Why I Am Not A Poet

For awhile I hated poetry because I didn't understand it.  All poetry was sensitive glitter, reserved for smug, self-important assholes, who were haughty and deep.  Like Linda Lovelace.  Or dungeons.  Or secret dungeons.  Or French people.  French people who locked their souls in secret metaphorical dungeons, where their poetry was chained and whipped daily because it plundered baguettes, tongue-kissed Madame Dupont, and took the road less traveled by, but someday we will have jaunty berets (je ne sais pas) and be free from le tyrannical aristocracy, oui?  Tres bien!  Louis!  Richelieu!  VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

So...that's what I think about when someone says "poetry."

One day, I discovered what became my favorite poem.  Another day I went to France. You know what? I like smug and glittery when the constituent is sardonically aware of its own narcissism (this is more prevalent in poetry than in France). 

And about half the time, that's what it's like over at From Quiet Thoughts.  Brown is a poet from San Francisco with dreamy bedroom eyes, thoughtfully propped up against a pillow in his profile picture looking pensive and bored, as if porn just doesn't get him off anymore since the internet made it all socially acceptable to jerk it all the time. He could so be French, especially with all the cigarettes and wine.

Honestly, I fucking love about a third of his poems, I want to edit the hell out of another third, and the rest?  Fucking dungeon, like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being poetic.

Because sometimes, this happens:

About Me:  Increments of time, attach themselves to light, creating impassioned pixels of reality. We are what we see, feel and hope.

which sounds like lyrics to low-fi-electro-indie-rock and other things that are trucked with hyphens and pictures of mustaches that lack any real hair. What does this say about Brown, as a person?  We're just particles fueled by our perception of reality, who can really know anyone, and if you can't figure it out then you don't deserve to know and all that priggish bullshit and SHUT THE HELL UP.

Which means Brown is a cheater.  Fuck that distant, vague crap.  He should do it better because I know he can, even though sometimes he could benefit from an editor, a little more self-awareness,

and a little less of that thing, you

know.

That thing that "poets" do, where lines are
separated
for no apparent reason, although
the idea is free verse
and the pauses between phrases can be inconsequential and

the result
is annoying.
(dungeon)

I'm a big fan of Rodin (OMG YOUR PROF PIC MATCHES YOUR HEADER OMG), so the header is fine, but poetry thrives on suggestion, aesthetics, and rhythm. Brown excels at the first, does a good job at the second, and needs to work on the third. Part of aesthetics is not just avid prose, but how the poem looks, and honestly, that template reminds me of fungus.  Stop feeding shit to your template.  Pick a paler, less offensive green for the words - that alone will improve things. Think about flow and meter.  You know how to write.  Do it better. 

I applaud the flows of nonsense because he's practicing his attack.  Sometimes the prose is a bit awkward and clunky, but he's exercising and I respect that, despite the overt naval-gazing, mostly because there isn't a lot of filler.  There's just good and bad practice.  Sometimes his spelling is fucking barbaric, he does the "your/you're" thing and if that shit is intentional to prove a point, like we're too hooked on grammar as a society or something, or if you purposely substituted "poured" with "pored" as a play on words, know this:  that doesn't make any fucking sense, but I'm over it, because I read that one about the snail about 500 times.

I'm a sucker. 


               for effort and skill, but

   because sometimes he sounds like he's trying to be a poet instead of just being himself.

My Subscription to Psychology Today Makes Me an Expert

Readers, have you ever known someone who has some life-changing, emotionally traumatizing experience happen to them, and they never deal with it and get the help they desperately need? In my experience, these people tend to be frozen at whatever age the experience happened and fail to evolve in mental and/or emotional maturity. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

If not, meet Violet.

Violet watched her mother die two-ish years ago. Her father is gone as well, I assume, given her blog's title. There may be a post dealing with him, but I can't be arsed to read all her posts. She has other family though, because she wrote about them during the holidays. I'm confused about why they don't know how screwed up in the head she really is.

