It's time for you writers to stop being a bunch of sissies!

[WolfLarsen]

It's time for you writers to stop being a bunch of sissies!

It's time to write poetry with all of the adjectives & nouns in our genitals! It's time to write all our defecations on the page! It's time to write all of our insanities with our pens & swords & phalluses!

It's time to conquer! It's time to conquer the page with blood & caffeine & urine & raging hormones! It's time to throw all our sex on the page! It's time for our words to become spermatozoa!

It's time to write poetry around our bellybuttons! It's time to write poetry on toilet paper & traffic tickets & court summons! It's time to write poetry with our fists! It's time to kick the page over & over again with all the monstrous monsters in our brains & guts!

It's time for you writers to stop being a bunch of sissies! It's time for you writers to get creative! It's time for you writers to have some balls! Write something new dammit! Write something with balls dammit! Write something that's never ever been written before dammit!

[DocHeart]

I don't know if it's the wine or what, but I actually feel quite energized after reading this.

I'm gonna go off and turn words into spermatozoa, and inject them into the uterus of Microsoft Word. By morning time, something must have happened.

[miyako73]

Now this is unrestrained writing. When I was in college, I wrote a 50-page philosophical thesis on warm bodies and dirty sex. my professor gave me 1.0 (A+) and a comment--go fvck someone.

[hillwalker]

Sadly it's less restrained than you might think. It's all been done before (by the OP ad nauseam) and by more innovative writers in a much more effective way.

A case of 'do as I say, not as I do' - preaching to those who converted years ago.

H

[Delta40]

I really liked the idea of writing poetry around bellybuttons but I agree with Hill's comment.

[cacian]

Writers!! bunch of sissies!! and whatever else. It takes balls for someone to write let alone expose. Sissies is not the word.

[AuntShecky]

That's the trouble with male writers. They think with their genitals and schtup with their brains.

[hillwalker]

That's the trouble with male writers. They think with their genitals and schtup with their brains.

Not all male writers, unless you're getting more jaded than you have been letting on.

H

[miyako73]

I wonder if Naipul's literary misogyny is also sex-fueled.

[AuntShecky]

I wonder if Naipul's literary misogyny is also sex-fueled.

Well, D. H. Lawrence's views certainly were. (if you buy the notion that he was a misogynist.) Good old Shaw was just the opposite.

[WolfLarsen]

I don't know if it's the wine or what, but I actually feel quite energized after reading this.

I'm gonna go off and turn words into spermatozoa, and inject them into the uterus of Microsoft Word. By morning time, something must have happened.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Docheart!

Regarding what others have said: the contention that it's all been done before may or may not be true. However, it needs to be said over and over again because the literary world is a boring monotonous desert. The literary world today reminds me of all of these boring buildings in the "internationalist style".

Walking through many cities today regardless of the part of the world (I've been to over 50 countries), the contemporary architecture is by and large the same: boring and monotonous – just like the literary world.

Every once in a while they put up a great structure like Frank Gehry's band structure in Chicago or art museum in Spain, but by and large both architecture and the literary worlds are boring.

There are many architects who would like to put up more interesting buildings, but the developers are usually not interested. I suppose in the case of writers many are more interested in trying to please the commercial publishers then in writing something original and exciting. It's a similar problem.

But at least people who write with commercial aims are conventional and boring on purpose, mostly for financial reasons. But others simply appear to lack the imagination to write something creative, and they sometimes become angry that others are inclined to write creatively.

I simply become annoyed at clicking on endless threads of monotony. And it seems like when somebody does write something creative on this site they are often chased away by the rude comments of the traditionalists. I'm not talking about rude comments directed at myself in the past, but there was a brief period where there was so much good stuff on this site. Certain traditionalists chased them away.

[hillwalker]

Regarding what others have said: the contention that it's all been done before may or may not be true. However, it needs to be said over and over again because the literary world is a boring monotonous desert.

...which you seem desperate to add to, grain of sand by boring grain of sand. If you're such a radical revolutionary why are you contributing to the 'endless threads of monotony' by creating your own with tiresome regularity? It's like LitNet's version of 'Groundhog Day'.

I'm not going to recycle the same, pointless dialogue we shared on here nine months or so ago where you somehow associated me (and other regular critics that actually try to provide meaningful feedback) with 'traditionalists' and accused me of driving away new members. If that's your sole agenda then count me out. There are other sites where one can discuss literature with like-minded individuals who take their writing more seriously than themselves

If your work is so novel and exciting let's see some of it rather than the puerile nonsense you keep posting - where the occasional 'rude' word is supposed to shock everyone and therefore appear innovative. Kindergarden stuff at best, I'm afraid.

