Comments for IT

Comment on Peter Redgrove by admin

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:58 +0000

DAATH

That hour in the rainstorm by the muck-coloured Bosphorous, shaped like a biological
diagram of a vagina and penis, I was free for an hour, but only to buy cheap army boots.
Within days I was a Turk, and within weeks such a Mongol I had to run to Chinatowns
to feel human. Nowhere is pressureless, bloodless, fateless. We fall off family trees, we break
our backs, and then have to crawl towards a destiny; but all we get are penny-in-the-slot
glimpses, an hour at the Bosphorous, then back into the tunnels, conveyor belts, and lifts
of the time-machine. No time for Sophia. At the emotional market we barter
angst for scorn. At night, dreams of a golden cat chewing on the corpse of an antelope
are the army boots chewing my feet, but I march onto Nicosia, round the Turk wall.

In England I walk under buzzards. In London I walk under falcons. Their cries of yarak
thrill sadly. The diseased khaki of the plane trees sways in a wind too depressed for business.
Solitary bees in cells do not make honey, but their noises would saw through the city
to tap honey reservoirs. A bureau, a bureau, another bureau to placate, walking with too much
printed matter and too few dinar, to haggle and shout, to be less ripped-off.

Ignominy, and concealment of it, is the history standard.

I have tried to claim a square inch of the A to Z as my own, to cozen it from the Duke of Westminster,
to find it in the Thames as one would find a coin, and wash it in the Thames for auction,
but the Thames became the Bosphorous, and though I was a foreigner by the Londinium river,
I was moreso at the Byzantine.

The Duke of Westminster was having none of it: the vagina and penis conjoined in brown rain.

Comment on STOP PRESS by admin

admin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:29:30 +0000

Niall:

Bring on World Anarchism. Now is its chance.

Comment on STOP PRESS by nick

nick — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:45:37 +0000

I totally agree with this article.

Comment on Le Song des Songs? by admin

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:19:16 +0000

Niall: You never know. His queens, her kidneys. Sexual dialysis. Gainsbourg was a French poet, and like his beloved Rimbaud, he used words in such a way as to squeeze every possible meaning out of them.

Comment on Le Song des Songs? by tom walsh

tom walsh — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:45:17 +0000

“entre tes reins” is also a pun:
between your reins (for riding);
between you queens;
etc…

Comment on capitalism: a Sonnet by dave tomlin

dave tomlin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:44:37 +0000

Well, that seems the end of that little spat. However, one last word and the real reason for my contentions. Now that fashion, fickle as it is, has decreed that the Petrarchan Sonnet is ‘obsolete’, ‘old fashioned,’ ‘archaic’, ‘not worth considering’ and so on, this concensus opinion of the rah rah free-formers will, unfortunately, deter younger poets from even attempting one, which is not just a pity, but more of a tragedy.
Writing free form poetry (this is actually an oxymoron) relies on inspiration and the imaginative mind. But writing a Petrarchan Sonnet means utilising the anyletical mind in a marriage with that inspiration. To willingly place oneself inside the prison of this strict form and yet still, in spite of the handicaps it demands, overcoming the difficulties and producing good and wholesome poetry is a triumph for the muse. Engaging in such a battle is a joy unecountered elsewhere, and it is this pleasure which those ignorant of its opportunities deny themselves. Like many other instances of this syndrome, valuable standards are lost by, as in this case, ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’. This is the crux of my argument and the reason why I contended this issue in the first case.

Comment on The Graffiti Poet by admin

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:21:21 +0000

Yea! I think he is a bloody genius Mike

Comment on The Graffiti Poet by Jay

Jay — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:38:39 +0000

Robert montgomery? Really?

Comment on capitalism: a Sonnet by dave tomlin

dave tomlin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:40:46 +0000

The Petrarchan Sonnet was introduced to the English court by Thomas Wyatt, it was then transformed by the Earl of Surrey, for reasons given, into the English Sonnet, ABBA- CDDC, although Spencer came up with a slightly different form which only relieved it of one set of four rhyming words, ABBA – BCCB. Still preserving the Petrarchian cadence of 1221 which was the real revolution.
The next step was to ABAB, which was the counter revolution, reducing the form to a more ‘user friendly’ form, in any terms this cannot be considered an advance.A Sonnet form cannot be ‘trashed’ by the content, although it must have been fun to trash my speculative little tale.

Comment on SHAGSPURT by dave tomlin

dave tomlin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:19:59 +0000

If the controversy is back in fashion it’s a pity there are not more comments here from the interested public, rather than just you and I tilting. One point only, (I won’t mention the word ‘quibble’), you speak of ‘truth’ and I wonder, given the time scale, whether this can ever be known, which means that the issue is a matter of opinion. Also, the anti-Stratfordians are not attacking poetry or the work itself, but rather the matter of authorship, The Bard’s poetry itself exists on an international scale and is impervious to all attack. As for poetry itself being under attack, the idea is preposterous, it can only be deprived of a public forum, something about which Harry Fainlight has an interesting thing to say.

‘The pathos of poetry is that it is locked out; that it speaks of what is wild and outside the human condition… outside the human routine. To make it the centre of ordinary life is not just a mistake… it means something criminal is afoot; some scheme to displace the centre of social gravity.’ Harry Fainlight ‘From the Notebooks.’