One Night Stand

[mickey_one]

I actually believe jimbo is submitting a piece of work which is serious to him. I do fully realise that some of us are here to set the rest of us up, in terms of taking the piss with submissions. The fact is that some people are not and, though I haven't met jimbo, I agree with damellon that his work is submitted with serious intent.
Sarcasm is a useful weapon but, like most automatic weapons, it's doesn't differentiate between the innocent and the guilty.
Far be it from me to preach, I've taken the piss out of quite a few people in my time (here and elsewhere) but it surprises me that those who have the knowledge, to differentiate between the posts that deserve a good kicking and those that don't, seem unwilling to use their discretion.

from time to time these threads appear about crit. of poems posted on this forum. I have tried over the years to encourage anyone interested in improving their writing to try the egoless site, or any similar, where you submit only anonymously and you are "not allowed" to whinge in response to any negative comments on your work. it's a fantastic stimulus to improve to have your writing reviewed fearlessly and without questions of ego getting in the way. whenever I posted and discovered that to others my writing was only 4% as good as I foolishly believed it was it made me take more time, take more care and make more revision.

of course there is a place for quick scribbled light pieces, and there is certainly a place for vanity writing and reviewing, there are thousand such on the Net. there is no Charter for how we crit. here but, for example, if someone added a request for no crit. and explained perhaps that they just wanted to post regardless then it would be inappropriate to start deconstructing the writing.

I genuinely do not know if Jimbo's piece was deliberately written that way with wild grammar and spelling. If it was unintentionally bad then it’s seriously good advice for him to take that time and care to improve.

The piece may be serious to him but I'm not sure that grants him an entirely Free Pass when it is posted to a poetry forum. Subject to someone asking for no crit. I make the assumption that people here are mature adults rather than fragile flowers. I think you must be careful that your attractive protective instincts aren't just patronising in disguise. If there is something absurd, illogical or clichéd in every line, it's not my fault but the writer's.

Long term, my response may be kinder than yours, though I accept your's was quicker and easier to make.

[Red Poppy]

I think you must be careful that your attractive protective instincts aren't just patronising in disguise. If there is something absurd, illogical or clichéd in every line, it's not my fault but the writer's.

Long term, my response may be kinder than yours, though I accept your's was quicker and easier to make.

You really do have a very high regard for your own critical skills and you also seem to believe that you're aways right in these matters.

Actually, mine wasn't easier to make but I thought it appropriate. But this "poetry Forum" is not a literary site, it's a place where Forum members (most of whom are not poets, though many would like to be) post their doodlings and attempts and verses and poems.

"The piece may be serious to him but I'm not sure that grants him an entirely Free Pass when it is posted to a poetry forum. Subject to someone asking for no crit. I make the assumption that people here are mature adults rather than fragile flowers."

If you say so but you do tend to make a lot of assumptions and while some posters found the ramblings round the poetry competition amusing others found them tedious in the extreme and well up their own collective arse! (No doubt that'll bring on a smart riposte!)

Long term, your response may not be kinder than mine, it may not even be appropriate! Have a think about that for a while mickey.

[mickey_one]

I think you must be careful that your attractive protective instincts aren't just patronising in disguise. If there is something absurd, illogical or clichéd in every line, it's not my fault but the writer's.

Long term, my response may be kinder than yours, though I accept your's was quicker and easier to make.

You really do have a very high regard for your own critical skills and you also seem to believe that you're aways right in these matters.

Actually, mine wasn't easier to make but I thought it appropriate. But this "poetry Forum" is not a literary site, it's a place where Forum members (most of whom are not poets, though many would like to be) post their doodlings and attempts and verses and poems.

"The piece may be serious to him but I'm not sure that grants him an entirely Free Pass when it is posted to a poetry forum. Subject to someone asking for no crit. I make the assumption that people here are mature adults rather than fragile flowers."

