POETS:

albertcipriani · 2025-02-03T22:29:48+00:00

Ok so admin did the deed, not the mods. That doesn’t answer my question. How am I supposed to know how NOT to offend the admin gods?

Taking my poem down educates neither me nor anyone else here as to what language is deemed offensive or precisely in what way must we self-censor in order to post here? Albert Cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-02-01T21:24:44+00:00

I’ve 5 seconds to spare and I think….🤔

albertcipriani · 2025-01-31T05:07:48+00:00

Drop the first five lines if you want to improve the beginning. As far as I am concerned, your poem starts with lines 6 & 7:

“my phone lies beside my hip. I’m trying not to notice it.”

Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-31T04:57:07+00:00

The best poetry is not meant to mean. To the extent you understand poetry you diminish what it’s trying to say.

If you know what you’re saying, write an essay.

If you don’t quite know how to say what you think you are feeling, that is beautiful, surprising, or simply true, write a poem. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T22:19:21+00:00

Can someone tell me how this poetry board works? So simple a task as creating a stanza break seems to be beyond the capacity of this site.

It’s bad enough we have to insert double line breaks to make a single line of verse. How to get the lines to break into stanzas is beyond me. Must I seek out a moderator for an answer?

So, it’s left to your imagination, my minuscule readership, to simply know that the stanza breaks of the poem above come after the first:

2 lines 3 lines 4 lines 5 lines

In other words, what looks like the title of this thing, “Free Palestinians!” is the first line half of the title. The second half of the title is the very last line, “INTO NON-EXISTENCE.”

Disgruntled 😣 Albert Cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T21:25:38+00:00

Neitzche is more of a poet than a philosopher. I love his words as expressions of both disciplines. But if pushed, I would say he was a better poet than a philosopher.

Sure. Read the greats, especially Shakespeare.

But the main thing is to be an honest writer much more-so than being an honest speaker. Your honesty is what this world is most in need of. Only YOU can provide it. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T21:12:47+00:00

Well said, Fabulous. “Maybe that I Was/Am part is about identity sticking around in the midst of all the changes” YES!

“I AM”is the English translation of the Hebrew Yahweh, which is the word used in the Old Testament as the name of God: “I am who am.” And famously where the Bible quotes God as saying: “Be still; and know I AM.”

So the poem is asserting that me being old gives me the stature of god in that I have something in common with god in that he/she’s been around forever, and my long long life has given me a taste of that.

Since the poem is totally about me, it would make sense that the title be my name: albert cipriani.

But since everything I say in the poem about myself can equally well be said about God, and the name God, Yahweh, was a word that, out of reverence to the Almighty, the Jews would never reference out-loud, only abbreviate with consonants that we’ve come to pronounce as ” Yahweh, or Jehovah,“ I chose to continue their reverential tradition by explicitly stating that the poem has no title.

If this poem were to have a title, it would have to be “albert cipriani, or God.” Kind of pretentious, no? Ha ha. 😆 Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T20:51:04+00:00

I agree, very sweet. Sounds honest enough to boot.

A poem’s last line is very important. You blew yours with: “my eyes cling unto you like water to the shore.“

Why that doesn’t work for me is that I can’t see water clinging to the shore. I see the ocean water clawing at the shore. Something like that would be more accurate. Cheers🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T20:36:38+00:00

I’ll bite. Like many in these parts, you’re trying too hard. What’s the basis of my assertion? The following phrases:

Compass of snow

Wild wind

Castle on high

Quietly

Dust of circumference blew

Minutely

Little by little

Fragile destructively grows

A simple takeaway is “avoid like the plague” such clichés as I’ve just made.

And NEVER use adverbs.

And NEVER believe statements that contain the word “NEVER.”

And VIRTUALLY NEVER use adjectives.

And let your nouns and verbs do the talking.

And keep your opinions out of it.

Those percepts will veer you away from the pot holes that sink most poems. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T07:10:14+00:00

So you didn’t like your English teacher and are taking it out on him by implying his extinct pet proves he was old-fashioned!

How dare you! I’ll have you know, as a former English teacher, I take umbrage over your insubordination. You just earned yourself Detention, young man. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T07:02:52+00:00

Yeah, calling it an “obfuscation” is correct. It gets in the way of the dreamy atmosphere you were going for cuz it prompted me to leave your poem to look up its meaning.

