Patience, my friends - I’m hoping to do another Short Fiction Contest before September ends. (And I hope some of the poets who haven’t already might consider giving it a try.)
Thank you for the explanation, Le Ministre. It seems this Jack was a remarkable man.
I’m guessing it did, as I voted for it, as well as two others, even before I read your clarification.
It’s the strangest thing - I’ve never known poets to be so shy about commenting on each other’s work. Is it the written format of our conversation which people find inhibiting? Hmph. Okay, let me start by buying a virtual round for everyone - that usually gets things going at any of the poetry readings/open mics that I’ve been to. Please, do keep things respectful, but it’s a little unnerving to hear the crickets at the back of the room.
Rapture of the Deep - one of the things I loved about this poem is that there is a distinct flow to the level of the language. We start quite clear and everyday, building to greater complexity at the end of the first stanza. The second stanza takes us somewhere very fulsome, and then, the last line brings us right back. I loved vdgg81’s comparison to ‘Calvin and Hobbes’.
Untitled - I avoid writing haiku as much as possible. The crystalline clarity of the form just terrifies me.
Among the things I enjoyed - there’s a strong verb of motion in each line and the distance ‘bottoms’ to ‘sky’ is well set. The second line has an interesting progression of alliteration - ‘s’ to ‘sp’ to ‘sp’ to ‘pl’ (skipping the ‘gr’.) There is a good sense of the completeness in brevity.
Untitled (Everybody smart agrees.) I love the conceit of playing chess against marine life, and the use of grey as a compromise in the dichotomy of white and black. Do you know the work of the Danish poet Piet Hein? I find there’s a resemblance (in a good way) between your two styles - the profound truth wrapped in a brief, whimsical stanza.
Sigh - I’m falling asleep at the keyboard - I’ll write some more tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, please vote.
Good stuff! Another round of very accomplished poetry on display. Thanks again, Ministre, for organizing and running it.
I was reading Idyll again today and trying to remember the name that is given to poetry about visual art (it’s ekphrastic poetry.) A google search gave me many very interesting quotations to think about, but also directed me to this poem, Epilogue, by Robert Lowell. It’s a wonderful poem and I hope you guys enjoy it too; it also dialogues nicely with Idyll. There’s a verse in Lowell’s poem in which he talks about “[p]ray[ing] for the grace of accuracy” and it’s the accuracy in Idyll I found so amazing.
I may have gotten a bit lost, but I counted 28 nouns in just 79 words. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but it seems like a very high proportion. The poem is just full of details and the details are all chosen carefully: the cat’s head tilts treewards, the grass was mowed this morning, mossy rodent scat… It’s a very compressed picture of a lot of things, but a very full one. It also takes care to be very sensual; it’s obviously visual and the cat sequence provides us with many olfactory hints, but we also hear the birds and the breeze. The sprawling cat in the sun by the pool, the underwater landscape and Triton’s frown also evoked tactile memories for me. All this in just 12 verses!
One of the things that impressed me the most is how careful the poet was with his use of figurative language. In the first stanza the only instance I can find is “sunsoaked tile”. The second stanza is still pretty literal, even if it animates the pool’s decorations; the past shimmer and wave of the kelp can be understood as just the illusion of movement the water would provide if the pool were full. It’s only in the very last verse that personification comes into play. It’s still pure description, but the reader can’t help but animate Triton.
He is described as “ignored and unseeing”, which raises both the questions of whom is it ignores him and what doesn’t he see? Sure, he’s unseeing because he’s a figure either painted in the pool or assembled by colored tiles, but the reader is free to imagine more. In a poem about art, Triton, with all his mythological connotations, can point towards an older art: romantic, often nocturnal and more vague; neglected by today’s precise and solar practitioners, but still resisting time in an empty pool.
I guess I’ll stop making a fool of myself now and end this, but I just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed your poem, xenophon41 .
Below are my impressions of these works.
I’m a bit embarrassed at my paucity of analysis, particularly after vdgg81’s detailed and [undeservedly] complimentary dissection of my small poem, but I hope some of my comments might be helpful to the poets, or at least give alternate reasons to appreciate each of the poems.
