Splicing adjacent thread titles

freemason9 · Post by **freemason9** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:39 pm

I lied. I don't actually know how to compose sonnets. I don't really know what they are, exactly. I read about sonnets somewhere, though, and I supposed they indicated sophistication.

Again, sorry.

Canadian whiskey is actually better than that Kentucky rotgut, you know.

Maddy · Post by **Maddy** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:40 pm

I'll take a White Russian while you're serving, freemason!

freemason9 · Post by **freemason9** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:45 pm

Maddy wrote:I'll take a White Russian while you're serving, freemason!

This is actually beginning to feel like a lounge. Have you been keeping up with mine and Sweejak's conversation re:quitting, Maddy? This is his fault. Had he not brought up alcohol, I would not be drinking right now. I swear, though, this is my last one. I'm going to bed.

Maddy · Post by **Maddy** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:48 pm

I have been! And I agree, Canadian over Kentucky!

OP ED · Post by **OP ED** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 2:43 am

Maddy wrote:I have been! And I agree, Canadian over Kentucky!

unfortunately...thirded.

(Kentucky has better tobacco though, sorry FM9)

...

Bill Gates master of the recession?

Did women cause the weather?

monster · Post by **monster** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:36 am

US gap between God and Obama greatest on record

rich Fuck poor

"the Machine is Pitching man against man"

Project Willow · Post by **Project Willow** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 4:58 am

Bill Gates master of 90% of Dollar Bills

Harlem Store Owner Can be Fabricated, Scientists Show

God is the Missing Ship

Fuck is the Machine

Joe Hillshoist · Post by **Joe Hillshoist** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:38 am

Am I seeing how we support our false beliefs.

Study demonstrates what i'm seeing. (...

Tucy · Post by **Tucy** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 11:29 pm

Anti-depressants under construction!

barracuda · Post by **barracuda** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 1:07 am

freemason9 wrote:I don't actually know how to compose sonnets.

You might want to check out the sonnets only thread for some pointers.

freemason9 wrote:Canadian whiskey is actually better than that Kentucky rotgut, you know.

To each his own, but I consider properly cask-aged Kentucky bourbon to reign supreme as my personal libation of choice just after Vintage porto declared in 1960 or 1962. Further bottle aging of Kentucky bourbon - and I have enjoyed bottles in the 75 year old range - can round this whisky to sheens of an indescribable mellow embued with profound reveries prompting rash and dire promises and the sublime joys of inescapeable melancholy.

The moon claims to be Tahoe girl kidnapped 18 years ago

Woman is made of wood

compared2what? · Post by **compared2what?** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:24 am

barracuda wrote:
freemason9 wrote:I don't actually know how to compose sonnets.
You might want to check out the sonnets only thread for some pointers.

Or someone could just reveal that a sonnet is a 14-line poem, that's usually written in iambic pentameter if it's written in English, in which case it's also usually divided into three quatrains and a couplet (Shakespearean sonnet). Or sometimes an octave and a sestet (Petrarchan sonnet). But I have no idea how anybody has ever managed successfully to produce any of the latter. They look mad difficult to me.

In any event. It's a 14-line poem that (usually) takes one or the other of those prosodic structures , each of which traditionally follows one or the other of two rhyme schemes. Incidentally, "iambic" means the basic rhythmic unit of the poem is an iamb, which is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, and "iambic pentameter" means that each line of the poem is composed of five metric feet, all or most of which are iambs. Other kinds of metric feet include trochees, dactyls, and anaspests. And spondees. I know! Let's make a little metric glossary! Oh, come on. Please? I may never get another chance to turn this into something other than totally superfluous and trivial knowledge. Really? Thanks! Okay:

iamb = dot-dash
trochee = dash-dot
dactyl = dash-dot-dot
anapest = dot-dot-dash
spondee = dash-dash.

Now forget about everything that isn't either iambic or trochaic. Or spondaic. Because we are strictly into two-syllable scansion here, and that's final. So. Most sonnets written in iambic pentameter throw a trochee or spondee curve somewhere into the line. Maybe because it sounds good, or maybe because it means something meaningul-like, or maybe because it's just too difficult to express yourself solely by emphatically and unambiguously going "ta-Dum/ta-Dum/ta-Dum/ta-Dum/ta-Dum" for fourteen lines. Or even for one line. Because it sounds odd. Except when it doesn't. As in "and-Sum/mer's-Lease/hath-All/too-Short/a-Date" or 'but-Thy/e-Ter/nal-Sum/er-Shall/not-Fade" from Sonnet 18. But, you know. That guy was gifted.

Right. So rhyme schemes. Traditionally, they're "abab cdcd efef gg" when Shakespearean (recommended), and they're "abbaabba" plus "cddcdd" (or "cdecde" or "cdcdcd") when they're Petrarchan (impossible). Or they kind of mix'n'match, as in what would be Petrarchan "Holy Sonnet 14" if John Donne had been able to resist that nice little ka-pow you get at the end when you end on a couplet:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

But he was gifted, too, so it's fine that he didn't. That's about all there is to it. I couldn't write one to save my life, personally. But that doesn't mean it's never fun to try. Even though -- excuse me for just one moment....

Ten Rules for 18 Years Ago.

....I've always totally sucked at just about every type of primarily creative writing that there is. As you can see.

Joe Hillshoist · Post by **Joe Hillshoist** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:38 am

Study says world's stocks seized last week.

34, 500 pot plants controlled by the select few.

911 Planner becomes Mary pinchot Meyer.

The moon is made of guardian angels.

About the wood...

Obama against Obama.

Queers to control internet during a 'cybersecurity emergency'.

§ê¢rê†§ · Post by **§ê¢rê†§** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:45 am

I loved the lecture on sonnets. I somehow escaped them in school, never looking back from the pleasures of free verse, good old prose, and maybe concrete poetry. But they are intellectually sexy when you really start to think about it.

Anyhow here's my splice:

The War On Drugs is a War on Women

Because of some prison-reformist activists I met, who convinced me just how badly women get it in the war on drugs. And it was a perspective I hadn't thought of before. The idea is, women lose their husbands who are convicted of victimless drug crimes, and thus the fathers of their children, sentencing them into, basically, single-parenthood. Even worse, women convicted of drug offenses lose their children.

Of course the War on Drugs is a war on minorities, but it is also a war on women.

Maddy · Post by **Maddy** » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:21 pm

'Pacific Garbage Patch' vs. Privatised Companies

barracuda · Post by **barracuda** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:06 am

The big "Why" - Why Do Fortean/UFO and parapolitic/UFO's / Secrecy / Black Ops / Murd / truthers hate eachother?