Violet bides her time being unemployed and crashing on people's couches. To support her lifestyle, placate her daddy issues, and distract herself from dealing with her problems, she signs up for Sugar Daddy websites and meets rich, much older men. Currently, Violet has a regular boyfriend closer to her age (early 20's, I assume), who doesn't know about her desire to be a kept woman or about her meeting potential Sugar Daddies/Johns behind his back.

This girl is a fucking trainwreck and has no shame about broadcasting it for the world to see. That's one thing I'll grant her. I don't have to complain about her not opening up. She writes about her boy troubles, albeit in a very Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe fashion. She writes about dreams she's had with her mother in them, ones where she and her mother are the same age. And she does so in an intriguing and image-provoking fashion. I just wish she would write more about what's going on in her head, rather than what shenanigans her latest John has pulled.

Violet writes somewhat coherently, with somewhat correct grammar and spelling, although she avoids the shift key like she thinks she's on par with ee cummings. Any mishaps can be chalked up to typos and not editing before posting. However, there is an abundance of caps and bold and ellipses and too many youtube videos and pictures for my liking. An indication of her age, I suppose.

The feminist in me, the woman who's witnessed male friends and relatives get put through the ringer by manipulative women, the woman who's been treated like shit herself because dudes think all women are users . . .wants to hate this girl. Desperately.

But I'm here to review a blog, not put on a German accent and have my reviewees lay down on my couch so I can play Armchair Psychiatrist, even if it comes naturally to me.

Which is why I'm generously awarding Violet one star:



For actually being able to write and for laying it all out there. Sometimes.




I'll let the commenters rip into you all they like. Shagnasty Freud has some advice for you though. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and way more important than frivolities. Maybe consider forgoing your gym membership and weekly salon appointments and find a therapist.

Exploring the Rabbit's Hole

Oh, I tell you, it was going to be beautiful; an ass-ripping like has never been seen. There would be pumpkin muffins, crow-bars, ‘praise’ and sharts flying hither and thither in the comments. You would have been proud to be part of the Ask and Ye Shall Receive Mutual Admiration and Procuring of New Bum-hole Society. 

I even had my first line worked out. It went ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no!’ in the vein the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 when she is flipping through her fairytale library trying to find a story in which the Ogre has a happily-ever-after with a Princess.

However, alas, alack, and woe is you, the imminent reviewee got cold feet and made her blog private. And then in the words of our fearless leader and word maker-upperer, Shiner, she ‘unprivateded it’. Well fuck me if I can be bothered by that shit. In the meantime I was given a different blog to review.

Unfortunately I didn’t hate this blog nearly as much. It was neat and clean in, what my uncultured eye would peg as, an art deco style. It had a classy selection of badges and thingamebobs in the side-bar and....

Okay. This is where you find out I am real person rather than a gory cartoon avatar; my internet at home pooped itself, only coming back on line the day before the review was due. I will now regale you with my quickly put together notes on a thoroughly read blog. Keep up if you can:

From the shadows of the comments, to the limelight of the reviewee’s position, I introduce to you, Miss Ash.