If you say so but you do tend to make a lot of assumptions and while some posters found the ramblings round thre poetry competition amusing others found them tedious in the extreme and well up their own collective arse! (No doubt that'll bring on a smart riposte!)

Long term, your response may not be kinder than mine, it may not even be appropriate! Have a think about that for a while mickey.

no riposte, I don't do "arse" jokes or anything as dull as that.

did you enter the comp.? do you know how much time and effort Manna and I put into it? sorry if you found our efforts to entertain tedious. I hope you didn't feel compelled to follow it despite that negativity. I am glad you didn't feel obliged to say thanks for what we did

some find it very helpful to have crit. others don't. I am not clear whether or not you are Jimbo's Official Spokesman, but let me know when you reach a definitive view whether my response was appropriate.

[Red Poppy]

No I'm not jimbo's spokesperson,
Never met the man in my life.
No, I didn't enter the comp.
But thank you thank thank you for all the time and effort you put into it (I thought it was by choice but I may be wrong?), we are grateful in the extreme.
And well done on avoiding the point of my last post.

[lizzytysh]

What I find interesting about this exchange... and having watched and interacted with Jimbo for quite a while now, I definitely feel it was submitted seriously, and if it is autobiographical in the recent sense, I can imagine his being so overjoyed as to want to write and post something on it. The grammar and spelling are consistent with his own, other serious messages. Whether it was cliched or absurd, it sure seemed erotic in a blatant kind of way. I also didn't see a brilliant crit hanging around anywhere in what Michael wrote, but did see a ruthless attempt to embarrass, diminish, and malign. It could also have been said that it was an easy target... the same sort of thing that Michael subsequently alleges Red Poppy of doing... taking the easy road.

I'm glad to see Red Poppy make the same sort of distinctions that I've been making right along about the nature of the contributions, as a whole, here. There have been many heartwarming, enlightening, inspiring, and exciting exchanges come through the 'poetic organizing of words' here. Were they all poems? Probably not. Were they all good poems? No. Was more learned about the writers as people than was learned elsewhere on the Forum? Often, yes. Was it worthwhile to come here and read them? Yes.

What I find interesting about this exchange... is that I ~ a certified Non Poet ~ made a very serious request for critiqueing, accompanied by suggestions as opposed to rewritings, so that I could actually learn something from the exercise. I submitted my poem to the comp in earnest, though I definitely did not have the time to seriously write/rewrite prior to doing so. Both my final decision and submission came late.

With a nod of thanks to those who responded... regarding my attempts/ability to use a vocabulary list, doing that and writing a poem are obviously very different. Other than that, the only other comment was from Michael that he laughed as he read it. Laughed with it or at it?

Hmmm. So what do I take from this? That the motives for those who critique here may not be quite up to par? Could be. That my poem is totally worthless, so much so as to not even warrant any kind of serious response? Could be. That the fact that my poem was written by me makes it anathematic for follow through on a serious request for critiqueing? Could be. Whatever the reasons, I came face to face with the question ~ Is it really about the poetry and the writer learning how to do better, at all? Or, do the crits here tend to be along the lines of exercises to make oneself look better, via the [edited to add... mocking and] sometimes massive and unsolicited rewrites. Could be.

Over the years, I've responded to a lot of poems for their thought, their images, how they touched or moved me or made me laugh... never have made a false claim to be seriously critiqueing it. I was disappointed, when I wrote something myself and actually asked for a serious critique... and outlining what for me would work best in a teacher-student capacity [I guess one might say that critics aren't teachers, but that seems to be the role that those who critique here take on], and it seemed to me to be a reasonable outline... I was disappointed to not receive a single, serious response. Yet, a good deal of attention has been given to this and a couple others, since then. When I see that, motives come into question.


~ Lizzy

[jimbo]

Well finaly after 7 1/2 months i get some critism

[~greg]

(Summary of my response:
The poem was "A.C.N.E.S." )

~~

damellon met jimbo
and says he's to be taken seriously.

Which surprises me.
But I'll bite.

