Fic recs, December 12th · 3:40pm Dec 12th, 2013
I’m taking a page out of Chris’s blog, for those of you who don’t read it, to recommend review blog site The City of Doors, run by a dude named Griffin. Lately, he does lots of MLP fic reviews, but he’s also reviewed actual fiction and non-fiction, along with writing his own stuff and occasional posts about anime and RPGs. He’s read a lot of the same stories I have, I was pleased to see, and he’s got some very different opinions about some things (we, for instance, have had a lovely in-depth chat about Fallout: Equestria). His reviews, like mine, are generally personal reactions with occasional textual analysis. So if you like reading people’s opinions about ponyfic (and you must! you're reading this!), you’ll want to add his to your list. :)
H: 0 R: 0 C: 2 V: 0 N: 2 I: 1
Hey There, Cheerilee by Comet Burst
Reading by Scribbler
Genre: Romance
So Cheerilee is a complete sad sack because she doesn’t have a schmoopy doopy doo of her own and the events of Hearts and Hooves Day fucked up her chances with Big Mac. Except, oh wait, she finds a letter in the trash and it’s from Big Mac and he wants a second chance because there is nothing horrendously creepy about actually wanting to pursue a romance with someone you were magically forced into almost-marriage with. I found it amusing that romance novels were mentioned in the text, because that’s about the level of ridiculousness on display here. There is no way I could like this story.
Not Recommended
It Is Tomorrow by Sharpened Quill
Reading by Doom Pie
Genre: Coping With Loss
This is the fanfic your mother warned you about. There’s a good idea at its heart: Celestia, wracked with grief at the thought of losing Twilight to old age, takes control of time, forcing Equestria to live the same day over and over, until such time as she can be made to see reason and let tomorrow come. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of idea that requires more than 2k words to execute. Also every pony is out of character, Celestia especially. Also there are hints of NLR screaming in the background. Also there’s an uncomfortable focus on three guards who are otherwise nonentities, and one of them is named Darkened Steed, which is the worst pony name since Joshua. This is through and through awful, don’t read it.
Not Recommended
Crystal Clear Confessions by LDSocrates
Reading by Reconciliono
If I wasn’t listening to these while in the bath or washing dishes, I might consider this guy. But he mumbles too much and his volume is generally too low for me to hear over the water, even at full volume.
Genre: Dear John Letter
Okay, so, in checking out these new fanfic readers, I’ve been trying really hard to pick videos that are both new and involve one-shots, or at least really short chaptered fics. Unfortunately, this isn’t helped when the reader doesn’t label their video properly. So this is just chapter 1 of a story that is still incomplete (it’s actually on my to-read, so one day, if the writer finishes it, I will read the whole thing). The upside of this is that I was disappointed the story “ended” on a low note; now I know there will be a resolution eventually. Anyway, I do look forward to finishing this because the opening chapter has just enough merit to make me want to see how it turns out. Shining Armor walks through the scattered remnants of his broken life while reading (or maybe remembering, I’m not sure), a letter from Cadence, who had been a changeling all along, the real Princess Mi Amore Cadenza having never met Shining Armor. I liked this for two reasons: A) changeling Cadence; B) it gives a somewhat believable long-game plan for Chrysalis’s failed attack on Canterlot. Well, and it draws from the comics a little, which I also appreciate. Anyway, I don’t know how good it will get, but there’s hope.
Incomplete
Soarin’s Quest by Scribbler
Reading by Scribbler, Goombasa and The Lost Narrator
Genre: Slice of Life
This story posed a question I cannot adequately answer: why do I still enjoy “Soarin loves pie”? It’s literally the only thing we know about him. Other one-note character jokes from the show tend to irritate me, but not this one. I especially love it in the context of SoarinJack shipping, which sadly there is none of in this story. The “quest” itself is pretty simple: Soarin wants to make pie, he sucks at baking, he asks Applejack for help, she sends him to SugarCube Corner, and Pinkie gets Mrs. Cake to help him. Up to that point, I was expecting something of a comedy of errors, maybe with some over-the-top pie-based shenanigans. Unfortunately, all I got was Baking 101 With Mrs. Cake. Now, for what it is, it’s pretty well written, even if I didn’t find the story overly interesting, but the ending especially was fairly unsatisfying: Soarin, having made his pie, gains a little confidence. I just felt this was weird because he didn’t necessarily seem to be lacking in confidence, per se; he comes into this “quest” with a healthy understanding of his own failings as a baker, which is hardly what you'd call low self-esteem. Those looking for something light and fluffy may enjoy this, but I wanted something more that I never got.
