ACCUSATIONS at the general Poetic Masses hereabouts, TorF?

You do not Duel because...

you despise Mahayr.	4.2%	[ 1 ]
you despise someone else in here.	12.5%	[ 3 ]
you are, as accused, CHICKEN!	8.3%	[ 2 ]
it is beneath you, you are just that good. BUT too chicken to prove it.	0.0%	[ 0 ]
you have too much on your plate for lowly duels, and are CHICKEN!	4.2%	[ 1 ]
there is not enough to be gained, you are greedy.	25.0%	[ 6 ]
Other... post your own answer.	45.8%	[ 11 ]
Total Votes:			[ 24 ]

[knight_of_chivalry]

Congrats! smile

[Zeo]

The Duel:

Challenger: Akashya inoue
Defender: Dancing Armadillo Mage
Bet: 500g
Type of Duel: Regular Duel
Judge I prefer: Zeo
Style/Form I prefer: Open form: meaning any form of our choosing.
Subject I prefer: Nature

Enguarde!

Edit: You two posted your poems before the enguarde. talk2hand Anyway, judgment coming soon!

[Zero is an Integer]

[Mnemosynee]

Zeo

The Duel:

Challenger: Akashya inoue
Defender: Dancing Armadillo Mage
Bet: 500g
Type of Duel: Regular Duel
Judge I prefer: Zeo
Style/Form I prefer: Open form: meaning any form of our choosing.
Subject I prefer: Nature

Enguarde!

Edit: You two posted your poems before the enguarde. talk2hand Anyway, judgment coming soon!

gonk

I had thought you posted it, so I then posted mine too! ninja


My fault for not checking.

[TheAmberShrew]

zero the last decepticon

Shiny.

[Zeo]

The Duel:

Challenger: Akashya inoue
Defender: Dancing Armadillo Mage
Bet: 500g
Type of Duel: Regular Duel
Judge I prefer: Zeo
Style/Form I prefer: Open form: meaning any form of our choosing.
Subject I prefer: Nature

The Critique:

Dancing Armadillo Mage

Okay, so this is a prose poem for my duel with Akashya.

One thing I want to mention: generally, prose poetry does not have line breaks. It is presented as a block of prose, but the language is a mixture of prose-like narrative or presentation and poetic language, imagery, metaphor, etc. It's just something I wanted to point out, as it's one of my favorite poetic forms. You can read more about it here.

Death is Beautiful

The sun hitting the back driver’s side window cast the scene in a grey-gold. The very first thing I'm feeling...is a bit unengaged. The imagery is fine, but the sentence/poetic structure here feels a little uninteresting, especially for the beginning.
The white Toyota rounded a tight corner and brought new scenery into view. I'm feeling the same sort of thing with this line. It's feeling less poetic and more strictly prose.
A mountainside of fire-tones after miles and miles of evergreens Nice imagery heart Was there supposed to be punctuation at the end of this line, though?
“They’re beautiful,” the first thing I had said in an hour. Check grammar here.
“They’re dying”
“Oh.” I was crushed.
“Really?” I was hit by a shattering crisis of understanding.
“Murderers,” I assessed, matter-of-factly. I'm not really sure what's going on in these four lines, grammatically. I find the statement--full stop--narration of what the speaker is doing/feeling right after speaking--another full stop and line break to be very jarring and confusing. Is this just one speaker talking? If so, in prose, you'd keep it on the same line or paragraph rather than breaking it up as you would for different speakers. Overall, though, the use of dialogue in this piece in this fashion is really not working.
“No.” Are we to assume this is the second speaker here?
He insisted this was massacre without intention or design. I was furious.

Years latter, I found cause in lack, (sp)
a lack of cold winters and deep snow to freeze the innocent killers.
a lack of hash chemicals to burn them and their children. (sp)

Ok. I think I see what you're going for here. I know it looks like your poem just got attacked by the dark-blue-pen-of-death, but bear with me here. What's interesting about this piece is that you were going for prose poetry and were looking to use elements of both. I see elements of both throughout, and now I want to help you utilize them more fully and coherently.

For the most part, I'm seeing a couple things. The poetic elements and imagery are being largely overshadowed in this piece, making it read more like awkward prose. The weakest part of this whole poem is the dialogue. It is confusing in how it is written, how it is presented, and what it is saying. On the one hand, the speaker is distressed ("crushed" and "hit by a shattering crisis of understanding" feel like the same thing, to me, so you may not need to use both). On the other, the speaker then goes to announce "murderers" matter-of-factly, despite being distraught in the other lines. This doesn't quite make sense. But more importantly, the set up is what is most confusing. You might want to condense some things here, because I'm not sure all the lines/bits of dialogue and narration are entirely necessary. I would take a look at how you want to use the dialogue in this piece to make it stronger and more coherent. You don't have to get rid of it, it just has to flow well and make sense.

I noticed there were a few areas with misspellings and lack of punctuation. These are easy fixes; just make sure you run through and edit real quick. Some of those lines felt like full stop statements to me but didn't end in any punctuation. If you want to keep this in free-verse format (as opposed to prose poem format), I'd really suggest enjambment. It'd help a lot with some of the more unengaging lines.

Keep the heart of the meaning of this piece at its center and build the imagery from there. There's a lot you can do with the destruction of trees--in fact, in your poem the beetles were never even directly mentioned. You might try adding more to suggest what is going on in this scene, rather than directly telling us how the speaker feels about it. It doesn't need to come off as a lecture in order to communicate the powerful feelings the speaker has about this occurrence.

