Iron Poet II

[Vaynor]

OK, just two more now, half the contestants, with only an hour and a half to go...

Get your entries in, people!

[Amotis]

Prompts: Actor, Machine, House

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Don't Call Me A Slut. I Am Surge Protector. I Am Revolving Doors. I Am Wheel.

there is a house in new orleans.
bought by my parents.
and drawn by me,
when i was three.

my teacher asked why i drew it
from the inside out.

i answered with a sneer,
"a rolling stone gathers no moss,
but triggers a goldberg device.
and that's why i'm still here."

just let me walk down,
this stupid town.
just once.
without you giving me
looks about my clothes.

working the ticket booth.
of my front door,
he's cute.
he's nice.
i'll let them in.

and if my head was screwed on right,
not hammered in with their values.
i could forget your head
and your screwing,
and hammer the door.

just want to hit something
that means something
to them.

and that's why i still give
a f**k about this world.
and that's why i let them
in. let them hit me.

i've got a lifetime left in here.
that's why i hate the intermissions.
where the smokers walk outside
and the actors stay backstage.

my race is run
on a treadmill.
on a stage.
if your parents watched
like this is your job,
and you're only in kindergarten.
you would be bitter too.

i wish i smoked.
i wish i had an
angel catcher.
they're not dreams.
apparently.
wooden hoop
and woven thread,
just hanging from my ceiling.

the only boy who's left
in the morning.

parting music,
bow my head
on to yours.
i hate to believe it
but
sex ain't an escape.
it's the motions
that lock you into me.
like gears
that sets it into motion
all over again.

encore. encore.

[averagejoe]

Alright, here it is. Just a little something I threw together. I had (and will have) basically no time this week. Who would have thought statistical thermodynamics could be difficult? It sounded so innocuous when I signed up.

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The fighters stood, poised
One the prince; the god
Who lived at the world’s summit
And, with his ancient machine
Wove stories and spun tales,
Showing peoples’ desires;
They loved and worshiped him.
He played his game; he pulled the strings
The prince and his ancient machine.
The second fighter, a young girl,
A proud and noble soldier,
Who believed in the miracle.
A grand fairy tale
Part of the prince’s game.

They stood, poised,
Battling with their minds
Ready to fight with steel.
And the prince wove illusions
Visions of time past,
Before she climbed the world’s summit
Defeating his lieutenants along the way
Then challenging the prince at the top.

First he tempted her heart;
A prince on his white horse.
She believed him a savior,
He made her his princess;
A nightingale caged.
He held her close
And whispered to her ear.
She, under his spell.

Next he challenged her ego,
Saying, “You’re as bad as I,” and
“’Prince’ is just a foolish ideal.
You have no right to this power.
Foolish, naïve girl.
You’re a child; you’re no prince,
Though you wish to be.
Your noble ideals
Are merely jealousy.”

Then he challenged her body
With blade, blood, and fire.
The old soldier, he said,
“I have fought many times
But you have only fought for play.
Put up your sword;
You have no hope.
Give in, child.
You are young,
And cannot appreciate me,
Nor my ideals.
That power should not be yours,
And I will take it from you.”

She responded,
“You are a mighty warrior
And have proved yourself
In the field and off,
But I fear no harm
And I never played when I fought.
You use this machine
To control others’ lives,
Seeing their existence as part of your game.
I shall not yield.”

They fought;
The clash of blades
In that room at world’s summit
Shook the Earth and heaven.
Those who worked for world’s end watched on.
The ancient machine started
And as she fought
She saw every battle she had fought before,
And other things.
The twelve apostles, puppets in the prince’s hands,
The earth’s eye,
The zodiac, an ancient clock,
And a graveyard in an ancient city.

He beat her back
But she stood firm
And she said,
“I will beat you,
and become a prince!”

Lights flare
The spell breaks
The bells toll,
As the grave of ABRAXIS shatters.

The fallen prince watched
As his castle crumbled
His eyes went wide
He fell back before her
Terrified.
Once friends
Once lovers
The fate of the world between them.

[Vaynor]

Ok! The contest is now over, glad everyone made it.

Judges, start your engines.

