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Bloodletting In Singular

The barren, thirsty soil of this hill
where I am most human should
by rights slake this mute sob
of my abused blood, wetting
a butcher’s earth beneath its howling sky,
sickle moon and bloodless breath
of snarling nature, always waiting.
Digested beneath a hungry star,
my eyes poisoned fish matter
leaking in death’s split fantasia,
the larvae miles long feeding
a still, obscene cry seals the night,
moist with star matter and tears.
Blinking, I wonder, what can
stay dead forever?

Editing stage: 

Comments

is questionable at the best of times. Doesn't work for me here.

The rest bridges the line between obscurity, surrealism and deep meaning as you are so adept at.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

I cant help but chime in on Jesses comment..".Neopoet is a workshop. Poets take the time to read and think about your work and offer suggestions."
I have commented on your work numerous times with out the slightest acknowledgment from you other than one general remark " friendo"
Are we irrelevant to you? You post here and I agree with Jess you have a certain obligation as a member of this workshop to interact thoughtfully. If not why bother to even post. I'm unable to engage a cold shoulder so if you prefer my withdrawal, and the absence of acknowledgment of your work I will yield to that unless I hear from you. I dont like being ignored!

"Friendo" is a term from "No Country For Old Men". Don't know if you've seen it (or read the book), but I was just being playful there.

Getting aggressive with me is a good way to trip yourself up. I'll post what I like when I like in my own individual style, though of course I want to contribute to Neo, and will.

JTA

author comment

I'm letting you how I feel about your absence of cordiality. I'm being honest and direct. I comment on your work and support you when no one here utters or comments a modicum of backing for your work without even a thanks from you for taking the time to read your work. Dont mistake that for aggression unless of course you insist. I'm cordial to you always and I expect the same.

"Getting aggressive with me is a good way to trip yourself up"

That sounds like a threat …. Of course you are free to have no manners, to be withdrawn, indifferent to others. It makes for a sour atmosphere and thats tripping everybody up friendo

No hostility. Though I'm not sure what that bit about "property" meant. I'm not, remember, one of the women you write disgusting poetry to.

JTA

author comment

I find it incomprehensibly strange and out of bounds that you would think I want you as property; now that is surreal!!!
And the question is not how long Ive read your poetry but how deeply, and how its effected me and what ive learned from it and how its changed my writing linguistically, how aware I am when your writing succeeds and when it gets away from you, and the dialectic between surrealist elasticity and the concrete narrative. I dont think I speak for everybody but as you may recall I was commenting on Jesses remark and I dont think he speaks for every body either but he is a significant person here.
I want to move beyond the edge of this conversation towards a higher arc and art of poetry. I'm interested in ideas, analysis, contemplations through deconstructions and examples I'm here to learned and to help others with what ive learned.
Best Z

What I describe there was agreed on by a quorum of current Advocates, before you and Quill became Advocates.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

just before you two became Advocates we made a resolution to ask people to acknowledge feedback. Some of us have changed our signatures as you see on mine (what do you think of the wording?), others may do it directly as here, others may do it by PM and the Greeters will emphasise it as well.

I'm going to have another look at new members joining experience and see if it can be reinforced there.

I should have told you all this? I just did [smiles]. No doubt there will be a bit more catch up for both of you. Can't think of anything right now.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

but find it very difficult to critique because it is so unconventional.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

The paradigm is different than narrative poetry. These are linguistic paintings The words are forms set in melodic atmospheres The foundational narratives are elastic and surreal death-scapes. Trees can turn to bleeding candy bars, cigarettes, heroine addicted cyclopsams, or maggots in dresses at a dinner party in a boiling nautilus floating through the sun.

"No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist."
"It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."

So how do you criticize the minds agile fiction poetry especially grounded in good craft?
Most here cant deal with it because they cant name it, contextualize and ie claim it
They look or nouns. pronouns and verbs that explore the concrete issues, real events etc and find themselves lost in a maze of gymnastic locution when reading stream of conciousness
I love the unique textural language of this work That is for me its primary appeal and reason enough to read it and enjoy it very much finding it relentlessly fascinating
As a broad critique I think it could pack more of a wallop if it could some how comingle poweful narrative elements or underlying ideas about the human condition ie outer being and inner that could evoke empathy in the reader with endings that open up to something important about oneself. Most poems are stories, a description of events and perhaps how we feel about them. Having said that I also think that it would be a great challenge for any writer to blend fiction, inner imaginative life , sonic power, and concrete meaning that renders a complex yet organized effect. We are not living just an externalized existence nor one that is purely internal and if form follows function perhaps we are better to integrate the binary reality we in fact live. Just because one can identify the meaning of a poem doesnt necessarily make it meaningful
Best Z

but you have just ruthlessly reminded me that I am capable of very good critique but have been slacking off for quite some time now.
At first I tried to fill the gaps by reading audios and posting them on SoundCloud. It is a valid... um... helper. Many have responded that they could hear their own work better and more critically in anothers voice. More recently I've tried video.

