Madge - version dos

[Erthona]

version 2
------------------------------------------------

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road
and cars make a sticky noise as they pass by
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop is a woman with
tumbleweed blown straw-blond hair,
lips painted like a freshly cut pink neon fig,
and deep crevices carved in pasty skin
from years of negligent living.

She reminds me of the Palmolive
dish-wash soap manicurist,
so I'm thinking her name might be
Madge...Not a name you hear much now.
That was from a time when if you were cool
you rolled your Lucky's up in the sleeve
of your tight white cotton shirt,
wielded a Zippo like a samurai sword,
and lit two, one for you and one for her.

She has that look like she's done a year
or two in what they call jail these days.
Nothing like the jail on the
Andy Griffith Show where
Otis, the town drunk, slept it off
then let himself out the next morning.
No one was letting Madge out
through those double vault doors
after her last bender, when she
smashed her fender into that street light.

She's obviously on the way to work;
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias like Luby's where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
a thousand times a day,

“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin” *

while serving their purgatory on earth,
but it's hard for a felon to get a job these days.

I can see through the heat distortion
swirling up from the earth
acting as a convection oven,
that she's firing up a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent of two hours of work.
Well, I guess you just find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!


©2013 -Erthona


* “hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”
help you, more tea, and come again.

------------------------------------------------------
original version

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road;
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair,
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig,
and deep crevices in pasty skin.
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!

©2013 -Erthona

[tectak]

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road; Economic word use. Oil consider it.
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night. ...but only if "fat people" is an adjective. Hmm.
At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair,
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig, ...but what is a neon fig?
and deep crevices in pasty skin. or pastry skin....yes....pastry skin
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”. ...so Badge or Nadge or Padge but NOT Madge? I would rephrase this.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail. Kind of like the distinction but would like gaol instead.I'm a Brit.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning. ...this is good enough but it not as good as you can get ...

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark ..bad enjambment.Not like you. In fact,the whole bloody piece is it not like you...is it you?
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”. ...you are off on a hobby-horse. Punctuation trap for tectak. Piss 'orf

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven ..put on your bifocals. This is missing some/A words.
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death! Yep. Nailed it....but what?

©2013 -Erthona

I think you are just warming up again. The Muse infused with recently oxygenated blood. Private joke. I shall watch this space.
Very best,
tectak

[in-need-of-an-empire]

the last six lines really spoke to me as an unemployed smoker. i've read some of your work, and a few of your critiques here on the site. i have no critique for you personally. i enjoy your poetry.

Though happy that you have quit smoking, your employment status should give you enough time for considered crit...which this is not. Please give the author the benefit of your thinking on the poem presented. It is not enough to say "it spoke to me".
mod

[billy]

just a few nits of little importance but there was one line i struggled with. some good images. for me it's a little wordy in places but i think that's more my problem than the poems. (a matter of taste)
what i liked about it aside from the images, was the breakdonw/profiling of the woman. it was like the narrator knew of many madges. not that ted bundy comes to mind, but it also had a half decent dark side to it.

great to see you posting some more poetry :J:

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road;
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair,
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig, a suggestion is [like freshly cut neon figs]
and deep crevices in pasty skin.
It makes me think her name must be would it read better if [her name must be] was moved to the next line?
something like “Madge”.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities i like this line simply because it made me smile
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

Through the visual heat distortion isn't it a given that you see it?
swirling up from earth as convection oven this is a problem line for me. a suggestion would be [swirling up from convection oven earth]
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!

©2013 -Erthona

[btrudo]

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road;
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair,
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig,
and deep crevices in pasty skin.
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!

©2013 -Erthona

I read this as rather bleak.
"fat people sex" "Madge" "ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress " "servitor" "zombie phrases" "wonder how...work"
This narrator very much dehumanizes the woman in this presumed portrait here, though it's just the narrator's words.

The idea of a serial killer or rapist would make sense if there was more sense of an actual stalking taking place here. If the stalking is trying to hinge on "life and death" that's simply not enough.

Right now, it reads like a very condescending person staring at someone at the bus stop. Does this shed light on how people view each other? Perhaps.

my thoughts,
Bill

[milo]

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road; you don't need 'asphalt' with oil. The double on 'hot oil' is nice.
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by, don't need 'by'
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night. sticky sound is enough, I read this ten times and never figured out why you introduced 'fat people sex' here. Such a big image on such an irrelevant detail. And the rest of the poem is free from fat people or sex(?)

At the bus stop is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair, 'straw blond' feels overly familiar, maybe because of the cliche "hair like straw" but I think overprocessed blond is probably enough

lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig,
and deep crevices in pasty skin. It is occurring to me that you just like to over-modify the fuck out of everything. For me, it makes everything weaker.
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”.

