I cannot say for now that you have bested Shakespeare, Milton and whom else, but certainly you explore the regions, unexplored by these. It makes your production fresh... and odorous. I had not been a pronounced foot fetishist before you came into the field, but now I see the need to reconsider. It proves that you are a real artist, if you manage to make your art infectious. Interestingly it concerns only women’s feet; no matter how they smell it’s enticing. Men’s feet cannot boast of such abilities, and considering that odors are chemically identical, there’s something deeply mystical in it.
Also there’s a mystique in the pair of shoes’ referring to themselves as “I”, though physically separate. The uniqueness of the soul... as a receptor of an odor... you touch on the great mysteries of life...
In short, I’m applauding.
Note an error in part 1: “stops” for “steps” if I do not err myself (I do not have now a means of checking).
You keep repeating “dream logic” as a kind of mantra to drive away less pleasant connotations. But of course it is not. The investigators on the matter (Ian Stevenson primarily) have long suspected that such recurrent dreams as yours have something to do with past lives. If you need the logic, here’s the logic which explains it. Look at this room with the windows on the wrong side - it would seem as if some other room from a past life tries to resurface blending with the current one. It’s very simple but you do not hasten to embrace this explanation, because it entails the admission that something very bad happened in that past life. So you construct the defense mechanism called “the dream logic”. It may be good for practical reasons, but it stands in the way of literature that does not get along well with defense mechanisms. Dropping them can make you into a good writer; all good writers are more or less persons with past life memories - or so at least the Indian philosophy teaches us.
I and my wife have preferred the bra. Our consensus is that the place must be soft, warm and cosy. Not so dangerous as inside the mouth. Also it can save us some cost of transportation (trains, taxi and other kinds of public transport); I think we can persuade the giantess to walk in the direction we need, highlighting the merits of sightseeing along the way. Probably she would be cooperative also in improving the weather, because she is undoubtedly a witch as all giantesses are.
Cool! Really! To state it briefly: God is a concept invented by those who want to control and it is so transparent that in itself it would not stand a minute. How does it stand then? Ah, here’s the thing: we have a damned great multitude who WANT TO BE CONTROLLED. God is just the name for this noble desire. They do not question the origin of the concept and they do not bother about the philosophy and the resulting freedom, because they have an exquisite freedom of their own: the freedom from thinking, I mean. So we have two kinds of freedom; which one is better? It’s simply the matter of choice.
As for me I choose to give to your essay all the stars I have at my disposal.
I thought at first (naturally) that she was going to receive a letter from her lover and then to plan together killing off that husbandly bastard. I was prepared to wish them good luck heartily. The therapy course instead of a lover toned down my expectations: looks like that the beatings of Caitlin would continue for a while. But anyway they must be stopped in the end; I would offer to expand the title of your book to “Bruises fade... on the grave of the hitter”.
I love when women write not thinking about males. I suspect the women possess some extra sixth sense which shrink in the presence of males (because males personify social conventions which do not make much sense generally and are especially unfavorable to the sixth one). That’s the reason why the women’s love poetry is rather lame as a rule. But when our poetesses shift their themes to regions uninhabited by males we get some precious items - glimpses of the world of the fairy freedom.
I give this poem five stars, but it deserves all six really.
It’s a serious poem. Reviewers should be wary of it. If your friend takes offenses easily, we must think twice about our wording. So I think that this poem is great - as your friend is great. We only feel a bit sorry that he is no bigger than a rhino and consequently not so great as we’d like him to be, but I think it’s just because he’s very young yet. As he grows bigger, poems about him will be greater too!
Well, well, well... A bit cruel, I guess. Though smacking undoubtedly of some ancient tradition, according to which what is really funny about clowns is their death. Because clowns themselves in a way impersonate death and definitely impersonate chaos.
But I would warn the protagonist of the story: he laughs too early. The clown is not dead really. A pin can not kill a clown; he just pretends, and he will rise to get his own last laughter
The rhyme is not your best friend. You have the poetic vision that produces such good chunks as “a thin blanket of white That reflects the winter’s sun dim light Blinding the hunting wolf...” Or the last stanza of “Deer” (except “around”).