I will now submit my first critical comment, ever,
on a poem in this forum.

~~

I try to imagine how "jimbo" got his name
- perhaps when he was a very large 14 year old boy.

And that since then no one has ever seen any reason
to call him anything more grown-up sounding.

And I imagine that back then he and some other
14 year old virgin boys one summer at camp
got a hold of a banned VCR (mini-skirt days)
copy of the movie "Porky's".

And that after watching it they had a one-upping
poetry-competition around the camp fire:

topic: first (fantasized) sexual encounter (with a prostitute).

jimbo's took 5th place.
And since he's never bettered it,
he's decided to submit it here.

~~

Quoting Ebert: "I don't feel like writing one more sentence".

I'll just copy and paste Ebert's review of Porky's.

Because if jimbo is really "serious" about this poem,
then I am really serious about this

I despise misogynists

Porky's
BY ROGER EBERT / January 1, 1981

PORKY'S is another raunchy teenage sex-and-food-fight movie.
The whole genre seems fixated on the late 1950s and early 1960s,
when the filmmakers, no doubt, were teenagers.

Do today's teenagers really identify with jokes about locker rooms,
Trojans, boobs, jockstraps, killer-dyke gym coaches, and barfing?

Well, yes, probably they do.
Teenagers seem to occupy a time warp of eternally unchanging
preoccupations. Hollywood originally entered that world with
a certain innocence in the late 1950s with Pat Boone
and beach party movies. That innocence is now long, long ago.

Since AMERICAN GRAFFITI, NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE,
and MEATBALLS, the A.C.N.E.S. movie has turned cynical.

You remember what A.C.N.E.S. stands for.

It's an acronym for any movie about the dreaded
Adolescent Character's Neurotic Eroticism Syndrome.

In PORKY'S, the male characters are neurotic about the usual three subjects:
the size, experience, and health of their reproductive organs.

The female characters, on the other hand, are seen
almost entirely as an undiscovered species from a lost continent.
They're whispered about, speculated about, spied upon,
victimized, and, in general, feared. And it's not only Ms. Balbricker,
the juggernaut gym coach, who's a heavy. All of the women
in this movie are weird. One howls like a dog during sexual intercourse.
Others lure unsuspecting horny teenage boys into rooms with trapdoors,
and dump them into alligator-infested waters.

In fact, the strangest thing about PORKY'S is how much it hates women.
The only close friendships in the movie are between men.
The movie even takes certain scenes that are usually cliches
for female characters and assigns them to men. For example,
you can hardly make a movie like this without a scene in which
someone's caught nude in public. Remember "Hot Lips" in M*A*S*H?
In PORKY'S, it's a kid named Pee Wee. He's caught with his pants down,
chased into the woods, picked up by the cops, and deposited
at the local drive-in hamburger stand, where he poses like September Morn.

Since the movie doesn't like women, its sex scenes all create fear and hostility,
which prevents them from being funny (sex scenes about fear and hostility,
on the other hand, can be very funny). Even in an easy scene like the one
where the guys spy on the girls in the locker room, the director, Bob Clark,
blows it. Peeping Tom scenes can be very funny (remember John Belushi
on the ladder in ANIMAL HOUSE?). Here, it's just smarmy.

There's one other problem. None of the male actors in this movie look,
sound, or act like teenagers. They all look like overgrown preppies
at their fraternity pledge class's fifth reunion. Jokes based on embarrassment
never work unless we can identify with the embarrassed character.
Here, the actors all seem to be just acting.

I see that I have neglected to summarize the plot of PORKY'S.
And I don't think I will. I don't feel like writing one more sentence
(which is, to be sure, all it would take).

ps

If I had any doubts, I don't now.
It is much worse than I thought...