Recommended for Slice of Life Fans
The Laughter and the Night by AugieDog
Reading by Illya Leonov
Genre: Poem
Note: After rereading the story on my own, I have come to the conclusion that the reading doesn't do this piece justice, and despite the story flaws near the end, it stands as a rather remarkable piece of fan-poetry. Read the following review with lots of grains of salt.
First, a disclaimer: I HATE POETRY. Most people I have seen write poetry do so without any concept of what writing poetry entails. Poetry, specifically rhymed and/or metered poetry, is hard to write. And if you’re going to write something that rhymes or has a particular form to it, why would you choose to use that form only to break it when it becomes too hard to fill? You wouldn’t write a sonnet without the final couplet; you wouldn’t write a villanelle and then not repeat the first line where you’re supposed to. So why write something in iambic tetrameter and then say “Fuck tetrameter, I need more syllables in this line”? If you’re going to write poetry, make sure you fucking write the damn meter and rhyme properly, or just write free verse or goddamn prose. (And don’t even get me started on half-rhymes; they make my skin crawl.) So many people are so sloppy with their meter that I no longer derive pleasure from reading poetry by anyone who isn’t either really, really dead or severely, critically acclaimed as a poet. Enter AugieDog. I’d more or less assumed that he was really good at poetry because he seems to write a lot of it and, hey, his prose is really darn good. Surely that translates, right? Well… Not entirely. The good news is, proper meter make up at least 60-70% of this, which is far better than I expect from people on the internet, but it did mean that whenever a line had too many syllables (and I think it was always more, never less) or when the meter broke, that error really stood out. When you’ve got someone as good as Illya Leonov reading a poem like this, metric breakage is extremely jarring and just leads to me sitting there shouting, "BUT YOU COULD HAVE DONE THIS INSTEAD, IT'S SO OBVIOUS!" There were some understated rhymes, but I only noticed one that was really a stretch, and I don’t remember what it was, so the author is off the hook there. This does suffer from another problem of poem-stories, which is out of character dialogue. With Luna this isn’t so much a problem, but Pinkie? Her being a rock trolllove expert is something I could normally swallow, but when she uses words like ‘yearn’ in the name of completing a rhyme, my disbelief is stretched even further. I was, however, impressed with the humor. There are really only three big gags, the first being perpetrated by Luna, but they all stood out and proved that Pinkie was a good choice for the story. They were also surprising because, at its heart, this is an adventure dealing with Luna trying to find an old boyfriend/corruptor of hers who’s been imprisoned for the last millennium and a half. (Side note: I got some real cognitive dissonance off the name “Bucephalus” because at first I thought it was a reference to Tonight I Shall Be Laughter.) Pinkie’s the only one who can help her because reasons, and they have a picnic and talk about boys and stuff. I’m serious. Despite the silly summary, the only spot where this falls down plot-wise is the ending. There’s this big buildup about how dagnasty Bucephalus is, and then once they find him they just sort of free him, and then Luna kills him because, I guess, which was pretty disappointing. I was hoping for something more epic. “But Present,” you wheeze, years of Dorito dust built up over layers of cheeseburger grease making your voice sound like a lawn mower with a head cold, “you’ve never written any poetry! I bet you couldn’t do any better!” To the first, I say thee nay. I started off writing poetry instead of fiction and that's why I'm a Poem Nazi but it eventually lost its luster because it is so fucking hard to write properly (I never could write a villanelle ;_;). But I would be hard-pressed to write a fanfic poem, the least reason for which is simply making it over a thousand words. But I’ve come up with an idea. I wrote it down and tagged it “I would have to be stupid to write this”, but there is every possibility that sometime in the future, when the fandom lies a smoldering Twilicorn-shaped crater in the depths of the internet, that I will put my money where my mouth is and show all y’all how it’s done. Until then, well, I’m now very dubious about Mr. Dog’s poetry skills, but I’m not ready to remove all his poems from my to-read just yet. I still have hope.
