Poetry 101 : Let's Break it Down

[kdnxdr]

This is an honest confession, I am plumb ignorant about the mechanics of poetry. I'm sure it shows. My problem is that I love to write poetry, it just does something for me.

I appreciate AW so much because of the wealth of information, the open, honest and the almost always, civil dialogue. AW has been an anchor for my sanity, a close friend and confidant in the night and somewhere I can just "let it all hang out". Thanks AW poet-community!

So, this thread is (and maybe there's others like it) a baby beginners spot to ask, "what's that?!".

I'm gonna start and see if there are others who might find respite in the asking of any question that comes to mind.

I am absolutely clueless regarding meter. Isn't that awful of me. I basically understand that it's all about count and that there are different forms for counting, different types of meter, but that's about it. I know they have names I can barely remember. I just don't have time to crack open the books and study, life is just too demanding, seems like I'm always in some sort of crisis mode. :(

So, if anyone would like to just give me about a 6th-grade-level understanding of meter, I would be thrilled.

If this thread doesn't fly, I'll have to flounder around until the day comes when I actually have the liesure to study just for the pure enjoyment of studying.

Cheers!

kid

[Medievalist]

1. English words are divided into syllables.

2. Syllables in English have a “natural” accent1, a pattern of stress indicated in a dictionary entry. When we alter the inflection of spoken words because of meaning in a given sentence, we are using rhetorical accent; when the stress pattern of a word in a line of poetry is determined by meter, we are using metrical accent. If the metrical accent alters the natural word accent, we end up with wrenched accent.

3. In metrical or “measured” English verse, each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into light (or weak) and heavy stresses. Together these create the overall metrical pattern of the line and poem.

4. The process of analyzing a line and dividing it into metrical feet, and the feet into smaller units of stress, is called scansion.

5. A line is described in terms first by the pattern of its feet, then the number of feet.

6. Five iambic feet create an iambic pentameter line. This is the single most common metrical line in English.

1Accent refers to syllable stress; when we speak of a “southern accent” or “British accent,” we are more accurately referring to dialect.

[Medievalist]

Kinds of Feet Stress Pattern
1. iamb light followed by heavy — X
2. trochee heavy followed by light X —
3. spondee2 two equal heavy stresses X X
4. dactyl heavy followed by two light stresses X — —
5. anapest two light followed by a heavy stress — — X

2Keats is fond of using a spondee at the end of a line that is largely written in another meter.

[Medievalist]

1. A one-foot line is called monometer
2. A two-foot line is called dimeter
3. A three-foot line is called trimeter
4. A four-foot line is called tetrameter
5. A five-foot line is called pentameter
6. A six-foot line is called hexameter3
7. A seven-foot line is called heptameter (rare)
8. An eight-foot line is called octameter (rare)


3A hexameter line that is six units or “feet” of pentameter, that is, a line of pure iambic hexameter, is also called an alexandrine. Sonnet poets in particular like to sneak these in.

[Medievalist]

Terms for Meter and Verse
(* terms are crucial)

A Line of text is a Verse

A group of spatially set-off Verses is a Stanza

Lines in which a clause or sentence runs across two or more lines of verse are *enjambed; enjambment is the opposite of *end-stopped lines. An example of enjambment:


If music be the food of love, play on!
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting
The appetite may sicken and so die . . .

(Twelfth Night Opening lines)

Lines often have a natural pause, a *caesura, like pauses in ordinary human speech, pause that is not “counted” in scansion as a syllable. The pause tends to be created by the syntax of the sentence, and is often marked by punctuation. In scansion, a caesura is indicated by a double bar || to mark the pause.

Rhyme


*End Rhymes (The most common sort in English) occur at the end of a line. In notating rhyme patterns, the pattern as denoted by using a different letter for each rhyme as it occurs, so that all lines that have the same pattern of rhyme share the same letter, is called a rhyme scheme.

