# Thoughts



## Pelwrath (Jul 6, 2018)

[FONT=georgia, serif]This is the poem that received the e-mail from a good friend, editor, published author, and one I view as a second mother, who's been very supportive, helpful and patient with my writing. Is it me or not as I don't see what she's referring to.[/FONT]


_Barbaric, nuisance, smut_: Prompt words for the weekly submissions.



*A Gorean Bard*



There was a barbaric bard from Gor,
Who’s smutty ballad’s hero's had valour.
The throngs thought him a nuisance
But were held in impuissance
So he always sang an encore





Her comments:

Your commas in the first poem were nonsensical. I couldn't read any more. Two words, comma, two words, comma,  which means you've never worked out what a comma does and why we need it. Your apostrophes need work. Your contractions need work.


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## jenthepen (Jul 8, 2018)

Are you sure she sent you the right comments and not those meant for someone else?


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## Pelwrath (Jul 8, 2018)

No, she had replied to an e-mail so I figured hat I was missing something. Maybe she didn't have a mix up. Are my apostrophes correct?


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## jenthepen (Jul 10, 2018)

There was a barbaric bard from Gor,
Who’s smutty ballad’s hero's had valour.
The throngs thought him a nuisance
But were held in impuissance
So he always sang an encore


There are some problems with the apostrophes. I think it should appear thus:

Whose smutty ballad’s heroes had valour. 
This is because 'whose' is the possessive form of who, 'who's' means 'who is' and I think you mean heroes (plural) rather than 'belonging to the hero' so the apostrophe is not needed there.

Although I noted these errors, I still think the original critique was unnecessarily vitriolic.


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## Darren White (Jul 13, 2018)

What she calls 'comma's' are in fact apostrophes. So who's in error here 

Yes, the apostrophes are in need of editing:


> Who’s smutty ballad’s hero's had valour.


who's should be 'whose'
hero's should be 'heros'


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## Pelwrath (Jul 14, 2018)

Thanks Jen and Draren.  It was after the fact I caught the whose but I used hero's because I was referring the valour that all hero's have and thought it would need to be possessive and not plural.  Now that just might have been a terrible case of bad grammar on my part. Thank you both.


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## Darren White (Jul 14, 2018)

In that case, your sentence is syntactic not right. It doesn't make sense that way.


> Who’s smutty ballad’s hero's had valour.



In either possibility above, it says plural:
either
you can read "whose smutty ballad's heros"
or
"heros had valor"

neither is possessive this way, both are plural.
If you want a possessive there, you need to change the line


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## jenthepen (Jul 14, 2018)

Yes, Darren's right. You only need to say, 'Whose smutty ballad’s heroes had valour.' By putting in the word 'had' you remove the need for the possessive form.

Incidentally, hero/heroes is one of those quirky nouns that take an extra e in the plural form. I also noticed that you used the UK form of 'valour' rather than the US 'valor' was that deliberate?


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## Pelwrath (Jul 14, 2018)

Thanks again, I'd better stop obsessing as I see the vortex of my terrible SP&G sucking into it.  An FYI spell and grammar check didn't catch it.


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## jenthepen (Jul 15, 2018)

Don't obsess, Pel, and don't worry so much about the intricacies of Sp&G. English is a minefield of weird and apparently pointless rules because much of it is based on the fact that it is a mish-mash of foreign languages that have been cobbled together over the centuries. All of us have times when we fall at the Sp&G hurdles and most of us have to look stuff up on a regular basis to make sure we have it right.

Remember, one of the beautiful things about poetry is that you can bend or avoid the rules at your whim. Maybe e.e. cummings had a problem with Sp&G and that's why he wrote as he did.


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## Pelwrath (Jul 15, 2018)

I know and I’m working on the obsession of it.  There is a level of expectation, I feel, in what is posted, that the readers expect.  That will vary based on the reader, forum it’s posted in and the writer.


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## Darren White (Jul 16, 2018)

NO 
You must write first and foremost for you!
If you start to imagine what readers or forum want, you get hopelessly stuck.


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## Pelwrath (Jul 16, 2018)

I agree but I was referring to the quality not the content. Reduced or no spelling, punctuation or grammar issues.  Yes, I write for myself but the rules sometimes get in my way. EE Cummings didn’t worry about it and it worked.


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## Darren White (Jul 16, 2018)

Cummings, Shakespeare, Tate, Darwish, everyone has their own style. Some use rhyme, some don't some write metrical, others don't. Some use punctuation, I do not.
Just write your own way and don't worry too much. Write first, improve and edit later, that's how we all learn and work


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## Pelwrath (Jul 16, 2018)

Okay and thanks.


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## jenthepen (Jul 16, 2018)

Exactly what Darren said. 

This is one of the reasons I wanted to create Poetry Hill. Every creative writer should feel an absolute freedom to express the way they feel, and this place is all about that. In this thread, you asked about the grammar and we tried to answer but, in truth, we should really be talking about what you are striving to express. If a poem isn't clear to the reader, we can let you know and maybe come up with ways to make your message more accessible, but we ought to be working with the poem from the starting point of the message, not the grammar, format or any other subjective restraint.


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## Pelwrath (Jul 16, 2018)

If you’ve noticed, I haven’t posted in the poetry thread in a while. The reason is my percieved expectations of the quality(SP&G). Is it as bad as I think, maybe not. The quality of my poetry isn’t an issue in that. I don’t want SPaG
to hide or distract from my poem, in what I percieve as a thread having a higher level of expectations.
I definitively remember my first few poems there and the reaction/comments they generated. To me, the message of my poem was lost, maybe burried is better, because of technical issues.  I can except a clarity issue, that’s related to style and or technique.

I am a good poet, possibly very good and I will become better.


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## jenthepen (Jul 16, 2018)

If you want to present your poems with good grammar and spelling, why not post them here first and allow us to edit the punctuation and spelling? If this would help to get your poems into the form that you want them to be I'd be glad to help.


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## Pelwrath (Jul 16, 2018)

Which I have and will continue to do.  You've all been so helpful and supportive.


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