You There, Review My Litery Capabilities At Once.

[Warshrike]

http://bebo.com/Chapters.jsp?ChapterId=4678649415&MemberId=4678115323

Not to draw attention to a social networking site or anything, but I'd love if those of you who are able to read and write English sufficiently to use the intertubes to have a look at these and tell me what you think. They're all written between roughly 1 year ago to present.

But dagnammit, noone I know hates them, so I'm on a quest to find someone who thinks they SUCK!!

Oh, and a warning. There's 6 poems and 2 short stories. They poems may contain excessive cheese, and one of the stories is about emocide.

Oh, and if you like the poem "The Last Dance Of The Muse" More than the others, please tell me, as for some reason everyone likes that poem, and it's the only one not written whilst thinking aboot someone I like.

[Solo]

http://bebo.com/Chapters.jsp?ChapterId=4678649415&MemberId=4678115323

Not to draw attention to a social networking site or anything, but I'd love if those of you who are able to read and write English sufficiently to use the intertubes to have a look at these and tell me what you think. They're all written between roughly 1 year ago to present.

But dagnammit, noone I know hates them, so I'm on a quest to find someone who thinks they SUCK!!

Oh, and a warning. There's 6 poems and 2 short stories. They poems may contain excessive cheese, and one of the stories is about emocide.

Oh, and if you like the poem "The Last Dance Of The Muse" More than the others, please tell me, as for some reason everyone likes that poem, and it's the only one not written whilst thinking aboot someone I like.

I demand that you refund me the time I spent reading those.:smallyuk:

[Warshrike]

Edit: Oh right, this is the forum I'm NOT allowed to flame on. oops.

[Tormsskull]

You There, Review My Litery Capabilities At Once.

Poor. You spelled "Literary" wrong.

[Warshrike]

Myes, I know. That was incentive for spelling nazis to come in.

[Solo]

Edit: Oh right, this is the forum I'm NOT allowed to flame on. oops.

What are you complaining about? You've fulfilled your quest, haven't you? :smallwink:

[Warshrike]

Yeah, but I figured a mum joke still wasn't appropriate.

Still... Woohoo!! Confirmation that I'm right and the rest of the world is dumb!! I can't write!!

[Brickwall]

All I care about is that you get this moved to the Arts&Crafts forum, where someone might deign you actually worthy of caring about. You're wasting time here, though.

[Ego Slayer]

Not that I have time right now, as I'm about to run off to a class and will read later... but... why exactly are we being harsh? :smallconfused:

[Warshrike]

What, move it there and miss out on all the fun of the General forum??

Because, out of everyone I've shown these to before the worst I've had said about them was 'Some aren't so good'. Which annoys me as before I Showed anyone I was have fun thinking that they sucked.

[Brickwall]

How is saying I don't care about him or his work harsh? I say that to a lot of people. It's not a negative statement or anything. In fact, I was so nice as to direct him to a place where people might care.

Though I can offer no explanation as to Solo's phrasing of his...criticism. It certainly wasn't helpful, though I suppose it's exactly what the OP asked for. You're all very strange people. :smallsigh:

Okay, so...wait, you posted in the wrong forum intentionally? That clears things up. [Scrubbed]

[Dragonrider]

I read "House 17". I liked your style, but I think you need some editing - your tense kind of jumps around and there's some spelling and grammatical issues.

(:smalltongue: am I being too constructive for your taste? not "you suck" enough?)

[Solo]

Not that I have time right now, as I'm about to run off to a class and will read later... but... why exactly are we being harsh? :smallconfused:

We climb the mountain because it is there, because we can!

[rubakhin]

Okay, I'm bored. You want the harsh critique?

Look, I'm saying this because it'll help you: They're complete and total ... okay, instead of searching for an appropriate word in the English language, of which there are none, I'm going to go with poshlost' and force you to learn Russian. Or at least make you Google it.

Still, I guess you could be a good poet if you really wanted to. The first thing you need to do is read poetry. Any poetry. Read a lot of modern stuff, prose poetry, and poems in translation, that'll break you from your obsession with form. Form is important in poetry, but content always trumps it. I'm guessing you don't read a lot as it stands, correct me if I'm wrong - you'll need to start reading one or two poems or books of poetry a day, if not more. And lots of prose couldn't hurt. Try to read three or four books a week for the next several years. Good books. Classics. The Western canon. And, for God's sake, write. They'll be awful, but write anyway. A poem a day, a week, three a month, I don't care, but write, write a lot, and do it regularly.