H

[cacian]

Regarding what others have said: the contention that it's all been done before may or may not be true. However, it needs to be said over and over again because the literary world is a boring monotonous desert. The literary world today reminds me of all of these boring buildings in the "internationalist style".

Walking through many cities today regardless of the part of the world (I've been to over 50 countries), the contemporary architecture is by and large the same: boring and monotonous – just like the literary world.

Every once in a while they put up a great structure like Frank Gehry's band structure in Chicago or art museum in Spain, but by and large both architecture and the literary worlds are boring.

There are many architects who would like to put up more interesting buildings, but the developers are usually not interested. I suppose in the case of writers many are more interested in trying to please the commercial publishers then in writing something original and exciting. It's a similar problem.

The world is not as free willed as you think. Conspiracy theories reek but they must hold some truth somewhere.

[Jassy Melson]

I quit trying to write revolutionary poetry a long time ago. Now I write prose poems. They are more restrained, albeit wordier than revolutionary poetry. But they're better.

[WolfLarsen]

Creativity is all that matters!

Creativity and conformity are opposites! Creativity and rules are opposites! Creativity and a conservative outlook are opposites!

[YesNo]

One person's creativity is another person's kindergarten writing. I sometimes notice that editors of literary magazines say they are sick of the boring stuff they read in other literary magazines and then publish stuff that doesn't seem to me to be any different from what is published in other literary magazines. No doubt, in their defense, they would say that I am not competent to differentiate the good from the bad, which is probably true.

Here's a poem, although I'm sure there are some that would not think it is a poem at all, that has some gore in it, a toilet and a relationship of some sort. Assume you are the editor of the Don't Write Like a Sissy literary magazine, would it get accepted? For all practical purposes the author is anonymous.


Haiku Composition

It's hard to tell you I'm no fool.
Perhaps I'll just not try.
I'll write a haiku on the stool,
Then flush, and say that I
Have got this haiku here for you.
You'll read it tenderly,
Then laugh to break my heart in two,
That's all that any heart can do,
Just pop and let the blood gush through
On you who would be free.

[miyako73]

No, I won't accept it. It lacks depth. It doesn't make me feel and think. Reading a good poem for me involves feeling and thinking. If it doesn't involve the two, it is not good.

[WolfLarsen]

The thing about yes no's poem is that it is boring and conventional. I would not publish it. However, the title of his imaginary literary magazine Don't Write Like a Sissy had me laughing!

I don't see why a poem about bowel movements can't be both creative and great. For example, imagine that god has diarrhea and he squats over Manhattan and creates the Manhattan skyline. Or imagine that all the politicians of the world have anuses in the middle of their faces instead of mouthes. The possibilities for creative imagery here are endless!

No doubt, some people will hold their noses up at such as thing. They are the same kind of people who during the Victorian Era would have hidden the legs of their coffee tables as being too "suggestive".

There is no shortage of such people in the literary world.

[Paulclem]

Creativity is all that matters!

Creativity and conformity are opposites! Creativity and rules are opposites! Creativity and a conservative outlook are opposites!

I don't think this is true. If you wish to write to a form such as a sonnet, then you have to conform to that type of form, or stay within the form structure and then subvert it. That in itself will not stilt creativity which can then execute the poem within the form or subversion of it. If you don't wish to write within a form, then you're onto free verse - ok. Difficult to subvert free verse in a new way though.

Or you could be creative with the form - invent a new form or style. Of course if that may become mainstream, but then you create another or subvert the first.

Perhaps you're on about content rather than form. I've seen an example of one of your poems on a similar thread to this, and I didn't see much in it except a rather clumsy collection of nonsense words which I found neither creative nor innovative. I think content can be creative, controversial and challenging - perhaps about people on the margins of society - or about subjects not discussed much rather than the obvious sex and bodily functions you use in your OP. I think a challenging subject within a beautiful form could be a very nteresting poem due to that contrast.

[YesNo]

Rejections are fine, miyako73 and WolfLarsen, as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder what would get into such a literary magazine. Any examples?

[Calidore]

How is mindless chaos better than mindless order?

[miyako73]

Here's an example written by a Mexican child poet (then-- he is now adult) in English:


Ekiwah Adler Beléndez



The Zoo

My words, indifferent as a gray tortoise,
remind me of an old woman
smoking tobacco by the window.

My words are as invisible
as the old kitchen rag
I use to wipe the grease off the cages.

My words are clumsy
as a frog saturated with mud
wishing to hibernate.

My words have the deliberate solitude of lizards,
their tongues unfold like a royal carpet
straining to hear the inward music
of distant saxophones.