Recommended
So yeah, take any reviews of poetry from me with a grain of salt. My standards are more or less unreachable.
How overwhelmingly negative.
Honestly, it make me all tingly inside.
Thank you!
Also I can agree with the jarring bits of that poem, in defense of Mr Dog, his poetry is often far superior but sometimes things like that happen.
I look forward to hearing your poem and I feel your pain regarding villanelles (Those who write them well I still maintain are robots.)
But why are you not coming to me for your Cheerilee needs?!
It'll be complete in just nine hundred and eighty-eight more chapters!
Thanks for the conditional recommendation, my friend. I always love reading these blog posts. I would have made Soarin's Quest more in depth and gone through it a bit more, but I was in one of those 'one hour, no editing time, just start writing when I go' challenges with a friend. And who would have guessed that stream of consciousness writing from a slightly aggravated Filipino man tends to be slightly lackluster.
I'm glad we have the same level of appreciation of the metric foot here.
Not to devalue free verse, but... yeah. I'm devaluing it.
All of us do free verse every day. It's called, you know. Talking. Actually putting the time into thinking of making stuff rhyme, yet make sense, yet have a rhythmic flow to it is actually much harder than people would give credit for, and this is even with me letting things slide with looser rhymes and syllabic near-rhymes.
I really do appreciate a good adherence to meter and stress and all that. You know what pisses me off the most, especially in songs? When they sing a line which has the stress on the wrong syllable of a word. That just grates my tits.
Rage. Rage all the way.
1599305
1599406
No creative endeavor:
Is ever finished, someone once said. It's simply abandoned.
That being said, I'd consider it a real favor if someone could point out the lines in "The Laughter and the Night" where the prosody falls down so I can go in and fix them. I guess I'm still too close to it to actually see them 'cause when I read the dang thing through, it seems to scan all the way from stem to stern....
Mike
You keep riding that "rhyming poetry should rhyme, and metered poetry should be metered" train, PP. Augie's actually quite good in that regard from what I've read of his (which doesn't include the story you've reviewed, so no comment there), but if I had a nickle for every "poem" which was brought low by awful execution, I'd probably be crushed under their weight. And from then on, everyone would remember me only as "that guy who got crushed by, like, a ton of nickles," which isn't the worst epitaph ever, but it's still not what I'm aiming for.
Eh; all the cool kids are into alliterative epics these days, anyway.
> It Is Tomorrow
Readers, be warned. It IS that bad. I took a look out of morbid curiosity. I made it as far as:
which I guess doesn't sound so bad out of context, but … Luna doesn't know where Celestia is (??) but can teleport to her anyway (!), she's raised an army of armored battleponies on the moon (?!) which she doesn't have control over any more (!!), but she doesn't want to use her army so she's personally visiting her sister with three OCs who are never mentioned again (except for one of them to deliver a one-off gag about teleportation sickness). The same day keeps repeating but everypony knows that the same day is repeating, which means the calendar's not advancing but time actually is passing, which destroys the whole premise of the story …
It's all like that. Worse, every single line of dialogue is exposition, and 80% of the rest is a wall of solid tell. Descriptions added to break up the telling are either gratuitous or contradictory. The story's logic all crumbles when you think about it for even a second.
The three moonarmyponydiplomat OCs mentioned, by the way, are Darkened Steed, Ink Blot, and Shiny Opal.
> poetry
With Augie, on the other hoof, I'm not understanding your rage. He's no slouch; take a look at the unrepeated rhymes of Seamstress, for example. I've only read one chapter of Laughter and the Night, I'll admit, and that was a while back (alas, the unread updates on my favorites list alone are in triple digits) — maybe it's rougher than the other poetry of his I've seen — but he doesn't set off my metrical rage.
