----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryfkah *" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 3:16 AM
Subject: Re: ABOUT THE WATERFRONT


Hi Philip, welcome to the List and to your first post.
I see from previous posts that this has troubled other readers. In fact I
cannot find your poem in my inbox so I am piggy-backing on another's.
Is it the long words that trouble?? I wonder. I like to make people reach
for a dictionary now and again but I also recognise that many people, and I
like my poetry to be read by many people, which of us does not, many people
will not do the dictionary reaching at all. So the poet,who indulges in
his/her sesquipedalian lexicon is hoist with their own petard.
After the first word has been read up, comes the next and soon the reader
thinks, 'I do not know nor do I wish to know.' and moves on.
There is a place for the right 'long' word . Eliot's 'eructation',for
instance,and we as readers should allow a poem to extend us, but the poet
invites a turned back if over indulgent.
It is more than the 'difficult' words though. There is the cloying richness
of poetic technique and conceits:
i) the cynghanedd of ' Dozing off into fried dreams, dusks frittered' .
ii) The copious alliteration of, for example, 'lanes of largesse'.,
'ballistic bulbs burgeon', 'thriving on the thread' etc etc.
iii) the plethoa of one image piled on top of another without let or pause
iv) some of the images seem merely words and do not project,; vegetal
forceps????? scintillantly splenetic????( ouch!!), 'ragamuffins of
electronics' none of these , nor others, connects for me.
The poem has become a teeming cornucopea upon which the 'appetite might
sicken and so die'.
I discern a love of language and I applaud that, there is awareness of
poetic technique and an admirable ability to use it, and I applaud that.
A poet needs to let his readers share, a poem is an act of communication, I
think you like this poem yourself and wanted to share it with us as your
first submission. It is a pity that it should be so greeted with wrinkled
noses and sour faces. I hope you are not put off by its reception for there
is much to be admired....... but just too much. Regards Arthur.

>
>
> In a message dated 08.04.03 7:58:58 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> <<         ABOUT THE WATERFRONT
>
>         Dozing off into fried dreams,
>         dusks frittered
>         to bonne nuit, Skeltonic
>         rhododendrons within
>         and without the
>         telemorphokinesis,
>         Boston's vegetal forceps in bloom,
>         quagmires
>         of dactyloscopic rooks
>         on wires of air,
>         the tough tinsel nut
>         modernity
>         hung thriving
>         on the thread of
>         a generation. How much more
>         scintillantly splenetic
>         could the ragamuffins
>         of electronics become? Where
>         to cast or not to cast
>         downtown ellipses of joyhood
>         to trucks of passersby
>         behind the public gardens
>         in lanes of largesse
>         and others of fireproof
>         spring, strongbox
>         efflorescence,
>         securities jacked up,
>         life going hand in hand
>         with economics?
>         The sky coat is spread
>         wetly over the scrapers.
>         In the earth
>         ballistic bulbs burgeon.
>         The spade bank
>         is full of spades.
>         Piers are pincers.
>         They are paroles.
>         They are
>         sunk to their barrels,
>         filled with seagull-squashed
>         linen sleep and aquatic
>         projections into
>         the cobalt blotting sun.
>
> Philip Nikolayev, 1999 >>