leonardcohenforum.com

lol, I am speechless in your presence

tinderella wrote:lol, I am speechless in your presence

you're welcome.

Bravo! Lion of Lions.

{Thanks for mentioning the "valid point" about your "enchantingly wove" cliché. I wondered if you also had a response about

1. your use of "among" (a matter of usage, it makes no sense to me)
2. "glib post natal woes" (a matter of taste)
3. the too easy switch to "taunting" (a direct criticism)
4. the ghastly "jube" / "lube" rhyme ( a matter of taste)
5. your random cap in "Your" ( a matter of grammar)
6. an explanation of "them" ( a matter of understanding, it makes no sense to me)
7. how you sing a tapestry (a matter of curiosity and explanation, it makes no sense to me)

Leo, These answers may give you some insight to my mind in poesy. (and, admittedly, not all poesy works; yet I love to saunter among the flowers and the weeds. )

1. your use of "among"- I wanted to convey the feeling that the babe was in a space of arms but not entirely conscious of that arms/cuddle/lift concept that we come to understand as we grow a little more. Perhaps “among” is not effective? I have considered other words and will again; but for now, it will do.
2. "glib post natal woes"- Life (beyond the womb) is suffering, as the Buddhist would say. The phrase is abrasive, original and maybe even memorable; a bit like life. It grated me too and I can understand your immediate repulsion but I like it in the context of developing contrast/themes of opposition. And then I was pleased by it’s repulsive qualities as that is the message in “life is suffering”.
3. “taunt” This word concerned me too, but I stuck with it as (to me) it almost conveyed how a mother can use her arms to caress or to tickle and tease and playfully “taunt” a smile from her child. I allowed the reader a little imagination here and I did and do question its effectiveness. But I will stick with it for now.
4. the ghastly "jube" / "lube" rhyme ( a matter of taste)- Yes it is shocking/ghastly and it is “a matter of taste”, as you state. I included it for fun.
5. your random cap in "Your" ( a matter of grammar)- The use of a capital letter “Y” (instead of “y”) is reference to the divine and this usage is common practice in mystical writings. Since a sonnet is traditionally expected to include some reference to the divine, I included the “Y” at this point, moving from “life is suffering” to transcendental belonging; the babe, the mother, the joy, the suffering; the divine drama unfolds yet again.
6. “them”- is what McMurphy (One flew over the Coocoo’s nest) would call, “the combine”, family, religion, society and so on. In the case of my sonnet; all that is not “mother”. It is the traditional requirement of a sonnet to build two opposing entities/forces/emotions and I chose mother/others.
7. how you sing a tapestry (a matter of curiosity and explanation, it makes no sense to me)- This is where you give yourself away a bit Leo, perhaps you don’t think imaginatively, poetically, you simply rationalize and use words cleverly. That is not poetry.

as the song goes:

“Fools rush in where wise men never tread
and so I come to you, my love,
my heart above my head
when we met, I felt my life begin
so open up your heart and let this fool rush on in.”

How does one open a heart and jump in...is this too “(a matter of curiosity and explanation, it makes no sense to me)” ?
No answer required, the question is rhetorical.

Thanks for your insightful response "among" the pugilism.

MatbbgmephistoJ

mat james wrote:
“Fools rush in where wise men never tread

Hi Mat
Let me try to pass on two little bits of advice
the first is from me
I think the line is "Where angels fear to tread"

the other comes from your Spanish friend who suggests not bothering to figure out who is on whose side and that the only way you can be sure of which way to go is to close your eyes. I think that is when his friend Theresa whispered in his ear "Jean, all the way to heaven is heaven"

Hi Jack,
advice number one is (unintentionally) misguided, as perhaps you are not familiar with the "song" I was referring to?
I was misquoting from the Frank (very young) Sinatra version of the song, "Fools rush in". ( I included one too many wise men and left out an angel...the story of my life!)
Writer(s): mercer/bloom


Fools rush in

Fools rush in
Where angels fear to tread
And so I come to you my love
My heart above my head

Though I see
The danger there
If there's a chance for me
Then I don't care

Fools rush in
Where wise men never go
But wise men never fall in love
So how are they to know

When we met
I felt my life begin
So open up your heart and let
This fool rush in

For me, the lyrics are simply wonderful.
My favourite string of lines is:
Fools rush in...but wise men never know (that) when we met, I felt my life begin..."

Check out this 1940 version with Tommy Dorsey..I just love it. I have an old "L.P. record" of his and play it occasionally, over and over and over...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Pm_9-1LsU

And as for your second piece of advice?
Answer: A circle has no sides.
(and I suggest the little Spaniard would agree. And if he doesn't; bad luck for him )

Regards, Mat.

Lion of Lions wrote: I love Cate and wrote I didn't like her recent poem.

ahhh - I love you too.