• She is rather thorough here, we like that round these parts.
• Dear Lord, you have to be shitting me! Perhaps it will get better. She has been doing this for a while and we all need to find our feet in the early stages. 
• Interesting, lacking in context. Is it supposed to be metaphorical? I want more sauce.
• Still dry.
• Ooh, getting juicier. (I was going to say wetter, but well, we all know where you lot will take that)
• There seems to be a LOT of caps lock going on to EMPHASIZE certain POINTS.
• This is cute, though still elusive. I am not really getting enough of a picture of her yet.
• Who is Amber to Miss Ash, if anything? I was confused at Miss Ash’s role in this drama and who was speaking. (Ah, further on – a glimmer, a glimpse!)
• This is indulgent, only in that it is interesting but could have been fleshed out more, and she left us high and dry.
• Why so much ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘you’? I feel like she is holding me at bay. Give people some names; own them, their actions and emotions, even if pseudonyms are used.
• Fuck – really? Then this sombitch is in a whole world of hurt, if I could muster up the energy to give a shit.
• I guess I pictured this, like you asked, but the clumsy ending was a spit bubble in the corner of my smile.
• Controversial – I like what you don’t say here.
• Cute – even though cats are evil, evil animals.
• I like the ‘light’ touch of this.
• Wholeheartedly I agree we all need these types of relationships. But show it to me – make me jealous or wistful or happy that I too, have this.
• I can totally get on board with this – are you in my head, Miss Ash?
• Nice imagery.
• Oh, I am all about the air biscuits lady, but you didn’t even raise a smile here. Shame. Love a good fart story. (Did you know, that the sort of thing you find amusing is supposedly indicative of your intelligence level? Shit.)
• Short and not so sweet – evocative.
• Again, you seem to say what I feel at times. I recognise it.
• This is lovely, but in a WHOLE four year blog, I have only had flashes of her situation, so when it comes down to it, I think ‘Aw, how sweet!’ when really I should be wiping away a tear, shouldn’t I? I don’t know, you tell me Miss Ash - the kid could be the next Damien.
• Hilarious first paragraph here.

Now, dear reader and armchair reviewer, I would like you to get off your metaphorical date-hole and do some work for once. (Geez, I am making free with the holes this review)

1) Go to Miss Ash’s archives.

2) Select the month of your birthday, in any year available.

3) Find a post closest to your birth date.

4) Give it a read.

5) In the comments here, give a seasoned opinion on said piece, perhaps providing a link if you have the technological aptitude, and even a score out of 10 if you feel so inclined.

Here. I will do one for you. (By the way – if I was clever I would be able to make it actually look like a comment box here etc etc but you know the drill. I am a writer daaahling, not a fucking IT specialist)

           

On March 18^th 2008, Miss Ash wrote this post, about decision making, consequences and such. I give it a 4 out of 10 because it was preachy and boring. Instead of saying this: “I could name a thousand different things I learned, and I do feel confident that when I acknowledged a behavior that wasn’t working,” she should have manned up and told me some of the juicy stuff because I wanted to identify with her, rather than get lectured.

Okay, so maybe that was a bit more complicated than the game I want you to play but you pick up what I am putting down, yes?

                                                                                                       

As you can see, my birthday is not terribly far away – enough for a savings plan to be put in place.  Feel free to send presents; Shiner will undoubtedly pass them on after they have been rifled through.

Miss Ash, you write well – you are more than literate but I feel that even though you have this mystic, spiritual thang going on, you hold me at arm’s length, when in order to benefit from your thoughts and wisdom, I need to nestle against your breast.

Let us in, Miss Ash.

I grant you,

     

It Must Be Karma

You’ll never guess what, my darling little scallops! Today we are going to review the blog of an earnest young Indian woman! An utterly new experience for us all! I can’t tell you how excited I am. I have even had Fanny loosen my truss. This site does attract a great deal of variations on a theme, and we must get almost as many earnest young Indian women as we do self-proclaimed ‘mad’ mommies and sexually-unheimlich humourists.

It was hard to review this blog. I would sit down to read it and five minutes later find that I had wandered without realising into the pantry and had consumed a pound of cheese. Or I would discover that I had been staring for untold hours at the dead wasp on the windowsill, or was consumed with the need to cut my toenails right now. Once when I thought I was making headway I woke up three days later in a burger bar in Penge dressed as Penelope Keith with three new and unsettling tattoos.

The first problem is that Live on Impulse is not overly keen on the paragraph break but does enjoy the exclamation mark, leaving me feeling as though I had been buttonholed by a particularly enthusiastic head girl. I’m sure she makes some good points here, for example, but such a relentless slab of text is as insurmountable to me as a pile of Fanny’s notoriously dense flapjacks. It gives me a headache all over.