But truth be told I used to be the most thorough, informed, honest and sometimes harsh giver of critique on Neopoet. But it's been twelve years now with never more than a fortnight away from the site, even when I was suspended I came back under a pseudonym, Aeron Maccloud, it was fun pretending to be a teenage female, but I got tired, even tired of reading poetry.

Thanks for the kick in the bum, my friend, I needed it and will do better.

I think Aeron's poetry is still here. Yep there she is, I miss her
https://www.neopoet.com/aeron-maccloud

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

what do you think of my new signature-
"Neopoet is a workshop. Poets take the time to read and think about your work and offer suggestions.
There is no obligation to make any changes however please acknowledge critique and comments."

It feels a bit wordy and maybe pompous. Any suggestions?

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

Understood: First of all who couldn't use a thorough incisive critique of their work with concrete examples for clarification, open intelligent discussions about context style etc but lets admit it is seriously demanding and can be emotionally intense Poets with high skills can disagree and we all have our subjectivity and biases to struggle with I dont see how a reviewing work couldn't be exhausting not to mention the resentments left in the wake to add to that dragging feeling. We've both been to grad school and experienced seminars from hell where one is publicly excoriated ,,,haahaahaa
On the other hand giving the right mix of writers it can be exciting but lets face it that chemistry is hard to find. My contact with Mark has been extremely useful but it helps because in spite of disagreements I fundamentally really like the man and respect him . When I get a critique I have to consider the source Its like okay Billy Collins come here and rip it You are always invited by me to be unsparing but that means entering into dialog sometimes with extended explanations and maybe a bit of heat The rule is its about the poetry and never the poet. Here's a dialog of thesis and antithesis with Mark that I archived I think this is a quality exchange between friends with a different perspective that has only contributed to our friendship

A Dialectic About Writing Poetry
I do believe all poets must not only read a lot of poetry but read a lot about poetry. Of my 50 favorite poets, there is not one who has not written about poetry, the philosophy of their work and of the craft. That in itself is fascinating- and difficult, like the depth you find in NY Review of Books. I do about 2/3 (poems) to 1/3 (being books about poetry) From the most philosophic works of archetypes by Northrop Frye to the most public and basic questions of Zupruders good seller "Why Poetry?" .
That last book opened up a new reality for me, to I ask myself all the time who am I writing for, in context to all this reading...I realized I was really trying to communicate the poetic truths of living, of my own small life in the world so full of beauty, horror, paradox and death. I realized to do this I had to make compromises, to not try to impress or amuse myself with poems that could only be understood by me. The craft and presentation became as important as the message. That is currently my direction, I'm writing "collections" of poems with themes so a reader could enjoy a concrete theme. (The last book I just read, a signed collection by Ferlinghetti ( nice and cheap in a used bookstore) was just that- the theme of light in "How to Paint Sunlight." Accessible and very full of several poems about light)
So you are stating two different issues:
I don't like being not understood, Having people throw up there hands perplexed, I'd rather be popular.... Its lonely
But I cant write for others because than it would be feeling like a commercial venture My motivation would be destroyed.
Id rather be desolated and write for those few who get the twinge...
Well, first of all, we poets are possibly lucky because we ain't making beans for our poems. Forgetaboutit. Even our most lauded poets end up teaching to get the health care and severance. I suppose there may be 3 poets in Amerika that make a living on just writing poetry....if that many. Who's buying? I didn't see much word "poetry" once in this weeks NY Times review of books. Only some letters crashing last weeks review of Leonard Cohen, who the critic called a wonderful lyricist and performer, but an awful poet. These dialogues are important to me, but really, quite a small audience. Either way, lyrics and song paid the rent, not Cohen's books of just poetry.
I'm sure there is no immediate cure for your paradox. If you want to be popular you have to make compromises. If you don't want to alter your vision, you can get the joy of a smaller readership and forget the rest. You have to manage expectations is a world that hardly notices our craft.
It's hard to be both, I suppose you should stay true to your motivation. And if readers like me don't get it, fuck em. Let it suffice we acknowledge the craft, and that we will get closer to some poems more than others be enough. For me, accessibility, the ability to engage a reader into whatever poetic truth I am feeling, is more important than in any way hiding the meaning in the poem in which I alone can understand it.
I want people who never read poetry, which is most people, pick up a poem by me and feel the poetry power without feeling intimidation which is what most people feel when they read most poems published today. For me its that fine line between letting the imagination do the work, and the poem setting up the narrative to allow it by inviting a reader into it. I get great joy reading my poems to non poets who are scared by even the idea of it, and get them to feel something new, that wonderful way Aristotle put it- that poetry provides an ultimate truth that is found beyond the boundary of philosophy.