[Canti]

ZRS vs. Amotis: machine, house, actor
Judgments ahoy!
Amotis v ZRS

Amotis

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I didn't like this one as much as the previous entry. It felt a bit mottled, but merging the disparate elements of the prompt must have been a bit hard. It just felt so terribly disjointed. The anger of the narrator was there, but the various little things, like the line about the "goldberg device" just baffled me and I'm too lazy to look into that part there. I like how the narrative sort of shifts between the narrator working to the narrator thinking to the narrator thinking and going through the daily motions, like going to bed. And the mechanistic nature of sex and then the little implication of the pain of the child that sex could have created.

How good was it, you ask? About a 7/8 range good.

ZRS

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I did enjoy this one, the little elements of play in your house, making it into a game, making just going about the house a thing of fun and play and games. The next part was odd to me. I sort of got it though, I like to think, that the house was being destroyed and the narrator's memories of it, how it was an atrocity and how killing the place those memories were made was like a murder. It was just a bit obtuse, because the set of lasers and pool of sharks reminded me of Austin Powers and general shark/laser silliness that really got me. Perhaps you could make the spotlight into a search light with a machine gun mounted on it? Much more deadly, much more time tested. It also evokes the image of a prison with guns and whatnot, which is good. The sharks thing with a trap door, you could say it's a covered pit with like, spears in it, since that's another tried-and-tested trap that really stabs you, as opposed to involving the sharks. But sharks and lasers have their own merits, I suppose.

The one thing I'm not sure of is whether the narrator dies at the end, since there's the implied blood thing.

It wasn't bad.

I'd say about 7/8 range.

Verdict

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ZRS. His poem was more enjoyable to me, even though it had its obtuse parts, I had a harder time getting Amotis' message more than ZRS. I enjoyed both poems quite a bit, but I liked ZRS' more.

Rubakhin v Average Joe

Rubakhin

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I really liked this one. The Langston Hughes reference wasn't half bad either. The laments of a person who feels dehumanized by the American culture isn't a new theme, it's a good one though, and the alternatives, a culture that occupies vast enough territory and history to not completely destroy the beauty it has pose an interesting question about the future of a country that is self-destructive in its march to greatness. Of course, the sociopolitical questions weren't so much a part of this prompt. I suppose there was jealousy, jealousy of people who weren't taken from home, and jealousy of people who could make something of themselves in this culture. You like, mentioned the game part of it in passing, and it wasn't a bad poem, just not very much adhering to the prompt. The military part was there, and the soldier of the people theme was very much present, but it was not what the poem was about.

Let's say... 6 outta ten, just because there wasn't much to the prompt.

Average Joe

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Okay, this was wicked cool. The battle thing was a neat element, and so was the general idea of taking the throne of God. The element of God being not so much an omni-being but a title for a player of a game, a person who managed to learn to control everything was pretty cool. The jealousy wasn't really there, I feel, I got the sense that the girl was motivated more by a heroic motive than anything else.

The soldier theme, or at least the warrior theme was there, and the "life is a game" theme was there, made abundantly clear by the Prince's manipulations. It was certainly a good poem, and it was an action story besides. So that was a rarity for what we've gotten so far.

So I'd say a 7/10, because I have no clue who Abraxis was or why that should have been dramatic, and that was the center of the poem. Maybe an overt reference to God, like, the grave of YHWH, instead of Abraxis.

Verdict

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AverageJoe. Rubakhin had a very nice poem that had very little to do with the prompt, so I had to go with AverageJoe. I liked Rubakhin's a great deal though, it just wasn't apropriate.

[averagejoe]

@ Canti:

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Thank you for your comments, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Actually, the Abraxas thing was a mistake on my part, because I spelled it wrong, which I just now realized.

"The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas" - Hermann Hesse, Demian

Edit: All judges should note that in my poem Abraxis should have been spelled Abraxas. I didn't want to edit, so I'm putting it here.

[rubakhin]

@Canti

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First of all, I didn't know we were supposed to build it up around those words? I thought it was like the Iron Author prompt, where we just had to work the words in somehow. Damn it, I thought I wouldn't be penalized by not adhering strictly to the prompt.

