/lit/ - Literature

Someone said we needed a breezeway
to bark down remnants of super storm Elias jugularly.
Alas it wasn’t my call.
I didn’t have a call or anything resembling one.
You see I have always been a rather dull-spirited winch.
The days go by and I go with them.
A breeze falls from a nearby tower
finds no breezeway, goes away
along a mission to supersize red shutters.
Alas if that were only all.
There’s the children’s belongings to be looked to
if only one can find the direction needed
and stuff like that.
I said we were all homers not homos
but my voice dwindled in the roar of Hurricane Edsel.
We have to live out our precise experimentation.
Otherwise there’s no dying for anybody,
no crisp rewards.
Batman came out and clubbed me.
He never did get along with my view of the universe
except you know existential threads
from the time of the peace beaters and more.
He patted his dog Pastor Fido.
There was still so much to be learned
and even more to be researched.
It was like a goodbye. Why not accept it,
anyhow? The mission girls came through the woods
in their special suitings. It was all whipped cream and baklava.
Is there a Batman somewhere, who notices us
and promptly looks away, at a new catalog, say,
or another racing car expletive
coming back at Him.

>>6980943
>>7.5/10
This is good, but I kinda get the feeling you shouldn't be trying to rhyme. Now I hate free-verse, or un-ryming poems as much as the next guy, but I think your poem would work better without it, since I enjoy the meter and the imagery your words inspire. Some of the lines seem forced to complete the rhyme-sceme, which again, detracts overall for me.

>>6980989
>>4.5/10
I didn't really like this.

this is the first thing i've written in perhaps 8 years. i'll take any feedback. it's not really what i planned on writing, but i had been staring at a blank page for over an hour and just had to do something.

>>6981020
you don't get it

http://pastebin.com/vqAbK0mT

>>6981531
Your style is quite heavy on the infodump, which I guess could be intentionally what you're going for. Otherwise it was pretty good. What is this story to be? A murder maybe?

>>6982085
Thanks bud. And I'm not really sure just yet. I only wrote the scene as it occurred to me and haven't yet got a firm idea of where I want to take the plot. I do know that the narrator is going to start losing his shit on account of the booze interacting with his medication and the improper chemicals used when preserving the bear. So yeah, some violence is in the offing. Just not sure by who yet.

I sort of had like this one idea and it branched out a little.

http://pastebin.com/zxHmTvpa

shouldn't we follow a scansion method?
free verses look so pleb, fixed form >>

>>6982321
Well written and quite intriguing, wouldreadmore/10

How can I make the following "flow" better? I fell like I'm repeating the same words over and over.

"Each province shall have its own regional legislature, titled the Federal Assembly, which shall be led by the provincial governor. The regional legislatures shall be made up of representatives directly elected by the province's citizenry every four years. The regional legislatures shall hold delegated powers, including the ability to draft new legislation, which, if approved, must be signed into law by the provincial governor. The provincial governors must abide by the rulings of their legislatures, and do not posses the right to veto legislation. The Sovereign retains the right to dissolve the regional assemblies if they see fit, and is not required to abide by their rulings."

It's intended to read like a proper constitution.

I'm not going anywhere with it, I just wanted to write something that sounded "legal."

This white
Male is begging you to check
His privilege I want to love you
In the most progressive way
Possible oh dear please cuck
My shit up

http://pastebin.com/jsiDVYbc

About to sit down to read some poetry and try to write some. here's an edited version of a poem I've posted before

A pale young cardinal flew to me feeder;
I didn't want it to leave, and I stayed so still
And distant. It left despite my cautious steps,
Though like real steps, placed in habit—not in care.
The gentle bird needed holding, not silence.

>>6983395
Pointless bullshit tbh. Are you attempting to be funny? What about this is poetic? Are you trying to criticize people obsessed with agendas by being yourself obsessed with agendas?

