The Word and Verse                                    Issue 5  -  Page 2

The word and verse is an independent publication put together by  members of DU for the purposes of entertainment
and is in no way intended to offend or cause outbursts of suicide.      -June 2012-
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No comment:
Words of wisdom from the people that keep the place interesting.

"Sarah is a common name and I know atleast ten. Please don't name her something common or something weird."

-fieryangelsouljia, on the What should I name my baby thread
to a woman who is quite used to the name "Sarah" by now.
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Poem Box


In this edition of Poem Box I'll be critiquing two famous poems, one I love and one I loathe.

"Scorpion" by Stevie Smith

'This night shall thy soul be required of thee'
My Soul is never required of me
It always has to be somebody else of course
Will my soul be required of me tonight perhaps?

(I often wonder what it will be like
To have one's soul required of one
But all I can think of is the Out-Patients' Department -
'Are you Mrs. Briggs, dear?'
No, I am Scorpion.)

I should like my soul to be required of me, so as
To waft over grass till it comes to the blue sea
I am very fond of grass, I always have been, but there must
Be no cow, person or house to be seen.

Sea and grass must be quite empty
Other souls can find somewhere else.

O Lord God please come
And require the soul of thy Scorpion

Scorpion so wishes to be gone.

***

Sylvia Plath described herself as a "desperate Smith-addict," and had arranged to meet her before she committed suicide. Smith,
who died of a brain tumour in 1971, believed that she didn't need to kill herself, because the mere thought of death was enough to
sustain her. I think of Smith's poetry as gentler than Plath's, which at times felt raving and harsh. Smith's was tender, especially
towards the end. This poem, from her last collection Scorpion and Other Poems, reflects the image of a woman who knows death
is close, and is calling it home. In earlier work this idea of asking for death felt suicidal, the result of long depression, but here it's
an acceptance. She knows she will die, not by her own hand but Fate's, and is tired of waiting.

I like the contrast between these lines from verse two: "'Are you Mrs. Briggs, dear?'/No, I am Scorpion." The first line is delightfully
twee. For me it evokes the image of a kindly, bustling nurse talking to an old woman in that patronising manner nurses do. Following
this, the second line is strange and menacing. Even the word "scorpion" hits the ear in a gruesome way, with a hissing "s" and sharp
"k" sound. This might imply that beneath Mrs. Briggs' frail exterior lies an ugly, damaged soul she now wishes was free "to be gone."

Verse three and the following couplet are for me reminiscent of Plath's Berck-Plage, in that they evoke a serene natural desolation.
The absence of all life and even signs of life ("house") create an oddly celestial atmosphere. One feels that, like Greta Garbo, all
Smith wants is to be alone, even in the afterlife.

The references to God in this poem are interesting. She seems to regard him as the keeper of her soul, with the ability to set it free.
Smith had a complex relationship with religion. She once described herself as a "lapsed atheist," and though she renounced her faith
she didn't completely abandon it, once writing: "There is a God in whom I do not believe/Yet to this God my love stretches." Perhaps
in her longing "to be gone" she was willing to buy even the notion of God.

More Smith poems:
http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi2.htm
http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi1.htm
http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi5.htm
http://www.artofeurope.com/smith/smi4.htm
 
***

"Thank You For a World of Kindness" by Leonard Nimoy

Thank you
For a world
Of kindness

Thank you
For your
Endless patience

Thank you
For your
Sensitive understanding

Thank you
For Your
Love

***

I'm not a fan of Nimoy's poetry. I find it banal and artless. What he calls poems I call sentiments, simple notes jotted down which
have no creative worth. Take "Thank You For a World of Kindness." Line breaks not included, name two techniques he uses here
which distinguish it as a poem. Being mostly a user of free verse myself I don't care that it has no meter or rhyme, but where's the
imagery, similes and metaphors? There's nothing here which signals it as a work of the imagination. In seconds I could devise a
poem of this calibre:

I am in love with you
And our love is wonderful

Flowing over us both
We will always be here

In love

That was actually slightly harder than I thought. "Flowing over us" and "here/In love" are images, kind of, so I retract. I can't write
a poem of this calibre in seconds; I can only write one that's better by default. So can you. Try it now. Think of a basic emotion and
describe it in as artless a way as possible. There's a good chance the resulting poem will be better than "Thank You For a Word of
Kindness." I guess you could say "a world/Of kindness" (given Nimoy's Star Trek fame, these lines evoke an alien planet where every-
one gives each other reach arounds and helps wash the dishes) is an image, but even then it's a very weak one, not as strong as
the oh-so-stellar "Flowing over us."

