neoeno
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Joined 6 years ago
neoeno
Posted twenty-four pieces
Thinks of Excellent.
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Collection of small writings I put together in a semisuccessful attempt to revive my narrative practice. They're all either cute, entertaining, or short, I think, so you should all read them.
Of late, I have been having a thing about writing obscenely long commentaries. Here is one:
The challenge was to compose a poem about loss without using articles (A, An, or The). It was pretty effortless, actually, I don't know why. Anyway, I started off with the idea of people you see in crowds or whatnot and who look/act interesting but you don't talk to purely because it's just... not done. I like to wonder how many people have thought this about me. It's really sad, all these things that keep us apart. The event in the poem is a loss of a person, and all the possibility that entails. I draw a lot from the Isolation chapter of The Revolution of Everyday Life (Raoul Vaneigem). It's great, go read it.
I considered that articles are actually pretty politicised pieces of grammar. There's probably a whole dissertation on the political aspects of articles, but what I found interesting was whether you use articles to refer to people. You don't when you're using their name, they're an individual then, they're an important enough artefact in your world that they are referred to only by a name.
However, the word 'waiter' has an article. When you are telling the waiter what you want to eat, you are interacting with them as an object, function, or interface. But if you were to call them waiter, to call after them or something, that would be pretty rude. Perhaps because you are insinuating that their importance amounts to being a waiter. Even more curiously, you go to Pizza hut (without the article), but the waitress (with the article) takes your order.
I don't know grammar very well, but that's what I took from it.
From this, I took my theme, and that I wanted to use a sort of acrostic. Note the first letter of each left-justified line, I E _ O U I E _ O U (missing the A's, of course). It actually works pretty well as a form by itself, but I also used it to say that this was an intimate setting (there are no articles).
I came up with the title pretty easily. It's a reference to 'On Being Sane in Insane Places', a sociological experiment by Rosenberg. Look it up, it's pretty fascinating.
After that, it's pretty much all poetry and all the grappling that entails. All that's left to explain really is a few references. I got a bit nerdy:
* 'wavelengths disappear' - The Casimir Effect
* 'blues shift' - ...blue shift.
* 'Zeno' - Zeno's paradoxes. I like this one so I'll explain it. Imagine you're walking towards something. You get half way there, so you've half way still to go. You walk half of that, then half of that, then half of that, etc. If you keep working that out, you get an infinite number of points you have to cross before you get to your destination. But you can't cross an infinite number of points in a finite time, so you never actually get to your destination. Makes sense, right?
That's about it, really. If you've read all this, I clearly have not written enough!
A fun little piece, to be read in a Bristolian accent. Partly inspired by my frustration with my own voice, and its lack of interestingness.
Yep. This'ns for golden_orchids. The form is a simplified glosa (ta Kluny for tipping me off to that one), and the meter is (mostly) dactylic tetrameter, which is a pretty damned awesome meter.
So, in my first month at uni the most exciting development for me was my new understanding of meter. Before, I didn't even understand what it was, but somehow I 'got' it in the course of a bit of research. I'm now in the process of overusing it in the form of a number of sonnets. The more I write, the more I'm seeming to 'get' the medium of sonnet itself, as a tool. There will be a few in here that are a bit... shaky...
Commentary for Damnbrosia:
Sorry about the title... I just couldn't resist.
This is the first sonnet I ever wrote, and the first thing in meter I ever wrote, and so it's a bit rough around the edges...
Overriding theme of my social life at uni though.
Commentary for Skeletons:
Second (pretty much) sonnet I've written. Again, shaky...
Commentary for Phantomb:
A sonnet that was composed, using a set of rules and a tiny bit of intuition, from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Pieces that I am tempted to destroy because they're old and eurghy. No doubt, however, some people will enjoy seeing the contrast, so here they are.
Just a collection of things I write that were driven through my mind by a huge force of emotion. Needless to say, these pieces are generally rather emotional.
They tend to be more personal, and more close to my heart than plot-driven pieces.
Title subject to change at any time.
I'm not 100% sure where this is going. Basically it's centred around a guy's experience with a drug which turns people into clowns.
Don't be silly, it's a great idea.
Standards loss they may deplore.
Damn them, the bastards.
Okay, okay, I lost the rhyme at the end; You try doing better!
This is where I'm keeping poems which I describe as deriving from (or actual) haiku. I'll state the rules I used in the individual pieces.
Series of very short stories about a surreal place called big Jo's city, initially it was serious, but then it degenerated quite quickly. Unfini
This is the series in which goes the users daylogs, please keep non-daylogs out of here, and keep daylogs in here. Also, do not edit the title of this, or pieces in it will not be recognised as daylogs, thanks.