But you should watch the rhyme and not let it misbehave. Or else it would throw in such nonsense as “fresh flowers”, unduly following “hours”, - what fresh flowers would there be after a “cold and frosty winter night”? And what is “renown” doing in the last line, being a noun in the first place? Of course, it rhymes with “down”, but this only does not qualify it for being put into the poem.
You are in touch with nature and manage to share it so we wish only that your rhymes would be natural too.
Looks a bit more like some personal reprimanding than real poetry. Poetry must be impersonal in a way: addressed not to a particular person only, but to all mankind (even if formally a real addressee is involved; a Horace may be writing verses to a Maecenas, but he still sounds universal, because everybody can identify). Your poem lacks as yet this universality; but it has an undeniable merit of sober and realistic approach to the theme. No beautiful princes, no pseudo-romantic stuff; you see clearly (and name it) what a male needs (“to get dirty”) and state your intention “to stay clean”. It would make a very good poetical theme; it only has to be a bit more metaphorical and aphoristic.
The poem is good but for the last line which is bleak and does not convey any interesting meaning (except the need to get a rhyme for “mind”).
But “eight-legged terrors” are excellent; I’ve never met such expressive poetic description of the spiders.
And the humour of “I wished I had a spouse” is exquisite. I know you do not have a very high opinion of males, but certainly it must warm them that you still classify them higher than spiders. This is a man’s pride!
At first I was a bit confused about this dialogue, ‘cause it evidently calls for some rewriting of the sacred history. We are used to think that the times when dialogues with God were possible are gone and this august personage is resolutely OFF for any reviewing, conversations and other compliances. But when I’d reached the new commandment “Doubt your beliefs”, I changed my opinions radically. If God proposes to “doubt beliefs” (including beliefs in Him evidently), he must have got tired of his usual course (which implied rather demanding to believe than otherwise). One may think that the restrictions on the prophetic activity are also lifted. And so I do not see any obstacles to greeting you as a new prophet of the very communicative and humorous God.
The first stanza is very good.
Further down, some downscaling begins. I would avoid such phrases as “human emotion” in poetic compositions. It belongs more to the rhetoric, concerning which the good advice of Verlaine holds:
Prends l’éloquence et tords-lui son cou.
And two examples “I hate you” versus “I love you” are too straightforward in my opinion. Too slogan-like probably. Some other examples ambiguous in wording but unambiguous in meaning would make this poem truly great.
Where’s the Grail? That’s the question.
You have observed it very rightly that this battle is fought for no Grail, for no castle and for no princess. And you have concluded that the battle has no sense at all. And it is very true. And not true at the same time.
Very true because the battle is not fought between the real enemies, i.e. the believers and the non-believers. The atheists you write about are also believers with no better reasons to believe than Christians have. The evolutionary concept lies strictly within the boundaries of faith and cannot live on its own without a god supporting it.
So it is really believers who fight among themselves. There’s nothing new to it. They did it all the history along.
This fight is inevitable. Believers want to see God exactly as they want to see Him and don’t want to see Him the way other believers want to.
Probably it would be more logical if they fought with God, because He is silent and does not show himself to settle all arguments. But God is unreachable... and there are so many contradictory ways to interpret His silence, that the battle is bound to go on.
It’s brave and resolute and no-nonsense. Strangely for this well-minded poem “ocean’s sea” works in the opposite direction. Maybe it would be more respectful of the veterans if you improve this to “on air or land or STORMY sea”?
It’s brave and resolute and no-nonsense. Strangely for this well-minded poem “ocean’s sea” works in the opposition direction. An ocean is not a sea and a sea is not an ocean.
Maybe it would be more respectful of the veterans if you improve this to “on air or land or STORMY sea”?
And once again I like it.
