meter and rhyme scheme here as homage to the source material, and there are some really tasty bits of enjambment, but overall the diction and elevation of register due to the form pulled me out of any particular human relation. This one is so close, but it still screams "You're reading a poem! Look at it being all poetic!" and the points where the craft is a little looser become more apparent. In the spots where the meter makes things awkward, let natural diction and syntax take over.

cda
I would have never expected an Erowid trip report. So first off, props for that. That's honestly the biggest factor here: the elevation of what most people wouldn't consider poetic into something altogether different. Also, given the... questionable... quality of a number of those trip reports, it's refreshing to have some sort of intentionality applied to them, even if that intention is to be fragmented. To that end, I appreciate the form as reflective of the content, and how it heightens the sense of fragmentation. One of the things a tabbed/column form gives is that the poem can be read as both a single poem and as two separate poems, and the single poem is just confused enough to make the two separate columns seem relatively coherent independently. A huge benefit of this is, I think, the use of first-person to combine all the individual accounts into a single "I" speaker, unifying a number of individually disjointed pieces into a single disjointed piece. If that makes sense.

In the end, everyone did pretty drat good and it was honestly hard to choose, and cda's work was the one that felt like it got both the craft and the intent down best. But everyone had those in varying degrees. I think from a conceptual standpoint everyone got the gist, and that's what matters to me. And there could certainly be the genesis of a larger project in each of these submissions.

Well done!

rickiep00h fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Feb 18, 2020

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Congrats cda (also autocorrect hates your username) and thank you rickie for the crit.

Interprompt:

Docupoetry from your favorite something awful thread

sephiRoth IRA
Jun 13, 2007

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan
Car Trouble

I got an email back from Budget saying they were sorry
you pay what they theoretically lost
absent a law specifically preventing this exact thing.

There is a contract doctrine
- the actual calculation of a loss of use of a rental -
but as a lay person reading that,
lol you are getting taken for a loving ride.
I'm not a lawyer and yeah, you should actually talk to one.

Excerpts taken from posts in the Legal Advice A/T thread

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
Thank you for the crit! I didn't like the prompt much at first (couldn't think of anything I wanted to document) but I actually enjoyed learning about this kind of poetry, and I learned some history in the process of writing it. Which I'm sure was your intention. Good stuff.

Prooooompt

rickiep00h
Aug 16, 2010

BATDANCE


sephiRoth IRA posted:

Congrats cda (also autocorrect hates your username)

*scrabbles to edit crit post*

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit

sephiRoth IRA posted:

Congrats cda (also autocorrect hates your username) and thank you rickie for the crit.

Interprompt:

Docupoetry from your favorite something awful thread

lol. great idea

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cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
I really liked "I Was Received Into the Church." Was each stanza from a single letter or did you rearrange the text more than that? For the trip reports I initially pulled things almost in straight chronological order (a lot of trip reports include either actual timestamps or words that describe the passage of time) but then as I started to work it into a poem, things started floating out of place, so I'm interested in what your compositional process was like for your poem; the imagery is excellent (this was the hardest part for me because god drat so many of those stupid trip reports are the same thing...I saw a bunch of colorssss mannnnnnn -- the saving grace was that they usually get very descriptive about how they took the drug lol)

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