1599406 >> Present Perfect
Anyone who complains about the challenge of consistent meter gets the world's tiniest violin solo from me until they've tried rhyming iambic monometer. POET PLZ.
That having been said, there is definitely something to be said for staggering your meter, introducing variations for effect, using implied/slant rhymes, or otherwise messing with form for creative effect. But you have to master the rules to break the rules effectively. Running five extra syllables and a noun-verb inversion just to rhyme "she took a break" with "the pool of cold water her thirst did slake"* is the poetic equivalent of prose mangling like "they picked, they're noses".
* Made-up example, so that I don't pick on anyone. …'s nose.
1599305 >> Present Perfect
Aquillo actually wrote a pony villanelle. Well, mostly. It veers from the form at the end in order to advance an idea. The thing about villanelles is that they're terribly problematic if you're trying to do anything other than meditate on an unchanging moment. This is a case where I think consciously breaking the form served him better than sticking to it.
Sestinas, it should be noted, are nearly as constraining, but Augie's done a pony one (and stayed faithful to it all the way through).
That stallion got made fun of when he was growing up. His name is hilarious!
1599305
I learned about villanelles at the same time as another highly technical poem form, the sestina. That one I was able to pull off (not that it was great) but villanelles are just fucking impossible. I think you have to think in four dimensions to make them work.
1599343
Lemme know when it's complete, then. :B
1599386
For an hour challenge, it's definitely good, don't get me wrong. I thought the writing was an improvement over the other stories of yours I've read. :)
1599406
Rage against the dying of that light, I feel you.
I'm not against free verse, personally. You can get a lot of mileage out of poem shape that gives free verse more power than prose.
1599585
I would be willing to do this, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't get to it immediately. :B Poke me in a month or so?
1600083
Oh yes, let's not forget the horribly misnamed night guard SHINY OPAL (this worked in Fallout: Equestria; it does not work here).
Like I said, I'll read more of Augie's poetry later. I know he's written a lot and I'm assuming this is a fairly early attempt.
>dem hyphens
>get out
I HAVE READ ZECORA DIALOGUE THAT WAS WORSE THAN THIS
Also stop breaking the comments, horizon, you're letting all the muggles know you're a wizard. D:
SESTINA! THAT IS THE WORD I WAS LOOKING FOR!
1600353
ffs, if it had been Darkened Steel, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad! It would still be bad, but c'mon.
1600914
I'll put you on:
My list. Not that I have a list of people to take virtual sticks to, but I do have a list of things I need to pick up at the store to make pumpkin soup. Yes, I'll put you on that list.
Mike Again
1599585
Hey Augie! I hadn't actually read it yet! I was just agreeing with PresentPerfect's sentiments, and none of my comments were directed towards your piece directly. I don't really go and bash specific works like that; if I ever have anything to say I try to be constructive.
I will, however, read it and see if what Present Perfect says rings true. Right now I'm a bit busy juggling a bunch of stuff, but when I get around to it, I'll send you a PM, yeah?
1600083
1599585 1600914 1600948
I will say something about poetry, though. In all seriousness. I don't HATE free verse. I don't HATE the weird placements of words on a screen. I write my prose in a very poetic way as well. I just don't think it's as simple as what MOST people would consider or think. A lot of people tend to just write stuff and plop it down on a page, ignoring things just as Horizon said - the purposeful abuse of things like dangling syllables and ESPECIALLY foot inversions which work well when it reads naturally and turns a poem into poop when it's forced.
That said though, I'd like to share with you all my favouritesest ever poem by a Scottish (of course) poet named Edwin Morgan. The poem is entitled, simply, "The Loch Ness Monster's Song" (of course). And this isn't a joke, no.
The Loch Ness Monster's Song by Some Scot
1601105
Gauntlet, comma, thrown, comma, returned:
Woo-hoo!
Applause
to you
because
you dare
to stare
into
the eye
of my
mindscrew
But not
until
you fill
each jot
of line
with rhyme
will we
truly
all see
iambic mono poetry
1600914
You will note that the above poem is so remarkably boring as to contain no hyphens. :V
Also, now I want Scribbler to do a reading of The Loch Ness Monster's Song. That's so much better read out loud. Does Scribbler read your blog?