Although, to me, the part of the poem that mentions soldier/jealousy/games/ is the core. When I read the prompt, I thought immediately of my problems. Resent that I can't even join the military or Peace Corps, whereas an upper middle class college student I know took a job for the express purpose of having pocket money for video games. (Not that I'm saying my resent is rational, or that it's morally wrong for my friend to be working, it just hurts when you know the prostitute single mother who applied for the same position trying to get off the streets.) Everything else spiraled out from that core theme. See, some Slavs are "for bread" immigrants, who come here/have kids here so that they can work and save up money to retire in the fatherland, while visiting every year or so. (Nor am I saying this is entirely ethical, only that it happens. Myself, I was sent here as a child, against my will.) But sometimes you can't find work or can't find good work, and you end up in captivity. I resent that I probably won't be able to make it out in my lifetime, that my children will be Western, that I no longer speak my native language well, that I have no place to practice my religion. The whole poem is about this jealousy, but I tried to obfuscate it and focus on homesickness because I didn't want to seem like I was attacking Americans.

[Canti]

@ Rubakhin

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I'm sorry I misinterpreted.

[PhoeKun]

@Everyone: I'm sorry I'm taking so long to post judgments. Things have been happening this week that have made it very difficult to devote the necessary time and energy to reading and consider your poems. I'll try to have something up soon though, so thank you for your patience...

[ZombieRockStar]

That's okay. As long as they're in eventually.

Also, bump so the thread doesn't get lost to obscurity.

@Canti:

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The machine gun probably would be more traditional, but it probably wouldn't emphasize the "machine-ness" of the stage as well. *shrug* Oh well, it's a minor thing, I think, anyways. Glad you liked it.

[PhoeKun]

I am really sorry to do this to all of you after so long a wait, but I think I'm going to have to drop out as a judge. I don't have what it takes right now to do much of anything besides embarrass myself or insult your efforts.

I'm very sorry about this...

[ZombieRockStar]

Well, I understand. No worries.

The question I have, though: Does anybody besides me and Phoe still remember that this is going on?

[Amotis]

I do. So Eugar is still in as a judge? Is Vaynor going to step up as a replacement?

[PhoeKun]

I don't know. I'll talk to Eugar tonight, and find out what's going on with him...

[Vaynor]

I'll do the replacing, but I'm swamped with tests and homework. Expect it by the end of the weekend.

[ZombieRockStar]

I might as well bring this up now: while I love doing these and think this was a great idea, is there really enough interest and dedication (from both contestants and judges) to justify doing another contest after this one finally finishes?

[PhoeKun]

In this one's opinion? Yes. There have been zero contestant dropouts so far, and judging problems... well, I'm sorry to say they're far from new. The contests (Author and Poet) have recovered from it before, and I think they'll do it again. Besides which, I have a bunch of people on a waiting list for the next competition...

[ZombieRockStar]

Okay, that's good news. I'm just getting a little antsy. Don't mind me.

[truemane]

I would be happy to saddle up again if a third judge were needed. I could replace Eugar if he's too busy, or I could at the very least free Vaynor from the necessity of stepping in.

[Vaynor]

That would be awesome, if Eugar can't do it I'll still be glad to, but it would be hard for me. Appreciate the help truemane.

[truemane]

Okay, then, with Vaynor's Official Head-In-Charge-Type Permission, I do hereby tender judgements on Round 2.

Zombierockstar VS Amotis
Prompts: house, machine, actor

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ZRS
Untitled

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This piece feels incomplete to me. unfinished. You've found a place where the three prompts intersect: a house as a theatre, with a horrid passionless machine at it heart, forcing the residents to act. But it's a complicated image, with a lot of places you could take it. It feels as though you took it sort of everywhere and sort of nowhere.

Your string of images in the opening stanze were supposed to set up the initial metaphor and the speaker as a victom. But your images aren't clear enouuh to be informative, or vague enough to be evocative. I'm unsure what symbolic value the colour of tea has. Ballet lessons and stage fighting could be because the speaker is a drunk, or abused by parents, or could be just general family dysfunction. But without knowing for sure, we can't really dig into the piece and get attached to it, since we don't really know what's happening here.

Second stanza sets up the machine, but with another set of images that refuse to be either informative or evocative. You tell us its a death trap, and then give a couple of examples, but you don't really DO anything with the image, you don't take it anywhere or give it a workout. WHY is the stage a deathtrap? We all act, the abused and the abuser, the victim and the victor. What is it about THIS stage in THIS house that becomes a death trap? We never learn. You might answer that it could be anything, that the reader is free to make up their own mind, but if that's what you wanted, then you should have communicated that in the poem somehow.