……………………
Admittedly I have gone off the rails focusing on the meta or man as dreamer. Are we not dreamers first before descending into the material, deadening the faculty of imagination or as the I Ching says "a darkening of the light"
I want to bring the reader up and when I read I want to have the sensation of ascending I try to give what I like to receive which is to be brought into greater fluency and light

Have we abandoned our inner life to such an extent that when confronted with it we find our selves strangers to it; reinforcing and amplifying a kind of cognitive dissidence?
Are we in a sense a stranger to our selves having lost the lucidity of our magical youth
Do we see the world as vacant utilitarian stuff and other humans predictable lusterless cogs in a wheel like cued robots?
Witches Seers, Voodoons , Hermeticists, Kabbalists and Occultists of every stripe know and use objects as essential to their operations and craft because they have hidden meaning and power.
Has the life of fantastical creative cognition been sacrificed to inveterate congenital pragmatism?
"Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality".....Andre Breton

To transgress is to process ones madness as opposed to the customary botched behaviors of repressive modalities we hide behind . It seems to me that poetry is a great ground for that exploration.

Perhaps Its a good thing for a reader to think about what the writer means, albeit a difficult pleasure as opposed to the instantaneous and facile modes of naming and claiming Reading towards the abstract can be a mystical experience Most people who read are shallow readers Shall I than aspire to be a shallow writer?
What surrealism (Detailed descriptive language unmoored from linear rationality) affords the writer like pure abstraction to the visual artist is a great opportunity to explore the musicality of language ie the musicality of form ie the energetic configurations of architypes.
Part of our craft that makes things crackle as you know well remains sound play ie the strategy of syllables ... Long vowels / short vowels...the length of words and sound of words in relationship to one another
As you know to feel the subtle abstraction of sounds ie words to the ear is just like music and like music although not wholly translatable to language has an undertow of non verbal meaning especially if exploited out side the linguistic necessity of linear prose like poems ie a device that most never use consciously and that great poets use strategically or certainly to its fullest potential like Joyce
So when we say a poem is beautiful do we in part mean its those amazing tintinnabulating sounds that seduce with their musicality? Poems that do that well stand out to me. while sounds that are ugly or flat spoil the art
Further I think we are in error when we confuse the realistic with the materialistic. It seems to me realism has magnitudinal underlying meta elements that need to be felt in poetry and to think other wise in my opinion would be a dull conceit
A good example is thought itself
When we speak our ideas thoughts impulses we have no real sense of where they emerge from The processes are so meta their incomprehensible even to neuro science and scientists have little if any understanding of consciousness or its meaning as far as I know

So perhaps the surrealist, poems with elements of ambiguity. elasticity and suggestion are bigger than the limitations of the concrete because they evoke in us of the magnitude of our inner life outside the cage of end product think. I don't always need to thoroughly understand everything; because sometimes a beautiful suggestion makes me aspirational. After all what is a life and what is a poem?
…..

Ezra Pound
What obfuscates ...the crust of dead English, the sediment present in my own available vocabulary ... You can't go round this sort of thing. It takes six or eight years to get educated in one's art, and another ten to get rid of that education. Neither can anyone learn English, one can only learn a series of Englishes.

It occurs to me that not all are fit to endure the demands of a workshop and that is why we struggle here for writers who are capable of a quality exchange. Perhaps we need some rules to stream line things. Its a lot to think about

Best Z

The signature is fine and hell no NOT pompas!

Copy and paste, and maybe with a few minor tweaks as to whom you are addressing in parts, repost it as a blog.
Every poet needs to read this.

You've inspired me. I'm not sure how to proceed. Part of me wants to get away from anything poetic for a spell, even in business few people work 12 years without a break but my work, poetry, critique and support are all suffering. Another part desperately needs to dive right back in to the inextricable mix of poetry, critique and theory.

Thanks

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

you guys

JTA

author comment

Its definitely mutual!!!!!! :)

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