starling

Well, I really don't know what to make of this. So basically, because I offered some advice on writing poetry, based off what I've found to be true, and then payed you a compliment (and woodwoman) I get called a twat? This is indeed a very bizarre place. And for the record Wert, I was asked to give my reasoning on why I don't go in for psychotropic drug usage and the culture that goes along with it. I said I'd rather not, because the post would simply be deleted--which kind of did happen, it got moved to degenerated and I got a week long ban, despite the fact that I made no personal attacks and got called a trolling wanker who has probably shoved too much DMT up his ass--by the very people who sought clarification on the issue, no less. So basically, I got a ban for giving my reasoning on a subject I was asked to give. Honestly, this site is totally fucked. The supposed open-mindedness that is espoused is pure bullshit, because being open minded and censorship cannot, and do not, coexist. And I was censored for giving an opinion. And now you call me a twat for paying you a compliment and trying to help you out with poetic forms. Well, fuck this place. You are all useless degenerate drug addicts who have fucked yourselves up so much that you have not only lost the ability to think, or create anything interesting, but can no longer participate in standard intellectual discussions or even basic social conventions based on mutual exchange in any way. You are, quite simply people, the walking fucking dead. And such people are not worthy of my time. Good luck with it all Wert.

after white power comments made at dimebash,

The first poem is metrical--mostly constructed of iambs. If you didn't intend this, you almost certainly have a natural aptitude for writing in meter, which is quite a natural ability to have. I will do a scansion later.

There's a lot I like about this wert. I think with some revision you could have something really great here. And I commend you for being a caring father--I never had one of those. s

You mean a bulk discount? Yeah, I'll do that. I may no longer have all the listed types on offer, though. PM me, I'll check and see what I have.

A) Sickle cell anaemia does give some--not a total-advantage over Malaria, and considering that pretty much everybody develops a natural immunity to the virus if they survive repeated exposure anyway (yes, they do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2620631/) and the systemic health tax that comes with Hbs, the whole shenanigan is, quite simply, a very stupid way of dealing with Malaria. Here's a brief rundown of what sickle cell anemia causes. vaso-occlusive crisis extremely high risk of infections, greatly reduced chance of surviving infections, both common and life threatening--especially influenza Acute chest syndrome Massively increased chance of blood clots, strokes, internal hemorrhages etc fatigue, tiredness, lethargy anemic crisis Now, considering that the countries with the highest rate of of HBs are third world developing nations such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the trade off for having a slightly more favorable rate of resistance against malaria is...well, quite shit really. In fact, a child born with with Hbs in Africa will probably die before the age of 5. Bravo, evolution! You really fucking knocked it out of the park on this one! And not only that, sickle cell anaemia allows occurs at a reduced rate in Europe, where there malaria doesn't even exist--so people carrying Hbs in those regions get absolutely no kickback as a result of having this life-threatening disorder at all. Wouldn't it be better to say, I don't know--pop a few quinine Tablets? Yes. Yes, it would. Not only is there no legitimate survival advantage to carrying Hbs in the conditions of the present--which again, contains quinine--but the symptoms of Sickle cell anemia would have greatly reduced the probability of survival in the past. All it would have meant is that while carriers would have been less likely to die from malaria. they would have been at much greater risk of winding up dead from an injury which caused an infection, or a cold. And in those conditions, there were no modern medicines to help stave off the symptoms of Sickle anaemia. Malaria is a tropical disease, btw--guess where quinine trees grow. It's understood that the benefits of quinine were understood by tribes very intimately--it was they who introduced it to us, actually. I'm sorry, your grasp of evolution by natural selection is not sound. It comes perilously close to what would be considered intelligent design. Allow me to be clear--nature has no plan. It doesn't know you or I exist, and while I'm not disputing that organisms do indeed adapt to the conditions of environments, it is still random probability--that is, luck, that drives those adaptions. For every successful adaptation that exists, there are hundreds of thousands of failures. It is about as cruel, inefficient, and barbarous a method for designing organisms imaginable. It literally consists of throwing out random mutations hand over fist until something works--not perfectly, mind you--just enough to accrue any survival advantage at all, or a disdvantage that results in either the immediate death of the affected organism or the effacement of an entire species over time.Some mutations might not accrue any survival advantage all, but since they also don't result in a disadvantage, these effectively useless, pointless traits are passed on throughout the span of time, forward into a time where they might either result in a survival advantage or disadvantage. It is a system driven by, and characterized entirely by, nonsense, endless death and suffering. And the whole thing might be worthwhile if the Earth itself stayed static, but it doesn't--it's a transitive flux, ever-changing. What is successful one generation might be completely outdated and unviable in another. Consider if you will, thePermian extinction, which caused about 87% of all genera to be wiped from existence. Our species only exists because of that event, incidentally. We exist through sheer dumb luck--as do 90% of all modern animals. Our own biology is atrociously designed fr4om an enginerring perspective. We stuff food into the same orifice we breathe from. Our entire life system is dependent on a pump that is prone to clogging, rupturing, and failing--a pump which I might add never stops: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/11/01/ask-a-scienceblogger-which-par/ And finally, we are a part of nature.We didn't evolve as extra-terrestrials. And therein lies the ultimate truth;we are a part of evolution--everything we do is a part of evolution. I do not think we are capable of greater atrocities or abominations than nature itself--but I do think we are capable of ethics--something of which natural selection is, in case you haven't noticed, completely devoid.