*Heroic Couplet is two lines of iambic pentameter verse that rhyme; this is usually used in longer poems. A couplet could, technically, be any pair of lines, but it is usually used to refer to two successive lines of verse that rhyme, like the last two lines of a Shakespearean sonnet.

*Blank Verse refers to lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse became the standard meter for Elizabethan and later poetic drama, including Shakespeare’s metered plays.

Internal Rhymes occur within a verse-line. Example: Fleet and Sweet in the same line.

Masculine Rhymes, rhymes of a single stressed syllable are most common. Example: still / hill; love / dove.

Feminine Rhymes use a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable. Example: ending / bending. These are sometimes called double rhymes.

Triple Rhymes are rhymes that involve three syllables. Example: comparison / garrison.

Some of the language regarding rhyme is almost never used these days, but you ought to be at least vaguely familiar with it.

[KTC]

this is very reminiscent of my TEACH THE IDIOT thread. I'm going to be bookmarking this and reading along. I know nothing.

[moblues]

Great post, kid. Thanks Medievalist. Awesome. Both of you.

I would love it if Di or Scott would explain Formalism as they interpret it. I've been researching it so I can contribute to Di's workshop. It has been a long slog after long workdays. I'm starting to catch on, but the descriptions I am getting from websites just don't match. Not with what Di and Scott are doing--but with competing websites.

I think my brain is going to explode. Maybe not a bad thing. ;)




Mike

[Medievalist]

Honestly, if you want to learn metrical stuff, you have to read poetry aloud, or at least silently, to yourself. Also, remember different people will read the same poem differently; that doesn't make it "wrong." The idea is to match your scansion to the way you actually say the words when you read aloud.

This website (http://www2.one-eyed-alien.net/~ayelton/Writing/meter.html) is in some ways a much better explanation than the teaching handouts I'm posting here--my handouts were meant to go along with me actually talking with and reading with students.

These are some good books about meter, rhyme, and scansion:

Attridge, Derek. The Rhythms of English Poetry. New York: Longman, 1982. This is a more advanced discussion of meter, intended for those with a serious interest.

Attridge, Derek. Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Revised edition. New York: Random House, 1979.

Hollander, John. Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Third Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

[Medievalist]

I would love it if Di or Scott would explain Formalism as they interpret it. I've been researching it so I can contribute to Di's workshop. It has been a long slog after long workdays. I'm starting to catch on, but the descriptions I am getting from websites just don't match. Not with what Di and Scott are doing--but with competing websites.

There are two similar sounding things here; Formalism in terms of criticism, and Formal poetry--both of which are a "return" to more traditional approaches--sort of a response to Modernism and Post Modernism.

Things like meter, rhyme, and verse structure (sonnet, villanele, etc. etc. ) are back in vogue.

[KTC]

Yes...I always read it out loud to myself. That's about the only thing I ever did to try to comprehend poetry better. When I try to study anything about it my mind just blanks...but reading it out loud is something I have always done. Great advice, Medi.

[Duke]

For a simple study of poetry meter, two good examples are Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.
In those particular American classics, eight syllables make up four feet in each line of tetrameter. Although both pieces use tetrameter, each one employs a different type of foot.

Frost uses the popular iambic foot -- two syllables stressed like the Morse Code letter A (dit-dah).

"Whose woods / these are / I think / I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow."

Longfellow uses its opposite, the trochaic foot -- two syllables stressed like the letter N (dah-dit).

"As un/to the / bow the / cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other!"

Those guys were good.

[kdnxdr]

WOW!!!

That's incredible stuff you guys have posted.

Now - To study!!!!

Thank you very much.

kid

[kdnxdr]

"If the metrical accent alters the natural word accent, we end up with wrenched accent."

So, the goal is to keep as close as possible to the natural word accent.

"Wretched" is saying the accent, or meter, does not work?

