Poem fight

August 4, 2011 3:13 PM

Raging and raging in the lengthening thread
The mood will not heed the moderator;
Rules sprout loopholes; the FAQ cannot answer;
Mere trollery is loosed upon the site;
The lambent prose is loosed, and everywhere
The assumption of good faith is crumbled;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Battle Poetry: Abi Sutherland vs. Chris Clarke. (via mefi's own LanguageHat)
posted by Diablevert (25 comments total)

What... did I just read?
posted by reductiondesign at 3:26 PM on August 4, 2011

Chris is in my social networks, and he's been posting some really fine work of randomly on Goggles+ lately:

The friendly cow all spherical,
I love with all my brain:
She makes my models possible
To complex worlds explain.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
Because she has no legs down there,
To her fine shape betray.

Not blown by any winds that pass
In vacuum's perfect grid,
I love my global bovine lass.
I do, but oh, Euclid.
- Chris Clarke

ps, he's sort of MeFi's own as well.
posted by carsonb at 3:32 PM on August 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Some people are really in love with themselves. This is like party talk where one of the lines is "...and then I said [witty/funny thing]!" /guests laugh/
posted by resurrexit at 3:35 PM on August 4, 2011

#46 in the comments is a thing of beauty not to be missed as well.
posted by darksasami at 3:38 PM on August 4, 2011

"Worth it's weight in bitcoins" is pretty good too.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:54 PM on August 4, 2011

This makes me fel much less clever for writing the following on my wife's wall last week:

This Is Just To Say

I have taken
the beers
that were in
the fridge

and which
you were probably
saving
for after work

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
posted by KGMoney at 4:01 PM on August 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

There's no ether way of knowing
Which direction the site going
There's no knowing where we're posting
Or which way the blog is bowing
Is it blaming?
Is it boring?
Is cold fusion a-blowing?
Not a speck of reason is showing
So the trolls must be growing
Are the IPs' of hell a-glowing?
Is the moderator mowing?
Yes, the GRAR must be growing
Cause the posters keep on posting
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are knowing!
posted by clavdivs at 4:15 PM on August 4, 2011 [4 favorites]

He had me at "The old Lie; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Consectetur."
posted by Peach at 5:05 PM on August 4, 2011 [4 favorites]

Ugh, I keep writing comments and deleting them in the interest of not starting a fight. Suffice it to say that I might actually enjoy this if it came from somewhere else and someone else had written most of it.
posted by Justinian at 5:12 PM on August 4, 2011

no pun intended my brother but could you expand. besides, we needs us a poemfilter throw down, commense with said contention.

send gold, ink, rice, carbuncles, more gold and olives, a legion.
oh and "myrrh"
posted by clavdivs at 5:44 PM on August 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Phat heads spout phat words
Thought bubble factories ah,
A cooling haiku.
posted by Oyéah at 6:59 PM on August 4, 2011

I just busted out
My Carlos, and you are full,
Of his meataphors.
posted by Oyéah at 7:01 PM on August 4, 2011

If it looks like poetry, it must be poetry.
posted by doomtop at 5:54 AM on August 5, 2011

ugh.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:40 AM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

no pun intended my brother but could you expand.

Not really; ML is just not one of my favorite places on the internet by a wide margin.
posted by Justinian at 8:49 AM on August 5, 2011

I don't read Making Light -- the only exposure I have to it is links from MeFi. But based on that, my impression is that all they talk about there is forum moderation and responses to trolling. Is it actually about anything, or is that really it? Is it just that only the moderation-flavored meta posts get linked to from here?
posted by rusty at 9:38 AM on August 5, 2011

I don't read Making Light -- the only exposure I have to it is links from MeFi. But based on that, my impression is that all they talk about there is forum moderation and responses to trolling. Is it actually about anything, or is that really it? Is it just that only the moderation-flavored meta posts get linked to from here?

Originally the personal blog of two SF editors, Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, over time (over a decade), it's metamorphosed into a group blog and community. Frequent topics include publishing, self publishing (and the perils thereof), politics, speculative fiction, history, emergency preparedness and response, the Netherlands, pastiches (both literary and poetic), moderation (TNH is internet famous for an ill-fated stint as community manager of Boing Boing), cooking, and current affairs.
posted by zamboni at 11:18 AM on August 5, 2011

So it's pretty much just that the moderation links are the only ones that make it here. Ok.
posted by rusty at 1:13 PM on August 5, 2011

This is just to say I have taken the line breaks that were in your poem, and which you were probably using for emphasis. Forgive me! They were important, so salient and so meaningful.
posted by speicus at 1:37 PM on August 5, 2011 [3 favorites]

This Is Just To Say

Yo dawg I
heard you
liked poems
so we

put a
Carlos in your
Williams
so you can

Forgive me
while you
William
Carlos Williams
posted by speicus at 2:54 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Shiatsus Tits Joy

A heaven tie
help smut
win theatre
ex-biotech

had winch
wry operable buoy
sing A.V.
a staff broker

Remove fig
you wiliest cheered
wee toss
Dad's colon
posted by speicus at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2011

This Is Just To Say

don't fuck with me
posted by speicus at 3:07 PM on August 5, 2011

This thread is seriously over my head.

The Carlos I referred to
Has to do with desert and coyotes,
Metaphors for magic.
Cast a nothing,
Not even a shadow,
Or the absence of light.
Don't even travel with
The other me, to where
Life may as well be poetry.
Tricky little bits of memory
Slip through the leaky sieve
That combs my time,
As I try to find the sequence,
And the characters briefly cast across
An insubstantial landscape, where
Footprints flatten just as I look after them
for proof at morning.
Ha ha ha ha ha, but
I saw you there anyway,
In your typical play, and I lingered
A few moments looking down over
Your profile, the way your hair
Frames your face, and I sent some
Of my light down across those lips,
refreshing the image graven on time,
A fine deception a certifiably Celtic
Contortion, locked in its convolutions
Calmly unaware of the watcher.
Morning comes wrapped in a mysterious
Demeanor, I am mine.
posted by Oyéah at 5:33 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

The committee has come to its safe conclusion sans work shopping, E-tales of deeds misspent then
Re-written for clover lined angst tied with thin jute from reeds near the aperture of everyone’s sudden desire
for metaphor in c minor. Piano dirge, pliant festivities gone awry as hoped but seldom planned.

Our attention turns for the worse with expectations-
Recovery, plain text, the jangle of dancehall silver.
We croon our materia and shake our tree just past
the threshold of growths eager supply.
Speak of the desert but thirsts ink presents itself, moderation, calm
Fury of glass shattered in allyways, unheard and full of non-descriptions of the usual
Implications. Steam valves and shadow. A movie played each night
for sleeps continuity.

The committees response.
posted by clavdivs at 7:03 PM on August 5, 2011

Muttering retweets, oh that is a great line,

and this: The newbie sat

In the Cheeto-crumbs.

I did read the start up post, finally, I am arriving way late to this, after having commented into the blue, but poetry is an irresistible lure. The poetic dialogue was wonderful in that place, and reminds me of old school web warfare, from a decade ago, but that wench is dead, you know.
posted by Oyéah at 7:14 PM on August 5, 2011