Oh so sad but a write that I think many will relate too..well written Thom..Yup I enjoyed the read very much..thanks :)

Comment is about Touching Souls (blog)

Original item by Tom

Thanks Elaine for your comments on Vintage heart...we all need a bit of glamour...well i do anyway hehe.
x x

Comment is about Elaine (poet profile)

Original item by Elaine

thanks to you all for some lovely positive comments, the actress in the photo is Joan Bennett :) ... bit of a girly one this hehe

Comment is about Vintage Heart (blog)

Thanks for the kind comments on Doing It Twice. To quote Steve Womack, "These days the only time I think about doing it twice is just before I've done it once".

Comment is about Lynn Dye (poet profile)

Original item by Lynn Dye

Thanks for the kind comments on Doing It Twice. To quote Steve Womack, "These days the only time I think about doing it twice is just before I've done it once".

Comment is about Laura Taylor (poet profile)

Original item by Laura Taylor

Thanks for the kind comments on Doing It Twice. To quote Steve Womack, "These days the only time I think about doing it twice is just before I've done it once".

Comment is about Elaine (poet profile)

Original item by Elaine

Excellent Steve
Just a minor thought though - should it be lay and not lie in line 2.

Comment is about Lullaby for Thermopylae (blog)

Original item by Steven Kenny

John - I didn't know you'd said anything untoward tbh... I never saw any such comment - thanx anyway mate

Comment is about John Aikman (poet profile)

Original item by John Aikman

Great poem John especially listened to on the voice over

Comment is about Doing It Twice (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Hello John - re: Below the Belt - thanks for taking the time to get in touch - much apppreciated

Comment is about John Coopey (poet profile)

Original item by John Coopey

Hi Cynthia - I'm pleased Muntjak resonated with you and appreciate your taking the time to let me know x

Comment is about Cynthia Buell Thomas (poet profile)

Original item by Cynthia Buell Thomas

I'm glad Below the Belt raised a smile Andy and appreciate your taking time out to let me know

Comment is about Andy N (poet profile)

Original item by Andy N

Thanks very much for your comments all.If anyone's feeling helpful I've another couplet beginning
They said there was an enemy within -
and I'm not sure of the next line. Summat about Old/New Labour perhaps.

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

...And a very good ahhh afternoon to Isobel...

Thank so much for your very well thought through critique... it really isn't a million miles away from the reality at the heart of the piece.I was born on a small Island and as a consequence the sea features in much of my poetry.

You are so right about the power and eternity of the sea ...to me it is hypnotic..


Once again many thanks for such a worthwhile and full critique

Gus xx

Comment is about Isobel (poet profile)

Original item by Isobel

Didn't mean to upset you, I was just trying to encourage you. Ray hit the nail on the head really, and you did too. Yes, I am a bit of a lazy reader and I tire quickly when a poem is too much like hard work to understand. Some poets can still entrance me with crackling language, even when I haven't got a clue what they are on about. Sometimes I am just left with a vague impressionist glow, and have been entertained...but I am none the wiser.

You do have several instances of crackling phrases and neat wordsmithery littered throughout your work, but I have yet to feel I have 'understood' many of the poems. I can't be arsed to wade through the wilfully obscure, which, I know is my loss, but hey, there's only so many hours in a day.

I just thought you might experiment a bit with a change of voice and maybe borrow from Thoreau's maxim and 'simplify, simplify, simplify' even if it's just for duffers like me and ray to appreciate.

Sorry.

:-)

Jx

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

I like this one Ray - caustic humour, black humour, slap stick humour - we've got it all on this site!

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

I never presumed everybody to take the same from the phrase "Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously" - it doesnt mean anything as a statement we can all share! so...thats why I played around with it abit, and I didnt think this poem was cryptic in its content. Maybe I was hasty - I didnt mean people should put in the same amount of time I did writing, and i appreciate many poems just on a feeling they create in me alone, but sometimes I find the "I just don't get it comment" a little tiring then - why should you have to get it?
I asked what he meant by stereotypical writing.
I don't want to rally you on a personal level and sorry if it is coming across that way.