Then, third stanza, a final burst of prose. Did you mean it to be prose? Or did you mess up the format in your cut-and-paste? Adding prose to a poem is fun, and can really have a string impact if it is somehow organic to the material, but in this case it feels like a mistake or a gimmick. Another small list of metaphors, each an example of the one larger image, and none of it with any movement or flow or edge. Who are the tech crew? The siblings? Cousins? Pets? Neighbours? Given the central image, it could be any, but I can't even guess because I don't really know what it is I'm reading about here. The director? Dad? Wife?

Final line is great. I hope that doesn't sound condescending after the criticism, but it's nice, succinct, and it TELLS me something. The speaker is bleeding, and their blood is shed by someone "for their own good."

I've enjoyed your poetry in the past, ZRS, and I think you know how to do the thing. I would guess that you wrote this quickly and didn't have time to refine it. It doesn't have the polished, tight feel that your other poems have. It feels to me, more than anything elee, like a set of short-hand notes you might write yourself about a great idea for a poem you just had.

Amotis
Don't Call Me A Slut. I Am Surge Protector. I Am Revolving Doors. I Am Wheel.

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I think you told me everything I needed to know about this poem in the title. Normally, I love your titles. The title for your 1st round entry into Iron Author 4 (Dante's (The Canonical Standard) Tree: Substance and Phallic, Heaven, Here, And the Underworld) was one of the best titles I'd ever read in all my years.

Now, compare that to this:

Don't Call Me A Slut. I Am Surge Protector. I Am Revolving Doors. I Am Wheel.

It's not that it's a bad title, or an inept one, but it's a rambling one, a title that tries to be a line of poetry, or a story, and not the tight little overriding image that it needs to be to be a title.

And the remainder of the poem follows the same vein. It's not a bad poem by any means, or an inept one, it's just a rambling poem, without the discipline and direction that all poets needs, but that a poet like you (who tends to favour content over structure) especially needs.

Your opening needs less tell, more show. Would a three year old answer a teacher like that? Do we even need to know the answer? Isn't it enough to know that the child drew the house inside out? Do we need a whole line about "bought by my parents"? Cna't we just hear "My parents' house is in New Orleans?" or somesuch? I don't know the answers to these questions, I just think that they need to be considered.

I'm sitting here reading the poem over and over again trying to give you some specific feedback. The trouble is that you are a talented poet, and as such your images, taken each on their own, are strong and evocative.

Consider:

i've got a lifetime left in here.
that's why i hate the intermissions.
where the smokers walk outside
and the actors stay backstage.

Nice.

i wish i smoked.
i wish i had an
angel catcher.
they're not dreams.
apparently.

Really nice.

it's the motions
that lock you into me.
like gears
that sets it into motion
all over again.

encore. encore.

Beautiful.

But put them all in a row and it falters. What if this poem were a single panel cartoon? Like a Far Side episode. One picture. No more than two speech ballons. Maybe a caption. If you could boil this all down to that ONE image, and tell us what that image looks like and MAYBE what came after, then you'd have it.

As it is, what you have is a series of string images, with powerful words, but with no oomph in the spaces between the words.

JUDGEMENT:

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Amotis.

Although I felt that both poems could stand another pass or two through Word Perfect, Amotis' entry felt more full and more complete.

rubakhin vs. averagejoe
Prompts: soldier, jealousy, game (electronic)

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rubakhin
Rhapsody on a Theme of American Poverty

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I'll say it up front so there's no confusion about it later: I have an inherent dislike for long, loosely structured poetry. Especially of the protest variety. So I had to read your entry a couple of times to make sure I was reading with judge's eyes and not my own.

That being said, I think this a pretty decent example of the genre. Long, unfocused, wavering rantings on the NATURE OF THE WORLD TODAY and how THE MAN KEEPS US DOWn and how WE GONNE RISE UP AND TAKE IT ALL DOWN. I don't mean that condescendingly, not at all, I mean it as a compliment. If you were a non-conformist in the 50's, a woman in the 60's or an African-American in the 70's or a Native-American in the 80's this could be slid into the existing corpus of protest literature almost without a hitch.

Your "shout out" to Hughes is deeper than the "Dream Deferred" allusion.

And that's great. If you like that sort of thing.

Specifics:

Even the kettle doesn't speak
The language of the samovar
Of my youth.

