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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 2:26 pm 
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It was six years ago today, down to the very minute, if I timed this correctly, that I joined NGA. According to the Members list, I was the 15th person to join the site overall. I was the very first person to post anything in the Art, Flavor, and Storyline thread when I posted this poem: Home.

So, with that anniversary looming, I've been thinking about my time here a lot lately, as well as my time before arriving at the Wizards' old boards, my time there, the early days here at NGA, and where we are now. And, considering I had resolved this year to write at least 52 new poems, I thought a poem would be appropriate.

With all of that in mind, here is my poem for the week, and for the occasion.

Where the Raven Flies


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sat Sep 28, 2019 9:48 pm 
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This week, I bring you a villanelle, a highly structured form with repeated lines, probably most famous to modern readers by Dylan Thomas's famous "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

This villanelle takes the form of a prayer to St. Micha, one of the Seventy-Seven Saints of the Church of the Holy Catharsis, on the M:EM plane of Dammerdall. St. Micha is one of the Seven Saints of the Arch, the highest tier of Saints, and is in fact considered to be the greatest, and most revered, of all of the Saints.

Enjoy!

Invocation of St. Micha


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 1:10 pm 
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@Where the Raven flies: ...I totally saw where you were going with it, and I still got hella sad, which doesn't mean I didn't appreciate it. I can't quite parse the rhythm the last verse's repetition is supposed to have though, it scans to me as a little abrupt.

@Invocation: This form is obviously easier to parse, and the poem reads like a believable prayer (and maybe even a chant), so much that I wouldn't mind it to be included in the plane's dossier as an appendix.

Thanks for sharing!

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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 3:48 pm 
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@Where the Raven flies: ...I totally saw where you were going with it, and I still got hella sad, which doesn't mean I didn't appreciate it.

Yeah, it makes me sad, too. :cry:

I really hope some of our lost birds fly back this way soon.

I can't quite parse the rhythm the last verse's repetition is supposed to have though, it scans to me as a little abrupt.

Do you mean the last stanza, or the repeated "Where the Raven flies" line that ends each stanza? If it's the latter, it's meant to be off-putting. It intentionally doesn't scan right. In the first line of each stanza, I tend to read the "Where the Raven flies" as an anapest followed by an iamb (where the RAven FLIES, through ENDless DARK). At the end of the stanza, I read it as a single stressed syllable, followed by two iambs (WHERE the RAven FLIES). I like the word abrupt here, because I think the missing syllable from that first foot definitely has that effect.

In other words, yeah, I know it's weird... :)

@Invocation: This form is obviously easier to parse, and the poem reads like a believable prayer (and maybe even a chant), so much that I wouldn't mind it to be included in the plane's dossier as an appendix.

I would be fine with it. I'll put it up for vote with a specific note that it would be put into the Dammerdall dossier - speaking of the Dammerdall Dossier, I edited the wiki to include a complete list of all Seventy-Seven Saints. Officially, that is not part of the dossier, but I've had the list made since I first made the Dammerdall dossier, and I just never got around to posting it anywhere.

Thanks for sharing!

And as always, thank you for reading!


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 4:19 pm 
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Do you mean the last stanza, or the repeated "Where the Raven flies" line that ends each stanza? If it's the latter, it's meant to be off-putting. It intentionally doesn't scan right. In the first line of each stanza, I tend to read the "Where the Raven flies" as an anapest followed by an iamb (where the RAven FLIES, through ENDless DARK). At the end of the stanza, I read it as a single stressed syllable, followed by two iambs (WHERE the RAven FLIES). I like the word abrupt here, because I think the missing syllable from that first foot definitely has that effect.

Huh! Quite interesting stuff. In Italian (even when we study poems in school) there's way less attention to stressed syllables, so that kind of things tends to go over my head. I should probably dedicate some time to understanding that.

Quote:
a complete list of all Seventy-Seven Saints. Officially, that is not part of the dossier, but I've had the list made since I first made the Dammerdall dossier, and I just never got around to posting it anywhere.

Nearly a crime, the mere thought of coming up with 77 names sends a chill down my spine :V You're a freakin' hero to my eyes.

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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 5:25 pm 
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Do you mean the last stanza, or the repeated "Where the Raven flies" line that ends each stanza? If it's the latter, it's meant to be off-putting. It intentionally doesn't scan right. In the first line of each stanza, I tend to read the "Where the Raven flies" as an anapest followed by an iamb (where the RAven FLIES, through ENDless DARK). At the end of the stanza, I read it as a single stressed syllable, followed by two iambs (WHERE the RAven FLIES). I like the word abrupt here, because I think the missing syllable from that first foot definitely has that effect.