(Thanks, again, for all the good stuff!)

kid

[Medievalist]

"Wrenched" is saying the accent, or meter, does not work?

Wrenched is about rhyme, not meter, though it can affect meter.

Meh. I wouldn't say wrenched= "doesn't work." I'd use it as a descriptive term, rather than a value judgment. My basic assumption is that writers know what they're doing, until proven otherwise.

I'd ask why the rhyme is wrenched, why the poet chose that word/rhyme?

There's a poem by John Donne called "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star," where he has this bit:

Teach me to hear mermaids singing ,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind (ll. 5-9).

Wind = wind; the motion of air, as in "a wind in the door". In Donne's day, in Britain, wind for air was pronounced the way the verb for what we do to an analog watch, in turning the stem, and actually rhymed with "find."

Wind is frequently perceived as a "wrenched" rhyme today, because a lot of people don't realize that the language changed; the words all rhymed when Donne wrote the poem.

Generally, when poets do something, whether or not the poet is consciously aware of making a decision, I'd say it likely merits a closer look.

[kdnxdr]

"each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into light (or weak) and heavy stresses."

So, is the natural pattern allternating the light and heavy stresses as a norm?

I feel like I'm trying to learn to dance with two left feet.

[Medievalist]

"each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into light (or weak) and heavy stresses."

So, is the natural pattern allternating the light and heavy stresses as a norm?

I feel like I'm trying to learn to dance with two left feet.

Look up some random words in a dictionary; if you've got a printed one, just open it up. In the pronunciation key part you'll see words have stress--and the emphasis or stress can even change the way the word sounds.

Normally, we say "SYL la ble

And if we emphasize the second syllable of "syllable," the word sounds odd:

syl LA ble

And yes, there's a tendency in English for verse to naturally fall into iambs, weak strong, patterns--it's because of the way words are made, actually.

And you'll notice that there's a tendency for verbs to bear heavy stress in English poetry.

One of the easiest ways to practice scanning is to read a sonnet out loud, and try to mark the syllables you stress naturally when you read the sonnet.

Then you go back and see what patterns, if any, you observe.

In some ways, the "differences," the departure from the pattern, are most interesting; it's a sign to go look at what else the poet is doing in that line.

Sonnets tend to be "14 lines of iambic pentameter," except you'll find in the middle of the line, a few "feet" that aren't iambic, or, say with Sidney and Shakespeare, entire lines of Alexandrines, or iambic hexameter; six iambs in a line.

[C.bronco]

My Daughter and Apple Pie -Raymond Carver

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
Could it be worse.

Theodore Roethke:


"Was nature kind? The heart's core tractable?
All waters waver, and all fires fail.
Leaves, leaves, lean forth and tell me what I am;
This single tree that turns to purest flame.
I am a man, a man at intervals.
Pacing a room, a room with dead white walls;
I feel the autumn fail - all that slow fire
denied in me, who has denied desire."

T.S. Eliot, from The Wasteland:

'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

Just a few

[Duke]

"each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into light (or weak) and heavy stresses."

So, is the natural pattern allternating the light and heavy stresses as a norm?

I feel like I'm trying to learn to dance with two left feet.


Kid, not necessarily. Alternating stress (or accent) on syllables applies only to iambic and to trochaic, two types of feet containing two syllables.

Other two-syllable foot types have the same accent on both syllables. Using my informal Morse Code ID method, spondee equates to M (dah-dah) and pyrrhic is I (dit-dit). There are other foot types and they have three syllables: dactyl = D (dah-dit-dit) and anapest = U (dit-dit-dah).

There may be even more foot types, I dunno. Regarding the Morse Code characters, that archaic means is now nearly obsolete, but anyone familiar with it can relate all this.

Remember that the pattern for meter is a specific number of uniform feet making up a line of verse. Although there are valid exceptions, that firm guideline is the proper concern of the poem maker. The chosen words of the writer-poet will correctly fit into that template. For the reader-reciter, those words will roll smoothly right off the tongue -- no sweat, no strain, no pain.

