Martin the fish

Is it national UEA love in day today?

I read Saggyarselaydee's profile. Just pure LOL I did however quite enjoy Mac's story “Thanks for your itchy sweater of a verse collection but, regrettably, no thanks because you’re not a wet and incomprehensible Africa-patronising international jet-setter, Yours et cetera, the London Literary Gazette.” Do you have an issue with aforementioned gazette?

One hell of a long opening line, but flowed nicely otherwise.

I liked the description of the Madam Skegafta's tent. (tent was spick-and-span apart from a few parrot droppings. ) I say "quite" liked because though it is good I find this style a bit too flamboyant but appreciate that this is pretty subjective and my personal taste. The 'off-the-wall-ness' just doesn't feel natural enough. I don't know why but it reminds me a bit of Steve Aylett ...read the opening of 'Bigot Hall' http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0575402938/026-5602492-2442811 which you can download here on Amazon but Ayletts prose is somehow gentler and works beautifully. (my oh my TWO c***s on one thread! anyone remember to PooBum filter?)

Steve Aylett? Steve Aylett?! I must protest. If anyone on abctales is ripping off the great Aylettmeister, then it's me. I really, really like this piece. The more I read the more I was drawn into it. I appreciate the continual rhymes and pararhymes chivvying the narrative onward. If anything, I'd say it felt rather Joycean... MACJoycean, that is! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! But seriously, brilliant stuff. I can almost imagine it being delivered live as a kind of super-poem.

I really like "Gramps, you’ve ignored someone who remembers how to rhyme but it’s your loss, not mine, your bloomin’ funeral, your tomb marked in Roman numerals,..." up to the literary magazine bit. Agree about the rhymes and pararhymes they really work here. It seems as though this is the best way to say what Mac is trying to say. It's clever and funny. But other parts, like the para beginning with "So there I stood, wrapped in a third-division football scarf" just don't seem to work in the same way or hold my attention. Think it probably would performed, dunno...

I find i have to agree with PJ though this is lyrically written and parts of it were understated humour, it didn't grab my attention, in particular i found the long sentence at the beginning a little off-putting and had to read it a few times to make sense of it. really liked the goldfish tank stuff - and the school visit, but the para starting cassius clay i found my mind drifting. It is very stylised and maybe that kept me at arms length - but maybe like poetry it needs a few reads to appreciate the style, it is certainly fresh and original. Juliet

Juliet, I'd say 'unusual' rather than 'fresh and original'. I've oft been exposed to this style. Jack Cade recently wrote an essay about poetry here which talked about poets finding uniqueness that starts to chime with you. With what is, as you say a very stylised piece it is actually MORE difficult to acheive this. When you are so hell-bent on pursuing quirkiness, one thing I find the unpredictable becomes predictable by virtue of its unpredictability! It needs a second thread running through it. BUT I stress again, there were parts of this where Mac finds this thread, something that works and gets my attention. I'd love to see a re-write or hear it performed. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

With this sort of piece I don't think you can avoid writing for the effect of the rhyme with forced metaphors, but as Jude says it would be great to hear it live.

"(my oh my TWO c***s on one thread! ..." Well, there were two but then Rokkitnite joined in.

In the interest of economy of language, I think Joe Novak should shorten his name to Jovak. Of course, then he sounds like a cross between a kangeroo and a hoover. A kangaroover. I'm all over this board like a flotilla of seagulls today, probably because I'm the only fucker who works in an office on a Saturday, and now I'm home and procrastinating a bit. The rhyming's fun, but the wordplay is even better - "it’s no hard cheese off of my unusables" combines the power of three different cliches to make an entirely new figure of speech. *However*, methinks MacJoyce's handsomely boisterous punked-up voice is rather blunted - if not stunted - for he ends up not affronted, but enamoured by the glamour and allure of grammatically pure artistic immortality, forgetting the drab, don't-grab, get-stabbed prefab concrete reality of those for whom the worlds of both jacuzzi room/Shares Boom! and romantic gloom washed down with a jet-flume of appreciative applause are as remote and quote unquote "torturously out of reach" as Elysian shores.

Four?

"Four?" Quite right. You forgot to count yourself.

Thanks, Brighteyes (lover of Jack Cade for the uninitiated), that gives me 5 of a kind! Although I'm prepared to accept a full house (3 c***ts and 2 T***ts) in this abc poker lounge. sense of humour anyone? PS Jack, no, simple maths tells you that if i included myself the c(o)unt would be 5. Tsk. You are an american love child aren't you? :-)

"sense of humour anyone?" Ah, no, you see, having a sense of humour doesn't mean you automatically slap your thighs and guffaw at every depressingly unfunny would-be wag who turns up at any given point and behaves like a tit. Try getting yourself one, and you'll see what I mean. "Am I to gather from your last sentence (which was far too long and I got completely lost in it...) you feel I am drifting off into nonsensica and neglecting real life?" Apologies for the length - that was mostly due to trying to have a rhyme every few words. What I meant that it seems the triumphant note you finish on is a very personal triumph, rather than a triumph for good. You berate the rich, but you're in effect saying you've beaten them because you're becoming a respected artist. But if you are indeed going to be read beyond the end of your life, and be more important than them, aren't you just joining the ranks of the powerful? Aren't you becoming one of them?