Excerpt from something I'm starting...

http://pastebin.com/TxAtiDGp

Would love a critique on this since I am struggling with well placed line breakage and enjambment. Any recommendations for poets who are exceptionally good at this that I may read would be greatly appreciated as well.

http://pastebin.com/jqfVdUaF

http://pastebin.com/dfvcTVKi

>>6983444
i did it for the memes

Ok, im a pretty shit writer myself, so ill leave it to you blokes to sort out my stupidity from helpful advice

>>6983412
>“I'm too handsome to be so alone,” he half said unto the pavement.
How the hell does someone half say something? Was the phrase 'under his breath' not good enough for you?
also the dialogue seems overdramatic
You've mentioned peoples eyes around 6 times in the first couple paragraphs, might wanna lay off that
>Mid sentence then who should stroll in but old black hair black eyes
good. more sentences like this
>all acting their age, below themselves or bettering by trying, who are these drunken people? God only knows, dear lord it's becoming over powering,
going good
>get out of there Jaspar, trouble is afoot.
little ridiculous here, pull back a bit
>Beer bellied and bald, ugly as sin and fucking atrocious, or so it seemed, or so it felt,
good
>or so it was and so it be, for eons and ever.
you had me up to this point, then you lost me

A lot of it starts off good before you fall off into being overly dramatic or ridiculous. Some things don't need to be said flat out by whatever odd ass rambling narration style you've got going on here, let the readers do some work and infer for themselves.

>>6983452
You have talent, but you're wasting it. That's all i really have to say.

it's boring shite m8

>>6983476
Poetry really isn't my thing but in your case you might want to take out some of the bigger words, really, they're awkward out loud.
Try and use more monosyllables

>>6981229
>often carelessly gifted...
Gifted is a very weird way to put it, this rewording seems to me completely pointless as it adds no important meaning and just makes you stop reading and notice the weird phrasing. Something simpler and more to the point would sound better.
>...did the fragile planet pay dearly...
Odd, also. A simple past "paid" would sound more natural and still get the point across.

No actual opinion on the last paragraph other than that I wouldn't leave it there at all, at least not in this self-referencing tone, but if you want to keep it instead "this is a story..." it would read better with something different but for the same effect, "the ones now we speak of are the ones who never left..." etc.

On the theme and non-technical aspects, I quite like it. Would read more.
I just read about this somewhere, probably on 4chan, about how people want to expand earth to the ends of the universe rather than explore something other than it, and it seems to me your idea and what they said is very alike. It's an interesting subject and you can do a lot with it.
Again: would read more/10

I just started writing a couple months ago.

I realized that if I didn't start now, I never would.

I'm not expecting it to be great, but thoughts?

>>6982321
>I didn't think she could get more beautiful, but lying there, in that hospital bed, I really ought to get a pat on the back - for holding myself back, I mean.
What the fuck happened
What does this mean
I'm curious, pls respond

>>6982868
Ellipsis
I'm too lazy to try and edit something for give you as an example, but organize things in a way that allows you to continue the next sentence in a way that doesn't require name repetition and the phrase subject is implicit. Bring them back with relative pronouns to reference back and go along your merry way.

Actually,
>bring them back...
Accidentally made an example. This is what I mean.

I hate summer.

I hate its great length - two months to do nothing! Nothing but idle; hours, days, spent on countless books and conversations with the self. To what end, I ask? To fill my head with knowledge in the hope of someday "making it"? To be able to recite a snippet from one of shakespeares plays at a dinner party? To make a comeback worthy of screencapping on /lit/? You scoff at the idea, but this transient knowledge can only be worth something if it is properly applied; and yet during the summer all it can do is fester in my mind like a thousand needles, trying to escape and yet finding none. This great cancer growing in my mind yearns for the dark fall.
Let me tell you something that I think needs to be heard: this world is a series of waits. We wait for our orders at restaruants, we slave away at our studies for years to someday hopefully make it, and we wait in line at disneyland to go on a short ride. A great deal of this time is spent in anxious, burning, solitude which so heavily surrounds me as a blanket.

Well I AM TIRED OF WAITING

thanks for reading!

>>6983721
I like how whoever is speaking keeps identifying the materials and measurements. You got the autistic tone just right.
As the beginning of a story it's very cliché but there are plenty of ways to make clichés work so you could definitely pull it off if you develop it into something interesting.

The penultimate paragraph reminds me a bit about an anon's writing, I wonder if you're the same person.

>>6983922
It's not very good at all, but it's easy to tell it was cathartic for you to write. So, carry on.

