Hi Cynthia, I'm not sure why you suggest the final stanza lacks discipline, it is constructed and expressed with the same care and attention as the rest of the poem.
Yes, I agree 'slags' is a strong term, and the women involved were frequently labeled as such throughout this affair, and also in the recent court cases, and indeed still are in some quarters - hence why I use the word.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/uc182-vii/uc18201.htm
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
Jeremy, so much of this is really good, especially at the beginning. IMO, the first four stanzas are super, a complete work. The next stanza is good in itself, another poem. And then, it just seems to derail into a third 'work' that takes off like an express train without a driver.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'sorry slags', which may not be derogatory at all by intent. Words are so powerful, and open to singular or regional interpretation.
You are a classical thinker. And I greatly admire that. Just not sure what happened to your instinctive discipline.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
<Deleted User> (5011)
Sun 28th Feb 2016 13:52
Poem? I don't think so.
This forum is for sharing poetry, not distributing dodgy diatribes intended to hit imaginary targets.
No reconstruction here, sadly.
Some innovative use of colons though.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
Indeed - thank you for confirming that the poem hits the intended target.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
This poem led me to check today's Guardian website. There at the top of the page, alongside pictures of the guilty: "Ringleader of Rotherham sexual abuse gang jailed for 35 years". I scrolled down the page: no mention of Savile (note the spelling, btw). So much for a cover-up.
The sad and ugly truth is that men of *all* backgrounds commit abuse. Savile mixed with the great and the good; the men from Rotherham did not. I doubt that fact (or their ethnicity) mattered a jot to their victims.
Did the girls in Rotherham have to wait far too long for justice? Yes. But now it's finally arrived it has been neither denied nor overshadowed, and I feel it's unhelpful to misrepresent that. Savile's victims suffered appallingly. These girls suffered appallingly. We're quite capable of understanding that they were poorly served by a system which let *all* of them down. Whatever the intention of this poem, I respectfully suggest the girls deserve better than being described as 'sorry slags', and the pain of Savile's victims is not something which should be written off as usefully proving 'white men do it too'. Abuse is not an issue to play politics with.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
jeremy young
Sun 28th Feb 2016 22:49
"This forum is for sharing poetry, not distributing dodgy diatribes intended to hit imaginary targets."
I invited you, within the poem, to state that it is not a poem: because you disagree with the dialectic, and don't wish to consider the issues - and you have.
I fail to see the imaginary.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young