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It took me long enough, but I'll be getting a few copies of my book in the mail that I can give out to people for reviews, and after that I can finish the back cover of the book and start producing more final copies. If you would like to support the book, simply add it's myspace to your friends list and tell some of your friends to do the same. I am trying to spread the word out to more than just people in my local community, so any help/vibes/wordz would be useful. Thanks.

http://www.myspace.com/contrafribularities

UPDATED: LAST PAGE

If I ever get to writing my book, you owe me.

Since when are you an established poet?

Since Jesus was like "LOL, WHY U GAIZ PUTTIN ME ON THIZ CROZ?"

And that was way back in like 1980-something.

umm. . .Is this the type word mastering genius which will fill the pages of your book?

No, it's more than likely filled with really bad new age highschooling hippy musings.

There are book samples on the myspace page, as well as an F.A.Q. for questions...

Short Answer: No



Obviously, because it's ME after all. And we all know if I do something it must be bad by the LAW OF ROB which states that Rob hates things that I do....I think.

How many of these would be SoaD inspired? Very cliche, at least the samples.

SOAD inspired? I'd honestly have to say none. I can't write unless it's an idea that I am very passionate about. Most of my early poems are feel-good short and quick kiddie poems. These were more experiments of style. My later poetry (anything from the past two years) is all based off of personal life experiences and feelings. The things that I write are all truths, not rip-offs.

... Is this hard cover? Please tell me it's not hard cover.

It was a joke.

Oh, heck no. It's perfect binding, but not hard cover. A hard cover book with such few pages would be silly.

Can I write the foreword?

Sorry, the part about them being cliche left me to believe the entire sentence was serious. I didn't get angry, I just thought I should explain it before everyone else started asking the same thing.

Give us some sample pages here.

So you paid to have a book published for you? Aren't 99% of all books self-published, uhm... well... failures?

I'll summarize for you, Echoman.

"We are sad people who try to understand life. I can see more than everyone else. I rock."

"Tomorrow will make today seem so unimportant, even though lots happened today that no one knows about."

"I can't breathe when I look into your eyes."

I can see SAJN reading at his book opening, pausing momentarily between each line, over-pronouncing cliche words like "Melancholy" and "despodent." I imagine lots of people going "Wooooooah man, deep." and I imagine no one in the audience will have ever read a poem outside of English 12.

Hey--I never took English 12, but in AP we read TS Eliot. That guy's cool.

I'm more of a Robert Frost kind of a guy.
Oh oh, Byron!

Congrats on misinterpreting all three poems!

I bet you're the kind of person that thinks Birches is about actual Birch trees, or that Snowy Evening and The Road Not Taken are 'happy' poems. Figures.

Robert Frost is my favorite, but we didn't read any of his stuff in AP. I think we did him in like, sophomore english.

EDIT: The Road Not Taken is a happy poem, and Snowy Evening (if I'm thinking of the right one) is a fairly happy one too. The Road Not Taken is about exultation in free will and taking the hard road over the easy one, making your own path in life. Snowy Evening is just an admiration of the beauty of nature (which Robert Frost did a lot).

SAJN, no offense, but there's no misinterpretation--at best your poetry is abstract enough that the meaning is lost to everyone but you so you can say "it's up to interpretation" and look artsy--until someone "misinterprets", and at worst it has no meaning whatsoever.

I must've missed the smybolism and metaphors.

Can I write a review for OSC?

Wikipedia states: "Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις," poiesis, a "making" or "creating") is a form of verbal art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning."



Okay, let's see what you have there:

"a form of verbal art in which language is used for its ostensible meaning"


Something seems to be missing.


I know you probably don't want this kind of criticism, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. I'm definitely not a poet but I've read my fair share of poetry; and I've never, ever read any 'poems' as empty and soulless as this one. Do you actually read poetry, or do you just write it? Because this isn't even anywhere near what real poetry is, it's just an emo blog post with

awkward line

breaks.