I'm not sure I can keep writing about this poem. There's not much else to say. At least Benjamin Zephaniah is memorably terrible.
Amusingly, Nimoy writes poetry the way I imagine his alter-ego Mr. Spock would: with perfect logic, and not much else. (I'm sure
slash fiction writers will put Nimoy's poems to good use in their latest stories about Kirk trying to make a Vulcan come.)

More Nimoy poems:
http://www.retroist.com/the-poetry-of-leonard-nimoy/you-fill-me-with-your-love/
http://www.retroist.com/the-poetry-of-leonard-nimoy/because/
http://www.retroist.com/the-poetry-of-leonard-nimoy/a-silence-with-you/

- JH

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No comment

"What's the difference from what you said to what I said lol?
I thought you was a prostitute? Now you're the queen of the underground ?"

-Gg78,  on the "Get published" thread
to the wrong member.
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After reading the IQ thread it has become very apparent that both MENSA and pre-school are recommending DU to it's members.
So in this edition we will be giving a look at a problem solving exercise. You will need a pencil and paper to jot this down.



----------[G]----------[E]----------[W]----------














----------[1]----------[2]----------[3]----------


E= electric         G= gas              W= water

What you need to do is draw lines from each utility to each house
numbered 1,2 and 3. Each house must have all three utilities
but no lines can cross another one.

Hint: think outside the box

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Well, My God


Those of you with no real religious affiliations might have gotten some amusement during the week when Tehran announced that a
Christian text containing verses attributed to Jesus Christ proves Islam is the righteous religion and will cause Christianity to collapse.

http://www.rt.com/files/news/iran-christianity-gospel-islam-messiah-215/turkishnewscom-image.n.jpg?Lo0P=3439c27f723984152
5d82d78a6eb457a42848

Tehran has a dark sense of humor at the best of times but there seems to be some merit to the authenticity of the texts. Rome, sur-
prisingly enough, has branded the texts as fake. Now, People! It's highly likely that the texts are in fact authentic but that's not to say
that they were written using only facts. The author of the texts, Barnabas (one of the disciples), may well have been a genius with
fictional prose.

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No comment:

"Hello Evan.

How do you feel about that nasty rumor that gingers have no souls?"
-PiereTheMad

"Pierre! You can't just ask people how they feel about gingers and their lack of soul."
-Carla

"Of course you can...the souless bastards won't care".
-DP

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Free Speech is what they preach

Listen to me! Listen to me!
And to what I will now preach
My words will set you free!
Thats the freedom of speech.

Now hold on and wait a sec there, Mack
your words are worth absolutely Jack
Everybody seems to be the next best preacher
with words of God and other sods
their very own personal god that only they know
but hardly any of it makes it sense
those stupid words from out of touch teachers.
Wouldn't we all rather lust after our neighbour
than love them?
Especially given the heartbreak record we all boringly talk about.

So who wants to be free?
More importantly who can be free?
Cos it seems theres censors everywhere
all except the erotic and their underwear
because they can say what they want
but their words aint worth much
So thanks for free speech a bunch.

Listen to me! Listen to me!
And to what I will now preach
My words will set you free!
Thats the freedom of speech.

Yet silence is golden,
Especially when you talk shit.

- Muggle Ghost Guest Writer A
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No comment:

i rode a horse once. it never walked again.

-Deontejordan, on the YEA (it's my birthday) thread.
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Are you High yet?

Ok good thinking, folks, the following is an interesting experiment
conducted by Derren Brown:

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan,the 24-year-old Palestinian claimed to have no memory of the incident
beyond seeing a woman in a polka dot dress. Conspiracy theorists claim that he was in a trance triggered by the polka dot dress,
as was programmed into him by CIA operatives.

In this experiment, he takes a group of volunteers and whittles them down to the person most susceptible to mind control, then tries
to get him to shoot a well known celebrity in a very public place.

The rest is for us to know and for you to Google.
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No comment:

"I personally think mermaids are just a terrible half-waste of a woman."

-PierreTheMad,  on the Mermaids thread
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