Love that bit. I felt that. Even the kettle, which surely speaks whatever language is spoken by the listener, speaks American now. Nice.

Peace Corps don't want me cos
Communications degrees
From party college come in handy
In third world countries; the army
Don't want more middle-school soldiers,
Middle-class daughters
Get the Dunkin' Donuts jobs.
To buy video games. What?
Claim I hate her outta jealousy
This city: can't take it
But we can't afford to leave.
Too many lost kids singing "**** it -
If life gives you **** then suck it"
Slip Terry a kiss and an extra dollar-fifty
Buys safety on the bus cos I know his hood is tricky
He say
"Honey promise me
You won't go out tonight
They got a guy going 'round, picking off us blights
On society - cops and papers don't care
They would if he was killing
Regular girls."
Terry knows what happens
When you have a dream deferred.

That stanza, especially, is what places this piece in the company of Ginsberg and Hughes and their ilk. An excellently tense and immediate rant on WHERE WE ARE and WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT ALL.

If I could be allowed some criticism: it is too long, even given the nature of the material. Based on what's here on the page, I'd pick one or two images about how it all sucks here in American by comparison. Keep the kettle, and the tongue/pliers, and maybe on more. THEN you segue into specific images regarding how tough things are for SOMEONE ON THE FRINGE, and then off to how THE LITTLE MAN GONNA RISE.

And then the end. The final stanza is excellent. I'd trim it some, but leave it mostly as is.

Look at the peice, and how it naturally divides itself into those three movements, and se ehow you can focus each movement down to one or two specific images, and a little but to connect them.

But nicely done. Despite my hate on for this kind of material, I still enjoyed it. And parts of it I enjoyed a LOT.

averagejoe - Untitled

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I'd like to know what you were thinking, in general terms, as you wrote this. It's technically profcient, and interesting, but I really wanted it to GO somewhere. Wanted you take the idea and really make it sing.

But it didn't. It's well written and well done, but it doesn't GO anywhere, doesn't say anything outside of itself. Not that there's anything wring with that, not every poem needs to be a philosophicl think-piece about the meaning of life, but if this is just a story, then it needs to FEEL more like a story, and less like a prelude. I felt like it needed a sequel, or a D&D campaign, to give it context and depth.

As far as the form and structure are concerned, I think it suffered from the ambiguity of purpose. If a story, then it needed more structure and formality. Some higher-level language, and maybe a semi-formal rhythm scheme, would have given it some tension and a sense of heightened importance. Maybe some sort of refrain, just the "point" of the story is underlined and emphasised. Failing that, a motif or two running through the various episodes could have done the same thing.

As it is, I don't have anything REALLY good or REALLY bad to say. It was good, and showed your skill with words, but it lacked either the depth or the flash to make it work as either a parable or a straight bit of narrative (respectively). I think it would have benefitted from some more time spent pondering it, and polishing it. But statisctical thermodynamics sounds scarier than fighting that Prince guy.

JUDGEMENT

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rubakhin.

His poem was stronger, more finished, with more depth.

[averagejoe]

@truemane:

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Thanks for your comments. This is actually one I plan to continue working on, and you gave me some really good directions to think about. Some of what you said I was aware of, and happen to agree with, and others I didn't really consider. Really, what made this poem suffer the most was that I really didn't have time to do multiple drafts, which I find is more essential to my poetry writing than my prose, and perhaps my vision was a bit ambitious considering we only had a week.

[Vaynor]

Are we waiting on Eugar? Phoe, can you talk to him?

[PhoeKun]

I've tried, on numerous occasions. Each time, I've gotten a "I can probably do it tonight", and then a week will pass.

Although actually, if you folks are willing to wait until the weekend, I could probably actually jump back on. I didn't expect my schedule to ease up before this round was even over, but... it looks like it has. Go figure.

Of course, I don't know how everyone else would feel about that...

[ZombieRockStar]

*shrugs* A judge is a judge and Phoe's a really good judge.

[averagejoe]

*shrugs* A judge is a judge and Phoe's a really good judge.

True, that. In fact, I was rather looking foreward to Phoe reviewing mine.

[rubakhin]

Would love to have you on if you can fit it in, Phoe.

[truemane]

I agree. Phoe knows poetry.

[Vaynor]

Thanks Phoe.

[Vaynor]

Phooooooooooooooooe.