This blog was so uncomfortable to read that I found myself not caring a jot about the content. However, because I am a brave soldier I forced myself to concentrate, and after several pots of tea, trips to the W.C. and a twenty-four-hour rum-and-Sanatogen bender, I managed to read some posts. I wasn’t much impressed. Fair play to Live on Impulse, she is a socially-aware young woman who wants the world to be a better place, but we all care about injustice, even me (well, I care about whether I get away with it or not). I’m sure she’s a charming young women with a winning outlook on life, I just found her rather exhausting.

Live on Impulse claims that she is compelled to write, but she doesn’t seem to put much effort into it. Look at this. This is just a series of mentions, it gives me nothing. There’s no thought in it, no detail, it feels rushed and unloved. She worries that she doesn’t produce enough meaningful stuff, but I think she could if she just shut up and thought about it for a while. I looked in vain to find a post actually describing her wedding. And those blasted smiley faces make her look childish and far less intelligent than she actually is.

Liveonimpulse, here are some words of advice. Get out your English grammar book and refresh your memory. Read your posts back carefully. Put spaces after full stops. Using two exclamation marks after every sentence makes you look like an idiot. Paragraphs and punctuation make your work easier to read and less likely to induce a fit of the vapours in rickety old reviewers. Most importantly, remember the old chestnut and show, don’t tell.

I do try to find the good in things, I really do, but sometimes one is faced with something that one just outright doesn’t enjoy and this is one of those times. To be honest, I found Live on Impulse boring and a little tedious. I did not enjoy reading it and I did not enjoy reviewing it, and to top it all off there’s a lot of really buttock-clenchingly awful poetry.

Live on Impulse gets a Meh, and I am going to wrap myself up in a blanket and sit in the airing cupboard.

A Lighter Side Order of Pseudo Tween Angst

Is it just me or has there been a distinct whiff of curry about the place lately? Sorry, not appropriate? Well too bloody bad - RedPen Reaper is here. I may be an Ask and Ye Shall Receive reviewing virgin but being an asshole? I popped that cherry a long time ago. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way; my pen is uncapped so let us begin.

Today I am reviewing a blog from India belonging to a young lady by the name of Matangi Mawley who purports to be part of the technology industry. Since I am new here I am just going find my feet and lay it all out, starting with the thing that whacks you in the face first - the template. If a manga inspired tramp-stamp hippie vibe is your thing, it isn’t bad. But it isn’t mine so this, along with the font-fuckery, does my head in. This ‘prettiness’ is especially distracting when the colours chosen engage in a passive aggressive tango with the fading blue to white background.

Squinting at all of the lovely colours made me feel a bit drunk, which inspired me to invent a game with Ms. Mawley’s punctuation. I named it RedPen-must-take-a-lengthy-sip-of-the-alcoholic-beverage-at-hand-every-time -Ms.-Mawley-uses-an-exclamation-mark. She is not a heavy poster yet in a 2 post month there are enough exclamation marks to put me into a coma. I won’t put in a link – just go and pick any month in any year and you too can play. Just keep a spew bucket handy and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This exclamation mark orgy flows into her poetry. Yes. The P word. Though dare I say it, it isn’t all awful. This is cute but spoiled with too! many! of! these! There is also an overuse of the recently fashionable ellipsis. Why use them when a colon, a comma or even a colon of the semi variety will do? Ms. Mawley is only 22; definitely not crusty enough to have her sentences rambling into unfinished dotage.

Before I dig into the actual content I have one more whinge regarding her functional literacy. (Ha! Look at me pretending to be all expert-like. You buying it yet?) Potentially interesting stories are spoiled with an inability to format dialogue correctly which looks lazy. I am not getting too pedantic here (bugger it if I can remember if the punctuation goes on the inside or the outside of the quotation mark) but for the love of baby cheeses put each new speaker on a new line.

The content consists of the aforementioned poetry as well as short stories and soul searching. Most of it, while noble in intent, is airy-fairy. Ms. Mawley asks questions that are too big, and to my cluttered, uncultured and unenlightened mind, mean nothing. Often it is the minutiae of life that connects people but I can’t connect with her if I don’t know what the hell she is on about. What is going on here? Goddess of Sin? Goddess of What Drugs Are You On? But I can’t even take that jibe and stick with it because although she says she is 22, it is the most innocent 22 I have seen. It may be a cultural difference but even then couldn’t we get an angsty arranged marriage or something out of it?

