Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

To the Editor

Clean; you must be referring to those
few so-called bad words, like;
fuck you you self-righteous-mud-dog,
cleaned up version being,
step away from the clouds my friend.

but not me
at least not anymore
I'll never be your word-whore.

Are you suggesting or demanding,
lifting or demoralizing,
imposing while declaring,
hearing but never listening.

I care not for your moralistic views
and don't want anything to do with you,
my poetic license reinstated,
there;
I fucking said it.

Editing stage: 

Comments

With even more pejorative terms...if it's in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) ...in my book you can use it. Brits swear more than Yanks anyway. I was always amazed at how uptight some people got in the US about swearing and nudity....but pretty relaxed about buying guns...hey ho.

Is there a ban on swear words at Neo-Poet then?

Go 'Moon' man

'Betty' aka Ellie

I'm not one of those uptight Americans, I might get naked and
cuss at ya while I'm loading my gun (lol), kidding about the gun,
although I have a few they are unloaded and under lock and key
with the ammo in a different location, kids in the house so if someone
were to break in we'd have to beat em with chairs or something.
No ban on Neo, this was written in response to an editor asking me
to clean up my poetry if I was serious about getting published, needless
to say I don't see words in the same way as some. I'd much rather a
person be a direct asshole than someone that smiles in my face and
then when my back is turned ...
No, no ban on Neo, freedom of speech is practiced here as long as
a person isn't attacking a member it's all good.

thanks for reading and asking questions

themoonman

author comment

You tell them to get their heads out of their ass holes and join the real world.
Now shall I take to task the one that says we in the UK swear more than the Americans, she should know that our basic language is Anglo Saxon plus a few others, lol.
You take the BBC in their toffee nosed talk that they sent out across the nations of the world, that wasn't the real English.
Betty lives here with all those accents, real people talking gibberish lol, now the American accent drives some of us mad the way that some words have become distorted Like Project and even the fun ones Tomato, Aluminium, its the tower of Babel all over again..
I hope you told him where to go and to join the real world out there some place.
Saw a programme the other evening and they were talking about speech and languages of the future, they say it will be an Asian/English but that which is more from the Malaysian side, they were quite funny when they said a few words.
Our children are destroying language now with text messages in crypt script, I have never sent a text message as yet, the damn keys are too small lol...
Have a lovely day out there Ya'll, still loves Yu.
Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

I believe you are referring to 'Standard English'....still practiced by teachers and newsreaders.....mostly due to the variations & dialects (rapidly dying out)...the news...(the governments' version of the truth) needs to be heard by most of the nation. So clean, clear speech is required. Could you imagine the chaos if the 9 o'clock news by the BBC was read by a Glaswegian??? ('tha troooth isnea aways tha troooth!)

Anyway, getting back to some sort of analysis of the poem (otherwise Jess will be moaning)...I especially liked your term "word-whore". The assonance for a start is good but I like the ambiguity it conjures up in my mind...selling out the truth of the meaning of the word.

Regards,

'Betty' aka Ellie

Thank you both (and you again Ellie) ... Language evolves like
everything else. There just may be some truth to that prediction
of Asian/English but I think it may be more of a Spanglish.

I don't text either but every young person does, we better learn
some of those chopped up words or we'll be left behind.

The news media in America is the same way, clear spoken with
virtually no dialect (even here in the South), I never thought it to
be a world wide propaganda agenda (oooo, sounds like a poem)

author comment

You know me I am not afraid to say fuck etc etc I dont use it a lot in my poetry but I have found I am using it more, I dont care what people think if they dont like it ? I say dont fucking read it, if it offends you that is, Aussies are known for their foul language I was recently took to task for my use of the c word but it was just one of those times that it said it all :) ... I then said I want to be a poet not a social worker ... I loved your poem, did you present it to the editor ? I would love to see his reaction giggle

sincerely Jayne-Chloe x

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” — W.B. Yeats

No, I didn't send it to him, I have an entire file for rejection
letters and there are many, but this one stuck in my crawl.
I did end up having the poem published by someone else,
and that was good enough, well, that and this little ol rant
of release.

I feel any and every word can be used in poetry, anyone
offended can move on and read something less offensive.

thanks Jayne

author comment

fucking comes naturally to all fuckers
so whats the fuckin brawl
about fuckin
without balls or what ?
burn the dictionaries
i see young guys kids
teens read words
like fuck ...suck ...penis ...vagina
what are you fuckin talking of
i can't get it in
the fuckin thing
well i haven't read the fucked up gin

loved

now that would be going too far

thank you for your view

author comment

I figured profanity was a Requirement for getting published. So I'll practice my swear words now, heck, darn, feces. Barak obama. Harry reid.(Hope the last two wasn't going too far) lmao

no more views
paucity of minds here ??
what???
the fuckxxxxxxxxxxxx

loved

no, not too far for me Stan. I believe in freedom of speech.

thanks

author comment

I don't tend to curse much in my poetry (much less than in my prose fiction), but I'm not offended by the use of blue language. Most of my poetic gurus hurl expletives with razor-sharp precision. It's funny how many professors try to sanitize poetry, like the goof who considered kicking me out of an undergraduate poetry course because I vocally and fervently argued with him when he denied Coleridge's widely reported drug use. One thing I can say is that I can usually find a more impactful way of saying something if I don't use a less precise term like fuck or shit, etc.

Ron

Blue Demon77

"What I want is to be what I was before the knife,
before the brooch pin, before the salve, fixed me in this parenthesis:
Horses fluent in the wind. A place, a time gone out of mind."

The Eye Mote-Sylvia Plath

You are correct, many try to sanitize poetry today, they've cut it
down to an almost one way place where growth is frowned upon,
but not only does language evolve, everything else does too.

Hard for me to understand how anyone is offended by words
that are splattered everywhere today, but many still are.

thanks

Richard

author comment
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.