davideo~ Thank you for your thoughts on this subject. One couldn't escape the object of philosophy if they jumped off a tall bridge. Life is out to get us, whether we seek to de-code it, deny it or wrap it up for sale. Life, I have heard, is Bliss. All the rest is imagination. Amen to that, brother ...

Author's comments: The 1st stanza is in its entirety a quote from the book Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology by Graham Ward (p 60), where the author quotes Heidegger's Being and Time (p 202)... The 2nd stanza is a reference to a poem by Basho, the Japanese master of Haiku. The 3rd stanza m...

Why I am not a Philosopher For Heidegger, ' f the phenomenon of the "as" remains covered up, and, above all, if its existential source in the hermeneutical "as" is veiled, then Aristotle's phenomenological approach to the analysis of the logos collapses into a s u p e r f i c i ...

Critic2~

Congratulations on the Grand Prize!

If you don't mind me asking: How many poems did you submit for the contest (I know you wrote one that was rejected, rhyming blue & true...?)

~Taigaku

Hi Laurie~ You wrote: The poem had better stand despite the allusion or risk falling predictably flat. I'm definitely not arguing with you, but T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound probably would... What I'm saying is: I do agree with you, but in the history of western poetry, this is a fairly recent sentiment...

I don't know whose poem # 21 is, but I agree with C2 in this matter.
It both struck a cord with me and, at the same time, seemed too close to "plagiarizing" LC.. If, however, I had never read anything that Leonard ever wrote, this would undoubtedly have been in my top 3.

~Taigaku

Well, fuck the character, I say.
He's only a fiction within a fiction anyway!


I thank you for the job you have done with the contest, Laurie. Hope things at work turn out well.

~Taigaku

Oh, and he [Raskolnikov] of course commits two murders, and is tormented by guilt etc. Read the book

Hi everyone~ Poem # 2 is mine. Thanks, Laurie, for finding it worthy of being in the "Second Place Winners' Circle." A few explanatory notes: Raskolnikov is the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. For me, knowing who he is and what he represents is a key to the poem as a wh...

And when will the winners be announced?

Well, I'm not writing any poem, but it seemed to me Martine wanted to...

Complain, complain, that's all you've done... if it's not the competition, then it's the podium...


Sorry, that was a joke

why don't we all just relax, take a deep breath, and write a poem?

He looks kinda like me

PS This, surely, must be blasphemous, Peter?

"And you're screamin: release me
go on and go on
as you join in the night
the spirit, the son"