A little overwhelming, I know. What I'd suggest, most of all, is that you practice with both prose and poetry separately before trying to merge the two. This piece had an overall feel of not being sure which it wanted to be. Neither elements were presented very consistently or confidently, so definitely keep practicing and in time you'll have a very strong understanding of how the elements of prose and poetry come together in this form.

Akashya inoue

Whispered Cadence

With silent stillness, moon-dressing on the bay,
the night's watchful eye reflects lily-white which shines This line is a little...unwieldy. Maybe it's the "which shines" part that reads a little strangely to me. Also, "lily white" really doesn't need a hyphen.
on your pale flesh, a permeating light this day. Day? I thought it was night, with the moonlight and all. Also, the syntax of this line feels overly strained.

Your eyes encompass the rays of blue, the way
your skin, as in flower-aspect, aligns I think you could elaborate on "flower-aspect" and its associated imagery/ideas. Also, this line doesn't quite match up syllable-wise to the others. More on this later.
with silent stillness, moon-dressing on the bay.

My eyes cling, nostalgic, to your face as you say: "Nostalgic" set apart by commas feels a little awkward to me.
I think the night sky feels like seal skin as it reclines I like the way you set apart the dialogue here.
on your pale flesh, a permeating light this day.

I gaze into your sepia eyes, the way If this person's eyes are brownish, what did you mean by the eyes "encompass[ing] the rays of blue" earlier?
your sight connects the dots of Pegasus who aligns
with silent stillness, moon-dressing on the bay.

Just when volumes of memory form, you say:
only, I can't climb high enough to touch it. Halo-light reclines The comma after "only" is confusing and I don't think it's needed here.
on your pale flesh, a permeating light this day.

My heart palpitates in slow motion as I say: This is an overall comment and doesn't pertain to this piece alone as such: I notice you tend to use the same words and phrases in all or most of your pieces. Watch out for that, and try to vary the images/language that you use. It sounds nice here, but I've read "my heart palpitates" or some variation in nearly all of your poetry so far.
you're as beautiful as the beacon that shines
with silent stillness, moon-dressing on the bay—
on your pale flesh, a permeating light this day.

Overall: watch the syllable count, especially in regards to the middle lines. Each middle line is a slightly different length, giving the poem an unbalanced feel.

I find the secondary rhyme scheme ( "ines" ) to be a bit clashing with the primary ( "ay" ). Maybe it's just a personal aesthetic thing, but the two sounds, while utilized nicely, don't come together as complimentary sounds. They feel a bit like clashing colors--the effect being jarring. For any other piece this might be a desired effect, but for the mellow one such as you're going for the clashing rhyme schemes only serve to pull the reader out more than bring them into the gentle mood of the piece.


The judgment:

This was a fun duel to judge. Both of you took very different approaches to the subject, and I loved the idea of the open form. It was fun to see which direction you'd each take it in. Armadillo went with a more serious environmental topic, and Akashya took a more romantic approach.

As far as subject goes, it'd be hard to pick a winner. I liked both. But as far as poetic strength and understanding goes, Akashya inoue is the winner of this duel. Good job, guys. biggrin

[Zero is an Integer]

TheAmberShrew

I just comprehended that the prompt is to write like Zero.



*various curses*

Yeah...

Good luck with that. rolleyes

Challenger: Akashya inoue
Defender: TheAmberShrew
Bet: 5k
Type of Duel: normal
Judge: zero the last decepticon
context: Think like Zero. Write like Zero.
Style/Form I prefer: ghazal

[areyououthere]

good one luis. congrats.

[Zero is an Integer]

ninja

[TheAmberShrew]

*smashes face into wall repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly*

[Mnemosynee]

Here's my Ghazal
Blind Delusions

Blue dragon flying, bow in shame between unholy flares forevermore.
Tonight, I ask, what is significant about your name forevermore?

The lunatic before us burns and grows but tame
between a worn but artful churn; colour appears but lame forevermore.

With eyes of anger, colour for here and now, burning prophecies!
Angelos! dark above sepia ripples 'cross from air return but tame: forevermore.

The monochrome remains, bit by bit, bloom in flame with stirring dark,
conjured by blind persistence, fear before the ark. Your name is feared and lame forevermore.

Apophis hear a nerve of truth! Between the Earth meandering,
I trace the lines of long-forgotten paths with grace and sneer before your name forevermore.

[TheAmberShrew]

Ghazal for duel with Akashya inoue.

old-timey slips and accidents

We tread on thin, glassy madness, swallowing red
into our lungs, and coughed up hurricanes blowing red.

Minutes past mundane, and we struck salvation with a pen
on a cliff overlooking the bad part of town. It was snowing red.

As we sang below big stars, small dreams were devoured
by our vocal chord's vibration, sending radiation flowing red.

The sky flickered with fifty thousand feathers, all ruffled.
Birds were dropping like the temperature, crowing "red".

Our fingers bled into prayers as we threaded needles
we couldn't see. The gauze ran out, and we were sewing red.

This is why pools are bleached and drained when it rains.
When we let our blues mingle, they turn on us, going red.

It figures: try to do something good and get burned;
amber eats our flesh and we regret this, glowing red.

[Mahayr]

If I was going to think like Zero and write like Zero, I would go read his stuff and steal lines here and there to put together something *coughs* new. WELL, I WOULD!!!

[Zeo]

Well, that's happened before.

[TheAmberShrew]

Mahayr

If I was going to think like Zero and write like Zero, I would go read his stuff and steal lines here and there to put together something *coughs* new. WELL, I WOULD!!!

Where was this brilliant concepts a few days ago, when I was smashing my face into the wall?