Dick diddled Sue

[evanbedford_dot_com]

I wrote about 95% of this poem some 30 years ago when I was doing graduate work at the University of Alberta.  There are about 70 stanzas and they're all about the concepts I was studying at the time. 

It should be fairly easy to spot the other 5% of the poem, since those particular stanzas refer to more recent events.  The imagery is also a bit more recent.  Most of it was done in the late 1990's.

Please feel free to critique both the poetic devices as well as the concepts I've written about...especially the concepts, since I'm social science geek who can't do small talk, but loves to chat about Tocqueville and Darwin, etc. 

Below is the link for the poem without imagery.  Boring!  But if you must, and you're confused about references to the "previous 37 pages" or the "previous chapter", just go to the evanbedford.com site and scroll down to the yellow book thumbnail.  The chapters in question are XI and XII

https://www.evanbedford.com/dick_diddled_sue.pdf

Here is the poem with imagery (less boring, but more time consuming):  https://www.evanbedford.com/pom1.htm

And here is the poem with imagery overlain with my wise -- ha, ha -- commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1zZRnU7OxI&list=PLXWr-pHeloFNEe4BZBPkR2ox9Gi6Q3AMd&index=3 (hmm, the entire youtube address isn't being picked up. You'll either have to copy and paste or just go to my website and click on youtube thumbnail. It's in there somewhere)

[evanbedford_dot_com]

Well, I see that no one is coming to critique my poem, so I had better do it myself.

One of the biggest problems with it is that some of the words are not amenable to the meter of the rest of the poem.

The problem arises with certain irreplaceable words which have a lot of syllables that don’t fit either dactylic or anapestic meter. “Sustainability” is the worst offender (in stanza # 10). I tried to force it by typing SUS-tain-a-BIL-ity, but now I realize that I should just leave it as is. The word first gained wide acceptance with the Brundtland Report in 1987 and there aren’t really any suitable synonyms. Oxford’s Compact Thesaurus doesn’t even list the word.

There are some other examples of words with many syllables that are normally iambic or trochaic: The word “communication” in stanza 42. And “cooperation” in stanza 33. They are both examples of using all-caps and multiple hyphens to force the reader to accent the syllables which are not normally accented. It’s too forced. So I’ve taken out the all-caps on both and the hyphens on the second.

I see that I have two more offenders in Stanza 22: “society” and “citizenry”, but I’m not as bothered with the them, since I didn’t have to use all-caps. All I did was space out the syllables.

Then there are a few rhymes that suck. “Sure” and “sewer” in stanza 25. I should work on that.

And then there’s the vitally important economics concept of “externalities” which mixes up different meters internally. It’s in at least a couple of spots in the poem. I shortened it to “externals”...which is dumb academically, but at least it can fit into the anapest/dactyl sentences.

And “odd rumor” in stanza 27. “Odd” is simply a dumb adjective for that line, so I’ve changed it to “old”.

[milo]

Well, I see that no one is coming to critique my poem, so I had better do it myself.

One of the biggest problems with it is that some of the words are not amenable to the meter of the rest of the poem. 

The problem arises with certain irreplaceable words which have a lot of syllables that don’t fit either dactylic or anapestic meter.  “Sustainability” is the worst offender (in stanza # 10).  I tried to force it by typing SUS-tain-a-BIL-ity, but now I realize that I should just leave it as is.  The word first gained wide acceptance with the Brundtland Report in 1987 and there aren’t really any suitable synonyms.  Oxford’s Compact Thesaurus doesn’t even list the word. 

There are some other examples of words with many syllables that are normally iambic or trochaic: The word “communication” in stanza 42.  And “cooperation” in stanza 33.  They are both examples of using all-caps and multiple hyphens to force the reader to accent the syllables which are not normally accented.  It’s too forced.  So I’ve taken out the all-caps on both and the hyphens on the second.

I see that I have two more offenders in Stanza 22: “society” and “citizenry”, but I’m not as bothered with the them, since I didn’t have to use all-caps.  All I did was space out the syllables.       

Then there are a few rhymes that suck.  “Sure” and “sewer” in stanza 25.  I should work on that. 

And then there’s the vitally important economics concept of “externalities” which mixes up different meters internally.  It’s in at least a couple of spots in the poem.  I shortened it to “externals”...which is dumb academically, but at least it can fit into the anapest/dactyl sentences. 

And “odd rumor” in stanza 27.  “Odd” is simply a dumb adjective for that line, so I’ve changed it to “old”.

While I would be tickled to read 70 stanzas of Dick diddling Sue, I just don't know if I can trust clicking on a link that takes me to whatever hole this leads to .  Best option might be to post it here.  If you are actually looking for feedback, maybe even match it to the leve of feedback you are looking for, I am certain someone would be to eager to give you a line by line critique of it.

[evanbedford_dot_com]

While I would be tickled to read 70 stanzas of Dick diddling Sue, I just don't know if I can trust clicking on a link that takes me to whatever hole this leads to .  Best option might be to post it here.  If you are actually looking for feedback, maybe even match it to the leve of feedback you are looking for, I am certain someone would be to eager to give you a line by line critique of it.

Do you consider youtube.com to be a hole?  (OK, some of it definitely is).  But at least on my video, you wouldn't even have to read anything; you could just listen.

(The reason I posted it here, is that somewhere in the forum rules, it states that this sub-forum is the place for videos.)

[milo]

While I would be tickled to read 70 stanzas of Dick diddling Sue, I just don't know if I can trust clicking on a link that takes me to whatever hole this leads to .  Best option might be to post it here.  If you are actually looking for feedback, maybe even match it to the leve of feedback you are looking for, I am certain someone would be to eager to give you a line by line critique of it.

Do you consider youtube.com to be a hole?  (OK, some of it definitely is).  But at least on my video, you wouldn't even have to read anything; you could just listen.

(The reason I posted it here, is that somewhere in the forum rules, it states that this sub-forum is the place for videos.)

Well, there are 3 issues:

1. Yes, this forum is for videos but it is for embedded videos.
2. This forum also is not a critical forum as the site is not a video critique site.
3. Your link is not a video link it is a pdf.