1601248
Oh boy.
Give
me leave
to heave
to breathe
stanzas
like a
panzer
tank, so
strong and
long, a
barrel
pointing
daunting
glowing
flowing
down this path
at last
it's time for me to kick your ass
Alright, that's enough, I've shown remarkable restraint
but it's time to cut the nonsense and take the limit off constraint
you wanna talk of gauntlets?
you're gone, let's
not count on
this conquest
you're entering
you step in my nest
where my words are like children
ready to spill some
blood on the floor and your blood is my vision
there's no intermission
no second decision
the moment you step in
you stand at attention
You talk of your silly rhymes and poetry
Well I'm not gonna run and hide and let it be
You want the real man's battle
not some 'gentleman's duel'
so stick your gloves and your top hat
back up your -- oooohhh
kay, can't say that, gotta keep this PG
but you still got a ways to go to beat me
if you wanna throw a challenge
be a man and show it
don't be a stupid poet
come out and throw your hands up
cause the world shows no dissention
if you wanna hit back
then the single one convention
is found in Epic Rap
When I heard about a story called Soarin's Quest about pies, I immediately think of a youtube video in which an image of Soarin bounces past many photos of pies while the Brodyquest music plays.
With regards to poetry, I really only care about song lyrics and rap, which is kind of like poetry but not really. I lost interest when I learned that official poetry recitation works differently than how I thought it did. Still, I appreciate the value of a good meter and it bugs me when Zecora on the show can't say good couplets. I'm pretty sure that even I can make those, though I may not get the chance to prove it for a while.
Thanks for showing me that blog. I tried doing something like that once, but it didn't turn out well since I did a chapter at a time for both fanfiction and books (I covered The Immortal Game and the first volume of Project Horizons for the former section, and I should move those blog posts to this site.). Reading through his Fallout Equestria review, though, I immediately notice him praising the way that the fic used music as a positive force and emphasized how it brings ponies together. I disagree; the fic didn't go far enough in that direction. It isn't brought up that often or that well. One of the things I wanted to do in my spinoff fic is give that more focus by making it about a musician who embraces the craft instead of neglecting it like a certain mare did.
1600083
Holy shit, how did you do that footnote thing and move it to the right side of the comment? I didn't know that was possible!
1601846
FAQ
Fimfic
1601105
Free verse, like all poetry, requires thought behind it. (Of course, there's also a school of thought where everything is poetry, from epic sagas to shopping lists.)
That poem you linked to is amazing.
NO
BAD
STAHP
1601248
It may not have hyphens, but your rhymes are awful why are people writing terrible poetry in my journal WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE ;_;
And she reads my blogs, sometimes. :B
1601360
did... did you just turn this into a rap battle x.x pls stahp
1601846
Tell me more...
1602683 1601248
You gon' let him diss you like that man? I say we team up and RAP HIM TO DEATH.
PresentPerfect, there's no turning back for me now. I'm gonna write that epic rap battle fic and you're going to read it and be like Z'AWW MAN THAT SHIT IS HELLA TIGHT and you'll be impressed with my sick rhymes and you'll love me forever and be my rap queen and you'll have a fic recs blog dedicated to my rap fic and it'll be like TING, GOLDEN BALLS BABY YEAH and the whole world will rejoice and e'rypony'll wanna be dissed by me and all that, yeah.
1602709
Your rhyme
is shit
it's time
to quit
1602712
I concede.
1602712 1602717
I concede.
1602683
> NO
> BAD
> STAHP
> awful
> terrible
> pls stahp
man pp when you phrase it that way i can't even tell whether your brain is boiling out of your ears ironically or not
But:
Anyhow, I'd really love to see some poetry from you. This is not meant to be a challenge; I'm simply trying to say that if your standards are higher than mine, then by necessity you'd be one of a few authors who writes poetry that doesn't make me want to set FIMFic on fire.