Evolution by natural selection isn't as simple as 'survival of the fittest'. There are all kinds of modicums of selection, and actually some organisms are here today through what can only be described as sheer, dumb luck. Nature doesn't design intelligently, that's the problem. Really all we'd be doing through manipulating the human genome would be cleaving out a lot of bad codes which result in nothing good for anyone. As it stands, space simply cannot be transgressed by our physical bodies. My personal bet is that at some point in the future we will figure out how to separate our consciousness somehow, and send this out forward into space as signals, the way digital files are now. Of course there would need to be something to receive these.

It's pretty much inevitable that designer babies will become a thing. We already kind of already practice eugenics when you look at some instances of Abortion (many women opt to have abortions if it is established the baby will be profoundly disabled, for example). Not even sure I disagree with GM humans, honestly. Look at the kinds of atrocities perpetrated on human kind by the lottery of natural genetics.

last call for drinks this year. Please refer to my other post for a list of CV's.

Thanks king. I'll have a few more for you to ID soon, a lot of different types have come up after the rain.

Hi wert, it looks like bluedog may have folded. Poetry is an increasingly niche form of writing, and participation in it as a market gets slimmer every year. As such, journals going bust is pretty much par for the course. Meanjin probably won't as it's kind of a cultural institution. I did find this journal, which seems to legitimate, and is an Australian publication: http://apj.australianpoetry.org/issues/apj-5-2/ Other advice: A) Don't have your poems rhyme unless they are metered, or syllabic. Avoid modifiers--words that modify nouns. Studiously avoid adjectives altogether. C) Avoid latinate type words--words with latin or greek roots, especially those that contain a lot of vowels. This is a big tip. because almost all contemporary poetry written in the last 25 years is constructed from saxonic words with have clean sonics (sonics being the sound of sound)--which are plain, or perhaps common, but used in interesting ways. To get a sense of how this works, I recommend reading some of the work of Anne sexton. Her Kind is a good example. She can show you how to use simple words in extraordinary ways. D) Avoid Abstractions, and remember that just because you understand something, this does not imply that the reader will. E) Avoid cliche'. Basically, a cliche is a common thought, scene or idea. Developing a sense of what is cliche is something that takes time. F) Avoid beat poetry --it was really only relevant for a short time and has been completely passe' since then. It's not published anywhere anymore. E) Avoid purple prose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose F) Limit your use of similes. And when you do use one, make it a direct hit. Ditto metaphor. A poor metaphor or simile in a poem is impossible to come back from. Try not to make direct comparisons between objects and things. For example, in Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf used the following metaphor to describe the expression of Anxiety/panic in the countenance of the character septimus, who has PTSD: 'The world has raised its whip--were will it descend'? This is succinct, accurate, and frankly very brilliant. Now, we're not all virginia woolfs. So don't expect to knock it out of the park like that. But it's a good standard to strive for. G)Condense, condense,condense. Poetry is not prose. You must reduce and refine your poem as much as possible--trim the fat. Compress. Whittle down your ideas--boil them down to their essential essences. H) Avoid polemic sentences I) Avoid vulgarity--this isn't to say never throw in the odd fuck, but make them count, be relevant, and use them sparingly. Use vulgarity in either a direct quote, to either personify a type of character, characters or protagonist, or to convey the severity of an emotion. Below are two poems by les murray which employ vulgarity these ways: Pigs Us all on sore cement was we. Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush under that pole the lightning's tied to. No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy. Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp. We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush. Us all fuckers then. And Big, huh? Tusked the balls-biting dog and gutsed him wet. Us shoved down the soft cement of rivers. Us snored the earth hollow, filled farrow, grunted. Never stopped growing. We sloughed, we soughed and balked no weird till the high ridgebacks was us with weight-buried hooves. Or bristly, with milk. Us never knowed like slitting nor hose-biff then. Nor the terrible sheet-cutting screams up ahead. The burnt water kicking. This gone-already feeling here in no place with our heads on upside down. The last hellos http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/last-hellos Hope this helps. s

Doesn't come out in the picture, but when freshly emerged they were a very pale yellow.