Ms. Mawley needs to know that she is allowed to tell a story straight. While I applaud her experiments with format, her style verges on 10th grade academic emo. I did that course too. In 10th grade. This story was too choppy and didn’t get the time it needed to be meaningful and while this was quite nice, it started off vague and irritating. I want her to delve, get dirty and get that everything doesn’t have to end with a big tragic cliché. Is this a Bollywood plot device type deal? She says she is not a good daughter but offers no details. We need a pervy snapshot of this bad girl rather than all the grass is green, the sky is blue malarkey – although here she gives a little more oomph to the ‘big’ questions.

I don’t want to totally bash Ms. Mawley’s earnest spirit – she is due some props. She wrote some stuff that I was tempted to google to see if she had whacked it from somewhere else. This story was lyrical and lovely, and with a bit more work, this post could be masterful. I started to think ‘by god she has it in her!’ ... and then this happened. A talking table? This post caused me to ponder that while her English is generally faultless, there are some odd phrasings that hint at a lexicon that Western readers may find twee and trite. Regardless, that post received a nostril spraying of caffeine 39 comments. Oh, that sound you hear? That’s my blogging alter-ego surfacing its comment starved head. It has green eyes and is a monster.

In perusing her blog, Ms. Mawley took me on a journey which is inevitable for a thorough reviewer. From the ages of 18-22 this should have been a real, live bildungsroman. However there was no growth or dawning realisation; her journey is a meandering one, spending too much time inspecting belly-button fluff and looking at the unobtainable stars from start to unforeseeable finish. But I do appreciate a blog that gets me thinking and Ms Mawley did do that. I mulled over my shallow Westernised values and wondered if her subject matter and style is a new wave that I haven’t been exposed to; pseudo-tween? Perhaps her vision is purer and loftier than us Ask and Ye Shall Receiver muck-rakers are used to. Or it could be complete crap. Who am I to say from my culturally imperialist vantage point?

Call me a soft touch, but I am feeling more pokey red crayon than stabby red pen for my first review. I give Ms. Mawley 1 star for just being so darned idealistic! There you go. That exclamation mark was on the house.

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Trillian,

I realize you're only 16. That makes it easier for me to forgive some of your more angsty or boycrazy moments, since we've all been at "that age".

But you presumptuously call yourself a writer and you've submitted your blog to be critiqued here, so I'm going to attempt to treat you like an adult and be bluntly honest because I genuinely like you and think you deserve that.

Have you noticed that as soon as you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder (over a year ago), you have written about little else and your blog has become super emo? I'm not trying to discount your illness, but do you have anything else going on in your life that you could possibly write about?

UN Peace Mission to Bombay but never write about it. You do the same thing with a school trip to Singapore. You actually write about a school trip to Malaysia, but it ends up coming across as a journal entry where you literally talked about cute boys and what you bought when you went shopping at the mall. Where are the hilarious stories involving the people you met? Where are the descriptions of the things you saw on your trips, written so I can imagine being there?

Hell, you even spent some time locked up in an institution of sorts, and all you could do is give us a description of the people who were there with you. You've given me a cast of characters, but no actual play. I feel gypped.

I'm frustrated, because I know you can write. You use correct spelling and grammar, which is amazing when most of the reviewers get stuck with the blogs of grown-ass adults who have no fucking clue. You write about things other people are scared to. You can turn a phrase beautifully and take pride in your writing when you take the time. I want more of this.

But 80% of the time, you only talk about your current mental state or write pretentious pseudo-artist crap. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we don't have a lot of patience for people who think writing about their angst makes them deep, introspective and unique.

Here's some big-sisterly advice from someone who's dealt with depression herself: if you wallow in shit, your cuts are only gonna get infected.