Rapture of the Deep: The poem is very sensory. I got a nice feeling of coldness, motion and pressure. I liked the eldritch tones from the poet’s repeated allusion to an ancient connection with the dark deeps – “some ancient creature of the deep,” “more accustomed to stygian darkness,” “monstrous pressure… above me,” “denizen of the eternal night,” etc. Plus, the poet uses “stygian” and “acolyte”; it’s nice to see those words let out and allowed to stroll around once in a while.
Untitled haiku: Rather courageous to submit a haiku, which, as Le Ministre noted, is a demanding/unforgiving form. I’d love to see more from the poet, as I think they have more to say.
Untitled (Everybody smart agrees): I really like the unobvious and irregular prosody; I’d read this through to the fifth and sixth lines before I realized it’s rhyming couplets! (Yes, I’m rather slow witted, why do you ask?) And once I adjusted the scansion, I couldn’t stop hearing the poem recited by Groucho - who I imagined wearing a scholar’s cap and gown and leering at Margaret Dumont. So I very much hope I’ve interpreted the tone correctly, or I owe the poet an apology.
Questions: This poem evokes every troubled relationship I’ve had or witnessed and fills me with unutterable heaviness. That’s a very good thing for a poem to do, I think.
Days and Nights: Don’t try to parse specific meaning from each line. The whole of this poem is more than the sum of its parts. I think the poet shows unwavering focus on that emergence from the sea that is the subject of the poem, such that the individual lines which propel the poem are only consequential insofar as they serve to move the reader toward that beachhead.
Verdant Sea: I like this poem more every time I read it. It’s a perfectly panoramic and vivid study of youth, which leaves me refreshed and energized like a long twilight swim.
Untitled (We were both so nervous): Are we the authors of our stories, or the stories themselves, or the paper on which those stories are printed? The poet doesn’t pretend to know, but joyfully opens windows into a particular conversation and provides some metaphorical lenses to help our appreciation of the theme. Despite the potential for voyeuristic titillation, the reader is allowed to witness that discussion without being privy to it, like seeing a whispering couple at a fountain on the square. It may remind the reader of similar exchanges, or prompt the reader to search one out. The poet reminds us what the meaning of “intercourse” is.
For Jack: I didn’t know of Jack Layton before Le Ministre’s explanation, but this poem killed me on first reading. It’s absolutely the finest defense of activism I’ve read in quite some time. The conversion of idealistic hope from a burden into a vessel is wonderful imagery, and conveys the spirit of the quotation provided by Le Ministre, from Layton’s last letter. This is a great tribute to a man, and I hope you share it outside of these boards.
Companions: The sea can also be used to symbolize barrenness. The poet makes effective use of that symbology in the opeing stanza, and the speaker’s departure from the coast seems less a retreat than a return to life, and to family, and to acceptance.
Beach: Well if there’s a reason whales beach themselves, it may as well be in pursuit of a song. This is a sobering reply to Days and Nights, a different approach to the telling, a different imperative for the same striving, and an altogether different ending at the same place.
The poems are also very similar in that both seem to have run aground in the voting. 
Not through lack of merit, but a superfluity of good company.
I found that after I’d chewed on all these poems for a few days the only votes I regretted were the ones I withheld…
Uhh… Is that Mark Twain?
I’m not even sure how to comment on poetry, it’s not really my forte, but I’ve always appreciated it. “Seaspawn” gave me the idea of evolution, and how far mankind has come (or not) since the dawn of life, so that was my thinking while writing what I did.
Bravo to everyone, I think poetry is like the music of language, and some of the best can strike a chord more emotional than aesthetic or even intellectual.
It was fun, thanks for the chance, Le Ministre, and the comments xenophon41.
Damn, you guys are pretty good.
I had never heard of him, but from his wikipedia bio he seems like quite an interesting guy.
To Xenophon: Groucho would be a fine reader, as would anyone of such gravitas.
Excellent work here, poets. I have no specific comments, but I enjoyed them all.
Last time I jumped the gun and voted/commented right away so I decided to hold off a bit this time. Also, I’ve been involved in the short stories but not the poetry before. I’ll comment fresh, before I read the other comments.
