Blog Comments

A late reply, but this interests me. I agree with T.S. Elliot.

I think music has helped me learn how to appreciate poetry. To me, it's about finding a feeling, and dejecting words that lead you astray. This might lead to the sense that the story has been thrown out, but really it just takes some good pouring overs to put the pieces together.

Just my view, there are example that prove this wrong. For instance some art dejects feeling and turns towards symmetry or cerebrality.

But, above all, one of the most beautiful things about art to me is that it's always changing. Or more accurately, the piece itself doesn't usually change, but our views on it do. I can listen to an album over and over again and experience it a different way each time. As my realm of thought changes I get new ways to relate to the old things I've always loved. As my experiences change, my mental and physical environment, my mind opens up to what this giants ****ing orb floating through space has to reveal.

Nice to see you Pablo. I'll have to disagree: Faulkner's the best.

Hey i want to read Leaves of Grass myself this year. I hope I can get to it.

You've made good choices. Dos Passos and Sherwood Anderson are(were) a great American author, but theirworks have been inexplicably neglected. Don't forget Ring Lardner.

I'm happy that you plan to write more. I wish you lots of success.

By the bye, did you know that there's a
new quiz thread? Maybe you'll write a quiz for us!
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=49916

Happy New Year!

Auntie

Thanks for the kind words folks. I'm going to keep writing, but I can't very well submit another Johnny Kickstool. Scher will throw me out because you'll know who wrote it. Thanks again. It's inspiring. I think Johnny has a novel in him.

I wouldn't apologize for voting for my own story if I read it and really felt it was the best. All of us should vote for the one we liked the best. Silly Pablo! As for the lack of votes- it drives me nuts! I think that's the one thing on lit-net that we should all do.

I thought Johnny Kickstool was kickazz good. I really hope you submit another one this month! Even better if it was another Johnny Kickstool story!!

Oh you wrote Johnny Kickstool. Pablo it was very good. I thought it was clearly the best. Oh I have voted for my own story when I thought it was the best. I try to be honest. Of course I'm bias but I don't think I'm voting for my story just because it's mine.

Pablo,

You are not the first author to vote for their own story in the competition and it is natural for any author to think that their work is better (ask parents whose child is the most promising/talented )

Hope you will keep writing and sending stories in

Take care.

I hope you don't stop writing and that goes to all of the writers here on the forum.

I haven't read the stories and voted in ages I used to do it, but then my exams got in the way. I'll try and vote again next time.

I have to agree with what Andya has said. I too struggled with a choice between the two she mentioned.

I found that Johnny Kickstool was very well written and the concept was very original. I hope that you enter many more contests, Pablo.

As for the lack of voters, hmmmm, what a loss so many people miss. The chance to read our own writers finest selections -- yes, voting isn't always easy, but the reading is very enjoyable. Thanks for this blog entry, it made me think (as your entries usually do).

For me it was a toss-up between Button War and Johnny Kickstool. That is a fascinating idea - I wouldn't say you haven't written anything serious .

I hear what you are saying, Pablo, I have felt these insecurities myself. But to pop into the poetry threads and read some of the stuff that is in there is truly a good experience.

We have some awesome people, not only are they talented but they are quite nice individuals (I just love our poets, all of youze) They view life in a way that I do envy. I cannot 'analyze' a poem if my life depended on it -- but I know what I like, what touches me, what I have felt. And this is what I find in our Poetry section. Sometimes I post to let the poet know that I have read the work. And other times I read it and just do not know what to say. But that is ok too.

Anyhow, didn't mean to bend your ear this long, but just to say, jump in Pablo -- you may be very surprised.

T. S. Eliot once said something about how our appreciation of a poem must precede our understanding of it.

You are definitely cheating yourself Pablo. And really poetry is not as hard as a novel, believe it or not, at least in my opinion. It's condensed and concentrated. Take it one line at a time, and read through the line breaks. I'm not a teacher I'm afraid, so I'm at a loss on how to direct you, but poetry is essentially the art of constructing language. I wish I had a way to just explain it all so that it makes sense. Let me think about it. But you are definitely not alone. Many people get intimidated by the lines being arranged. Just ignore that and read it for the sound and meaning.

Think of the novel as the art of arranging a story to enlighten experience.

Think of poetry as the art of arranging language to enlighten experience.

I'll have a final blog when I've finished USA. It's not as disjointed as it sounds because the themes drift in and out of all four techniques and the main characters typically cross paths in one form or another at one or more times or another.

I almost missed your blog Pablo. As I told you I've never read Dos Passos, and that sounds very interesting, the technical experiments. This caught my eye:

Dos Passos patches together the stories using four techniques. Each book has central characters, each of whom's stories are told from that character's perspectives. The characters may or may not eventually cross paths.

Virginia Woolf does that in Mrs. Dalloway and frankly, though I really like Woolf's writing, I did not find the parallel stories which never intersect a satisfying technique. This is my opinion of course, but story cannot be held together strictly by theme; it requires narrative connections.

Thanks for the information on Dos Passos. I know so little of him.

That's funny Nick. I wonder if he called that homeless hotline. What would a homeless person be doing reading Ezra Pound? Actually that little ditty doesn't sound too bad. I like the slant rhyme of them/numb.

$15, ol' Steve sounds insane.

I don't have a phobia with used books, but they do make you wonder. I have a used copy of Pound's ABC of Reading and inside the back cover someone wrote:

"I'll feel it for
them
they're all too
Numb
I'll feel it for them"

along with the number for a homeless hotline.

I also found William Packard's business card in my copy of The Poet's Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices by William Packard founder and editor of New York Quarterly.

Well I think he is good