There’s a poet named Fyodor Tyutchev, which is deemed to be a very great poet in Russia (for reference - Russia is a country, situated somewhat to the north of Papua-New Guinea). This poet Tyutchev wrote much about the chaos and if the topic can be developed successfully he did it successfully. But your “or was the chaos invited” sounds great even compared to this specialist in all things chaotic, Tyutchev. You did this invitation in one of your more chaotic minutes and you forgot about it when things had settled down a bit, but still the chaos came and you ask yourself “Oh, was it me who have invited ALL THIS?”
Mighty poetry.
I like this too.
In India we have seen statues of Shiva holding a deer in one of his many hands. My wife kept asking me - what does the deer mean? I knew of course that the deer is a sacred animal with Dravidians and gave this correct answer, but I also checked out on Google and found many funny explanations. The funniest one was that the deer symbolizes the human mind; they both are unstable, fickle and prone to dart from one place (or subject) to another. Shiva in this perspective grasps the deer of mind with his hand to restrain its movements and to make it FOCUS. The explanation as you see is as nonsensical as you could desire.
And the truth is that poets’ minds have full freedom to run, race, frolic, cavort and do many other elaborately silly things.
Full of covert meanings, spoiled, vain,
With serpent hairs of a Gorgon, each one having its own roguish character,
Hissing, twisting, flickering with tongues,
Sinisterly present, abominably playful...
Pretty humorous. I love the calendrical poetry and encourage you to write out all the year’s round. Some good poets have done it: Edmund Spencer, Vyacheslav Ivanov... (the latter more conventionally derived March from the god of war’s name, Mars). “Where garden walls had sway” is a bit disappointing. Being thoroughly respectful of garden walls, I still think that it is gardens themselves that hold sway over us.
Gotten lost, I guess? I respect your hardcore “gotten”, but “loss” seems to be just an error.
In other respects the piece is pleasantly realistic (for those who delight in realism). Il leaves us with a question: will Mister Chun Ping Lau, when he’ll beat Mister Chuan Lupin, stay firmly the course with the ideals of multiculturalism? Or he’ll throw them overboard, listening to the silent voice of Dao (道)? Which is simple and does not encourage fiddling with anything that smells of “multi”?
Being a Celt, I find your treatment of Celts a bit harsh. But maybe it’s a good feedback after all - we, Celts, have to know how people see us and try to improve our image. The literary merits of your story are obvious; it grips and does not let go till the end. I’m disappointed slightly only with the description of the sword; it’s too noncommittal and lacks sinister details building up to the climax.
I do not know if the addressee will read this, but we do and we have our very special feelings about the author. Bordering on jealousy? Maybe, maybe...
We love these “nighttime forests”. It reminds of Robert Frost’s overwhelming “the woods are lovely, dark and deep”. It has an unmistakable flavor of exclusivity, exquisite feelings not to be shared by everybody. And that your ex-lover enjoys all these finesses upstairs with you demoted downstairs tells (in the dream language) that he is just another Narcissus who needs somebody to be below to feel that he himself is really on high. (I repeat, this is only the dream language, which like any other language conveys a meaning, but does not vouch right away for the veracity).
So the phrase “she glared at me... we kissed”... I read it out of context, purely grammatically, as if it was her, not him, whom you kissed. Her - just another victim of his narcissism.
(Of course, you understand that all this is just about the text and my impressions around it, not about your real circumstances).
Citizens of outer Space!
Your invitation to embrace
You - does not sink well into our minds.
Because our psyche has all kinds
Of doubts and restrictions and scruples to feel
Love for you. Who’s to blame? John Keel!
That’s how it was - me and my wife were shopping yesterday in our supermarket, when we spotted a novel display: Halloween pumpkins with sinister and strangely familiar faces, put on sale. Halloween is quite a new tradition in our country, so we looked for some forty or maybe fifty seconds, completely charmed by these dear guests.
And when we had come home your story came in to add to our festive mood.
Although the events described do not seem to be extremely funny in themselves you have an excellent sense of humour which helps you to face them and not to lose your head in this rather intricate world. And this goes over to a reader, so if you ask your audience if you have some negative energy I’m inclined to answer in the negative (no pun intended).
“I don’t want any reprisals from this world or beyond” sounds like an updated Edgar Allan Poe!
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