The second thing you need to do is live in the world. You have nothing to write about, nothing to say. Your poems reek of sheltered inexperience. How old are you? After a few years of the rigorous intellectual discipline I suggested, I suggest you enlist. No, seriously, enlist. Listen, when a young Isaac Babel showed his stories to Maxim Gorky, Gorky said that Babel wasn't writing about what life was like, but what he thought life was like. So Babel joined the army and became one of the greatest writers history remembers. At very least - I don't know, have sex, do drugs, make poor decisions. Hitchhike across the country. It'll ruin your life but help your poetry, which is more important in the end.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Moved from Friendly Banter.

[Lord Iames Osari]

At very least - I don't know, have sex, do drugs, make poor decisions. Hitchhike across the country. It'll ruin your life but help your poetry, which is more important in the end.

And if ruining your life with poor decisions doesn't work, arrange a way to die. Then you can write wonderful poems in the afterlife, because after all, the quality of your poetry is more important than your continued existence as a living person.

((note: I haven't read your stuff, I'm just taking rubakhin's position to its logical and absurd conclusion because I think it's a stupid position))

[Warshrike]

Thanks all for continued criticism.

@Dragonrider- Yes, I'm aware of that. I wrote it at about four in the morning, and didn't get around to fixing it up. I've always felt that editing was like admitting you were wrong.

@Rubakhin- Thank you for some of your advice. I'm seventeen at the moment, so maybe life could teach me a thing or two more. Indeed, most of these lack 'life experience' because life where I live is not something I wish to experience at all, and these were mostly written on a whim.
And writing is more of a whimsical hobby to me, just like roleplaying. I do it because I enjoy it, not because I want to become famously renowned as a drunken poet who lived in the gutter for fifty years unpublished, until they found clutched in my hands the most magnificent poems ever written. Just doesn't seem much to aspire to, y'know??

[rubakhin]

Bah. Poetry, to the right poet, is far more important than the poet's continued existence as a living person.

[Lord Iames Osari]

So if achieving the best-quality poetry (and by extension, any other form of art) is more important than enjoying life, or living at all, then why don't all people who believe that arrange to die in various horrible and painful ways, so as to increase the quality of their work?

[rubakhin]

*muse* Well, the important thing is to do whatever facilitates creativity and understanding - poetic knowledge, the knowledge of man, or of oneself. To be able to create is the ultimate goal. Dangerous living is one thing, suicide is something else - a dead body can't write a poem.

However, if you were going to spread that death out over the course of, say, six months or a few years (there is or was an order of priests that would mummify themselves alive over about that period of time), and you believed it would give you artistic transcendence during that period of time, go for it.

[Quincunx]

Hrmm. Now this will annoy me until I remember the details, but weren't those monks trying to leave their physical bodies perfected as inspirations/relics to later generations and not so much creating works of the mind? (Buddhists? Mahayana, as the climates of the Theravada branch don't really support mummification? The drink of. . .of. . .of. . .) Mind you, if there were anyone here who ought to dig out a half-meter deep grave, tilted so that the face of the deceased would break the soil's surface, and carefully self-bury the naked form with loose humus, you are it, Rubakhin. (Mild doses of hemlock--does hemlock even exist in the Himalayas? Tannins? Teas?) The monks kept to tiny cramped cells, and as they had ceased to eat at the beginning of that year, did not foul them. The bacteria died in their gut and they did not rot from within. (You would exhume yourself after a few hours, once the chill had gotten sufficiently into your skin. And worms just add to the sensation, mmm-mmm. . .) What do you think about when you're dying from hunger of the mind?

[truemane]

Well, rubakhin is Russian, and Russians are prone to grand operatic statements. Sometimes I think Hemmingway must have been a Russian in a previous life.

While it is true that living hard and loud and on the edge of things informs the stereotype of the suffering artist, it need not be the case, Gerard Manley Hopkins spent his rich, priveleged life doing bothing but meditating on the Divine, and he is regarded one of the greatest Victorian poets.

rubakhin's point DOES have validity, but only for those for whom writing is more important than anything else. Same thing as the people who drop out of school, move to California and live in abject poverty while they try to break into acting. Same drive to BE something and to CREATE something above all else, and the same disregard for the conventional life-path while they do so. Lots of people give up the dream in their late 30's, their lives "ruined" but happy that at least they tried.

But the point is, Warshrike, that if you aren't serious about writing, if it is in fact just a whim, then why should you, we or anyone else care about what you write?

If you want people to think you suck then, you suck. Congratulations.

Now that that's been decided, go get a degree in computer programming or something, spend the rest of your life playing Counterstike in between customer service calls about how to check email.

PS: You're not smart and everyone else is dumb. People are just nice, by and large, and won't take you seriously unless you give them a reason to do so.