>>6984173
I suspected as much, I think I'm going to stick to nonfiction if I ever write. Feeling very bottled up though, still a few days until I go back to uni. it's terrible.

>>6984030

I've only posted something of mine once before here. It was from the same thing as the thing I just posted.

Also, thank you for telling me you pick up on the AS vibe. I really wasn't sure like, how REALLY familiar knowledge of that mode of thinking is, but at least now I know it comes through the text.

>>6983439
>flew to me feeder
Flew to my feeder?

This is a pretty nice poem in its content; the final sentence carries with it quite a weigh of sadness. It reads very much like prose, though, apart from your enjambment with "And distant". Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

>>6981020
I'm OP, and thanks for the feedback. Its nice to know the meter worked. Could you point out a couple of the lines that felt forced to you? I've seen this poem so many times that I'm already inured to the good and the bad parts of it.

>>6983697
thank you! i will fiddle with the wording, and with the last paragraph (which was really just a means to draw things to a close: i admit i spent over an hour writing those 3 paragraphs, i am very rusty...)

http://pastebin.com/YvpC2Lfk
This work is highly experimental. Tell me what you see from this, /lit/. I don't know whether all my intentions passed onto the writing well.

>>6984516
It's supposed to by "me feeder" because the voice is an irish women whose family just potato.

>>6983795
He wanted to fuck her.

>>6984827
Whom is YA audience?

>>6985088
Why whatd she do?

>>6983795

Loss in book form.

>>6984827
If your intentions were the message that "misanthropy based on the belief that you're better than everyone else will only isolate you to the point of your emotional or physical death" then yes, that carried through well enough. The reader might find the sudden "and then I died" confusing, though, especially as the narrator goes on narrating right through his/her death. Otherwise your prose is decent and it wasn't a bad read. However, as >>6985092 points out, your edgy content is more of less the bread-and-butter of YA. Your story doesn't stand out.

>>6985107
This is actually the first half of the first chapter only. I have other things in my mind too, and I wanted to set the the overall atmosphere of the story by making the narrator untrustable (I died, sudden change in tone, overt trauma) And no, the message isn't quite that. But that's clearly my fault that you don't know.

The first image of the snowy village before the narrator's death is actually just the narrator's imagination, but clearly the readers didn't understand that well. It could've been because my exerpt was too short, or it's just that such exposition has already become cliched in some random hipster genres... I guess I should start reading contemporary edgy works too. Or most likely I just didn't make it seem like an imagination clearly enough ("I died" was the only hint I guess.)

Thank you for your constructive criticism.

Wrote this some time ago. Don't even know what it is. Maybe an excerpt from a story... I'm almost sure 'tho that this is the view of a female character. Or, maybe not. It's certainly hindu/egyptian-mythology inspired sci-fi.


you don't even need to cry. your soul is already crying.
you don't need to surrender. you have already run down the stairs, you
are running down the staircase *don't fall*
down there... you could explain yourself. but your words would never match those
of the mirror in front of you. these are the waters that your parents
have cried, and your grandparents carried them from across the grand desert
through a million years, beneath these stars that loomed and guided them.
-you should drown in these waters - said the angel of defeat.
-but i could swim... for the black faced death i could swim.
because all that i bear within my body are gods, and death is but one of them.
their wings and heads, their feet, their hands within the eye, their grace,
their freedom, their bravery, i have bore nine times and nine times i survived,
nine times i thrived and nine times i cried. forgive me oh mother...
the sun above them. the sun that screams outloudly without being ever heard
*was made* a big sound that embraces and awakens us to live this penance.
all but sounding flares... that for a moment there my skin have melted.

>>6986055
Someone pls respond

>>6986055
I'm sorry but as soon as "your soul is already crying" i gtfo


-Shirt I put on after shower has heavy right pocket.

-Make note to self to wear with thin undershirt.

-Weedwacker string still in right pocket.

-Make note to put string on wacker.

-Put string through lips.

-Is string poisonous? Tastes bad. Tastes acidic.

-String could hurt me.

-String pulled tight makes strong knot.

-Make mental note to use string in event of suicide.

-Wacker string is utilitarian, industrial.

