A Balancing Factor

[RonPrice 0]

A BALANCING FACTOR

 

The writing of a poem is, to me, a task of construction following on from an impulse, an inspiration, an idea. It's like an energy source that turns on a light and the poem is an attempt to give that light form, containment, a compartment from which it can continue to shine when it is brought out and read. Sometimes the light that is turned on is faint and the poem a simple narrative conventionalism; sometimes the light shines more strongly after experiencing an intense dialogue with silence; and sometimes the light is so bright I have the opinion it can bring light to the world of its readers. -Ron Price with thanks to Dylan Thomas in Dylan Thomas: The Poet and his Critics, R.B. Kershner, Jr., American Library Association, Chicago, 1976, p.193.

 

This may be a simple narrative,

conventionalism, and a laxative,

a part of a day that occupied my inner life,

my silence, my conversation and inside my wife,

with myself in the early hours of this morning,

when I am given to endless mourning,

down low, sucking the guilt,

the shame, the ugly, the dark quilt,

the twisted, the inadequateness of what I am,

what I live, breath, seek during my time in 'Nam

the spinning moments of my life:

where I bring myself to account fife,

here I am summoned to a reckoning.

I would not want to be judged by Mr. Felding,

in this mood of darkness for I would always,

be found wanting and would descend even though I can't use doorways,

to the lowest abyss day after day, perhaps

simply due to a chemical deficiency in my fax,

imbalance that sends me into the most profound state of feeling and thought

amounting to a sickness unto death to which I fought,

pure physiology, a balancing factor

that keeps my ego from being run over by a tractor

which, in the end, will shut out the Light.

 

Ron Price

10 May 1998

*rogue editor*

16 September 2005

[Josco 49]

Call me a Philistine, but that does not seem like a poem. It neither rhymes nor scans, but what do I know, I like Meatloaf and Queen.

[Lady Die 63]

Call me a Philistine, but that does not seem like a poem.  It neither rhymes nor scans, but what do I know, I like Meatloaf and Queen.

I agree. It looks like a load of pretentious twaddle to me.

Even Meatloaf/Queen songs rhyme & scan.

[VSBfromH 74]

Go out and have a few pints, mate! You'll be right as rain in the morning.

[Tuber Mirum 125]

There are about 2,999 more just like that one, apparently.

 

Oh dear!

 

"Inadequateness" isn't a word anyway. It's "inadequacy".

[Anubis the Jackal 77]

So you've been keeping that little gem hidden for 7 years? Shame.

[Magere Hein 1,400]

There are about 2,999 more just like that one, apparently.

 

Oh dear!

OMG. It's almost as bad as Art Garfunkel's.

 

regards,

Hein

[Tuber Mirum 125]

On a par with this, perhaps?

 

 

In my heart

Is the seed of the tree

Which will be me.

Nourished by understanding

Warmed by friends

Fed by loved ones

Matured by wisdom

Tempered by tears.

 

[Magere Hein 1,400]

In my heart

Is the seed of the tree

Which will be me.

Nourished by understanding

Warmed by friends

Fed by loved ones

Matured by wisdom

Tempered by tears.

Yes.

 

regards,

Hein

[Guest Guest_RonPrice]

At the risk of giving you more 'pretentious twaddle' I'll give you more stuff about death.

_____________________

Keep in mind that poems do not have to have rhyming lines, nor do they have to scan. Most of the poetry written in the last 200 years does not have rhyming patterns.

 

But to return to the subject of "Death" and "Lists" of those who will one day die. Here is my "comment" and my "tip" for the time when the death will be my own.-Ron

 

 

AN UNLAMINATED DEATH

 

Again and again he must stand back from the dress of hobbits and conservatives. He must keep on recapturing solitude. -Walter de la Mare. Pirate 1953.

 

 

He was not a practical man,

not adept at gardening, poetry,

cleaning, cooking, milking the goat

or door handles or shopping.

His death could hardly be laminated.

All he seemed to do was whine,

I mean just about endlessly.

On any forum no matter

how inappropriate

He said he felt an excess of joy,

He blamed the invention

of SPAM.

It was too strange. He was too extreme,

impulsive, a victim of a bored moderating team.

 

Some he said were jealous,

but he did not like to pursue that theme.

He was given to wearing

Saturday Night Fever suits.

He seemed to prefer his own company,

a recluse, a hermit, had fallen in love

with Tempus Fugit;

he’d often weep at movies

which he rarely attended.

He cried especially when he saw

"Abba the Movie" on video.

 

We were praying for the death

of Ronnie Biggs

for he said he’d died already

many times and looked forward

to its face, its new life. Was it suicide?

We’ll never know and there’s no disgrace.

Besides, I wear his face and he was beyond

that kind of place, still in the Special Olympics.

 

Rogue Editor

16th September 2005

[Anubis the Jackal 77]

Where is Poetry Man when you really need him? My ears are weeping pus.

[Bald rick 9]

It would seem that 'poetry' consists of a tedious series of statements, with line breaks in inappropriate places.

 

Ode to Deathlist.net

 

Deathlist.net is a

place

on the interweb where weird

people come and

rant

at the people who maintain a

List of famous people

who they think are about to

pop their clogs.

A sort of online

obituary department.

[Boudicca 702]

He was not a practical man,

not adept at gardening, painting,

cleaning, cooking, fixing the car

or door handles or shopping.

What? I know plenty of people who are useless at all that other stuff, but I have yet to meet someone who hasn't mastered the use of a door handle. What's the story, Ron?

[Tuber Mirum 125]

He was not a practical man,

not adept at gardening, painting,

cleaning, cooking, fixing the car

or door handles or shopping.