Her name must be something like Madge is enough, we know it is the narrator thinking

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

What is the point of all of the speculation about what kind of jail it was that she may have spent time in? Especially the description of the jail she /didn't/ stay in(?) This seems way too tangential.

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform

this is so much modification on 1 noun, I have to think you could pick better nouns and verbs or at least infer some of this stuff metaphorically.

for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

"cum'gin' is amusing because it makes me think of 'cum gin' but I doubt that is the intent

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven

this sentence just doesn't parse properly grammatically. I can figure out what you are trying to say, but every pass, the grammar here is annoying.

I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!

©2013 -Erthona

It ends very prosey. Actually, the whole thing is quite prosey without the line breaks and the line breaks aren't anything to write home about (her, with (you actually broke on with?),way, they, places, medium-dark, and work).

The constant waffling (I think, I wonder, probably, obviously) all seems unnecessary and weak, and the overmodification throughout is cloying.

Thanks for posting.

[Truerenigma]

Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road;
cars make a sticky noise as they pass by,
sticky noise just sounds like you don't know how to describe it. "their tires stick to the tar.."i think the first three lines can be conflated our conjoined into one concise thought/line.
sounding like fat people sex on a hot night.
At the bus stop there is a woman with
overly-processed straw blond hair, i get what you're saying with over processed, but it's clumsy.
lipsticked lips like a freshly cut neon fig,
and deep crevices in pasty skin.
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”. her skin makes you think here name must be Madge? I'm sorry but this is coming of as a clumsy, presumptuous, pretentious, holier than though rhetorical put-down on the working class. It's speculative and un-grounded.

She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail. the type of jail is not important, especially when we're only musing on unfounded speculations.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning. unclear, clumsy. Was the jail she was in the place where the town drunk sleeps it off, or was the Mayberry jail where the town drunk sleeps it off?

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”. so she has a job, what's the point? That the narrator is above their position of employment and use of ungrammatical patois?

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven awkwardly over modified, and grammatically unsound- earth as convection oven? Makes no sense.
I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death! well, we know It's not A matter of life and death for her to smoke (even though we know it may be for her to quit), so it fails as irony, and a self-satisfactory sarcasm it's hardly worth hanging a poem on.

©2013 -Erthona

It seems whatever humor that was intended for the piece was lost to poetic "pose" in the form of clumsy over modifying that fails to accomplish its (perceived) goals.

Also, as a whole it seems unprovoked.--did she spit in your eggs?

It could perhaps be rescued by stripping it down to simple, concise, unmodified prose arranged into units (something like noun/acts upon--noun). From their, losing nothing to over modification and pose (poetic or otherwise), begin again, by carefully inserting your puns and/or punchlines.

JMHO

[Erthona]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Re: "freshly cut fig", an allusion to Hesse' "Siddhartha", Kamala's lips are compared to a freshly cut fig, meaning both sets, the upper and the lower. I suppose I could have said "neon pink" but that seemed unnecessarily awkward. I felt the usage was both satiric and ironic.

Tom, it is true I generally do not do observational sketches in prose poetry, but I was lacking in sufficient energy to put it in my usual word turned querulous style.

I will make changes to the line as suggested as regards the last two lines in the first stanza.

"fat people" is an adjective.

Most other suggestion I will act upon.

Thanks again for the comments, I would discuss further but am a bit fatigued at the moment.

Dale

[Erthona]

Thanks Bill,

A lot of my work deals with point of view, I treat the narrator no easier than I do "Madge". Life and death simply refers to an addicts need for the substance, to state this as such creates ambiguity, making it nicely ironic.

Thanks again,

Dale

I read this as rather bleak.
"fat people sex" "Madge" "ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress " "servitor" "zombie phrases" "wonder how...work"
This narrator very much dehumanizes the woman in this presumed portrait here, though it's just the narrator's words.

The idea of a serial killer or rapist would make sense if there was more sense of an actual stalking taking place here. If the stalking is trying to hinge on "life and death" that's simply not enough.

Right now, it reads like a very condescending person staring at someone at the bus stop. Does this shed light on how people view each other? Perhaps.

my thoughts,
Bill
[/quote]

[Erthona]

Thanks for your comments Milo. Some I will use, some I will address here.


Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road; you don't need 'asphalt' with oil. The double on 'hot oil' is nice

As roads can be composed of many substances, such as concrete, gravel, and dirt, as well as asphalt, I think it is necessary to state that the road is asphalt to avoid confusion. This is a very specific image I want to get across, I do not want it to be ambiguous. However, I was never satisfied (and I am still not satisfied) with this line, and have rewritten it a number of times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sticky sound is enough, I read this ten times and never figured out why you introduced 'fat people sex' here. Such a big image on such an irrelevant detail. And the rest of the poem is free from fat people or sex(?)