I come in and find abundant thick hairs,
droppings, and tangerine peels,
a familiar scent fills my nostrils.

My words have escaped.
I’m too tired or too wound up
to go after them.

[YesNo]

The idea of words escaping the zoo that the keeper is not interested in going after is interesting in the poem by Beléndez.

However, I don't see how "feeling" or "thinking" is involved much here, miyako73. There was some thinking involved to link the title with the last stanza, but in retrospect it seemed obvious. The other linkages between the words and lizards, the tortoise, and the droppings seemed too artificial, or even unrelated to words.

Is this piece creative enough for you, WolfLarsen?

[miyako73]

First, the entire poem makes me think of the motivation of the child poet to write unconventionally about the zoo. Child poems about zoos or animals don't sound or read like this. His line on indifference makes me feel how it is to be indifferent like the tortoise or the old woman, and his line on invisibility surely makes me feel how one is being treated like the invisible rag. Those are just from the first two stanzas. If you read the poem literally, you won't think or feel anything. The title alone makes me think about the zoo--is it a metaphor for a complicated person?

[hillwalker]

The thing about yes no's poem is that it is boring and conventional. I would not publish it. However, the title of his imaginary literary magazine Don't Write Like a Sissy had me laughing!

I don't see why a poem about bowel movements can't be both creative and great. For example, imagine that god has diarrhea and he squats over Manhattan and creates the Manhattan skyline. Or imagine that all the politicians of the world have anuses in the middle of their faces instead of mouthes. The possibilities for creative imagery here are endless!

No doubt, some people will hold their noses up at such as thing. They are the same kind of people who during the Victorian Era would have hidden the legs of their coffee tables as being too "suggestive".

There is no shortage of such people in the literary world.

You're confusing puritanical hypocrites - who tried to deny the existence of bodily functions and needs yet fantasised about raping their housemaids - with those on here who find your desperate attempts to provoke a response (by writing about defecation and anuses, etc. etc.) rather childish. Perhaps you need another session with the therapist. :D

H

[Bluehound]

I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always.

[cacian]

I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always.

Bluehound this is rather depressed. To write is to surge into a world of energy vision and hope. One must teach oneself to be somebody else for the better only then one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

inside me is energy
whenever the eyes sadden
desolate faddens
and imperfect glows
I search within me and it gives me power
to lift and be lifted
inside me is realm
the real esteem I need when I seem
slightly off beam

This for me reads better because it promises changes even if one is low one must write themselves up.

[Paulclem]

Bluehound this is rather depressed. To write is to surge into a world of energy vision and hope. One must teach oneself to be somebody else for the better only then one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.


.

Unfortunately, reality bites.

[Delta40]

Faeces comes in all shapes and sizes as well as different textures. Have you considered that even you Wolf are not going to be able to swallow every bit of **** that you read as creative?

[cacian]

Unfortunately, reality bites.

Indeed it does hence writing. It should by effect reverse the concept in order to sensationalise life. To feel good through writing paves ways to better beings. One has to start somewhere.

[Bluehound]

All the talk of bodily functions and writing from the guts provoked this impromptu poem (?) about my recent diagnosis with a chronic disease. I am a lot more positive about it than the words would suggest, but yeah reality bites and sucks.

[WolfLarsen]

Here's an example written by a Mexican child poet (then-- he is now adult) in English:


Ekiwah Adler Beléndez



The Zoo

My words, indifferent as a gray tortoise,
remind me of an old woman
smoking tobacco by the window.

My words are as invisible
as the old kitchen rag
I use to wipe the grease off the cages.

My words are clumsy
as a frog saturated with mud
wishing to hibernate.

My words have the deliberate solitude of lizards,
their tongues unfold like a royal carpet
straining to hear the inward music
of distant saxophones.

I come in and find abundant thick hairs,
droppings, and tangerine peels,
a familiar scent fills my nostrils.

My words have escaped.
I’m too tired or too wound up
to go after them.

When the children write better poems than the adults it should be a wake-up call. Of course, children's drawings & paintings are also known as being very creative – and were inspirational to many artists – including Picasso.

Childhood is often a time of great imagination. Many adults seem to lose many of their abilities in the area of imagination & creativity. What a shame.

[Paulclem]

I agree that the poem is very good, especially if it is written by a child, and I would agree that there is a lot of creativity in children, but that this is often scattered and not focused - which makes the poem more special.

Creativity can be practiced and nurtured. Here seems like a good place to try stuff out.