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Marianne. Nobody is going to put in as much work reading a poem as you've put in to write it.I don't doubt that every word means something to you and I think you arrange those words in an interesting, novel fashion.I think you write well, as I said. But, you know, I had to smile at your response "sorry, John, I don't know what you mean." And also at your explanation of Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously. For I wonder how many people share your understanding or intent.A poem can be appreciated for reasons other than meaning, of course, but you know, every little helps.This is just my opinion and there's absolutely no reason why you should take any notice of it. Best Wishes, Ray

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Brilliant, John, such a good laugh! x

Comment is about Doing It Twice (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

with all due respect John, I think your comment is abit lazy. I don't expect everyone to like what I do but I don't understand what getting out of my groove and writing something challenging would actually entail. What is my groove according to you? and challenging? What do you suggest? Maybe my feathers are being ruffled here but I challenge myself alot with ideas and themes and language, I take on characters because I am fascinated by the different psyches. I was listening to an interview with Henry Miller the other day, he was talking about the way people write - some people write objectively but... they are still there - the idiosyncracies can not be clothed completely no matter what idea someone is trying on. He talked alot about the idea of the artist and writer either being possessed or obsessed (which i think is just our psychic aparatus so to speak, amplified) to really get to make some magic, thinking about Dali and Edgar Allen Poe. And if somebody told them to get out of their groove, probably would have replied with "fuck off!" (I am not being rude, maybe teasing a little here.) ha! I never comment on my work but I fear a can has been opened and my serpents are slivering everywhere, must tidy them up. By the by, the Henry Miller interview is a cracker if you want me to send it to you, on youtube but an hour long so split up into sections. He ends alot of his sentences in it with "Don't you know?" which is kind of amusing after a while.

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Hi Marianne-thanks for 'Beautiful'comment-you have made an old duffers day.x

Comment is about Marianne Daniels (poet profile)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Haha!! Oh well, I guess recovery time is a little longer 'at your age' John ;p

'let daddy kiss it better' - oh you are awful, but I like you :D


oh ray, hehehe

Comment is about Doing It Twice (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Lynn - yes! Charlie Dimmock...mmMMM :D

steve - dead right. Nigella took it way too far though and I actually went off her :( She might as well have been performing fellatio for real tbh.

Anyway - MOAR girl crush poems! :D

Comment is about sarah beaney (blog)

Original item by Ann Foxglove

Good morning Gus. This takes several readings to fully appreciate the words lapping over you - it is lovely...

I felt the poem was about another self. For me it would be about the person one might have been in different circumstances - with different life experiences.

'Watchers gather upon still waters
Weaving his love and lives to wear'
I love those lines - to me representing the key players in one's life. Though they are key, they will only ever be on the sidelines watching and trying to interact with the different strands of the self cos each person's life is individual, separate, complex - we are all islands or waves.
Underpinning it all, I sense time passing. Though the sea is timeless, we are not. Putting man next to something elemental like the sea highlights his mortality and ultimate inconsequence.

That is what I got out of it anyway. The beauty of your poem is that people can get whatever they want out of it - it works well without a crystal explanation. xx

Comment is about Wave Over Wave (To the memory of a very good friend of mine that I never met) (blog)

Original item by Gus Jonsson

like it thom, but it's one i think that needs a few reads and that itself is not a bad thing..

i particularly can relate to this stanza

'We were one chapter, now just a recurring character
in the long story of each others lives
you are a glimpse of all that might have been for me
in the long story of our separate lives'

and the ending...

top stuff.. (need to think about my childhood poem too which reminds me)

Comment is about Touching Souls (blog)

Original item by Tom

i'm in the same boat as john here, alan as there is a lot of good stuff in here, but it does feel a bit heavy for me with all of the ideas you are trying to get out, but i enjoyed it and wish you good luck if you want to re-edit it..

Comment is about The Scream (blog)

Original item by alan barlow

haunting indeed... i can see why it may lose one or two people but i get what you are talking about.. love it... see you soon (Augusta told me about a exhibition you are putting together also - you two make such a good team together with your work i think...

Comment is about Wave Over Wave (To the memory of a very good friend of mine that I never met) (blog)

Original item by Gus Jonsson

This is neat. I like it ;-)

Comment is about Vintage Heart (blog)

I enjoyed reading this. The last two verses are brill in my opinion. Some really good lines in there :-)

Comment is about The Scream (blog)

Original item by alan barlow

Hauntingly beautiful Gus.x

Comment is about Wave Over Wave (To the memory of a very good friend of mine that I never met) (blog)

Original item by Gus Jonsson

in my haste i have slipped up in my typing but i hope you understand me. thankyou.

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

john, i am fully aware of where that phrase has come from and why Chomski used it as an example. I was experimenting here with the idea of "word salads" and using poetic liscence to maybe create something that makes sense out of something that appears nonsensical. the character that i therefore created was that of a paranoid person, confused in the knowledge of their feelings being real but the source maybe not being so... so "green" became jealousy, in the eyes of a lover, the "idea that sleeps furiously", the torment that this creates - taking over your waking thoughts and your dreams - sleep became a furious activity for this idea to spiral out of control and 'colourless' was referring to the paranoia - it is without fact. Ray, if you do not get it, you do not get it, but i sometimes tire of this being tagged to me - i do not pick words at random or use a cut up method, every word means something to me and is symbolic to the overall philosophy of the poem. they stem from feelings, sure, which can be hard to identify with but if you find it hardwork then mayybe because you are not putting in the hardwork reading it that i have whilst writing it. That sounds incredibly pompous but screw it! Sorry if this seems defensive, i hardly ever comment back on my own work but feel quite strongly about this.

