Snapshots

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's a lovely poem. How very strange that something so sad can sould beautiful at the same time.

Many thanks, Jade, for this lovely comment...

The city seems to be weeping today
--or is it me?
Or is it me?

Along Av. du Parc the residences
have turned their facades around
so that they're facing inwards
as if sadness were akin
to shame, to failure...

[PrinceMyshkin]

Snapshots: 3

An unfamiliar SUV
passes slowly by
as I brush the overnight snow
from my car.

Behind the wheel
an attractive young woman
(but they are all attractive
when they smile)
glances into her rear-view mirror
and flashes a smile
at the passenger behind her.

My day begins.

[PrinceMyshkin]

A woman stops by my table to greet me,
to offer me the chance to invite her
to join me. It would take me
the better part of the day
to decode the expression on her face.

There is a note of Save me from my loneliness
and an undernote of Of course you won't.
Like all the other men you look for younger women
with bigger breasts and lax morals
and there's a side note of Figure me out if you can!
No one ever has, or will.

[Sweets America]

That's a nice new snapshot, shou. Now maybe nice is not the appropriate word. Maybe 'nice' is not 'felicitous' (I learn that word in class today ). I like how your poem deals with the unsaid, and I also feel how the speaker is passive in front of this woman who asserts her presence. I like how this tells something about human complexity.
I also recognize your own voice here, your own poetry, my Prince.

[Granny5]

It hurts my heart, Jerry. Could it be me and Poppy someday? Naw, I never run out of things to say and he always makes up an answer hoping to shut me up.
It's beautiful and moving. And it does bring sadness to my heart.

[Sweets America]

It hurts my heart, Jerry. Could it be me and Poppy someday? Naw, I never run out of things to say and he always makes up an answer hoping to shut me up.
It's beautiful and moving. And it does bring sadness to my heart.

That is sad, yes. In comparison to you and Poppy, I think that the even more interesting thing in the poem is that the two characters actually don't know each other, and I love how so many things pass through glances here.

Oh, I just understood the 5 in Granny5! I'm so stupid I had never realized it was about the number of your grandchildren!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh, I just understood the 5 in Granny5! I'm so stupid I had never realized it was about the number of your grandchildren!

On the other hand, it could be a reference to the number of teeth she has left in her head!

[PrinceMyshkin]

That's a nice new snapshot, shou. Now maybe nice is not the appropriate word. Maybe 'nice' is not 'felicitous' (I learn that word in class today ). I like how your poem deals with the unsaid, and I also feel how the speaker is passive in front of this woman who asserts her presence. I like how this tells something about human complexity.
I also recognize your own voice here, your own poetry, my Prince.

Thank you. Your reference to "voice" got me thinking how, by that, one usually means the distinctive manner that X or Y employs in his or her poetry, but that in fact in my characteristically conversational poems, the voice is almost indistinct from that in which I would speak to someone spontaneously.

[Sweets America]

Thank you. Your reference to "voice" got me thinking how, by that, one usually means the distinctive manner that X or Y employs in his or her poetry, but that in fact in my characteristically conversational poems, the voice is almost indistinct from that in which I would speak to someone spontaneously.

That's true that your poems are conversational, but in the meantime I don't see them that way, not only. Of course when you read them, you see it sometimes (often?) sounds like the speaker is relating an event to the reader, but in the meantime there is something which goes beyond the purely conversational, I don't know. Maybe it's the 'general' thing that I can feel in all your poems, this things that draws kinds of conclusions or lessons from the particular event. This didactic thing. And I think your voice is more there than in the strictly conversational.

On the other hand, it could be a reference to the number of teeth she has left in her head!

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[PrinceMyshkin]

That's true that your poems are conversational, but in the meantime I don't see them that way, not only. Of course when you read them, you see it sometimes (often?) sounds like the speaker is relating an event to the reader, but in the meantime there is something which goes beyond the purely conversational, I don't know. Maybe it's the 'general' thing that I can feel in all your poems, this things that draws kinds of conclusions or lessons from the particular event. This didactic thing. And I think your voice is more there than in the strictly conversational.

Certainly I'm trying to purge myself of the didactic and I'd begun to worry that the conversational thing might be getting glib or even self-parodying but on the other hand there's a common ground on which conversation and poetry may be synonymous. That will happen sometimes when a speaker is passionate. He or she might lapse (or rise) into poetic cadences. It is so, too, I think, when one speaks plainly of some truth that is essential to one's being.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Oh, I am, deeply, deeply ashamed of myself!

[SleepyWitch]

That's a nice new snapshot, shou. Now maybe nice is not the appropriate word. Maybe 'nice' is not 'felicitous' (I learn that word in class today ).

Pragmatics class?

gee, I wish I was an old geezer so women would stop by at my table (I don't mean the waitress)

[Sweets America]

Pragmatics class?

gee, I wish I was an old geezer so women would stop by at my table (I don't mean the waitress)

Well, not pragmatics class, but yes, the teacher just explained us some things about pragmatics and the 'felicitous' word came up.
Isn't it a beautiful word?

[SleepyWitch]

Well, not pragmatics class, but yes, the teacher just explained us some things about pragmatics and the 'felicitous' word came up.
Isn't it a beautiful word?

yeah, but I like Grice's "avoid unnecessary prolixity" better and his "be perspicuous" .. .yeah, right, they don't sound as nice as felicitous, but they're two words with a p that you won't find in any old run-of-the-mill dictionary. takes a philosopher of language to dig up two of those and use them in a row..
(did I mention I'm no good at either, avoiding prolixity and being perspicuous? also, has anyone noted that Grice's maxims would make a great song in the style of "Class of 99" by Baz Lurman -sp?-... I mean: "Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.".. .sounds great)....

sorry, Jer, I'll stop hijacking your thread now

[PrinceMyshkin]

Pragmatics class?

gee, I wish I was an old geezer so women would stop by at my table (I don't mean the waitress)

It's a common enough misconception that old geezers are necessarily male and of an advanced age. Some of them may be smart-assed "chicks" who are younger than thirty!

[SleepyWitch]

It's a common enough misconception that old geezers are necessarily male and of an advanced age. Some of them may be smart-assed "chicks" who are younger than thirty!

who you talkin bout, doooooode? hehehe, you lost me there