One of the things I like about this lion of lines is that he'll actually tells me what he thinks. With that last poem I had specifically asked him to check my rhythm, not just because he has a better sense of that sort of thing then me, but because I can trust his answer.

back to poem

A babe enmeshed, I wander from my crib
Among her warm and soft protecting arms
That taunt me to love and calm, despite glib. . (I’m with the furry guy on taunt – why do these soft arms taunt you?)
Post natal woes; her milk and honey charms!
Icing-sugar, Turkish delight to jube; . . (big fan of icing-sugar and Turkish delight the words themselves sound good but also add to the smell and taste of the poem)
There is no sweet allure that beckons more;
She is the Mystic Arc, the gel the lube . . (Mat I really like mystic ark as it brings a few images together. I don't like 'the gel the lube. gel beside lube sounds like a sexual inference but I don't think that was your intention. I think by gel you mean the thing that holds everything together and I think by lube you mean to say that she’s like the oil that makes everything run smooth - although I could be wrong)
Amidst this hard-edged world adrift Your shore.. . (this has a nice sound to it and seems to transitioning us in the poem)
A hand adrift, a small salute I gave
But not to them; not that arctic other. . ( Arctic other is good, you can feel that cold breeze coming in - there is a slight awkwardness with the pleural them and the singular other. if you had, had room for an extra syllable it would have read better to say But not to them; not to that arctic other)
Enchaining me to school and work and grave,
Defacing tapestries my young mother . . (tapestry works for me, we weave or spin a tale. I didn’t like undermining structures at all, so I think that was a change for the better)
Once sung and spun and enchantingly wove;. .
Legends of quest and hope, around the stove. . . (I think this makes a nice visual image of N as a boy watching mom cook, learning through stories. I think the fact that the stories were defacing adds interest – we tend to romantasize these moments but not here yet at the same time sung spun and enchanting all add a feeling of a warm kitchen – so it makes the Mother an interesting character.)

it looks silly with the colours on the rhymes - but I'm visual and it helped me to see it better. I think your rhymes are for the most part good and I can hear your pogo stick bouncing away in rhythm of it. I think your of subject - the contrast of the two types of Mothers is a good one and a good choice for your sonnet attempt.

yeah Mat - good work

mat james wrote: And as for your second piece of advice?
Answer: A circle has no sides.

other than an inside and an outside. Your circles seem pretty big and inclusive so have fun and carry on.

mat james wrote: For me, the lyrics are simply wonderful.

Funny, there was something about the song that I always liked but I think that some of the lyrics are crap. It was a song that Elvis's manager would get him to sing but then again Elvis's manager use to make his money placing chickens on a hot stove and telling folks that they were dancing.

Here is why I think some are crap

Fools rush in
Where wise men never go
But wise men never fall in love
So how are they to know

How does this guy know that wise men never fall in love? How else did they ever get wise?
Another name for wisdom is Sophia and I have reason to think that Sophia knows a thing or two about falling in love. I don't like seeing her name tarnished in this fashion.

Who am I to try to rewrite such an old beloved classic but if I was ever asked; I think that I would write something like

Let me step
Where scholars cannot go
Cause scholars do not live my world
so how are they to know

I use the word scholar because this is a Leonard Cohen forum and scholar was the word he used to describe the point of view that he decided not to follow when embarking with poetry.

Cate, thanks for you detailed and thoughtful response.

She is the Mystic Arc, the gel the lube . . (Mat I really like mystic ark as it brings a few images together. I don't like 'the gel the lube. gel beside lube sounds like a sexual inference but I don't think that was your intention. I think by gel you mean the thing that holds everything together and I think by lube you mean to say that she’s like the oil that makes everything run smooth - although I could be wrong) Cate.

You are not wrong cate. You’re right on track.
There were several images flying through my mind at the time of writing. As you suggest,

“I think by gel you mean the thing that holds everything together and I think by lube you mean to say that she’s like the oil that makes everything run smooth” .

I was thinking this...and contemporaneously I also moved through the thought of magma/larva and plate tectonics; how the continents float on a molten gel (magma) and this molten magma/larva lubricates the edges, as in plate tectonics...and the system regenerates and moves on; Mother Earth, so to speak, re-birthing. This sauntering “among” the poesy/process took me to the next image of “hard edged world” (plates/plate tectonics), which seemed to fit the “life is suffering” theme and the image of continental drift; continents banging into each other, creating islands and mountains, Himalayas on the surface of the Earth, yet these plates are lubricated (“lube”) by Mother Earth herself (her magma).
Hence;

“...She is the Mystic Arc, the gel the lube
Amidst a hard-edged world adrift Your shore”

Since I had moved from babe to mother then onto Mother Earth, I thought the progression to father “Y”/ “Your shore” was the perfect place to introduce the mandatory “divine reference” (in a traditionally constructed sonnet, which is what I am attempting here).
And, moving toward the father, symbolically, is the healthy/natural Freudian solution to balance, from Oedipal desire for mum to adult desire for other women, or at least another woman.
As I mentioned to Lion of Lions, "the gel and lube" took on an Oedipal complexion and while this was strictly accidental, (sub-conscious) it was a natural shift I suppose, and latent, after the lines

“...her milk and honey charms!
Icing-sugar, Turkish delight to jube
There is no sweet allure that beckons more;”

And these lines were intentionally Oedipal from the start as I was implying by these lines that a man’s (and perhaps woman’s?) fascination with breasts stays with him throughout one's life of fire and heat and magma
Don't you love the fire and heat and magma (lust)

There is nothing new in that observation !