General comments:
Can someone explain why writers here are so adverse to creating titles? The only untitled poem I’ve ever written was actually about identity so it was kind of meta. If I couldn’t think of a great title I’d just reuse the first or last line. What’s up with that?
The word “seaspawn” is so damned specific that I applaud every one who made the effort to not write something related to water, whether or not it ended up working out.
More specifically:
Rapture of the Deep: I think this is the best of the sea themed poems. I really get the feel of an ancient leviathan. And then the last line just turns everything on it’s head!
Untitled haiku: I might have dismissed this as just the traditional “shortest possible entry” we get every time if not for the haiku meter.
Untitled (Everybody smart agrees): Fun, silly little poem that reminded me of Lewis Carrol.
Questions: Not sure what to say. Didn’t quite gel for me.
Days and Nights: I liked the theme.
Idyll: Loved the descriptions of the smelliverse from the perspective of cat. And what I assume is a mosaic at the bottom of the pool.
Verdant Sea: I actually wrote this as a song. The phrase “emotional ocean” came to me when I saw “sea spawn” and other silly things like “florescent adolescent” and “sandy sandals” followed, and I went from there. It’s slightly more fun with the melody attached. I’m just happy I got more votes than last time 
Untitled (We were both so nervous): Great visceral depiction of the conflicting feelings of first intimacy. And boy, that ice wasn’t just broken, it was smashed into tiny bits.
For Jack: This seems to be about an activist getting older and advising the next generation but I wasn’t quite sure. But I liked it anyway.
Companions: No specific comments.
Beach: I think this was hurt by being last. I was a little overwhelmed by sea imagery by this point.
From the poll, it looks as though I picked everyone else’s favorites.
There’s still time to vote, folks! Some great poems in here.
What?! :looks around wildly:
Oh, nevermind.
Speaking personally, titles are kind of intimidating. They shape meaning and set expectations. Which isn’t to say I *won’t *title things I write (at least I have for the SDMB); simply that I appreciate the difficulty some other people may face in creating them–or the restrictions they may wish to avoid placing on interpretation of what they’ve written.
I’m not averse to titles, but it takes me a long time to come up with one. If I end up deciding to revise my poem I’ll be sure to name it, but so far nothing has come to mind. (I’ll also put, as an epigraph, the verses that inspired me: “Let your body reach an understanding with another body. / Because bodies understand each other but souls, never.” and “Life / isn’t worth the trouble and the grief it takes to live. / Because bodies understand each other but souls, never.” The last verse is repeated because it was taken from a poem called Anthology, entirely made up of verses of previous poems by the author. Both excerpts are by Manuel Bandeira and translated by Candace Slater. They can be found, in their entirety along with many others, for free online here.)
It is very specific! I had to look it up in the dictionary to see if I found something to work with, but it turns out it wasn’t there. I tried first to do something more aquatic, but couldn’t think of anything. The time limit is very short, as is the talent, so I ended up with something a bit awkward.
The poll has closed and we have reached the end of the August 2011 SDMB Poetry Sweatshop. I would first like to congratulate our poets - Elendil’s Heir, Becky2844, appallinggael, Puddleglum, cmyk, xenophon41, jackdavinci, vdgg81, **Le Ministre de l’au-delà **, **Angel of the Lord ** and maserschmidt - for their outstanding work this month.
And it is my pleasure to offer my particular congratulations to vdgg81, the ‘Poet Laureate of the Straight Dope Message Board’ and author of the beautiful ‘Untitled (We were both so nervous)’. Bravo!
I would also like to take this moment to thank the Mods for their ongoing help and support. I’d like to thank our readers and voters as well - your participation is greatly appreciated.
Next Poetry Sweatshop will be sometime in late October. Meanwhile, for those interested, I hope to be running a Short Fiction contest sometime in the last week of September.
My best wishes to all of you,
Le Ministre de l’au-delà
Many thanks to Le Ministre for having organized this and to all who have voted for my poem.
It is an honor to have won against such distinguished competition. Although I can’t honestly say I thought I had the best work, I’m still very glad so many people seem to have liked it. I’m saddened to see I’ll probably be unable to participate next time, but await eagerly to see what you guys will submit in October.
How were the mods involved?