-Rope has romance not cohesive with worldview.

-Make not to self not to ever kill self.

-Even if really want to kill self.

-Even if alone, do not kill self.

-Pre-reqs for killing self:

1.No one need anything from self
2.No one hurt by kill self
3.Have good meal
4.Write kill-self poem on self, make sure legible
4b.Negate legibility
4c.Maybe care legibility, maybe write in several common language
5.Make easy to get rid of self
6.Wear shirt with heavy pocket

-This is thing about killing self.

-Just want talk about kill self to make self profound.

-Not profound.

-Not deserve privilege of kill self.

-Once dirty again, put string on wacker, eat.

I assembled this poem using only excerpts from episode 20, season 4, of Gilmore Girls:
____

i feel hopeless because

this chop-shop masquerading as
a hospital is a thing of beauty
but he’s worm food, destined
to be alone and incapable of saying it
at all. propoganda can do that:
hit you with more lame tautologies
and push you onto the fainting couch.
you slow down,
get heated and vicious, you die.

everyone’s freaking out because the lab
technicians are getting conflicting advice:
read all these awful stories, eat up
American splendor early on Fridays, amputate
his foot before the puking starts,
listen to anything anybody
says within the realm of reason,
refuse if it’s a reasonable request.

i feel hopeless because this road
is impassable and i shouldn’t string him along.
i spotted him through the curtain
like he was taking confession or looking at god.

that’s kind of why i’m here too,
i haven’t looked at the stars in ages.

>>6986055
Google ELIZA, find her, talk to her for 20m, I'm not kidding, then read yr post again, then go outside for a walk.

I'm gonna try to make one offhand.

Sweat drips and pours,
Dirt and fire fill the air,
Clinging to me as I work,
Tireless, digging, pushing, aching,
My body tearing the earth asunder,
My face a mask, betraying nothing,
The heat in my arms and snap in my joints,
Swing of the pick, stab of the shovel,
The almost zen sound of metal on dirt,
Of the almost happy grunts of men,
That we are here, to dig, to work,
Not there, covered in a different heat,
Ripping into the earth, not men,
But instead, here, where we sweat instead of bleed,
Where death is a tragedy, not an inevitability,
Where our wives are angry at us, not worried for us,
Where our hands are stained with callouses and blisters,
Not with blood,
Where we can laugh and smile because we want to,
Rather than because we have to,
Here, where we can live lives free of conflict,
Here is where I do not belong.

I belong out there, among chaos,
Where men's lives cannot be shown-
to be better or worse by any measure,
other than the life in their eyes and air in their lungs,
Where each breath is a gift,
I belong where I can pit myself against a man,
Who, like me, has life and home,
A woman who cares for him,
Children who love him,
A community who respects him,
and death in his hands,
I belong there, Where we are equals,
In the clash of fathers and brothers,
The heat of love coursing through their veins,
for those he left back home

I belong there, on either end of a rifle,
Where victory reeks of the dead,
The putrid smell of conquering,
The bounty of rancid air,
Of sleeping in a cocoon of innards,
Burning carcasses of friend and foe alike warming me,
Along with the frenzied heat inside,
The lion unleashed,
Leaving a red wake of mangled bodies,
Roaring onward, onward,
Onward unto death,
In his harried chaos,
One becomes as nothing,
Only firing bullets and boiling veins,
Only to be cooled by the heat of another.

And I belong there,
Washed clean of the blood,
Dressed in the clothes of a patriot,
Respected and loved,
Receiving awards, the object of affection,
Of lust, of praise,
For the killing of men,
Some like me,

Some would go for duty,
To do what they must, for their family,
For their land, for their country,
And some would go for greed,
To sell their service to the highest bidder,
To take for themselves,
And some would be like me,
A loving father,
A dutiful and faithful husband,
An upstanding member of their community,
And a Lion, waiting to be unshackled
Waiting for the day he may be a lion,
The day where he is not only allowed to be a lion,
But told to, the day where the lion is needed,
The glorious day where the lion sheds blood,
And claims what is his with fang and claw,
Not paltry words or paper,
But the whip of corded muscle against flesh,
Of metal on bone,
Of corpses falling with wet, sloppy thuds,
And the crowning of victor baptized in the blood of his opposition,
Bones broken and flesh torn,
But Alive.