I invested a lot of time into the poetry group a while back, but there never was enough of a critical mass of good poets to keep any good discussion or collabs going. It's … well, not six hours after I posted 1600083, as if to prove my point for me, this was posted to the Poetry forum. This is what we have to work with. FIMFic needs better examples.
Reset your standards, pres. 1599585's poetry and Kitsune's rapping and my shitty hyphenated monometer (I'm not sure I even want to know what you'd think of my TS Eliot homage Melt) are your muddy, brackish oases in a scorched, barren wasteland. If you don't want to stop and see the beautiful little flowers growing at the edge of the water, that's fine, but you sure ain't getting them anywhere else 'round here.*
* All differences of opinion about Syhlex aside. But come on. "Nearly called out did I in joy, yet I stifled my hope"? Really?
Pony poetry's brief shining moment, as far as I'm concerned, was when darf and I rounded up the best folks we could find at the time for the Pony Verse collab. Poetry was fun again for a few weeks. We preread and critiqued and edited in a google doc and then posted the best of it. Even now, I find darf's William Carlos William-esque on the way home and Cynewulf's lyrical free-verse On Earth Ponies an unalloyed pleasure to read. But two-thirds of the collaborators there don't seem to be posting to FIMFic any more and the new poets I've discovered since aren't enough to keep up with the churn.
So, yes, I'd love to see your poetry: because if better is possible, there aren't a whole lot of other places it could come from.
Best,
H
1602683
I thought for the longest time that you were supposed to pause at the end of every line to emphasize a rhyme, but I've been told recently that this is wrong and you should just speak the words like they're normal speech, ignoring the ends of lines and not emphasizing rhymes. I'm not sure that this is commonly accepted, but I don't really care that much.
1601105
Thanks!
Many eyes make light work. Or something like that.
1603170
That is quite:
The fun collection. I do a lot of poetry and word play over in my webcomic Terebinth, but until I saw your collection, the idea of writing Pony poetry hadn't even occurred to me...
Mike
1603170
This is truly my greatest hour. ;_;
Okay, so. My poetry. Here's the thing.
I can't write poetry.
Like, I used to, all the time, but then I got this wacky notion that poetry had to be deep and personal and then I started realizing that no one can do metric rhymes properly and I hate half-rhymes and I don't give two shits about anyone else's deep and personal free verse, which means they don't give a shit about mine.
And I just sort of can't write poetry unless the mood strikes me. I actually keep a listing of all the poetry I've written, divided up by year, all the way back to when I was five years old. (Those are not what you'd call deep.) The last time I was able to make myself write poetry was back during my undergrad (I have a BA in
UnemployabilityCreative Writing). Funnily enough, that college only had one poetry professor, and he hated all my poetry. I think there was one thing I wrote that he had any praise for during the whole two and a half years I was in that program. I don't know if it was personal or if he was a dick to everyone, but I'm pretty sure he gave me at least two complexes.I also can't see myself writing pony poetry, because pony just doesn't hit me in that way. (I want to take a moment and link you to this tumblr post that I read today, as it's at least tangentially related to this discussion.) At your insistence, I may go forward with "I'd have to be stupid", but not until I've gotten more important things out of the way.
Anyway, I was going to show you my most recently written poem. It turns out it's actually a haiku (I love haiku), that I wrote back in May of this year, in response to an actual haiku written by an actual Japanese person in ancient haiku-writing Japan. The original is translated as "I regret picking and not picking violets" (obviously not a poetic translation; also, the author is unknown). Here's my response:
But that's also kind of cheating. Haiku are easy. This one I gave a lot more thought to than I typically do, so I'm somewhat proud of it. But then I look back over what else I've written recently, and there's nothing from 2012. Then in 2011 I wrote three poems for then-girlfriend. Here's my latest piece of free verse, from April of 2011 (I keep very close track of the dates when I write poetry, because I believe that's an integral part of the poem; also, Last Exit is a bookstore):
I should also add that I believe in poetry being some kind of great outpouring of the soul, wrought in the fires of creativity or some garbage, so I hardly ever edit it after it's been puked onto the page. (I'm trying very hard not to think about how much courage is required to show someone your random old unedited poetry.) In my notes, I labelled this as "just me whining about pretention while being pretentious".
