Ever felt like this?

[billy]

[Leanne]

Mark, yes! That's it exactly!

Now if only World Vision would turn their charity onto miserable, pathetic, whiny artists we'd be set

[QDeathstar]

I'm a Genuine Poet™

---

Also, who cares about what constitutes a post count worth post... I thought the days of e-penis envy were long past?

[aschueler]

26 years ago I was writing on some hardly remembered BBS. It was the kind of place where people argued over Zenos paradoxes and the color black. I remember mentioning writing poetry, something very important to me at the time. Someone posted back "cool, do a poem." I found not only did I have nothing in return, but I couldn't come up with anything until just recently. It's been going in my head for a long time, just nothing down. Now I have to see if I can catch back up. I have my theories as to why it's trying to boil back up, but like opinions and buttholes...

Anyway to the board: allow for a few things. One, some people do need reassurance/ encouragement. You have done that with me, esp. Ellajam, who encourage us to keep trying. That is sad but true.

Next, if someone's poem is of the sort, it should be moved from novice to mild to serious. Also, rewrites should be allowed to move also, with the appropriate title changes etc.

Be merciless on four posters. They should wear a hat of shame or something.

Require and somehow enforce people to thank those who have commented on their poems, I know having people thank me for my input has made me feel like I was truly helping.

[ellajam]

Require and somehow enforce people to thank those who have commented on their poems, I know having people thank me for my input has made me feel like I was truly helping.

Ha, we can't force people to realize they are human beings interacting with other human beings and the simple social graces of please and thank you and do unto others grease the wheels here as they do any other place. All we can do is each act in a way that we see fit and hope that people writing poetry bother to read.

[Tiger the Lion]

Require and somehow enforce people to thank those who have commented on their poems, I know having people thank me for my input has made me feel like I was truly helping.

Ha, we can't force people to realize they are human beings interacting with other human beings and the simple social graces of please and thank you and do unto others grease the wheels here as they do any other place. All we can do is each act in a way that we see fit and hope that people writing poetry bother to read.

Oh dear. If we have to force humanity on poets...

[ellajam]

Require and somehow enforce people to thank those who have commented on their poems, I know having people thank me for my input has made me feel like I was truly helping.

Ha, we can't force people to realize they are human beings interacting with other human beings and the simple social graces of please and thank you and do unto others grease the wheels here as they do any other place. All we can do is each act in a way that we see fit and hope that people writing poetry bother to read.

Oh dear. If we have to force humanity on poets...

**** the rues!

[Achebe]

Thanking the critter is great, but unfortunately in the process it also bumps up the thread to the top. I fear that the future will belong to strong willed bumpers.

[Leanne]

Conversely, not thanking the critter sees your thread sink through the pile... and since gratitude is one of the virtues we'd quite like to encourage, I don't see a problem.

If it's clear someone is just bumping -- and this has happened in the past, but very rarely -- all it takes is for a mod to delete the last post and down she goes.

[QDeathstar]

What's wrong with bumping... As long as you're leaving your fair share of critiques, BUMP ON I SAY, BUMP ON!!!

[rowens]

I still don't believe that poets can be taught. No more than Jesus could be taught by God. A lot of insecure people post here and get scarred for life. Because to them poetry is some kind of ago-go that you just are a part of right away or you're not. Some kind of club that you can get into or you can't depending on what the frontman says. And people don't have time to know that poetry has to deal with madness, Jesus, the Earth being flat, and homosexuality and unintentional rape in ways that the usual talent doesn't spend. They don't think that unless you're Milton, Blake, Hart Crane or Robert Frost you can strike out on your own without Maya Angeblack or Billy Colgeneric saying oh. People don't know. Shelley and Keats kind of knew; but imagine all the others that would have slinked forth and back if they had Internet and lame schools at that time.

[milo]

What's wrong with bumping... As long as you're leaving your fair share of critiques, BUMP ON I SAY, BUMP ON!!!

I am a big fan of the bump.

[rowens]

This site attracts failures who are too young to know enough. And real poets who are fool enough to post for free what could maybe be published if not first posted on this site. Not me. I don't know the difference between Leanne or ellajam or the much missed justcloudy saying my poems are good and the publishing houses saying they're not. And I don't care. Because I only write what I want or need to write anyway. But I think here we should always give the benefit to the fools, because these days passion can feed more souls than the cowardly push-overs, don't you think? Just because they're inept doesn't mean they're hopeless. Any less than godly bores me and pisses me off and bores me again, because I've never been educated or to church, and I know more about poetry and God than Dante, Pascal, Augustine, Martin Luther and Milton back in the day. And most educated people know more about Pascal, Luther, Milton, Cervantes, Donne and Augustine than I do, because I have to think about sex and money. It doesn't mean the poems I argue about are ignorant-hateful-ought to be banned material.

---

Or to say it in sober terms: The problem with poetry today is that people with imagination are afraid of sounding weird, and people with no imagination have learned rationally how to get the best deal. Readers don't want to be fooled, and real poets don't care if you're a fool or not. That's all I think.

[milo]

Bump

[rowens]

Look, milo. What makes a passionate person who cut and bled before they wrote their poem more or less important than anything? A lot of people cut themselves these days. A lot of people don't read. If you want to be the poet of the day, you can't sweat the small stuff. Yeah, I sweat the Pascal, Rabelais, Martin Luther, Montaigne diaphragm. I catch myself after I get the ticket of fool. Most poets who post on this site at the beginning don't consider their ignorance. So why should I?

---

I don't want to feel anything, unless I came up with how I should or could feel first.

---

I have to make that up myself. And I reckon all the new posters are feeling that way too.

[milo]

You are probably mostly correct but ignorance is a luxury they must give up if they want to write that one poem that I want to read. It is sad as all great human loss is sad but it is worth it.

[rowens]

I didn't bring up Pascal just for piss and giggles. I'm talking how serious this is on the Internet. I have friends who are afraid to post on this site, questioning legitimacy. Theirs. They're afraid to be let down.

[milo]

I didn't bring up Pascal just for piss and giggles. I'm talking how serious this is on the Internet. I have friends who are afraid to post on this site, questioning legitimacy. Theirs. They're afraid to be let down.

And who wouldn't be a bit scared?
I used to be the fastest runner in the world
Til the day I found a stop watch.

[rowens]

I don't think I know anyone who is willing to read a poem, let alone write one, until someone--not me, but someone online--doesn't make them too insecure to know for them self.

[ellajam]

I didn't bring up Pascal just for piss and giggles. I'm talking how serious this is on the Internet. I have friends who are afraid to post on this site, questioning legitimacy. Theirs. They're afraid to be let down.

And who wouldn't be a bit scared?
I used to be the fastest runner in the world
Til the day I found a stop watch.

What about the fun of learning, and if eventually you see some improvement the satisfaction in that, in crafting a poem you wouldn't have been capable of a year before.

I revel in my ignorance, I don't know too much about too much, but that gives me a big field to grow in. Thinking of it that way I can understand Leanne's dilemma, maybe she knows too much. But I still don't get why most writers would be scared to go someplace where people expected them to grow.