Huh! Quite interesting stuff. In Italian (even when we study poems in school) there's way less attention to stressed syllables, so that kind of things tends to go over my head. I should probably dedicate some time to understanding that.

If I remember the quote correctly, the textbook I use to teach students poetry states that "poetry in English is both metrical and syllabic." To be fair, though, modern poets care significantly less about syllable count and stressed or unstressed syllables, just as they've largely dropped off caring about rhyme (not everyone, of course, but a significant majority.) The last class I took in Graduate School, concurrent with writing my Master's Thesis, was a Writing Poetry class. There were probably about twenty of us in the class, give or take a couple. And, despite being in a graduate level class near the end of my schooling, I was the ONLY student in the class who had ever done scansion before. So that should tell you how much these sorts of concerns have fallen by the wayside. Most older poetry in English has some sort of syllable count, but it's just not discussed too often anymore.

I, of course, am still very fond of it. :D

Quote:
a complete list of all Seventy-Seven Saints. Officially, that is not part of the dossier, but I've had the list made since I first made the Dammerdall dossier, and I just never got around to posting it anywhere.

Nearly a crime, the mere thought of coming up with 77 names sends a chill down my spine :V You're a freakin' hero to my eyes.

To be fair, most if not all of them are real-world names that enjoy some level of popularity or commonality in Germany (Dammerdall being HEAVILY influenced by medieval Germany, of course), so it is not as though I came up with seventy-seven fantasy names. I feel confident in myself that I could come up with seventy-seven unique fantasy names if I needed to, but because of the plane, they're basically all real names. I do list what each one is a patron of, though, and that was definitely a process.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 03, 2019 1:50 pm 
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If I remember the quote correctly, the textbook I use to teach students poetry states that "poetry in English is both metrical and syllabic."

I slightly misremembered the quote. It is "Poetry written in English is both accentual and syllabic." It goes on to explain that "poets count the number of accents as well as the number of syllables at they create each line of poetry."

Again, I'm not sure how true that is of all poets these days, but it is usually very true of me. There are, for instance, maybe only four or five poems of mine in this thread that are not in a set metrical pattern (The three song parodies/song-inspired poems and maybe one or two others). I have always really enjoyed metrical poetry. Writing it is sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle while painting the picture yourself.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:23 pm 
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Based on something that was said in another thread, I decided to write a poem about knights. I have opted to do so in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. Enjoy!

Color of Knight


And because this is a Patrarchan sonnet, otherwise known as an Italian sonnet, I've decided to run this poem through Google Translate into Italian. Huey, I trust your translation skills FAR more than Google Translate's, so please feel free to tell me if the translation is as hilariously bad as I suspect it will be. :)

Colori del Cavaliere


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:11 am 
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On average it's not that bad, honestly, except for the ridiculous botches. Obviously the title and the last pun fall flatter than a polished table, and speaking of polished, the translator thinks the white knight's gauntlets are really, REALLY clean (it considered "polished" an adjective). Also, according to it, the dawn (from "morning") is some kind of drug-dealing spirit(?), as its "crack" is left untranslated :D and squires might be carrying their master's... mohawks?... on their back. (weird wording from the mistranslation of "crest")

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Johann the Bard (The Adventure Zone) wrote:

To anybody reading this, including my future selves: have a good everything!

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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:08 pm 
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On average it's not that bad, honestly, except for the ridiculous botches.

If there's one thing I love, it's ridiculous translator botches!

Obviously the title and the last pun fall flatter than a polished table,

To be fair, the title doesn't make a whole lot of sense even in English... :)

and speaking of polished, the translator thinks the white knight's gauntlets are really, REALLY clean (it considered "polished" an adjective).

There's something about the image of a White Knight endlessly polishing their gauntlets that just feels very appropriate. Or, perhaps more accurately, the squire doing it...

Also, according to it, the dawn (from "morning") is some kind of drug-dealing spirit(?), as its "crack" is left untranslated :D

"primo crack!" HA! I didn't even notice that. That's hilarious.

and squires might be carrying their master's... mohawks?... on their back. (weird wording from the mistranslation of "crest")

And this just makes my day. The image of stereotypical Western European Middle Ages knights, but all with over-the-top 1980s punk rock mohawks dyed their appropriate colors, is such a fantastic image. Add to that the fact that the squires apparently need to carry said mohawks on their backs just pushes this over the top.

Thanks for giving the translation, Huey!


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sat Oct 19, 2019 9:58 pm 
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I have no idea if this one is going to work on this site or not, but here we go...

Sands of Time


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 5:50 pm 
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Apparently, some of the upside down capital letters don't show up on some mobile devices. Bummer.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:39 pm 
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Maybe not, but i find it supremely cool just by form. I would love to see this as a physical thing, like printed out on some hourglass-shaped paper design perhaps. Something I would do, though I'm not sure if it would change the meaning you intended for it, would be to make the last word of each half, which I assume to be revivor, into an ambigram, so that you could read the last word regardless of how the poem is physically oriented. Doing something like that would probably need a completely different poem to support the proper physical dimensions to make the hourglass shape, though.