......i dont know her name and never will.it was a man thing
that had to be quenched.been 4 years since.need to do it again

[lizzytysh]

That reminds me of a comment Geoffrey/Snow made here a long time ago and, had I not already been endeared to him, would have made me so. I know it wasn't deleted, as it wasn't a part of one of his more controversial postings, but I don't recall what it was in response to... nor any specific word grouping within it; so it would be hopeless for me to try to find it now. The jist of its meaning, however, was that no one ever need to be afraid of telling him anything ~ anything ~ as he would not judge them. From what I've seen of his comments, it would seem he meant it and I know I've never experienced feeling 'judged' by him. At the time, I remember feeling that if you wanted to share something you weren't sure was necessarily 'shareable,' that he would be someone you could feel safe with to do that. This just reminds me of that posting. Good wishes to Geoffrey/Snow, wherever you are...


~ Lizzy

[Red Poppy]

The assumption of misogyny, which might be something else of course, is interesting, greg.
It raises the question of the differences betweeen eroticism and pornography. And, indeed, whether personal eroticism may come across as pornographic in the public arena. One wo/man's turn-on is another wo/man's cause for shock.
The review of Porkys is interesting in that it's 26 years old - other than that it actually bears no direct relation to the piece submitted by jimbo.
Your guess-assessment of how he got his name is a load of condescending and smug bollocks, which reflects more clearly on you than it does on him.
I despise bigots.

[lizzytysh]

As eroticism goes [and why would it have to be with a prostitute... where I would think the erotic aspect might be compromised... "erotic for cash" just seems to lose a bit in the translation], I would think that not knowing each other's names would add to it. Is there further need of a name with a one-night stand? What if she gave a fictitious name, anyway? What if a woman is asked her name and declines to give it. Might not that scenario be covered under the phrase "I don't know her name"? I can only wonder how many men and women here have engaged in one-night stands. Were names provided? If so, looking back on it, was it really necessary? Did it add or detract from the experience? Are one-night stands necessarily erotic? If Jimbo found his to be so, might that not be a good thing? Might she have found it to be so, as well? I think of the phrase "two consenting adults." I'm not advocating one-night stands, but I'm not condemning them, or judging Jimbo regarding one, either... with a poem that couldn't be any more clearly stated in its title... One Night Stand. Two consenting adults. Initiated by the woman . " . . . it was a man thing." It appears it was a woman thing, too. Good on you, Jimbo .

The question on the difference between/confusion of eroticism and pornography I think is a good one. Does it mutate from one to the other when placed in the public domain?

I wonder about the awareness of cliches and hackneyed expressions when you're a non-native English speaker. Jimbo ~ Next time, please ensure that what happens doesn't unfold in a cliched, hackneyed way... so that your recounting of events in a language not your 'own' doesn't get categorized as such. Please make the woman aware of these requirements, as well. [This is, of course, not to suggest that you, henceforth, share every one-night stand you have, either .] At least you're not being berated for "kiss and tell," as an identity is prerequisite for that.

Greg ~ Did you read Leonard's books through a filter ? Or is it the difference between fiction and real life? [Uhm... I'd have some additional thoughts on the fiction aspect, too.] Or, the difference between reading in privacy and reading on a 'worldwide' screen?


~ Lizzy

[Jimmy O'Connell]

Apologies.
Jimbo, Damellon, and whomever.
It is difficult, as has been said here, to tell the difference between someone taking the piss and another who is writing a serious piece.
I agree RedPoppy that Mickey_one did not write a "serious piece of lit".... I was being sarcastic, but I have to acknowledge that I did agree with Mickey_one in his intent. He, at least, treated it more seriously than I did...
I write on this forum because I want to get feedback. We all do.... I presume. I acknowledge that I seriously misunderstood where jimbo was coming from (and I won't get into the present debate about eroticism versus pornography). I probably wrote things that were hurtful... that was unintentional and I agree completely with Lizzy. And I apologise to jimbo, and whomever.

