Comments on Poetry

[Grido]

This topic is for discussing the poetry for the newspaper in the main thread.

Please link to the post of the poem you are talking about in all incidents to save confusion.

Whilst you are allowed to vote for which poems should be included into the paper, the MDNP staff retain final decision on which poems are included into each edition.

Also as a final note, stay on topic please.

Poetry thread [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/3802-poetry-corner/"]HERE[/url]

Edited August 17, 2009 by Grido

[Harion]

okay i will say this now without any prejudice
i LOVED every poem on that thread
and no offense to DST, though his were quite funny
i think his poems wouldn't match too much with MD lore

while all the others are perfectly excellent for MD

my favorite poet though is phantom orchid
with [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?s=&showtopic=3802&view=findpost&p=29968"]A Pirate's Lament[/url] as the best (currently) IMO

edit: oh btw, thanks Grido!

Edited May 3, 2009 by Harion

[dst]

I never ever thought of putting those poems into the news paper. I posted it for fun since everybody was so serious. A little smile doesn't hurt anyone.

[Tarquinus]

I post here on behalf of my friend Keith Arthur, known to many of you as Keith "Moon", a name he seems to think is funny in some way or another. Keith's remarks appear in italics.

[i]For starters, I have to congratulate everybody with the guts to post their work here. It's very easy to criticize the work of others without doing any yourself, and posting your poetry in a gaming forum is almost begging to be abused and/or ridiculed by critics of that kind.

As some of y'all know, my standards for poetry are very high, and I view poetry as the most difficult form of writing in any language. Those of you who have attempted to work with rhyme and meter can appreciate why I say so. I have met a few people in the realm of MagicDuel who seem to think poetry is easy or has easily broken rules. I could not disagree more. To cite one example, putting a pronoun in the wrong case to complete a rhymed couplet is not what I consider good writing. The exigencies, or rigors, of adhering to a poetic form are tests of writing skill. Breaking the rules is one thing if you look like you know what you're doing, and why. If you don't, you just look like a weak writer.

The poetry I find in [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?showtopic=3802"]the other thread[/url] varies in quality from weak to really excellent, and falls along a standard bell-curve distribution where the extremes of being very good or very bad are comparatively rare, while the bulk falls somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to provide any negative criticism for the poems I find weak, but I will say that one thing I notice in the less outstanding work is a recourse to "obvious" metaphor. If you want to get my attention in a good way, surprise me. Show me something I haven't thought of or seen many, many times.

So, without further pontification, or as we say in Texas, ramblin', the poets that stand out to me as excellent are Phantom Orchid, Dayredeemer, and zalabar.

Phantom Orchid wrote [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?s=&showtopic=3802&view=findpost&p=29968"]"Secret Places"[/url], the only poem that speaks clearly to me as having a strong influence from the realm of MagicDuel. As such, and in light of the fact that the author manages a relatively fresh rhyme scheme without embarrassing herself, I consider it a completion of my Bard's Quest. She already has Luke Tarquin's spell document for one of [u]his[/u] quests, so if one of y'all fancypants RPC types would be willing to offer yours to Orchid as sponsorship for the quest, I'd be much obliged.

Dayredeemer's [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?s=&showtopic=3802&view=findpost&p=29971"]"Mirth"[/url] is an all-around excellent poem, with strong, creative use of a metaphor that could easily have come off sounding very tired. Though Dayredeemer runs into typographical errors [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?s=&showtopic=3802&view=findpost&p=29976"]later on[/url], this guy is an attentive reader and his superior writing proves it.

I'm a reasonably good judge of non-English poetry, which really deserves a category of its own, but the further a language gets from Latin, the more trouble I have evaluating it. I have to salute zalabar, among the English-as-second-language writers, for penning not only better-than-average poetry in English ("The song of Death's Love") but the beautiful [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com//index.php?s=&showtopic=3802&view=findpost&p=30009"]"L'aria, il mio amore A lei. "[/url] Bravo!

If I didn't single you out for praise, don't be discouraged. Read poets you like, learn why you like them, and write, write, write.[/i]

Edited May 3, 2009 by Tarquinus

[Treehill]

I would quote Keith but wont....tooo long and it would be boring doing it....as you speak about pronouns and things similar to that,not everyone talk english as a prime language i indeed understand the critic yet i feel pretty displeased about translating poems of my language to english, SEE 1*, i had trouble putting it on english Dreams,it lose, from my perspective, almost the whole meaning of it,so i dont know if i should post more i thought the damage wouldnt be too great but well from the review...probably some mistakes on spelling XD.

1* Not too long ago i spoke with Tarquinus exact the same thing,my language is portuguese,and it is the closest language to latin,mother of "all ocidental" languages,and its quite dificult putting it on english it lose all of the meaning,english doesnt have much words to tell something too many meanings on only one word makes the style poor and bad written,this is just a bad aspect of the language but too a good its just doesnt fit my language,i could write in italian it would be better although then again most wont understand.

........................................................................

I would like to first say somethings about rhimes,there are two types poor rhimes and rich rhimes(it isnt about bad or good,its types of skills),poor rhimes goes like this Noun/noun, adj/adj...its rhiming with the same type of word thats called poor rhime,the rich one is Noun/adj and etc...things like that make a good or bad writer,and for those who are starting a learning studant on rhimes.

Obs.: Correct me if i said something wrong,its dificult to talk about "high" grammar when im using portuguese theories.

Well for those who like rhimes i advise to search for Parnasianism/Parnasianismo,and too advise to search for portuguese writers as Olavo Bilac,Raimundo Correia and Alberto de Oliveira. Although from what i've know every person that liked rhimes didnt liked very much the style,since its too full of metric and rules to do it.

For those who want know more about poetry search for French and portuguese literatury they are the richest in terms of culture ocidental,there are some interesting styles/culture too on Germany and lots on Japan/China.

For those who want criticize the poems, please try to read the poem in the mother language,there is no poiting in criticize something you cant even read correctly. Translating is the killer of meanings,know by all tradutors you cant be loyal to the mother language when translating to a language that diferent.

Obs.:or you could always go for the Shakespeare's English or Old english,its pretty similar to latin,probably most wouldnt understand..XD

[zalabar]

Just to throw in quickly to lucius: I'm a english first Italian second language speaking...


And to say... I loved all of these poems, :good: you guys earn two thumbs up!

I think all of them earn praise.

[adiomino]

:good:

I like all of them.

Oh and tarquinus has lots of big words

[Grido]

bump