I'm not telling you to repress what you're feeling, but just to avoid things that trigger your depression and anxiety. Yes, writing about pain sometimes helps one deal with it, but there's a difference between that and relishing the pain to the extent that you end up defining yourself by it. And you really have much more potential than just a fucking definition, chica.

While we're on the subject of immersing yourself in your drama, why aren't your comments set to be moderated? Since you have an ongoing problem with trolls, it makes me think you enjoy the antagonism.

The problem is . . . I actually agree with the trolls half the time. I don't agree with how abusive they are, but I can see where they're coming from. You mention your maids, your tailor, spending a shit ton of money on shopping, and your FIVE expensive cameras. True, you have a mental illness and abusive/emotionally distant parents, but nonchalantly acting like a rich bitch makes it hard for me to feel that much sympathy for you.

Some more big-sister advice: I really think you should do some volunteer work for people less fortunate than yourself. It'll help put things into perspective, give you something to do other than think about your drama and provide blog fodder that will probably be more interesting to your readers.

And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, take your fucking pills. Who gives a shit if you get fat? Imagine all the mentally ill people who can't afford their medication. You being flippant about your pills is completely offensive and makes you look like a self-indulgent princess.

Anyway . . . because I actually, truly, love it when you quote a relevant song, book, or poem at the end of your posts, these are for you:


You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part of the same compost pile.






That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

Dick Move, Jargon Juggler.

I am an American. For the most part we are an English speaking country, but there is no amendment or law that explicitly states, “We speak English here, take your other worthless language and go suck on a dead dog’s nose.” Of course, this is a good thing, because other languages aren’t worthless at all, especially not to the people who speak them.

Similarly, there’s no official language of AAYSR. It’s not like we called together a reviewers gin rally and debated the semantics of our FAQ over bucks and Tom Collinses (Tom Collinseses?). Since the FAQ is written in English, we arrogantly assumed like the vainglorious dicks we are that all submissions would subsequently be in English.

Obviously, some asshole out there decided that he was entitled to a review, even with having less an a third of his posts written in a language I understand, as if he's testing me. You sonofabitch, I got a 34 on my ACT because I test so good. Pop quiz, jargon juggler: who's got two fists full of round bombs with fuses of scorn for bilingual bloggers testing my lexical patience? This girl. Dick move, jargon juggler. Dick move.

But I thought, you know, hey--this guy’s got to have some reason for doing this. Hopefully he'll reveal himself as some kind of pretentious fuck, and then we can set him on fire with leftover bottle rockets from this past weekend's patriotic debauchery. Maybe he'll be counterfeit and full of shit. Maybe he'll nearly plagiarize but not quite, and circumvent any accusations of plagiarism because of the nature of the concept he's addressing, thus brilliantly demonstrating the idea he's floating--but did he know that I've read that book? Does it matter?

Fine, so I didn't necessarily predict he would do that last bit, but motherfucker did itnonetheless.

And by golly, I fucking like him. He turned out to be feisty and hilarious and obnoxiously ostentatious because he is totally a Bombay hipster (which he would adamantly deny, true to hipster code), and I love that kind of unapologetic bastardization of self. Sure, some of this poetry crap is just nonsense, but I assure you: although it doesn't look like a standard poem, this blog is all poetry, even if a little wordy and rugged (the entry at the bottom), even if sometimes he comes across as a kind of drunken swan, where you can see how elegant he could be if he weren't such a flashy fuckdunce.

His template is horseshit, the navigation is a sterile, complicated hospital nightmare, sometimes the links lead to streams of shrapnel html and most of the writing is in fucking Hindi. Opening each quarter-monthly archive link is like passing around a live fucking hand grenade. There is no profile, no comments, no way to go back to a homepage, no way to click on an individual entry. He hasn't posted in a couple of months, which makes me believe he either joined Facebook or Twitter, where his brevity could be more immediately appreciated by his peers.