MatbbgmephistoJ

Norman Ball posted this sonnet recently on his own thread and I have copied (with his permission) and pasted it here on the sonnet thread.
Thanks Norm,
Mat J.

Beware leak-bearing lips.

Beware leak-bearing lips. A fresh career
can launch post-augmentation. On its face,
the contours of a paralytic sneer
seem comically benign. Yet there's a case
for flouting phony pouting. Why deface
time's stark imprimatur, its ageless knack
for running looks aground? We can't go back.
Nor can injected toxins halt the race.
Worse still, the gains --ostensibly skin-deep--
can turn cosmetic purpose on its head
should botulism start a covert creep.
What use are luscious lips to one who's dead?
We pay lip service to the grace of age.
Then pay the surgeon not to turn the page.

Copyright 2009, Norman Ball

To the Art of Lovingly-Assembled Slights, Both Real and Imagined

She preps her bristles, prickly and hellbent
for passersby who happen on her feast
of pity. Man is manna, heaven-sent
(i.e the putz du jour.) Can we at least
draw scandal from performance, how the cart
anticipates the witless stalking horse?
The feign of outrage --seethingness-as-art--
adores its ill-effects. Absent the force
of elemental anger protest fails
to rise above a cranky lashing-out.
That said, the ritual's affected males
wear guilt. The vaguest sin escapes all doubt:
Hear her. She roars. Her feelings have been hurt.
She bakes a humble pie for your dessert.

Copyright 2009, Norman Ball

(this is my english translation, the original rhymes very well)

She bakes a humble pie for our dessert
the kind man from the circus tent told me
I to him that we do not mind humble dear sister
as we lack the wit and tools to make our own
I did not understand what else he said prior
something about cats being tamed in cages
but here have some of this bread and wine
and a piece of jerk left from the ride
I do think that I am very content this day
to be here beside you on this breaking morn
Oh brother look, the sun comes through so fair
Lets us not bother to wait for the offered pie
But move on as my heart feels so gay and free
and there will be plenty not humble where we head

mat james wrote:Topic:

"a baby being swaddled by a mother to bring it peace and comfort and a baby being swaddled by a stranger to get it to be less bothersome.
Have fun.

Jack L.

....????????...?/???.??......OK, let's go;

A babe enmeshed

A babe enmeshed, I wander from my crib
Among her warm and soft protecting arms
That taunt me to love and calm, despite glib
Post natal woes; her milk and honey charms!
Icing-sugar, Turkish delight to jube;
There is no sweet allure that beckons more;
She is the Mystic Arc, the gel the lube
Amidst this hard-edged world adrift Your shore.
A hand adrift, a small salute I gave
But not to them; not that arctic other
Enchaining me to school and work and grave,
Defacing tapestries my young mother
Once sung and spun and enchantingly wove;
Legends of quest and hope, around the stove.

MatbbgmephistoJ

(...and thanks to Jack for jolting my brain into gear. I did take a slightly different tack, Jack, but you got me sailing.)
I have attempted a Shakespearean Sonnet.

Have fun everybody and anybody, ripping it to bits
Where's Laurie?

I'm bored. It's raining.
I think first starting off by being honest with yourself is needed--re: about how MUCH the need to maintain the rhyme scheme AND to keep the syllable count consistent drove this sonnet. Sometimes those constrictions can bring surprising and lovely results, but honesty of the process is essential. And editing for nonsense (instead of eureka-ing what fit) has to be done with diligence.

The bits you end up justifying are the bits that have strange concepts that scream of only being there because it gave you a rhyme. The syllable count issue is less conspicuous, but over use of "ands" gives it away:

warm and soft
milk and honey
love and calm
school and work and grave
sung and spun and enchantingly
quest and hope

Your metaphors are all over the place.
; should contain complete sentences on both sides far as I remember (could be wrong).

The worse of the rhyme problems have been addressed.

Really, my best advice (since you asked) is be Honest! and Edit. Edit. Edit.

Laurie
(as you was)

Nice to know you can make space between the raindrops of boredom, Laurie.
As always, your comments are worth reading for their accuracy and their negative cringe value.

I think first starting off by being honest with yourself is needed
...but honesty of the process is essential.
...Really, my best advice (since you asked) is be Honest!

In the opal game we always prick our ears up when we hear someone use the word "honesty".
The biggest con-men in the game use that word frequently. For awhile they con "new chums" but in the end they only con themselves.

Here is my favourite quote relating to honesty, on the opal field of life.
...and I asked, "Who on this field do you trust, Peter?"
"Mat, I only trust myself 25%".
(Russian Peter)

At best, by Russian Peter's measure, I am probably only 25% "honest", Laurie. So the 75% left over must be what you are referring to.
...and thanks for that space of boredom between raindrops.
In your case, this does sound honest.
If only I could be honest and bored? What gems I would dig from life!
They would probably call me "The Buddha".

...a haiku (as you love them) for you Laurie and your "honest" comments.

honestly Winter,
I am bored between rain drop's
rattan... to Buddha !



MatbbgmephistoJ