Even ignoring the fact that you use terrible imagery (if you use any at all) and you completely fail to evoke any sort of emotion in the reader, you make no effort toward aesthetics. There is no prose, no rhythm, no rhyme. Free-form poetry certainly has its place, but when you're missing all of the other elements that actually make a poem a poem you end up with nothing.

Wow. With that font, your poems should be about how Winnie The Pooh found himself some honey. Next to that, using big words without them having anything to add to the poems, they're useless and there's no point in even writing them down.

I hope your reviewers are drunk when reading this stuff, because otherwise, you'll have to use your creative genius for good reviews on the back cover.

The Road Not Taken is not a happy poem. If you read carefully, both roads are worn about the same, and the ending lines in the poem explain what the speaker will say when he is old, even if it isn't true. It shows how nobody can actually tell for sure which path is right for them until they actually take it. After they take that path, they can never take the other one because in the end, there is no going back.

The poem Snowy Evening is about contemplating suicide. Frost wasn't as much of a tree hugger as people thought. He often stated in his poems that humans and nature have little connection to each other.

It's not my fault everything you like sucks.

While I think it's stupid to claim a "correct" understanding of a poem, I think your opinion of The Road Not Taken is projection.

or stoned :downs:

As for those of you that have only read Robert Frost in the 6th grade and were taught that he was a happy man that wrote about trees and bunnies, try actually reading some other poetry. (Frost is amazing, don't get me wrong, but kids are always taught wrong about him)

There are hundreds of types of poetry out there, and if you want to read some really amazing poetry try reading Nazim Hikmet's poetry. My teacher introduced me to him a while ago and come to find out the book we were reading in class was translated by my teacher (Randy Blasing) so people could enjoy Hikmet's poetry in english. It's amazing poetry. Not only is it amazing, but it shows that you don't need any specific form to write poetry. Frost was a poet that made sure everything was perfect. Beats per measure, etc etc... A lot of poets write free verse, don't rhyme etc... I don't try to copy other poets, I simply write in different styles depending on the mood and feeling of the poem.

I appreciate criticism and comments, but this stupid flaming and uneducated bashing of my work is just stupid.

YES.

Now we have a Friend14 of poetry.

No.


I present to you all the full text, with relevant lines in BOLD.

The point in case here is that your work simply isn't of any kind of level to be shown, or god forbid, sold, outside of MySpace/Livejournal. The samples you show are obviously meant for making people to want to read/buy your book, thus you'd show them the best stuff you have. However, these samples are an empty collection of words, and nothing but that. You use big words to make you feel special, where an actual poet would describe the thoughts behind those words even coming to mind.

Writing about the stuff you think is life doesn't make you a poet. Deal with it.

I read poetry in my free time and don't require teachers to interpret it for me.

Besides, if you're putting so much weight behind hidden meanings (and, in this case, completely hidden meaning fake and imaginary because you're projecting your emo onto Frost), why the hell don't you actually put any of those hidden meanings into your own poetry?

No, your poetry is bad. It's soulless, bland and it lacks artistic merit. It is not 'stupid flaming and uneducated bashing', it is my opinion and you'd best learn to live with it because it's an opinion you'll be hearing a lot.

They were both grassy and wanted wear. No leaves we're 'trodden black' as in both paths were fresh, and he kept the other path for another day, even though he knows he will never be back at the same fork again. The last five lines are showing him as an older man telling his children that he took the harder path and it made him a better man for it. But what he is trying to say is that in life you can never say for sure that you took the harder path because you never get a chance to make the same choices twice.

I tried to read your poetry, but MySpace's web design sucks so horribly that I couldn't figure out where the Hell I was half the time.

I agree that the poem is about the path that he didn't choose, but



...quite clearly states, in plain english, that the path he took was 'perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear'

He does not say that about the other path.

"And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black."

Neither of them had been visibly taken.

he mentions that one of them is grassy and wants wear, and in the next lines he states that in fact, they were BOTH grassy, and neither of them had been taken.

Quote the line that says the other path was grassy.

As much as I would love to support a peer writer, I have virtually no interest in poetry, and thus no interest in supporting it. Sorry =(