02-19-2015, 08:19 AM
(02-13-2015, 08:20 AM)Erthona Wrote: Tom,
Thank you for your overwhelming comments. I have answered all that I didn't automatically agree with. Some of the responses are simply clarification and not necessarily a rejection of the comment. My changing the ubiquitous "Tom wrote:" to other variations was simply boredom and no slight to any person named "Tom." Nor is it because I felt -that- you are a card and needed to be dealt with.
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Since you asked:"in a book of like minded cards." Collectable or trading cards, like baseball cards.
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Tommy Gun wrote: ""...a candle wick, not fully lit, I find that I'm snuffed out." Surely. Try snuffing out a flaring match. Caution! Contains oxidising (oxidizing) agent."
My idea here is that life is ignited, not lit as in a candle. Notice language of "the spark of life." Candles have no spark, matches do. The spark is what ignites the flame. As opposed to D. H. Lawrence's "We fucked the flame of life into being!" (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
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Tommy blue note wrote: "Surely not. Halcyon Haze" No the word play on "halcyon days."
definition #3-
" 3. happy; joyful; carefree:
"halcyon days of youth."
So yes and quit calling me Shirley!
Your serve! Yes...shame about the commercial cliche, though.
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Tom a than wrote: "No. "midst" is most certainly wrong. You cannot be in the "midst of walking"."
Midst: "the position of anything surrounded by other things or parts, or occurring in the middle of a period of time, course of action, etc. (usually preceded by the)"
I would submit that walking is a "course of action," and as it starts from point A and continues to point B, there is "a period of time which passes" while doing so. Midst is basically a shortened form of "in the middle of," an as one can be in the "midst" of eating, or in the midst of a conversation, I am unsure from where this comment springs? walking is too pedestrian for the wordiness but citing The Grammatist, from english economy of words:
"In the midst of
The wordy phrase in the midst of could almost always be shortened to amid, among, during, or in (or, for non-U.S. writers, amidst). In some cases, the phrase could be removed outright. There’s nothing strictly incorrect about using in the midst of, though, so use it if you think it sounds better than the alternatives.
Examples
There are shorter alternatives to in the midst of in each of these cases:
In the midst of [Amid?] the Great American Royal Wedding Frenzy, it’s hard to remember that not everything British is upscale and quaint. [Los Angeles Times]
Yet more proof that we’re in the midst of [in?] a TV golden age. [Atlantic]
In the midst of [During?] a riotous wake at the Pink Hotel, a 17-year-old London girl takes clothes and a suitcase from her dead mother’s room. [Daily Mail]"
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"One might just as easily
walk down a sidewalk
and find it lying on the ground
Tom wrote: Oh please...not you, too dale. It? It? You would not let me get away with "it"."
Yes, you're correct, I will change it post haste.
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Tom wrote: "I look for cohesion but find none in this stanza...it is unglued (huh?)" Yes, I agree the "throughout" must go!
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Time wishes not to create:
but only to unmake.
Tom wrote: "If this is Entropy for the Layman it is un-understandable. You are now pushing the boundaries to where no man has gone before...er...or since" (by the rule of negative un-understanable means understandable.) No. By your logic, "un-understandable " means "derstandable"
This is referencing the arrow of time, which goes from order to disorder. Meaning energy goes from an energetic state to dispersed dispersed one. It is in this way I am using the more poetic phrase of "unmaking." As I am referring to it, I am talking about when energy becomes dispersed into space in the form of heat and "the temperature becomes spatially homogeneous." This to say that any system which is not already at it's lowest energetic state is currently in a process where it's energy supply will be depleted and the system becomes inert. In other words, it has been unmade. The arrow of time is the direction of this progress. Over time all systems will become depleted of energy, and that in conjunction with the expansion of the Universe, will create, in trillions of years, a universe that has all of it's energy dissipated into space to the degree work can no longer be accomplished. It is this aspect of time that I am personifying and applying it directly to human perception of life, specifically human life.
As this is poetry and not science I thought I might be spared of the exactitude which is needed in science, but not in poetry, especially as I was using a personified "arrow of time" as the metaphor "time" as it is often perceived from the human point of view.
As your comment was inexact in terms of specificity, this is the best reply I can offer. If you find that you can fine tune your comment to more of a specific nature, then maybe I will be better able to accommodate you. So entropic principle it is, then?"
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Thomas wrote: "Why the succubus? Why not the incubus? In fact, why either.(?) I struggle here(.)"
There is a difference between a succubus and an incubus. While the incubus forcefully invades the woman, or the woman's dreams, it has more the tone of rape. Whereas a succubus must first seduce her prey, gain consent, before she can do her damage. Another characteristic of a succubus that goes back to Lilith (Adam's first wife). Lilith and those who preceded her were much more powerful than just a reason for nocturnal emissions. They would also kill the man once he submitted to them, or later in history, would inflict a wasting sickness on the individual which would lead to a premature death. Plus the common perception that a succubus sucks the life out of him not only just literally in terms of his seed, but also figuratively in terms of his soul or his life essence. To me, succubus seemed a very apt descriptor. granted
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Tommy two tone wrote: "Hmmm. If I said this was a contrivance would you hold it against me?"
Ah see, this is what one so often gets when opening oneself to criticism. Ray chastised me for trying to do away with tricky and here you rebuke me for using it. To me, the question should be, not is it a contrivance since all of poetry is in some way a contrivance, but is it a good contrivance. I do not think it is a bad contrivance since it has a solid foundation within my use of the term succubus.
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Tommy couldn't figure wrote: "Well, dale, I guess I failed on this one. It is brave crit who admits to understanding the un-ness of it...and I am un-brave. So un-less there is more to this than I am capable of un-derstanding I am un-derwhelmed."
Un-fortunately I am forced to give your opinion some credence based on past history, and when I find such credence I shall give it to you, although I may have already given it to you to some extent
xoxoxoxo,
dale