However.... I do believe that if someone wishes to post a piece on this site that at least he/she observe some standard of spelling, grammar and punctuation. I don't intend to be elitist here. I'm only asking for basic standard, nothing high flying. If I read a piece, like jimbo's most recent, I (unintentionally) took the piss, because it was below what I would consider basic standard in terms of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
I'm not saying that jimbo writes shite. I am saying that in not writing to a basic standard I will assume that he's not being serious. Now, that might be my fault but it doesn't do jimbo, or anyone else any good if he doesn't get feed back on that basis.
I want to take every piece I read on this site seriously. If I see writing that has basic standard punctuation, grammar and non-howler spelling, then I tend to take it more seriously. Otherwise, as I said above, I tend to think this person is taking the piss. And, I'm not sure I should apologise for that!!!

I will say this for jimbo. It was a brave piece. It needs work. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and tightening of structure would improve it hugely... and it would strengthen its impact.

Jimmy

[lizzytysh]

Your last two paragraphs are what I consider "constructive feedback," Jimmy.

I, too, was put off [and surprized by ] your comments on Jimbo's choice of screen name, Greg.


~ Lizzy

[Red Poppy]

"I want to take every piece I read on this site seriously. If I see writing that has basic standard punctuation, grammar and non-howler spelling, then I tend to take it more seriously. Otherwise, as I said above, I tend to think this person is taking the piss. And, I'm not sure I should apologise for that!!!"

I agree Jimmy, in submitting work for literary criticism your standards are, insofar as is possible, required and if someone submitted material in such a form at a creative writing workskshop I'd point that out to them BUT I think the fact that the grammar/ spelling/ subject matter become an issue for doing someone down (and I'm not suggesting you did) then that's a different matter.

As a matter of interest, W B Yeats had serious spelling problems.
And e e cummings wouldn't recognise a capital letter if it bit him

[lizzytysh]

Yes, on the difference between a "creative writing workshop" vs. here comments, too. Spelling is an either you've-got-it or you-don't skill. We still have spellcheck available now... and that could be utilized. Of course, that would require doing something in a "Word" variation first... or transferring it there, before posting it here. The meaning of something outweighs its spelling for me. Still, it's fine to suggest that one try to concentrate on spelling and grammar, just as a general suggestion. To use them as a heyday for having a great time at the writer's expense, however... is a different story. It also returns me to the question on motives.

Again, I don't agree that everyone who writes here does so with the idea of being critiqued, though some certainly do... and that's fine.


~ Lizzy

[mickey_one]

quick responses to the several new posts on this thread since I went to work and returned.

Jimbo, I accept you as the Official Spokesman for Jimbo. Great to read your mature response. I hope some of my crit. was useful to you. You don't sound to me like someone who needs delicate handling (I spoke to the girl in the mini-skirt and she confirms that).

Lizzy, you sound like you are hurting about the lack of reaction to your request for feedback. I have noticed in the past that you try to at the very least acknowledge the work of others. That has always impressed me. I responded to yours. I haven't the time immediately to go back and check what I wrote but I can be confident that I was not laughing at your piece. I recognise your displacement here which arises from your (quite unnecessary) mothering of Jimbo.

Red Poppy, you're just looking for a fight. Get over it. Your weedy sarcasm about the comp. doesn't bother me but it necessarily directs against Manna as well. You may have been in too much of a rush to realise that.

Jimmy, my crit was serious because the intent was to stimulate Jimbo to really look at his piece, to dissect it and approach his next work rather differently.

Neither Red Poppy nor Lizzy own this place or can dictate what it is for. It remains a possibility that, amongst other purposes, it is for people to learn to improve their writing. It remains a certainty that I would never offer any crit. to someone who ticks the "no thanks" box.

That sounds like a decent arrangement to me.

I used to visit a newsgroup alt.poetry or something like that. I think it is now just spam and trolling and I haven't posted there for years. This thread would rate about 2 on their scale of contentiousness, and about 1 on their scale of discourtesy. But I remember once (but not the precise words, damn) a great response to wounded feelings of a writer "oh, you came for a free box of chocolates and some flowers, sorry I thought you were here for the writing).