This guy is good. This guy is really, really good. And he fucking knows it. I'm guessing he's a professional (apparently he has already written some film scripts). He's above detailing his life or personality for any potential readers, because if they don't get it, if they cannot just deduce his dreams and self from his poetry, which "does not burnish on paper as much as it embers in the mind," why would he want them reading his blog?

So, Manish Fuckwad, you are a cocksucker.

I want you to take your superior word choice, your smooth, jerkface prose, and your aloof, cryptic layout back to Bombay's version of Brooklyn and dump it in a trash bin at the local ditchwater coffee shop.


Then I want you to straighten up your thick-rimmed emo glasses and start over with a simple template with a plain, classic header that's just your title and a drop-down archive. I want you to tag your posts with "English" or "Hindi" so people can just skip to whatever language they understand or feel like reading that day. And I want you to write more often, because I want it.

Could you hold this for a sec? Yeah, it's just my emotional depth.

Hi, my name is Rohini. I am a vibrant nineteen years old, and I've got it all figured out.

I discover truths every day that you never contemplate, because I am different.

I am lost and wandering and idealistic and I write mediocre poetry to prove how whimsical and romantic I can be, and I totally understand the plight of the underprivileged because I took a course on it after prep school. Don't judge me because I'm from Suburban Jerkwater, India. I'm not like them. I am different. I get it. See? Here is one college essay that proves my profundity, which is a word I learned in my thesaurus.

You know what? I'm pretty sure I wrote college papers on a whole slew of topics that are a bigger deal than your slew of topics, so I will just go ahead and give you a couple of those.

As you can tell, I am very insightful. Here, catch. Another poem. It's about soldiers because I understand them in my soul. This is because I am sage.

But don't let the heft of my soul intimidate you! I am a regular teenager and I goof off with my friends! Yes, that is a very long one, but I was so excited about telling you I had fun that I couldn't bother with paragraphs and splitting up the entries by day, because we did so much! :)

Wait, what? Oh. Um, okay. You want to hear something...you want me to show you what it was like. I heard that once. Show don't tell. But I'm trying to show...I am trying too hard? How can you try too...oh, like I'm trying to be impressive instead of just being me.

Well, okay, I wrote this once, but I don't know, I mean, it's kind of ramblesome but it's how I really feel. I don't know. I just really miss them. Yeah. I mean, and I started this internship, and now I kind of...you know. Lately I've been thinking that there is so much I have to learn.

On Poetry and Dyspepsia

This morning began badly. I had passed a broken night plagued by sinister intestinal arias and had finally slipped into a lightly-greased coma when I was awoken by a troupe of vulgar children taking a shortcut through the grounds. Nothing is more terrifying to me than children en masse. When they had gone I had my Fanny put down some salt, but I have no doubt they will return.

For breakfast I dealt commendably with a sweetbread bap washed down with small beer, but my mood was low, the Black Dog cocking its leg against the scrappy saplings of my mind. Fanny tried to distract me, bless her cotton socks, but I have seen that trick with the billiards balls so very many times that I could barely raise a smile, let alone anything else. I decided that the only thing to do was to get stuck into this review, so Fanny booted on or whatever you call it, and from the ether we summoned Shadow.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that Shadow is a poet! And I mean that without a trace of sarcasm – poetry is my meat and my cream. I am aware that I am in a minority here. Some people have had such traumatic experiences with poetry that they shut down at the mere mention of the word, the way I do when I hear ‘siphon tubing’. It is such a shame, because a good poem, a really good poem, is like a toothful of gods.

Shadow is a prolific little monster. There are well over a thousand posts here, which is a touch daunting for one who would at least like to eat supper before they die. I decided to start with the most recent post and work backwards. Fanny handed me a large Advocaat-and-brine and in I plunged, hoping to have my maculate soul salved by some beautiful words.