_

I bet it's shit, but it was fun to write.

>>6984516
>Flew to my feeder?
yep, typo

Thank you for the critique and compliments.

Do you (or anyone) have any tips on how to make one's verse less prose-y? My iambic pentameter was a tad loose but it does still seem prose-y regardless.

http://pastebin.com/vnbgcd2U

A scene that popped into my head. I realize the premise is somewhat cliche, so I probably won't expand it into anything serious. Mostly using it as a writing exercise. Interested in improving dialogue.

>>6986848
no critique on this /lit/? I made this for you.

is this going anywhere lads?

>>6987957
Dialogue has always been the boiler of energy to me, and that raises the question of fuel.

Boring people call it inspiration, but what they really mean is fuel.

I have always had a head full of wet spiderwebs and the world has had to work its way into me through them.

I am never serious. On some nights I read a post, empty, boring, and realize dialogue isn't difficult, everyone does it in person all day everyday, just fucking pay attn, unless of course yr an idiot w/idiot friends and idiot family and have idiot ideas, in which case yr fucked. Are ye?

Trying out a ranting style. Tell me what you think.

Are lyrics welcome here?

>>6983494
The good news is—no bad news!

Ye see I bailed, balked, got tired and angry, twisted in my chair, sighed, hand to face, pictured ye typing and farting, ye not realizing yr farts were interpolating w/yr hitting the spacebar, and I started typing this sometime before all that, the picturing, just so I can tell you: there once was a man from nantucket who kept all his cash in a bucket but his daughter, named plan, ran away with th klan and as for the bucket, she fucked it

>>6988831
Why not anon

>>6988819
I subjectively like the first part, second part is awful in my opinion.

>>6988819
It be annoying—ye think/write in clichés and y'll never be any good at writing or speaking or loving or fucking until ye burn em all off and purify yr well of English and straighten out yr thought grammar. Obv there is hope for ye; fo find fime 2 red bookaz allowed to yrself it r th only wu-wei...

But 4 real it's b4d.

>>6980943

http://pastebin.com/XQrrDFhy

Thoughts?

Demons seek dry places to avoid angels in high places, take a trip through the desert and they might latch on. An empty house makes easy use as a residence of the spirit's pestilence, expel three and seven return to hide from heaven. Mercy from Mammon's whip. Legion's beehive hunting honey in the heat, from the land of milk for their fiery ilk. Minds hide pride from the light shielding salvation from Michael, without water they multiply. Try and die and wry in Sheol, escorted by aborted targets. Serve the worm as a sinner in Gehenna. In a frozen flame satan tells of his greatness, patience was never his virtue. Instead he hurts you. Assert through repentance, submit from dependence. The evil one cannot give, only take for a lonely fate. It goes against his nature as an abaser, his ambition of contrition. When you regret he collects, guilt feeds his insects. The lord of flies and bees neither dies nor sees as a creature too stern to burn. Why else would the Living One permit it going on?

Okay, so like, fuck, never mind.

^ Thoughts on this as an opening?

>>6988888
Congrats on quints, witnessed

>>6988874
sooooo goooood
A writre ye are! Strip the adverbs, never say human or normalcy again, or scamper, ye blew it w/the semicolons; wtf is wrong w/ye ahhhHHH.

Good effort. I wish ye a true labyrinth of Hi Fives in Septembre.

>>6988888
despite your illustrious digits that is an awful opening. also *nevermind

>>6988888
Looks like th gods have blessed it, so—

>>6988906
>also *nevermind
What are you, Nirvana?