[WolfLarsen]

Bluehound this is rather depressed. To write is to surge into a world of energy vision and hope. One must teach oneself to be somebody else for the better only then one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

inside me is energy
whenever the eyes sadden
desolate faddens
and imperfect glows
I search within me and it gives me power
to lift and be lifted
inside me is realm
the real esteem I need when I seem
slightly off beam

This for me reads better because it promises changes even if one is low one must write themselves up.

Originally Posted by Bluehound:

"I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always."

The original poem by Bluehound was better. Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

[AuntShecky]

Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

But sometimes it's better to sweep the work for typos, unintended shades of meaning, factual errors (an oxymoron?), needless repetition, overwritten fustian bluster, and god-awful boring parts,revising and rewriting when appropriate.

That's not being a "sissy" -- that's being "professional."

[WolfLarsen]

But sometimes it's better to sweep the work for typos, unintended shades of meaning, factual errors (an oxymoron?), needless repetition, overwritten fustian bluster, and god-awful boring parts,revising and rewriting when appropriate.

That's not being a "sissy" -- that's being "professional."

Nobody said anything about not editing your own work. You need to edit your work and improve on it – but you need to do so without losing the raw freshness of the first draft – because if the final draft is too polished it becomes boring.

Take Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for example. I had two CDs of this work – one performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the other performed by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the Rite of Spring in a much more polished manner. The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performed this work with all of its original rawness and vitality and energy and rebellion. When the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performed the piece you could understand why the traditionalists rioted at the original performance – and yes the traditionalists rioted in the symphony hall itself when it was first played.

Igor Stravinsky worked and reworked (i.e. heavily edited) the Rite of Spring without losing all the rawness and ingenuity and creativity. The greatness and originality of the work caused the traditionalists to riot – because the traditionalists are close-minded and hostile to creativity.

[Charles Darnay]

The problem with your theory is that the rioting did not come from the music but the visuals. The "rawness" of the Rite of Spring was in its provocative nature - if the "traditionalists" as you call them were just listening to a recording of the ballet, they would have praised it, as they had Stravinsky's earlier works.

[cacian]

Originally Posted by Bluehound:

"I looked inside myself and this is what I found.

My guts are broken
The Doc says forever
Inflamed, raw,
Oozing, leaking
For life and maybe death

Broken forever
And always."

The original poem by Bluehound was better. Art is best when it's raw and unsanitized.

Art is better when it is refined because it changes perspective of reality and provide the mind with imagination pure and simple.
Sain is much needed if art and people are to make sense.

[WolfLarsen]

Art is better when it is refined because it changes perspective of reality and provide the mind with imagination pure and simple.
Sain is much needed if art and people are to make sense.

Nonsense! Refinment is horrible! The last thing you want to do when you're editing your work is refine it! Instead, you want to improve on it, you want to make it more exciting! You want to turbo-charge it! You want to give your work all the energy of the streets of Manhattan & Calcutta – you want to give your poetry or prose the speed of a fast fast fast assembly line, you want words to be greasy like the kitchen of a greasy spoon, you want your words to be as hungry as piranhas in the Amazonas when the dry seasons come, you want your words to be predators like those candirus that are swimming into bathers’ private parts in the Amazonas. Like a rainforest where everything is devouring everything else there is no place for refinement in the arts.

Refinement is for the people that don't create. Even Mozart – who was one of the most "refined" creators of all – wrote much of his music in whorehouses and gambling dens. Beethoven could hardly be considered refined, as can be said for Jackson Pollock, and Picasso's nickname was "Prickasso" for a variety of reasons.

The refined are those people who mock the Impressionists and gave that type of art its name, the refined are those who mocked cubism & fauvism – and also give those works their names.

Refinement is for people that look backwards. They can only admire the great works of the past, and contemporary works that mimic the past. Refinement is the enemy of creativity.

And imagination has nothing to do with refinement. Because the imagination goes where it may – imagination is exactly the opposite of refinement.

[MANICHAEAN]

Refinement! Hah Christmas Humbug, Little Red Riding Hood.

Let’s discover through fractured syntax, crafted inarticulateness and oblique denouement, the new naturalistic dialogue. For writers should be before their time, and to be completely to the vanguard in aspirations is fatal to fame.

And if the objectors are constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic, that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument, lets rebel in high Promethean fashion against the gods and fate. Let us like Aeneas as when Troy fell, establish a new Rome via the arms and bed of the Carthaginian queen Dido.

Enough of this carking incertitude. Let also Ithuriel be dispatched to locate Satan. Then when the “grieslie King” is discovered in the Garden of Eden squatting like a toad close to the ear of Eve, let him touch Satan with his spear, thereby causing the Tempter to resume his true likeness.

And yet!!