What can I say, it is a metaphor, or as Tom would have it an adjectival metaphor Seriously, a lot of this is to show you the mind of the speaker.
-----------------------------------------------------
'straw blond' feels overly familiar, maybe because of the cliche "hair like straw" but I think overprocessed blond is probably enough.

This is an allusion to strawberry blonde hair...a double entendre that represents the past and the present.
-----------------------------------------------------
It is occurring to me that you just like to over-modify the fuck out of everything. For me, it makes everything weaker.

Sometimes, perhaps, just to irritate the reader...sometimes just to have fun!
----------------------------------------------------------

Her name must be something like Madge is enough, we know it is the narrator thinking

I'll consider.
---------------------------------------------------------
She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

What is the point of all of the speculation about what kind of jail it was that she may have spent time in? Especially the description of the jail she /didn't/ stay in(?) This seems way too tangential.

You are a bottom line kind of guy, aren't you. Unfortunately, I tend to use the tangential to try and get behind the readers defenses. However, I do think this is a very clumsy section. I am not fond of it, and it needs reworking.
----------------------------------------------------
She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform

this is so much modification on 1 noun, I have to think you could pick better nouns and verbs or at least infer some of this stuff metaphorically.

I could have inserted, "because she is wearing..." but it seemed unnecessarily wordy.
-------------------------------------------------
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

"cum'gin' is amusing because it makes me think of 'cum gin' but I doubt that is the intent

hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin help you, more tea, come again. However, any bawdy interpretation are gladly accepted.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven

this sentence just doesn't parse properly grammatically. I can figure out what you are trying to say, but every pass, the grammar here is annoying.

agreed, it is an awkward usage, although I like the idea of imaging the earth as a convection oven, and this is why it creates heat waves that create mirages, but I have been unforgivably clumsy with it here.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!



It ends very prosey. Actually, the whole thing is quite prosey without the line breaks and the line breaks aren't anything to write home about (her, with (you actually broke on with?),way, they, places, medium-dark, and work).

Yeah, line breaks need work... Well it is prose-poetry
------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks again for the comments Milo.

Ya'll cumbak now, hea?

[milo]

Thanks for your comments Milo. Some I will use, some I will address here.


Hot! Oil seeps out of the asphalt road; you don't need 'asphalt' with oil. The double on 'hot oil' is nice

As roads can be composed of many substances, such as concrete, gravel, and dirt, as well as asphalt, I think it is necessary to state that the road is asphalt to avoid confusion. This is a very specific image I want to get across, I do not want it to be ambiguous. However, I was never satisfied (and I am still not satisfied) with this line, and have rewritten it a number of times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

for me, if I read Hot oil along with road, I know it's asphalt. There may be some who can't figure it out, but they're probably not going to get anything else in here either, now are they?

sticky sound is enough, I read this ten times and never figured out why you introduced 'fat people sex' here. Such a big image on such an irrelevant detail. And the rest of the poem is free from fat people or sex(?)

What can I say, it is a metaphor, or as Tom would have it an adjectival metaphor Seriously, a lot of this is to show you the mind of the speaker.

I like it for the metaphor, so I was hoping it would be more relevant. If I was you, I would save it for a different poem, one with some later speculation of sex in it or other tawdriness. Here it is wasted and a bit of a red herring besides.

-----------------------------------------------------
'straw blond' feels overly familiar, maybe because of the cliche "hair like straw" but I think overprocessed blond is probably enough.

This is an allusion to strawberry blonde hair...a double entendre that represents the past and the present.

I would be surprised if anyone gets strawberry blonde, I got that stiff, straw-like, overprocessed blond from it.

-----------------------------------------------------
It is occurring to me that you just like to over-modify the fuck out of everything. For me, it makes everything weaker.

Sometimes, perhaps, just to irritate the reader...sometimes just to have fun!

it can be fun but I hope you reconsider some of it at least during the editing process

----------------------------------------------------------

Her name must be something like Madge is enough, we know it is the narrator thinking

I'll consider.
---------------------------------------------------------
She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning.

What is the point of all of the speculation about what kind of jail it was that she may have spent time in? Especially the description of the jail she /didn't/ stay in(?) This seems way too tangential.

You are a bottom line kind of guy, aren't you. Unfortunately, I tend to use the tangential to try and get behind the readers defenses. However, I do think this is a very clumsy section. I am not fond of it, and it needs reworking.

