Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
The still red branches
make autumn planted dogwoods
February’s hope.




(94 votes, average: 3.02 out of 5)
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February 9th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve ever used a caps lock key before, but let me see if this computer has one.
A SCORE OF ONLY 1.67 OUT OF 5, WITH THREE PEOPLE VOTING?
FOR A POEM???!!!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me just say that I hate poetry on general principle, but I always look forward to jClifford’s minimalism and geographical surprises, in the same way I look forward to his visual creations. His political rants are okay I suppose, but when he takes the time and the discipline to put his words through the lens of a particular literary format, the result is like turning a piece of coal into diamond then cutting the diamond into facets.
Now every one of you idiots who gave this haiku a low score, I want you to go back and rate it fairly.
I myself have taken the poem to heart and am going out for a walk to look at the winter color in the landscape. My own garden has some tall flower heads of something the locals call “jade”, also when I mowed for the last time in the fall, I left the marigolds–both the three-foot ones and the one-foot ones–with the seed heads intact to provide some winter interest.
When I get back from my walk I want to see some more reasonable ratings up there.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
7 votes, average: 3.14 out of 5
That’s more like it.
It’s snowing. I didn’t see any dogwood. I did see some nice four-foot high ornamental grass with fluffy stuff on top. I also saw the irises I transplanted last fall trying to come up through the snow. I bought some nice red wine and now I’m going to drink it.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Why do I write a pandering hack poem and it gets more starts than this one? It may not be jClifford’s best poem ever, but it does flow naturally and combine landscape with emotional context, the reader at the end of the seventeenth syllable sees the subject revealed more true to life than in a photograph. And did anyone else notice the pun–or maybe double meaning–in the first line?
Sigh.
I still have three quarters of a bottle of wine left. Tomorrow is the Lincoln birthday holiday; I’d better get busy with this bottle. I know it’s not politically correct to say LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act anymore, but can we still say Lincoln freed the slaves?