MP's very brief foray into a poetry forum
So I spent about half an hour on a poetry forum, before a mod (very politely) pointed out to me that well... I managed to break pretty much all their rules in this brief interval.
I think it's kind of funny, you know, by the time a place's managed to construct such a complicated tower of law that random person walking in breaks most everything without malice aforethought... it's even conceivable the whole system long stopped filtering for whatever it aims to filter for and instead simply uptakes rule followers. Which don't (usually) make that good poets.
But anyway, I left them a note explaining that I didn't mean to, and wishing them the best. If I needed a platform perhaps I'd have considered adapting and adopting, but as it happens I don't, and moreover even if I did ... really, turn in your sovereignity in exchange for presence on some obscure online forum ? Whatever happened to the throne of China! Maybe if these were people in my WoT, whom I believed to be excellent at some obscure craft. Maybe if I was younger. Maybe, maybe, maybe. For sure not today.
One of the rules I broke was "never rewrite another's poem".i The original read :
to be deteremined by pffrau
The thin, black, velvet, strap
And its tiny, toy, buckle;
You call them "Fuck Me" shoes,
On the floor, at the foot of the bed.
One shoe upright on tapered heel.
Its partner lays upon its side,
Tossed there sometime between mounts.
And my re-write was
Oh the thin dark velvet stap
And its tiny, toy-like buckle
"Fuck me" shoes to my old chap
By the bed they have their chuckle.One shoe upright on its heel.
Other resting on its side
In their way they try make real
What we also tried... and tried.
The moral being :
- Don't follow the rules of anyone you don't personally know and deeply respect!
- Do rewrite poems. And computer code. And everything else.
and
To paraphrase my dead grandmother, "the Internet is great, if you knowhow to drive it".
———- I happen to think this is pretty stupid as a rule, all artistic achievement to date (of which none I recognise past 1800 or so) happened exactly that way, through concerted efforts to re-do the masters. If anyone imagines they could learn painting, or poetry, or any other art in any other manner, that someone belongs with some other anon USians on an online forum somewhere. [↩]