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence with correct grammar (logical form) but semantics that are nonsensical. The sentence therefore has no understandable meaning. An example of a category mistake, it was used to show inadequacy of the then-popular probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models.' (wiki)

Just my observation. The above was coined the year I was born. Nothing personal. Just think you are stuck in a bit of a 'samey' groove and could burst out and write something, well, a bit more challenging.

I think you are fab...but, stuck.

:-)

Jx

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

I enjoyed this. I thought it were quite Shakespearean in its way and as close as I'll come to "getting" your poems.Your writing is very distinctive...and hard to follow. When I first came across it I thought this is imaginative , innovative, interesting..... and hard to follow.After a while the "hard to follow" began to outweigh other considerations and I found your work irritating. Maybe John feels that too.I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't think you were a good writer - and weren't rather drunk.

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Wonderful poem with a gorgeous turn of phrase: "vintage heart", "sequinned delight" and "glorious glamour".

Comment is about Vintage Heart (blog)

Very much appreciate the sentiments of this poem, Ray.

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

Very witty, title and verse! Much enjoyed the humour.

Comment is about Doing It Twice (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

It is very good, John, but a toe should never look black in anger.

Comment is about Doing It Twice (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

How many diffrunt ways to shag Ms Beany ?
I can count at leat 57 :)

Comment is about sarah beaney (blog)

Original item by Ann Foxglove

Magic ! I doff my cap :)

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

i love this, the fierceness and passions we have inside ourselves, sometimes hidden through fear..thats what i took from it atleast... I love
"Watchers gather upon still waters
Weaving his love and lives to wear
Laying his lonely angel sleeping
Moments ebb and tide waits for no man"
excellent.

Comment is about Wave Over Wave (To the memory of a very good friend of mine that I never met) (blog)

Original item by Gus Jonsson

Well, let's not be koi about it, Plymouth Argyle were never gonna knock Real Madrid off their perch and there's no point carping about it now. It were minnows against sharks and they skated it. Ray

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

ha, sorry john, I don't know what you mean. What is stereotypical of my writing then?

Comment is about Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (blog)

Original item by Marianne Daniels

Personally, I think Charlie's Arse (poem brewing??) is a bit TOO great - a bit like that Great Wall'O China - can be seen from the surface of the Moon :D

Comment is about sarah beaney (blog)

Original item by Ann Foxglove

I'm up there (down there?) with Cynth on this.

It's not really a Haiku and...it doesn't really work (for me).

For whatever reason, it reminds me of the old joke...'an empty cab pulled up outside of the Hilton...and John Denver got out'.

Not sure where the substance is?

Jx

I could, of course, just be an idiot?

Comment is about When is the ground? (blog)

Original item by Dave Bradley

Ray - it was the only plaice they'd have him :)
(or maybe that was just a red herring)

and - if Monsieur Foot did not fight in the Spanish Civil War - then where did he get that Donkey Jacket ? answer me that !
(not easy to come by these Spanish fur coats ye know)

Comment is about Donkey Jacket (blog)

It is good, Dave. How do you know you're falling if you have no point from which to 'measure'? You may be in ELSEWHERE.

Comment is about When is the ground? (blog)

Original item by Dave Bradley

Ok. So she does have great dugs...but we all know they are heading south...whatever she does...and, well, she is incredibly smug...despite her...umm...great dugs.

I'm sure there's a poem in my response,somewhere, but I can't be arsed...despite her great arse, too...which just pisses us all off really. Schadenfreude ...aaah, schadenfreude...

No, you're right. Great tits, but, does she keep giving birth to Beaney Babies?

:-)

Jx

Comment is about sarah beaney (blog)

Original item by Ann Foxglove

This takes my breath away!
It has such a serene quality to it with the repetition of 'Wave over wave'... though very sad.

Comment is about Wave Over Wave (To the memory of a very good friend of mine that I never met) (blog)

Original item by Gus Jonsson

Very interesting, John. Like a bunch of too-clever scriptwriters 'idea dumping' as they try to frame the opening scene of an episode, hoping inspiration will finally hit on a theme. There seems to be one major writer who is the front liner. Or this could be an internal monologue of someone drafting a story in his mind, a preparatory 'me, myself and I' investigation of an idea. I really like 'The definite article of a man'; it took a moment to peg it. Also, after all that discussion, all you get is 'our man'. If I've missed a major metaphor, please tell me.

Comment is about A Man Walked Into A Room (blog)

Original item by John Togher