flowing liquid-pure
through the trap-sieves
in rapturous pursuit of a sort of
ascetic hedonism,
flickering in the infinite blackness
of unmanifest potential
spider-web suspended
and loving every shard-cast scintilla
of non-time awareness:
no-thing is not nothing.
Author notes
Questioning whether to be hedonistic necessarily means to be selfish or nonspiritual.
A contest entry
- Hedonism: 10 X 10 X ASAP by Griswold.
400 points, ended September 6, 4 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Silver dollars and empty lungs (prewrites) by Writing0Freedom.
600 points, ended December 1, 270 entries
• next poem in this contest, • Add to finalists list, or remove from contest
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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I'll be honest here, this read like purple prose, minus the prose. I felt like there were a lot of big words that didn't add anything to the poem and threw it off. I can't really read what the imagery/message/purpose is, because it feels clouded and diluted. i liked the first line, and thought that could have continued into strong imagery, but when it didn't i was mildy disapointed. I felt words like 'ascetic, hedonism, unmanifest, scintilla, ' all really threw off the poem, and were crammed together too closely. using words like that have to connect and not be disjointed if you want them to be powerful within the common theme, and they need to be semi defined within the piece to make it work.
You have potential, but this could use some polishing. -
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I hear you, and I have this problem a lot. The thing is, I'm trying to communicate a very specific meaning that, honestly, I'm often not able to express in the English language. I end up obsessed with specificity of meaning, trying to get the closest thing possible to what I want that's available. I'm not trying to sound "smart" or "different" or whatever -- I'm grasping at whatever word seems to best fit the concept I'm trying to convey.
So I'm really not certain how to take your advice to heart and act constructively on it without sacrificing even more of the already compromised meaning I had in mind. Advice on that point would be HUGELY appreciated, because I think this is probably my most glaring flaw as a writer of poetry or prose.
That said, if you think *this* one is "purple" ... you probably should avoid some of my older work. This is NOTHING.
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I'm coming soon.
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An interesting and different take on the prompt than any so far, I'm glad of it.
Thank you for taking the time to enter my contest, best of luck to you... Scott
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I just took a look at the other entries thus far... it's funny how mine seems to be a response or disagreement with the first two, when I wrote it cold without looking at the others.
I couldn't pass this contest up because this is a very important idea to me, philosophically. It seems very obvious to me that, at minimum, a large part of life is about enjoying it. Why else do we have organs, neurochemicals, and such whose -only- purpose is pleasure and reward, after all?
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That is true, we are all hedonistic about some things, different people different things. Take for instance eating, our taste buds and olfactory system work in concert to bring enjoyment to a necessary requirement that our body has, to be nourished. We were DESIGNED to enjoy it, some just take it to an extreme. Anything is ok in moderation it's when it becomes an obsession that it is a problem.
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