But that's not what you wanted to see, right? So let me dig back for something metric...
Well, this isn't great. It's from October of 2010 and was apparently prompted by my ex somehow. I'm reading it and cringing:
Okay, it's not that bad, but it could be tightened quite a lot. I didn't write it for any particular reason other than I think my ex was critical of my lack of poetry-forcing ability.
My "masterpiece", if you will, I wrote back in... twelfth grade? It was a takeoff, a fanfic almost, of the Canterbury Tales, a five-page long poem in rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. You're damn right I had less than half a dozen errors by the time that bad boy was done. No way am I showing it here though. :B
Oh, and I've added a few of those poems to my to-read now.
1603450
If you can read a poem like that and it sounds just fine, then it's a damn good poem.
While I kind of prefer that method myself, there's nothing wrong with emphasizing the meter and rhyme, only the meaning tends to lost when you do so.
1603170
Ya know, if you were ever going to do a poetry thing again....
Just sayin'.
And no, I would not offer epic rap.
1604136
I believe that poetry can come in two forms. One is the deep, personal, meaningful type that is often very esoteric. It is then the job of the poet to try to communicate those personal feelings to a willing audience, and in that lies the success of a poem. The poem is frankly pointless if it only communicates from the writer to the writer.
The other side of poetry is poetry that tells a story or tale or just is -fun- in general. Look at C.S. Lewis. Look at T.S. Eliot. Look at Dr. Seuss. Look at... The Loch Ness Monster. We wouldn't have CATS if bloody T.S. Eliot was writing crap about his inner struggles with his abusive father personified as a kitty. No, he just wanted to have fun.
You don't ALWAYS have to write a poem that is about yourself. It can be about more familiar things. The state of the world. An emotion. A sentiment. An occurrence.
A cat.
I like your poem about the market. The scheme is pleasing. Of course, like anything else, it can be polished, but it's fine for me and MY standards at least.
The most recent poem I wrote, not counting all those um.. things I left here were a set of haiku that I did for a surrealist existentialist fic that I'm working on called Lily Waits for a Tampon.
Actually, come to think of it, I often add poetry in a lot of fics I write. I have them as chapter buffers for "These City Walls", I had a non-rhyming prose poem that follows meter to open 'Six Walk In' and I have haiku to wrap up the sentiment of each chapter in Lily Waits.
Here's the one I wrote for the description. Also, I couldn't post the other haiku because they're all sort of tied into the chapters themselves and are meaningless outside of context.
Deep, huh?
Horizon, we must do more poetry collabs. A good one. A nice one. A proper one. One with funnies and deeps and cheesecakes, and we will drag PP down screaming while Augiedog watches in the corner and eats popcorn.
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In the reading of poetry, I do actually feel that emphasis ought to be placed in a line when emotions require it. Poetry is a very emotionally charged medium. Proper readings place the right emphasis on the NECESSARY words to carry out the sentiment, as it was in Shakespeare and such. His plays contained a great number of rhyming couplets and lines and stanzas and it went by so naturally that most people don't even notice them. That's a good effect, although if you're seeking to have a poem that's recognized as a poem, then all it'd take is that meter to carry it out, which is why meter is so important in the first place. It carries the rhythm of the poem just like a beat carries a rhythm of a song.
A poem without proper meter is akin to a song that sounds like this:
And there will always be people who do like that, but not most ahem... 'poetry snobs' for lack of a better word.
However, I would say that there is a great difference in delivery between RAP and POETRY READING and FREE VERSE. In Rap, you DO want to emphasize the rhyme. You DO want to speak harder on the impact parts, because the words and the rap itself is what CREATES the beat and the rhythm, not follows it. In Free Verse, the idea is to just speak very very passionately, as one would when one is trying to convince someone else, for example, as opposed to lyric verses' Shakespearean highs and lows.
Rap -> Read like Christopher Walken
Regular Rhyming Verse -> Read like Patrick Stewart
Free Verse -> Read like Obama
Terrible -> Read like Keanu Reeves
So for me, at least, that's the difference.
I have no idea what's going on here.