>>6988877
Three words: yuck jk yuck

"A man just walked into that tree, I swear to god", Tim said as he and me walked, each one to his side of the curb, red ears and trembling teeth, holding to himself the heat in his red mantle. "You're quite schizo today eh, buddy... Or is it the cold?", I replied, after a quick moment. "Must be the cold, mother fucker... That's how I'm feeling today." "And how is that?" "Well, by one side I'm bitter, by another I'm feeling quite violent..." "What's that got to do with anything?" I perpretated. "The thing is, Alice and I, it wasn't ever going to work." "Ooh, so it's that girl again..." "Yeah, so she and I... she's just too rich, you know. It's like I'm never going to be enough for her." "One thing I can say, though... She was never enough for you." "What do you mean by that? I never cheated... Never. You knew this." "I did, yet... Isn't it obvious? We are forever alone, mother fucker. No matter how we try to push someone into our lives, no matter how close we hold said person."
Cars running down the avenue at fifty miles an hour, rear red lights leaving. My hands itching. My stomach little eager for food... My mouth dry as a vagina I've been trying to please. "That man just walked outside of that tree. I swear to god."

Maybe has no opposites, certainly is opposed by certainly not
Esoteric rhetoric circles the drain, heresy to sea
Head in the clouds and it's raining and hailing

>>6989424
This is really hard to read. Have you considered.. not leaving it as a lump of text and maybe formatting it a bit? The use of "mother fucker" feels really out of place and just odd.

Critique pls:
I lay under the Mozambican sky illuminated by the cloudy arm of the Milky Way. A tree extended across the speckled darkness, anchoring my fugitive perspective to the Earth. The initial intensity of the marijuana had subsided and my reality was now a vibrant dream with every sense acutely registering and relaying to a faculty beyond thought the slightest fluctuations in their respective mediums. Her head was nestled on my shoulder and her leg was coiled tightly around mine. Her kinetic breaths bounced lightly across my neck as my fingers traced a meandering line along her arm. I breathed in deeply in an attempt to gather the feelings of nervousness, exhilaration and stress that swelled in my gut before exhaling them into the cosmos.
“So do you believe in a God, then?” She said with an almost childlike, inquisitorial frankness.
I stifle a chuckle, admiring the efficiency at which marijuana manages to drag our minds, time and time again, to wrestle in a state of inebriated clarity with humanity’s fundamental questions.

>>6980943

> Oh, you were like a summer's day.

pseudo-vocative case and cliche simile in the same opening line? jeez.

Read the rest, it only gets worse.

>>6990532
Bit more:
“Uhhm okay, well I believe that the fact that every culture and society throughout history has had a belief in a higher power or a god, the Mayans, Egyptians, Christianity in Europe, Hinduism and Islam, even societies that are completely secluded like the Aboriginals have their type of Religious belief system. Uhmm…” My thought process momentarily evades me, “So the fact that an overwhelming proportion of humanity has or wants to believe in a god means one of two things. Either that there is a god or a spiritual energy and religion is an attempt to connect with it or that the need to connect with a god is a symptom of the fact that the human mind is intelligent enough to be conscious of its own existence. The human mind has numerous troubling questions that arise from it recognising its own existence, like what happens after death, where do we come from, how can I have thoughts, what is the origin of my consciousness…”
A punctuation of static silence reveals the murmuring sea. I begin to think I might have lost her, I could barely keep track myself.
“So you believe in the second option?” She asked, more for affirmation than query.
“Yeah, but I can hardly criticize the other one. I’ve never had a spiritual experience so I have a bias towards the objective.”

>>6988901

I'll definitely strip the adverbs, and scamper.

But anyway, thanks. Does this mean you actually liked it?

>>6980989
this is really great

first sentence is pretty Ashbery...y

did you steal anon? also his new collected is called breezeway or something

>>6980989
>>6991573
oh, I just googled

pretty funny how no one even noticed a poem by possibly the world's best living poet...

or has no one replied because ashbery has reached meme status on lit?

We sent out the SOS call.
It was a quarter past four in the morning when the storm broke our second anchor line.
Four months at sea, four months of calm seas to be pounded in the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point.

They call them rogues, they travel fast and alone.
One-hundred-foot faces; God's good ocean gone wrong.
What they call love is a risk, you will always get hit out of nowhere by some wave and end up on your own.
The hole in the hull defied the crews attempts to bail us out.
It flooded the engines and radio. Our half-buried bow underwater now.

Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship.
Sends your words past your lips or keeps them safe behind your teeth.
But the wrong words will strand you.
Come off course while you sleep.
Sweep your boat out to sea or dashed to bits on the reef.