On the subject of using poetry by twisting the physical form, though, I thought I'd share this limerick I came across recently:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Or, to put it another way:

12 + 144 + 20 + 3√4 + (5x11) = 92 + 0
7



I haven't had any luck in tracking down any other math-equations-as-poems, but I really enjoyed that.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 6:11 pm 
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Maybe not, but i find it supremely cool just by form. I would love to see this as a physical thing, like printed out on some hourglass-shaped paper design perhaps. Something I would do, though I'm not sure if it would change the meaning you intended for it, would be to make the last word of each half, which I assume to be revivor, into an ambigram, so that you could read the last word regardless of how the poem is physically oriented. Doing something like that would probably need a completely different poem to support the proper physical dimensions to make the hourglass shape, though.

I'm glad you liked it! I have not written very many concrete poems (shape poems) in my poetry writing career, but they are certainly a fun challenge. I remember during the planning phase of the Innistrad anthology, I wrote a concrete poem that was in the shape of Avacyn's collar, upside down and broken on one side. That was a lot of fun.

The central word is, indeed, "reviver," which of course is a palindrome, and the reason for it being in the center. It would be really crazy to see this poem as a physical, 3D hourglass.

On the subject of using poetry by twisting the physical form, though, I thought I'd share this limerick I came across recently:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Or, to put it another way:

12 + 144 + 20 + 3√4 + (5x11) = 92 + 0
7

Cool. I'm not much of a math guy, but I do like things like this. Thanks for sharing it!

I haven't had any luck in tracking down any other math-equations-as-poems, but I really enjoyed that.

This isn't quite what you are talking about, but hey, I tried my best!

:)

Math


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:58 pm 
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The central word is, indeed, "reviver," which of course is a palindrome, and the reason for it being in the center. It would be really crazy to see this poem as a physical, 3D hourglass.

Ooooooooh. Now I get it. I assumed it was "revivor," with an "o," because no matter how I spell it, I get that little red line that says it's misspelled. That makes a lot more sense, and is also a really neat use of a palindrome.

And now I'm imagining a really hard poem, that uses a palindrome to form the end of the poem, and then if you read it backwards, it's a different poem.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:37 pm 
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The central word is, indeed, "reviver," which of course is a palindrome, and the reason for it being in the center. It would be really crazy to see this poem as a physical, 3D hourglass.

Ooooooooh. Now I get it. I assumed it was "revivor," with an "o," because no matter how I spell it, I get that little red line that says it's misspelled. That makes a lot more sense, and is also a really neat use of a palindrome.

Thanks! I was pleased with it. I've always liked palindromes (as my character Cyrryc Adda can attest to...) and it was fun thinking of this poem as, essentially, two sonnets working toward the same end rhyme.

And now I'm imagining a really hard poem, that uses a palindrome to form the end of the poem, and then if you read it backwards, it's a different poem.

Oh, man, that would be a very had poem to write, if you're talking a poem that reads literally backwards. You would need the last word to be a palindrome, and then every word other than the last to be either a palindrome or an emordnilap. I'm not saying I won't try it someday, but I can't imagine it being very long.

Now, if you want a poem that you can read backwards or forwards by words, I've got you covered with a poem that is, in fact, already in the Archive! Spinning Clock was written to be read either forward or backward, with a different rhyme scheme. And, just because, here's me reading it (forward and backward simultaneously!)

Spinning Clock


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:59 pm 
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Oh, man, that would be a very had poem to write, if you're talking a poem that reads literally backwards. You would need the last word to be a palindrome, and then every word other than the last to be either a palindrome or an emordnilap.

Bolton's not a palindrome! The palindrome of "Bolton" would be "Notlob!"

Python aside, yeah, I realize how few palindromes there are, that it's not feasible to make a poem out of them, but I thought that starting and ending a poem with the same palindrome, to make a kind of bouncing or mirroring effect, would be neat as it could call attention to the fact it could be read backwards by words. I forgot all about Spinning Clock, though.


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 10:13 pm 
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Hey, what do you know? I managed to get two things written for Halloween this year! Enjoy.

Mass of Ghouls


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sun Nov 10, 2019 12:38 pm 
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And now I'm imagining a really hard poem, that uses a palindrome to form the end of the poem, and then if you read it backwards, it's a different poem.

Okay, here you go, Lord Luna.

This was...difficult.

Foward


Backward


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 Post subject: Re: Raven's Rhymes
PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 9:36 pm 
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Nettling Imp


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