Dude named teh pone Bucephalus though? Lel, that's the only horse I know with a name proper enough to avoid a foray into all that "pointing" nonsense. He's ruined it. We'll be pointing at "there that Bucephalus" now, with all the metonymic commitments that come with it; is it teh pone or is it teh horse?!
Now I've confused myself. I'm going home.
Oh yeah, n' did you enter that Lonely Happiness thing? I was going to, but school.
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I did! Voting's on, which I'll be blogging about next fic rec. :B (Tomorrow.)
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That's the most sense I've ever seen you make. Thanks for the clarification!
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That almost sounded like a compliment...
Haha no, I'm kidding.
Truth is, I never actually make sense. I only pretend that I do.
Okay, I got dragged away from this thread and there's all sorts of things I have to do, but I had to at least come back and say:
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That haiku is beautiful. Full stop.
("First Reading", I don't feel like I wasted my time with. "Our Market" is metrically tight, although there's nothing in it which grabs me, and the repeated rhymes of the last stanza seem like an odd choice to me. But I doubt you're looking for detailed critique here.)
> I should also add that I believe in poetry being some kind of great outpouring of the soul, wrought in the fires of creativity or some garbage, so I hardly ever edit it after it's been puked onto the page.
Dunno about you, but my soul is nine kinds of retarded with words. I have an inner editor which whacks at things several times before they ever leave my brain, and even that isn't enough to keep me from saying stupid things left and right. I would politely disagree that editing makes poetry less authentic; most of the time I have to try for a while in order to actually say what I was trying to say.
> (I'm trying very hard not to think about how much courage is required to show someone your random old unedited poetry.)
Well, I'll at least join you in putting money to mouth: here's an archive of my old nonpony poetry. There's some appalling crap on there (though some bright spots, too, I think; Cycle, which can be read as three different poems in one, is a neat bit of wordplay).
> I can't write poetry. Like, I used to, all the time, but then … (disillusionment snipped) … And I just sort of can't write poetry unless the mood strikes me.
That's … not unfamiliar, actually. That tumblr post you linked is uncomfortably relevant. What is poetry for? I fell out of the habit of it after college, myself, when I didn't have other poets to impress; although I've certainly written my share of filk songs since. The weird thing is, I think, the impetus to poetry is almost identical to fanfic's, or even prose's more generally: here's an idea, and here's an art form in which I can express it saying something cool, and yet … it doesn't feel worth doing, whereas writing up the same thoughts as a prose scene feels immediately postable.
I suspect poetry feels weird because it doesn't have an audience. And nobody writes it because it doesn't have an audience, so it doesn't get an audience. Vicious cycle. It is this Thing which is Pretentious and Hard To Do, therefore everyone either does it wrong or is pretentious, therefore reading it isn't worthwhile either. I fall into that trap too. I have to work myself up to a poetry-reading brain state.
Pony poetry, as I said, was fun when there was a bunch of cool folks to write it for and with. Then I wrote Melt to universal disregard, and darf posted some poetry of his own to even louder silence, and after we dropkicked the collab into EqD and flogged it on half a dozen popular authors' blogs and it got sub-1000 views … and with the poetry group a wasteland and half the authors gone … yeah, it's tough getting even a smidgen of inspiration.
I dunno. Although:
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I would totally do a collab again (though a month or two down the line, when projects cool down a bit), but it would have to be with other people willing to tilt at windmills with me. I don't care enough about it to make it a crusade and beg the world to care with me. I just want it to be fun, and entertain along with me whoever is willing to wrestle with constrained writing and twist and contort and produce some horrible mixed metaphor of a beautiful balloon animal … flower … thing i don't even know where i'm going with this
(Also, oh dear gods where did you find that video? That is not just bad music. That is FRACTALLY bad music.)
cc: 1604064
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Thank you. This means a lot to me. Although in rereading it to post, I was tempted to change the fuck out of it because I hate the middle line. But First Writing and all that. :B
Okay, that's extremely clever. I like it. It wouldn't have had the same impact if I hadn't been prompted to read it as three poems, but doing so really makes it work. :D