The vessel groans the ocean pressures its frame.
To the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and rain.
And I wish for one more day to give my love and repay debts.
But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.

They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm.
But this ain't the Dakota, and the water's so cold.
Won't have to fight for long.
This is the end.

This story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear.
Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath.
I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea.
I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean.

I know that this is what you want.
A funeral keeps both of us apart.
You know that you are not alone.
Need you like water in my lungs.

>>6991594
nobody knows who ashbery is

>>6990815
Yeah, totally ignore the picture of shit. It wasn't meant to indicate yr post was garbage, boring, long winded, amateur, baby-boy looka me mommy horseshit. It was near perfect except for it being, well, ye can't tell and I can tell ye can't tell from yr writing, actually, so go with yr intuition.

>>6992402

.... alright. Thanks for the feedback.I'm making changes and I will post updated versions in future critique threads.

I present for your consideration one Thomas Gideon, age eighteen years, eight months (as of this month), seventy inches in height, one-hundred-sixty-six pounds (as of this month; it fluctuates between a winter high of one-eighty-one and a summer low of one-sixty), high-school and now collegiate athlete in football (American) (as a running-back), football (Association) (he’s a winger), and (his favorite) fencing (a sabreur, naturally), and freshman (AOTM) at Ashtarot College near Lincoln, NH, at which he is officially enrolled as a biology major, desperately wants to study microeconomics, cultural anthropology or maybe archaeology, electrical engineering, and/or (AOTM) botany, and in-fact spends most of his time studying Ashtarot’s freshman co-eds which could conceivably fall under cultural anthropology or biology but definitely isn’t micro-, archaeology, or E.E. and could only conceivably involve botany in the case of whom he (as of today) hopes will be his next subject of study, Marion Crawford (it being her passion).
His peers were all of course too young to care about it but Tom has the ignominious honor of being The Gideon Baby. At the tender age of thirteen months he was disappeared in the night from his crib, spurring a month-and-a-half-long man(and baby)hunt at the end of which Tom was mysteriously found returned in his crib, healthy as a baby boy could be. Stories like that draw media attention, especially when they happen in a predominantly white, upper-class suburb in Cheshire, CT, and especially when it involves the baby of one of said town’s wealthiest and most established families, and especially when it culminates in the suicide-by-alcohol-poisoning of said baby’s nanny, cutting off the final lead in an already perplexing case.

Ephemeral

On a dark night
A swan lands
On a moon reflected lake
It glides in the water
And with a stroke of its wings it’s gone
The only memories
Are the waves it
Left

what do you think?

>>6994158
eh

Il y a une forme de raisonnement chez Cyrille. Une sorte de découpe. Très minutieuse. Ce qu’il raconte n’est pas une grande histoire. Il ne vie pas dans le passé. Le passé vit à ses côtés. Comme le présent. Un corps mort qu’il garde en vie. Un corps qui ne se crée plus continuellement. Le passé n’est plus touchable qu’en lui donnant vie en le nommant. En le taillant pour en garder les moments maitres. Cyrille a la mémoire brute. Il a une grosse boule de tous les mots de son hier. Tout ce qu’il raconte est une accumulation mathématique de faits. Ça un début et une fin. Ça passe du coq à l’âne. J’écoute. Je ne parle pas. Je ne parle plus. Je ne note plus que dans ma mémoire. J’apporte la mémoire jusqu’à chez moi. J’en fais l’inventaire sur mon vélo. Je classe, je tri, je coupe, je colle. Pour finalement écrire. Pour donner un corps à ses histoires revenue du centre du monde. Un corps d’encre. Mais un corps quand même.

>>6993553
Information v Communication.

Ye can whip a wire once and the wave will travel.

