Posted on 10/07/2017 11:35:33 PM PDT by txnativegop
An area covered in still water
The smell of stagnation will overwhelm
Even the strongest of sweet fragrances
Diversity of life easy to see
It is a swamp its denizens harmful
to all life save for native residents
Its water riddled with bacteria
Its bottom - vile, sticky trapping the lax
Various denizens like mosquitoes
and snakes will create disease, suffering
that will spread to locales very distant
unless decisive action is taken
to check the contagion of the swamp
Pesticides will control it for a short time
But disease will very quickly return
Teeming diversity hides great evil
of its pestilence and its sickly airs
A disease filled swamp is best when it's drained.
Let me know what you think.
Keep your swamp friends close, and your swamp enemies closer.
that and snares and shotguns and knifes :^)
I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at spotting liberals. LOL
I always like seeing these issues turned into poetry. It’s fun to read while thinking about important topics.
that is so cool
He co-wrote the first play published in America. That was in the files, too! Politics back then sounds a lot like politics now. Except the sponsors you had to placate were back in England, so the politicians were always in ships going back and forth to regain favor and positions.
then I’m happy. I fired up some neurons first thing in the morning!
Thank You, FRiend!
txnativegop
Thanks for the poem. and lucky you for getting copies of all of his papers.
:^)
7th great grandfather. I was EXTREMELY lucky!
Congrats!
:^)
So tell about your poetry. When did you start writing and what type do you write?
I started writing poetry in 2010.
I was in college at the time and suffering through an English literature class. I don’t read much fiction and had never read poetry.
I made a sarcastic remark about the uselessness of writing/reading poetry to her.
She immediately challenged me to try writing some poetry and then tell her it was useless. I had a big helping of crow and must admit I truly love writing poetry.
I write stream of consciousness, usually while listening to music.
My subject runs from nature,business, life in general and politics.
I do not write much blank or free verse to speak.
This poem that I posted is a form I refer to as Icosastich (or 20-line)this is a personal development and is written in pentameter (not Iambic).
I really don’t care where the syllables are stressed or whether they are stressed at all.
For me, it is about the story I am trying to tell.
I write couplets, tercets, quatrain, quintet, sestet, Sestina, Mirror Sestina, Double Sestina (Non-rhyming), Mirror Double Sestina, septets, octaves, Villanelles, Terza Rima etc.
The size and style of the poem fit the story I am trying to tell.
I do prefer the shorter (in length) poems, they are more difficult to write.
I Love A Challenge! :^)
And thank you mairdie for the interest.
FRegards,
txnativegop
I do care.
I love the combination of individualism in your pattern, along with your formal understanding of what you’re doing. I absolutely believe that there are body rhythms in all of us and that the most natural way to write is to be sensitive to the rhythm rather than coerced to a formal pattern developed by someone else.
When looking deep at the guts of poetry, one thing that amazed me was the variability from formal shapes. Almost every single line was off in syllables or accent, even among those best known for rigid formulation. If that’s the case, then why stick with the formal forms to start with?
So, yes, what you’re doing sounds great!
Thank you so much for the compliment, mairdie.
That is truly meaningful for me.
txnativegop
Thanks! :)
What I’ve been doing most recently, poetry wise, is trying to figure out how to identify one random poem as being by Henry Livingston or not being by him. We did all of our previous analysis by comparing the bodies of work of Henry and Moore. Mac suggested we might be able to identify a work by Henry by putting Henry up against a body of random poets. So that’s what we’ve been doing. I collected one offs of a huge variety of people publishing in the same papers at the same times. Mac got one paper out of it so far on analyzing the bodies by phonemes. But what I desperately want is to find a way to chunk all the tests together into a black box that includes probabilities based on their origins and be able to have it spit out a probability for the poem. We have another large body that we use as a countertest set that is poets guaranteed NOT to be Henry and we test the poem against that set, too.
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