“What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgement, without foresight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgement, or purity of sentiment.”

[WolfLarsen]

Manichaean! What a great post! You know, when people are refuting each other, and they start using imagery like this – all I can say is it's wonderful! I'm not exactly sure what his point is, I think he's making fun of me and possibly others, and he does it so well, his writing is absolutely hilarious! It's very talented writing actually! Read this by Manichaean:



Refinement! Hah Christmas Humbug, Little Red Riding Hood.

Let’s discover through fractured syntax, crafted inarticulateness and oblique denouement, the new naturalistic dialogue. For writers should be before their time, and to be completely to the vanguard in aspirations is fatal to fame.

And if the objectors are constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic, that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument, lets rebel in high Promethean fashion against the gods and fate. Let us like Aeneas as when Troy fell, establish a new Rome via the arms and bed of the Carthaginian queen Dido.

Enough of this carking incertitude. Let also Ithuriel be dispatched to locate Satan. Then when the “grieslie King” is discovered in the Garden of Eden squatting like a toad close to the ear of Eve, let him touch Satan with his spear, thereby causing the Tempter to resume his true likeness.

And yet!!

“What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgement, without foresight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgement, or purity of sentiment.”

[MANICHAEAN]

Is it possible that words, mere words, can work miracles? Or are they not words at all, but chalices and Holy grails, of human passion, full of the life-blood, staining the lips that approach them scarlet, of heart-drained pulse-wearied ravishment?

[Delta40]

Lol. Such wit embroidered like a fine shawl Manch, while I make do with toasted wholemeal humour dunked in tea.

[Steven Hunley]

Ya write it as raw as you like and refine the you-know what out of it later, when you've had more time to consider it. Cave men took branches out of trees and hit animals over the heads with it when they wanted food. Later men shaped them into arrows and did it from a distance. The branches were straightened and balanced and polished and feathered. Now more than a mere tool, they were a piece of art. And you know what? They were more deadly. Art pierces hearts more effectively than crudity, and still gives no quarter.

[WolfLarsen]

Being civilized and creating great art are two different things!

As I said before many great artists & writers could hardly be considered very civilized in the way that some of the posters here consider civilized. They were civilized in the sense that they knew the history of arts and literature, but they did not have all the stuffiness of those who consider themselves "civilized".

It is better to understand the history of art & literature, but at the same time be a barbarian. The pen is a sword. The pen is a phallus. The writer is to take his pen-phallus-sword and do things to "civilization" & the readers that I don't believe I can say here without getting disciplined.

The "civilized" writer/artist who is not a barbarian is the equivalent of a eunuch. Prickasso was no eunuch!

[miyako73]

I assume paint brush is a phallus too, and so is chisel. hehehehehe

[MANICHAEAN]

It was the third day before Christmas and Little Red Riding Hood found herself to be an alien concept in the middle of the stark barren landscape that comprises the California interior.

To set the script, she found herself on a sultry evening, buttocks clutching a bar stool in an establishment somewhere in a red-neck wolverine hamlet of nowhere. Her pockets reeked of currency begging to be liberated, with a view to enable her to take the edge off of the psychological aches and pains that had accumulated during her workaday tasks and chores.

A subconscious ensemble of beer and a double portion of Knob Creek bourbon fell before her, without having to even summon the energy to order.

It's a given that pints of ale or beer should be supplemented with a token gesture of liquor - a chaser if you will - and bugger me with a robust Lit Net pen if it doesn't just serve the purpose of alleviating the angst, anxieties and general "merde" that we as human beings have to endure on a day to day basis.

In one way or another, each and every one of us deserve to be emancipated from the utter tedium of lateral thinking. Who in their right mind would want to spend the whole day with their brain for company.

"Roger that for a game of soldier-boys, I'd rather go about adopting a serious crack habit whilst loitering around bus station conveniences with 'civilised writer' tattooed upon my perpetually sweating brow.

[WolfLarsen]

This is great writing! It's imaginative! It's unique! I don't read stuff like this everywhere.

Thank you MANICHAEAN – you brought a smile to my face!

[jayat]

Creativity is all that matters!

Creativity and conformity are opposites! Creativity and rules are opposites! Creativity and a conservative outlook are opposites!

"Power without control it's unuseful". Ten years ago, maybe more, there was an ad in which appears Carl Lewis wearing a woman high-heeled red shoes*. I'm not sure but you could see how ludicrous the best fast-runner of the world looked running with them. We could say the same: creativity without hard-working is unuseful, that is*, reading hard and give everything for every bloody line it comes from your pen or keyboard.

*I'm not Eglish native. I'd agree corrections on my messages. Thank you.