>>6991594

probably because the collection is fresh off the prints and Ashbery already has way too much material in print for someone to read all of his work or even recognize it beyond it being "Ashbery....y"

>>6994342
v a t e f a i r e f o u t r e
y e y r y e y r y y y y e r

The cause is Ozymandian.
The map of Sapokanikan
is sanded and bevelled,
the land lone and leveled
by some unrecorded and powerful hand,
which plays along the monument
and drums upon a plastic bag.
The "Brave Men and Women So Dear to God
and Famous to All of the Ages" rag.
Saying:
"Do you love me?
Will you remember?"
The snow falls above me.
The renderer renders:
The event is in the hand of God.
Beneath a patch of grass, her
bones the old Dutch master hid.
While elsewhere Tobias
and the angel disguise
what the scholars surmise was a mother and kid.
Interred with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters' fields
above them, parades
mark the passing of days
through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel.
Where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall
and the cause that they died for are lost in the idling bird calls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best,
lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
with any fluorescence
where the hand of the master begins, and ends.
I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be.
Will you tell the one that I love to remember and hold me?
I call and call for the doctor
but the snow swallows me whole with ol' Florry Walker,
and the event lives only in print.
He said:
"It's alright,"
and "It's all over now,"
and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened;
the boy was known to show unusual daring.
And, called a “boy”,
this alderman, confounding Tammany Hall,
in whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall.
So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest soul may repair,
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now may look and despair
and see with wonder
the tributes we have left to rust in the parks,
swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart
for the Western front where our work might count.
O mercy! O God!
Go out, await the hunter to decipher the stone,
and what lies under. Now the city is gone.
Look and despair.
Look and despair.

The cause is Ozymandian.
The map of Sapokanikan
is sanded and bevelled,
the land lone and leveled
by some unrecorded and powerful hand,
which plays along the monument
and drums upon a plastic bag.
The "Brave Men and Women So Dear to God
and Famous to All of the Ages" rag.
Saying:
"Do you love me?
Will you remember?"
The snow falls above me.
The renderer renders:
The event is in the hand of God.
Beneath a patch of grass, her
bones the old Dutch master hid.
While elsewhere Tobias
and the angel disguise
what the scholars surmise was a mother and kid.
Interred with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters' fields
above them, parades
mark the passing of days
through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel.
Where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall
and the cause that they died for are lost in the idling bird calls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best,
lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
with any fluorescence
where the hand of the master begins, and ends.
I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be.
Will you tell the one that I love to remember and hold me?
I call and call for the doctor
but the snow swallows me whole with ol' Florry Walker,
and the event lives only in print.
He said:
"It's alright,"
and "It's all over now,"
and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened;
the boy was known to show unusual daring.
And, called a “boy”,
this alderman, confounding Tammany Hall,
in whose employ King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall.
So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest soul may repair,
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now may look and despair
and see with wonder
the tributes we have left to rust in the parks,
swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart;
for the Western front, where our work might count.
O mercy! O God!
Go out. Await the hunter to decipher the stone,
and what lies under. Now the city is gone:
Look and despair.
Look and despair.

>>6994356
him having a style so distinct unique it's that easy to recognize isn't significant to you?

>>6992252
sorry, but anyone who is serious about writing poetry knows who ashbery is

makes sense that no one here knows him

>>6994729
Sorry to rain on your parade brah but I ain't gonna let it slide. Not for Newsom

I know you posted it here to gauge if it's any good. Make your own mind using your own intuitions.

Everywhere I look, normies I see
Normies to the left and to the right of me
They don't know my feels, I just want a girlfriend
But I mustn't break, I mustn't bend
Just love of some kind, a hand to hold
"Just be yourself," I am constantly told
Most are disgusted by what they view
So I put back on the mask, big guy for you
I say I'll make changes starting tomorrow
But changes never come, not even in sorrow
Days pass me by like bitter cold
The years go round, I grow old
People are settling, they all have a wife
But I have not begun my life
It's too much, I cannot do it
One chance at happiness, and I blew it
Nothing in life, no legacy
Generations of fathers, and it ends with me
I am nothing but an empty shell
I can already here the funeral knell
Empty chairs, empty casket
People will walk just right past it
I'll order that helium tank one day
One day never comes, I learned the hard way
I have no other outlet but rage
Fuck you, fuck this thread, sage
So while I wait for my doom
I post on a board for little girl cartoons
I join in this culture of hate
Against those people who did not wait
It's all I have left in this sad life of mine
They still don't understand, they just think I whine
What I wanted in life will never be
Nothing left to do but just go RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

already posted this about a month ago but here's for shameless self promotion

https://www.smashwords..

com/books/view/563309