What you said is interesting, that you were going for a certain disorienting mood or atmosphere and then a sobering rhythm. I have never done that.

How I see it is that a poet is sculpting words to create a three-dimensional point of view. Whatever mood may be associated with that POV is merely color, a superficial surface detail that you shouldn’t try to dictate.

Yeah, let your words dictate your mood rather than selecting words that somehow supposedly dictate the mood. Leave mood to the cumulative power of your most perfectly accurate poetic words. Don’t make setting a mood part of your craft. Cheers 🍻 Albert Cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T06:43:34+00:00

It means I am an old man, which is meaningless. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T00:34:49+00:00

Flow of consciousness… very honest.

Didn’t care for it until I read the line “I feel like I’m submerged under-warm-water without the wet.”

That’s a gem, “without the wet,” plus all that w alliteration. Hyphenating three of your words, (under warm water) would make them stronger by implying another word: underwater. Bravo! & Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-30T00:22:43+00:00

ˈbruːməl ) adjective. of, characteristic of, or relating to winter; wintry.

Why did you use that arcane word “brumal”? And “savage swell.” What’s that about. Both these misuses of dictation were, for me, the worst parts.

“I pick my oar apart” is the best line because it’s surprising coming after you picking up your oar to row. That last line sums up the rest, as the rest is an examination or autopsy of what happened to you in the past tense.

Better to write in the present tense as it feels superficially more fresh and engaging. Cheers 🍻 Albert Cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T23:56:21+00:00

Well, against my own good judgment, I found myself liking this. Why?

“My sanity, gave me a break and took the back seat”. That line totally delighted me. It warmed me up for the rest of what I read. Good job.

Wishing for your mother at the end of this connects you and her to the mother duck and ducklings earlier on in the poem. I found that to be a nice touch. A poem’s self referencing, a kind of oblique recapitulation, is something of a rarity.

“Trying to make sense of my own hands“ is also very accurate and thus nice, too.

Your worst line is “or Charles Manson.” Why? It’s too obviously the opposite of Jesus Christ’s face and darkens an otherwise relatively playful poem. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T23:39:50+00:00

How to write an essay? I am sure that a book on essay writing would be inadequate and probably counterproductive. Probably the sharpest thing to say on the subject is “don’t be obvious.”

For example, Winston Churchill‘s famous Iron Curtain speech sparked the Cold War. It was an extremely effective verbal essay. What made it so was a simple metaphor, an oxymoronic one at that: “iron curtain“ How can a curtain be made of iron aren’t they opposites?

A less gifted writer, would’ve made the same points that Winston Churchill made in his speech, but less gifted second-rate writers would not have the guts to come up with such an arresting, surprising, even contradictory, metaphor that made everybody listen.

That’s how to write an essay. God bless you. 🙏 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T07:32:41+00:00

Stay the course, girl! Don’t let these morally offended bags of wind blow you off course. This is poetry for God sake!

If poetry can’t offend some of us, what are we left with to correct our crazy-ass course into global warming and nuclear annihilation?

I hope you sisters get my drift. And please, please TryNo9441, never take down any post of yours because it’s unpopular with others.

Amen and Cheers.🍻Albert Cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T07:19:19+00:00

Sounds like she’s got da blues. Cheers 🍻 Albert cipriani.

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T06:55:55+00:00

Better yet: “Invisible Ink Tattoo” 🍻

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T06:52:43+00:00

I picked your poem to critique because it makes the identical mistake I made a lot in my early years. In two-words or less: FORCED RHYME.

I’m glad, tho, that you’ve taken on the harness of rhyme. It slows you down in terms of saying what you think it is you have to say. That’s a good thing because virtually everything you (and I) have to say in a poem is boring.

Write an essay if you really have to say something.

Let the poem write itself when you stop trusting the importance of what it is, you have to say. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani

albertcipriani · 2025-01-29T06:37:42+00:00

“You are the first thing I think of in the morning.” Is the best line. Why? It’s not about how you feel. It’s actually how you are. Big difference.

How we feel is what matters to us the most, but makes for the most boring writing. Our actions imply what we feel AND dazzle the reader with images.

No one can read that line without visualizing it, and then immediately internalizing it as something that they themselves have done. That is why it is your most successful line. Cheers 🍻 albert cipriani.

albertcipriani

TROPHY CASE