2 hours ago
Just want to point out that "of" in the last line is not forced to take a stress. Yeah you can read it that way but it's hardly mandatory: I got
in CRUDE apPROXiMAtion of your LOVE
But yeah I still would not recommend trying to write this poem in iambs OR rhymes, both seem to be significantly contributing to its defects.
I think the biggest mistake, as it were, to address here is the conceit itself. This just isn't, probably, a very good idea at the end of the day -
ironic account of an ill-fated love affair between human user and chatbot, in which the verse itself enacts the cringiness it's calling out.
satire IMO is far and away the most exigent of literary forms. 90% of satires is just plain BAD and another 9% is mid. Only the very very
best is actually much good at all.
This is because to pull it off the work has to live on this razor's edge where it's simultaneously enacting the thing it critiques, but doing so
in such a way that the audience never doubts who is really in control, or that X or Y feature is intentional. Here, because the poem's craft
is not airtight, one simply never figures out what is going on - "where are we?" becomes the predominant experience of reading the verse.
Instead of considering the subject, the reader spends most of their energy simply trying to define the rules of engagement. Along the way,
he has to question whether certain features are just shortcomings or subtle jabs at whatever is the intended satirical subject. Like neither I
nor Busker realized the author was having a go with "move/love" - we both just clocked it as un-self-aware bad writing.
there is of course the additional and perhaps simpler issue that the result of this approach is to actually make the reader read bad writing
as part of the experience of the poem.
I don't much care what the POINT of the last stanza is, nor would I sign up to have it explained - it's 7 lines of verse that isn't enjoyable to read,
so I don't want to read it.
in CRUDE apPROXiMAtion of your LOVE
But yeah I still would not recommend trying to write this poem in iambs OR rhymes, both seem to be significantly contributing to its defects.
I think the biggest mistake, as it were, to address here is the conceit itself. This just isn't, probably, a very good idea at the end of the day -
ironic account of an ill-fated love affair between human user and chatbot, in which the verse itself enacts the cringiness it's calling out.
satire IMO is far and away the most exigent of literary forms. 90% of satires is just plain BAD and another 9% is mid. Only the very very
best is actually much good at all.
This is because to pull it off the work has to live on this razor's edge where it's simultaneously enacting the thing it critiques, but doing so
in such a way that the audience never doubts who is really in control, or that X or Y feature is intentional. Here, because the poem's craft
is not airtight, one simply never figures out what is going on - "where are we?" becomes the predominant experience of reading the verse.
Instead of considering the subject, the reader spends most of their energy simply trying to define the rules of engagement. Along the way,
he has to question whether certain features are just shortcomings or subtle jabs at whatever is the intended satirical subject. Like neither I
nor Busker realized the author was having a go with "move/love" - we both just clocked it as un-self-aware bad writing.
there is of course the additional and perhaps simpler issue that the result of this approach is to actually make the reader read bad writing
as part of the experience of the poem.
I don't much care what the POINT of the last stanza is, nor would I sign up to have it explained - it's 7 lines of verse that isn't enjoyable to read,
so I don't want to read it.