I think in poetry I am mostly not a bottom line kind of guy as I am way more interested in the journey (sonics, devices, fresh language) than I am in the destination (meaning). I am a big fan of being as concise as possible during the editing process and I think you might want to consider if all of this speculation is additive or distractive. just me rambling again.

----------------------------------------------------
She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform

this is so much modification on 1 noun, I have to think you could pick better nouns and verbs or at least infer some of this stuff metaphorically.

I could have inserted, "because she is wearing..." but it seemed unnecessarily wordy.
-------------------------------------------------
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”.

"cum'gin' is amusing because it makes me think of 'cum gin' but I doubt that is the intent

hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin help you, more tea, come again. However, any bawdy interpretation are gladly accepted.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Through the visual heat distortion
swirling up from earth as convection oven

this sentence just doesn't parse properly grammatically. I can figure out what you are trying to say, but every pass, the grammar here is annoying.

agreed, it is an awkward usage, although I like the idea of imaging the earth as a convection oven, and this is why it creates heat waves that create mirages, but I have been unforgivably clumsy with it here.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I can see her smoking a cigarette,
and I wonder how someone like her
can afford to smoke, when a pack cost
the equivalent two hours of work.
Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death!



It ends very prosey. Actually, the whole thing is quite prosey without the line breaks and the line breaks aren't anything to write home about (her, with (you actually broke on with?),way, they, places, medium-dark, and work).

Yeah, line breaks need work... Well it is prose-poetry
------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks again for the comments Milo.

Ya'll cumbak now, hea?

of course. Once again, good luck with the edits.

[Erthona]

JMHO,

Thanks for the comments. Some of these I have acknowledged above
The rest I'll address here.

---------------------------------------------------------------
It makes me think her name must be
something like “Madge”. her skin makes you think here name must be Madge?

Well, actually that would refer to the complete description, not just the last line.
---------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sorry but this is coming of as a clumsy, presumptuous, pretentious, holier than though rhetorical put-down on the working class. It's speculative and un-grounded.

Yes, people often make these sorts of assumption, but as this is mainly an examination of the speaker by way of his observations, you are free to assume that
------------------------------------------------------------------------



She has probably done a year
or two in the prison they call jail. the type of jail is not important, especially when we're only musing on unfounded speculations.
A jail without any of the
Mayberry RFD homey qualities
where the town drunk sleeps it off,
then lets himself out in the morning. unclear, clumsy. Was the jail she was in the place where the town drunk sleeps it off, or was the Mayberry jail where the town drunk sleeps it off?

Yes, this is clumsy. There is a valid point here, but I did not handle it well. I will work on that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

She's obviously on the way to work,
wearing the ubiquitous medium-dark
brown knit knee length dress that serves
as the standard uniform
for servitors in such places
as the occupational cleaning industry
and chain cafeterias where they
monotonously repeat their zombie phrases
“hep ya”, “moe tea”, and “cum’gin”. so she has a job, what's the point? That the narrator is above their position of employment and use of ungrammatical patois?

Cultural bias frequently resorts to pointing out colloquialism as evidence of the supposed stupidity being assigned, however can they not be pointed out as the course de jour without implying stereotyping. Could it not just as well be an observation of pity rather than disdain?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I guess you find a way
when it is a matter of life and death! well, we know It's not A matter of life and death for her to smoke (even though we know it may be for her to quit), so it fails as irony, and a self-satisfactory sarcasm it's hardly worth hanging a poem on.

As noted above, for an addict, acquiring the substance is a matter of life and death, or at least it feels that way.

It seems whatever humor that was intended for the piece was lost to poetic "pose" in the form of clumsy over modifying that fails to accomplish its (perceived) goals.

Also, as a whole it seems unprovoked.--did she spit in your eggs?

Are you assuming I was the speaker?

It could perhaps be rescued by stripping it down to simple, concise, unmodified prose arranged into units (something like noun/acts upon--noun). From their, losing nothing to over modification and pose (poetic or otherwise), begin again, by carefully inserting your puns and/or punchlines.

I would like to see an example of that.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks again, I appreciate your comments, it has given some things to consider.

Dale

[Erthona]

Ha! Laziness is also one of my virtues. It is why I write poetry and not novels!

Dale

[milo]

Ha! Laziness is also one of my virtues. It is why I write poetry and not novels!

Dale

I don't know. For me a novel would be less work.

a good novel is cake compared to a good poem.

[Erthona]

Can I have a scoop of ice cream with that half metaphor?

A good poem is stuffed with all manner of goodness. Just so, it is a stuffed poem! (from- Much Ado about Poetry)

A good novel is a torture on the writer, but an enjoyment to the reader.

A good poem is an enjoyment to the writer, but a torture to the reader!

Philosophy tortures everyone!