Mirror, mirror on the wall,

[PrinceMyshkin]

Who is the bestest poet of us all?
Idiosyncratics and rugrats every one,
we slide out from behind the lives
we’ve assigned ourselves
and dare to be
somebody other,
somebody real!

[Delta40]

why the word 'bestest?' Are you being facetious? I'm in shallow mode thinking this morning....

slide out from behind the lives, suggests we live a facade and poetry is the expression of the true self. You have a wonderful habit of inciting thought Prince. Like the very message in your poem, you structure a seemingly simple framework which implies a much deeper meaning.

[Jerrybaldy]

I think my English teacher used to call this self awareness ;) I have read over time your appreciation of peoples bravery of exposing themselves in words, in poetry and that is what I read here. Idisosyncratics and rugrats fits for me. I love to be as real as I can on here and long may we keep on daring each other.
best wishes
the other J

[PrinceMyshkin]

why the word 'bestest?' Are you being facetious? I'm in shallow mode thinking this morning....

slide out from behind the lives, suggests we live a facade and poetry is the expression of the true self. You have a wonderful habit of inciting thought Prince. Like the very message in your poem, you structure a seemingly simple framework which implies a much deeper meaning.

Yes, facetious, because I needed to make fun of the concept of anyone trying to determine who was the best.

And yes, I was meaning to suggest that we all operate to some extent or other in camouflage and that poetry does allow us - if we dare - to be who we feel we really are.

Thanks to you, too, Jerry - who are sometimes even more real than real on here!

[Delta40]

glad I got it right through sleep filled eyes. Stop making me think deep at 5.00am!

[PrinceMyshkin]

glad I got it right through sleep filled eyes. Stop making me think deep at 5.00am!

At 5 am or 7:20 pm, you're always 12 hours ahead of me so you bloody well OUGHT to get it!

[hack]

True that!

[Silas Thorne]

I've kept returning to this poem, but each time I encounter the same problem. The first line and second lines ('mirror' to 'all?') taken together, work (though of course not for syllable count), but I feel that stylistically, the lines after them don't gel. With the rhyming on 'wall' and 'all', the immediate alteration in the style seems to clunk for me.

I don't disagree that poetry can allow us to be who we feel who we really are, I think you will agree it also allow us to be apart from who we feel we really are, which can be very worthwhile too. The poem can also be a 'mask', can't it? I know you like Yeats too, so I'll cite this:

The Mask

"PUT off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes."
"O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold."

"I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit."
"It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind."

"But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire."
"O no, my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?"


http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/800/

[hillwalker]

Thought-provoking as Delta says - but I also wonder whether this poem is referring to the alter egos we adopt on this forum.

Is LitNet the 'mirror mirror'? And if so, do we prefer to see that 'somebody other' we choose to share on here rather than who we really are? Who'd admit to being an aspiring poet out on the street?

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Hack - and even more so Silas Thorne and Hillwalker for taking this 'poem' out to the woodshed for a few well-deserved licks. On more sober reflection, I regard the poem as a failure, even on its own terms, in that it starts off promising to be light and amusing if didactic but soon abandons the first two in favour of the third.

Of course poetry allows us to be "real," as even the most erotically inflected banter allows us to be real while, at the same time, both allow us to be as fake as any of the politicians on the other side.