Poetics and Poetry Discussion

Now she's posted a 'poem, ' pretending not to have heard our legitimate criticisms of her and the Four, and innocently wondering why we are supposedly attracted to war. This reminds me of one of those old B-movies where some lady has multiple personalities, and there’s some dopey psychiatrist with a puppet saying, “Can I talk to Janice now? ”

And then the actress changes her expression and says, “Yes, this is Janice.”

And then the psychiatrist, using the puppet, says, “Why are you so hard up for acclaim that you engage in fraudulent behavior? ”

The actress grimaces. “Janice is gone! This is Diane Utteridge! ”

“Okay, Diane, ” says the psychiatrist calmly, “Tell me why you are suddenly sticking up for Janice on a website where you supposedly spent very little time? Why can’t Janice speak for herself? ”

Then the actress changes to a third personality. “Why are you harassing me? ” she says. “I am simply trying to bring joy to people with my poetry. Why do you insist on war instead of peace.”

The psychiatrist shakes his head, exhales, and calls over some men in white scrubs, and they gently escort her to a padded cell. “You can write your poetry in here, honey, ” one of them says.

I have just had an email forwarded to me from one of the poets who I have added to my site.
She has asked me to notify the group of people on Poetry Hunter that she left you site because she has no desire to be involvrd with all the time consuming arguments she calims there are here.
I have agreed to post this on her behalf as she is no longer registered.
Please do not bring my site into your ramblings. It is open to ALL poets who would like to place a few poems there.
My aim in starting the site was to give a voice to work I personally enjoyed.
As such POETIC PALACE is my castle of work that pleases me.
It is pleasing that so many of you have been there and read the poems. Thankyou for your interest. But please, leave the arguments here in this environment and enjoy my site for what it is. A place of great poetry.
Thanks
Diane

Now that I think about it, one doesn't necessarily communicate better in person than over the internet. I'm thinking about it in a business sense. My career has taken me all over the world and the style of communicating in China and Japan, for instance, is very different from the style in the West. There is a great value put on indirectness and face saving, and there are certain cultural niceties you have to adhere to in meetings. Even if you know this in advance, it can be maddening to do business in these countries. But over the internet, it seems almost silly to be indirect, and my Chinese and Japanese colleagues understand this for the most part. They get right to the point and send terse emails just like Westerners. So I think the internet has actually improved communications in this regard, or at least made them more efficient. However, with this homogenization of cummunication, the things that gets lost are many of the cultural niceties.

I find the whole concept of language removed from its context of accompanying non-verbal comm. to a medium such as this quite fascinating. So many strategies of accompanying written conversations with tempering visual cues such as garish, but sometimes all too necessary emoticons have developed to acommodate a whole sub division of language specifically for speed of interface and to convey tone for accurate interpretation.

Isn't it intriguing that thought via a medium such as this is then further encrypted by poetry?

I wonder whether at the language switch required by four or more forms of thought here, from the visual-literal of net speak on an open forum/soap box, to poetic metaphor, symbolism, allusion etc, to then flip back into communication on a one: one basis with individuals in privacy of the mail box, to then hold a physical conversation while typing with a colleague, family member in the 'real world'
Language is so often an enclosed code within families/soc... here we have several in operation at once, not really surpising we have misunderstandings: -)

all the best
L

The detachment thing reminds me of a book by Philip Slater called “Pursuit of Loneliness, ” in which he talks about how people actively seek to avoid human contact. He wrote it in the seventies at a time when lots of do-it-yourself things were cropping up – you could buy stamps from a dispensing machine instead of interacting with a post office employee; you could use drive-up windows at fast food joints and banks to minimize contact with people, etc. Of course, the justification for these things is always convenience and time-saving. But Slater thinks we are also attracted to them because we are afraid of contact with humans. Then we wonder why we’re lonely. The internet affords us this “convenient loneliness” in spades.

Sherrie, Lenchen, et al - this topic of the internet and poetry is quite interesting. I haven’t really explored it before. The internet has been integrated into my life in so many ways for almost 20 years, and yet I don’t think about it that much beyond the convenience and the marvel of what it can do. The interpersonal communications on the internet are extremely interesting. Like Sherrie says, you can have completely different personas on different sites. Which is the real one? All of them are. Which means the internet allows you to segment yourself into different personalities and test them out on others. It’s liberating in a way because you can push a given persona to its extreme in a way that you would never do in real life. I think some people extend this personality segmentation to poetry-writing by using different names/personas for different types of poetry. On this site, for example, Mai Opiut is the same person as Amy Murtagh. Neither one is her real name but she uses one persona for more serious poems and the other for lighter fare. (Don’t worry, I haven’t spilled the beans on her – she already revealed it a while ago) . She would have a more difficult time doing that without the internet.

i decided to delet the two poems i contribute to the discussion yesterday. they are wasted here.
so if anyone cares to read check 'ice age' and 'a dubious way to fame' under ulrike gerbig.

this here is just ridiculous!

u.

where are your great poets mister fry, not you surely not mister england
i have my list, i have just signed on are you all well

Allan james saywell

I think judging an entire race of people off a few comments here is a little harsh Kubla.........please give Americans a little more credit...we are more than a few people on a poetry website...and I'd like to think many of us are nice people representing America proudly here.

you americans running a fine poet down, because he is Australian, they did fight a war with you, they are fighting one with Americans now
i will email the poet and convey what you have said, he does have a following
you are not a very nice race of people

KUBLA KHAN