What? I know plenty of people who are useless at all that other stuff, but I have yet to meet someone who hasn't mastered the use of a door handle. What's the story, Ron?

 

Fascinating stuff

He's also not that good at writing poetry, a thing he fails to mention in this attempt at same.

 

I find it hard to put my finger on what makes this guy's poems seem even worse to me than those of Garfunkel or Nimoy.

 

They are so criminally dull that they appear to have completely bypassed "so bad that they're good" and gone straight for the uttermost depths of artlessness.

 

The fact that there are thousands and thousands of them, one no better than the next doesn't do the man any credit either.

[Teddy 21]

At the risk of giving you more 'pretentious twaddle' I'll give you more stuff about death.

_____________________

Keep in mind that poems do not have to have rhyming lines, nor do they have to scan. <snip>

I think you may find that is prose.

 

Now, if you want some real poetry, I can point in the direction of some pretty damned good haiku

[Guest Mr Magoo]

Iz a reet load av fukin shite man (as we say in Middlesbrough)

[RonPrice 0]

The feedback at this site is, at the very least, consistent. For 30 years I was a teacher in primary, secondary and post-secondary schools. 90% of my students found the poetry in the world's Holy Books: The Bible, The Koran, The Bhagavad Gita, among others and the world's great poetic works like those of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickinson, Wordsworth and too many more to list--pretentious twaddle, boring, not rhyming, the list of pejorative terms is long--as is the list of writers.

 

I rarely post my poetry at sites with such consistent negative feedback. It makes me feel I am worthy of joining the greats of poetry in the last 3000 years. But I must give you all credit for your honesty. Let me place my autobiographical prose-poetry in some context:

 

"Autobiographical poetry is about our past and a hell of a lot of it is true. Perhaps factual errors, false imaginative alternations, even dishonesty slips in. Each of us visits our past, our childhood for example, in different ways, with varying frequency. We each experience a sense of loss, sadness, pleasure, or even relief, in contemplating the past. Writing redeems these feelings. These feelings are exploited in poetry. We visit our past; we revisit it again and again."

-ABC Radio, Books and Writing, 19 December 1997, 7:00-8:00 pm.

_________________________

As far as doorhandles are concerned let me make some justification for my brief inclusion of that reference. Doorhandles all require keys to open them and keys often do not seem to open doors as simply as one would like. When a person like me has lived in 37 houses in 22 towns since he was born over 60 years ago and visited numberless other homes requiring keys to get in with the owners' permission--and found the key-door combination a hassle, I felt the reference to doorhandles in a poem, for me anyway, justified.

____________________________

 

Christine Slovey, the editor of Poetry Criticism(Vol.15, NY, 1997) quotes Theodore Roethke on poetry: "Poetry is an instrument which can sharpen one’s understanding. Writing poetry allows one to play with the confusion, the chaos, the order, the necessary, the arbitrary, the factual, the patterns, the humiliating and transform it all into truth, beauty, ugliness and horror depending on the mood and the music of life. For the poet finds in the sensed and unsensed universe a mirror in which he meets himself. During this meeting he creates a world, his world, sometimes ‘our’ world. Hopefully the poet’s voice is unique, an expression of the real person." The poet's voice for those responding to my stuff thusfar is clearly not meeting the voices of others. But that, as I said above, is a most common reality in our world. One wins some and loses some.-Ron

[Guest IYG]

And the point of all of this is???

[Magere Hein 1,400]

And the point of all of this is???

They laugh at the author of the Song of Songs. They laugh at Shakespeare. They laugh at Bozo the Clown.

 

regards,

Hein

[Lady Grendel 139]

At the risk of giving you more 'pretentious twaddle' I'll give you more stuff about death.

_____________________

Keep in mind that poems do not have to have rhyming lines, nor do they have to scan.  <snip>

I think you may find that is prose.

 

Now, if you want some real poetry, I can point in the direction of some pretty damned good haiku

 

[Guest IYG]

And the point of all of this is???

They laugh at the author of the Song of Songs. They laugh at Shakespeare. They laugh at Bozo the Clown.

 

regards,

Hein

Yes but they laugh rightfully so at all of these.

[Guest Guest_RonPrice]

It is said that "he who laughs last, laughs longest." I shall cease my postings here for now and thank you all for, what shall I call it, 'a stimulating interchange?' And the point of all this was......? I will go out with the words of Paul Goodman on the subject of death which this site seems concerned with in different ways:

___________________________

As I grow old, I inevitably see more and more the death of my colleagues and dear ones, and I’m confused. I understand that all flesh is as the grass...I understand that we must try to mourn it through. I understand these two ideas but I cannot grasp them in one vision. It is too sublime for my finite experience and I become confused. -Paul Goodman(1911-1972) in Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy, Taylor Stoehr, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1994, pp.271-272.

______________________________

 

I shall return at a later date at this 'Deathlist' site, as I get closer to death in these years of my late adulthood. See ya 'round, folks!-Ron

[Josco 49]

And the point of all of this is???

They laugh at the author of the Song of Songs. They laugh at Shakespeare. They laugh at Bozo the Clown.

 

regards,

Hein

"They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian; well, they're not laughing now. " (The late, great Bob Monkhouse)

 

 

AN UNLAMINATED DEATH

 

Again and again he must stand back from the dress of hobbits and conservatives. He must keep on recapturing solitude. -Walter de la Mare. Pirate 1953.

 

We have a laminating machine here that you may borrow.

[Star Crossed 33]

 

Ian Huntley's getting into poetry these days, is he? Kills time, I suppose...

[Josco 49]

 

Ian Huntley's getting into poetry these days, is he? Kills time, I suppose...

Never noticed before, but he does remind me of Mr Spock.