But oh! Unhappy day! Shadow rhymes! Of course, in all fairness, rhyming isn’t always a bad thing. From Shakespeare to Edward Lear, people have pulled it off. But the trouble with rhyming verse is that, in the wrong hands, it quickly dissolves into doggerel. Shadow stuffs her words into forms like Fanny stuffs me into my truss each morning and they, like me, end up uncomfortably strained, viz:

"gone is the spark that would dance in your eyes
silent the words that my heart on relies"

"playful the creatures that dance through the night
carried by angels whose calls them invite"

"a feeling as silent and subtle as mist
is rising up through the air
tentacles curling and winding their way
sensations you don’t much for care"

All of the above are very much sic, of course. And I would hope that they illustrate the problems I had with Shadow’s work. I am all for people having a go - we must never shy away from poetry assuming it is only the pastime of the intellectual elite. I must own to having penned the odd stanza or two myself; mostly romantic verse written during my courting days. Prison is most conducive to romantic thoughts, to which the great Marquis himself would no doubt attest. I think the world would be a much nicer place if more people flirted with the odd haiku. However, there is no escaping the fact that I find this to be excruciatingly awful poetry.

It’s not just the rhyme scheme (which is haunting me, forcing all my thoughts and movements into a sing-song rhythm. Diddly-diddly-diddly-dum, I go as I make my way from the daybed to the dressing table. De-diddly-diddly-doo), it’s the repetitiveness of imagery, theme and language. I had Fanny search for posts containing the words dark, darkness, black, pain, sorrow, shadow, moon, kiss, soul, angel, demon, night, but we got bored of counting. I realised when I reached the fortieth post that I had not yet happened across a single arresting image, one startling line. I quite like, "your words are laced with rust," but the poem ends with the plain unforgivable:

"and with the onset of natures death
my soul froze to your plea
cold is the whisper on your breath
i retreat into woods misty"

There are, no doubt, many people who would disagree with me about all this. Shadow has a lot of chums – there are in excess of forty comments on some of her posts, almost all of them extremely supportive. She is a member of a thriving little community, and she’s even got awards! I wish someone would give me an award. They’ve taken all my medals away from me now, and the ones Fanny made from milk bottle tops just don’t have the same je nais se quoi. Anyway, there is clearly a market for this kind of stuff (but this is the internet, where there’s a market for crayoned drawings of ants fucking cardamom pods), and Shadow’s fans have every right to question my authority to judge. I question my judgement all the time. Why, for example, have I just eaten two pounds of whelks? We’ll all come to regret that soon enough.

I must point out that Shadow isn’t all about poetry – a hop back in time reveals diary-style entries about her day-to-day life, her favourite things and so forth. From this and other hints around the place, I came to appreciate that Shadow has seen some tough times. I am not callous enough to make light of anyone’s afflictions, addictions or journeys to recovery, and I tip my cap to Shadow’s strength in making herself well. I’m just here for the poems, as poems are what Shadow has been producing these past many months.

I believe it is customary to give advice at some point during a review, but I am not sure what advice I can give to Shadow. She likes her poetry. Her fans like her poetry. It seems to provide them all with much-needed succour. I would love to see Shadow throw off her ill-fitting forms and frolic naked in free verse, but that’s my personal taste. I could recommend a thesaurus and a big, fat poetry anthology, but they are my panaceas. Everyone should keep a poetry anthology in their bathroom. I can think of no more profound an experience than reciting Yeats during a healthy evacuation.

Eventually, when all Shadow’s poems began to blur into one, I had to desist. I gave it a good shot, but I can’t recommend this blog (unless you like pictures of raven-haired beauties, of which there are many; they look mournfully into the mist, they play the violin against burning skies, they show coquettish shoulders by strange seashores. I prefer blondes myself. Fanny had the most beautiful golden curls, before the accident). There is so much quality stuff out there that I’m damned if I’m going to read any more of this rot. Shadow is a grown woman. She can write what she likes, but I will never return to her site, nor will I ever forgive her. My umbles are protesting and I’m going to need at least an hour on the commode with Dylan Thomas before I can face Fanny’s tripe for tea...

For making me hate poetry, I award Shadow with this brightly flaming finger. Why not write a poem about it?