[kdnxdr]

To be honest Duke, this statement : "For the reader-reciter, those words will roll smoothly right off the tongue -- no sweat, no strain, no pain." helped more than anything.

When this type of information isn't in your normal routine of the day, it's "Greek"; you know what I mean?

So, the "no sweat, no strain, no pain" comment helped "bring it down"; you know what I mean?

kid

PS: I'm a bit "under the weather"...so please excuse - you know what I mean?

[Duke]

To be honest Duke, this statement : "For the reader-reciter, those words will roll smoothly right off the tongue -- no sweat, no strain, no pain." helped more than anything.

When this type of information isn't in your normal routine of the day, it's "Greek"; you know what I mean?

So, the "no sweat, no strain, no pain" comment helped "bring it down"; you know what I mean?

kid

PS: I'm a bit "under the weather"...so please excuse - you know what I mean?

You bet I do. I'm really glad you started this thread because I'm oriented to this kind of stuff more than free verse. I admire much of the free verse in AW and the skills of free verse poets, but I am a real novice with it. I'm also very pleased to read all the info that Medievalist gave us today.

Kid, I'm wishing you health, wealth, and happiness -- but mostly good health right now.

[kdnxdr]

It's interesting to go back and read what you wrote when you were a tad inebriated.......

I'm in San Antonio helping my mom for the month of June and hopefully, I will get to have more computer time inbetween projects. We're in the process of gleening through all the nooks and crannies to route out unwanted, unneccesary "stuff" and have one massive yard sale before we deposit the remaining items with the Good Will people. Then we will shuffle around the furniture and "redecorate" with what's kept.

I appreciate all the good information that this thread has generated so far. It's definately something that has to be studied and practised to "get it" and I hope I can do just that while I'm here.

It seems to me that I need a good book on the essentials of "doing" poetry to really understand what you've presented. Maybe there's an actual Poetry For Dummies that I can acquire. Seriously.

My brain focused on the word scansion and I feel that I need to get so simplistic to understand exactly how these different mechanics function.
I realize I just need to practise, practise, practise reading and then maybe doing some kind of lessons where I write how the stress patterns of different poems?

Thanks, again, for all ya'll have posted.

kid

[Priene]

My brain focused on the word scansion and I feel that I need to get so simplistic to understand exactly how these different mechanics function.
I realize I just need to practise, practise, practise reading and then maybe doing some kind of lessons where I write how the stress patterns of different poems?


Clap the beat as you read. Works wonders.

[Medievalist]

I realize I just need to practice, practice, practice reading and then maybe doing some kind of lessons where I write how the stress patterns of different poems?

Just read a lot; mark the words or syllables you emphasize. Sonnets are an easy place to start since they're going to be mostly lines of iambic pentameter, and when the poet departs--say half a line is iambic, and the second half isn't--figure out why and what. Sometimes an entire line will be different, a line of hexameter, for instance.

The public library will probably have:

Hollander, John. Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Third Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

[kdnxdr]

Thank you!

I'll look for that book.

And, practise my clapping. Seriously. :)

kid

[Medievalist]

Thank you!

I'll look for that book.

And, practise my clapping. Seriously. :)

kid

Some people find tapping with a pencil works better for them, using it as a sort of ersatz drumstick. I'm not sure why it works better for some, but it does.

[kdnxdr]

I wanted to bump this thread because Medievalist has given us some supurb information, at least for people like me who are metered-challenged.

I come to this thread often just to keep rereading and forcing myself to become more disciplined as a poet. Hopefully, at some point, it will pay off. :)

Medievalist and Duke, thanks.

kid

[kdnxdr]

Would anyone be interested in posting a poem where the scansion is marked and a meterical analysis is given with it?

cheers!

kid

[Dichroic]

I apologize for not chiming in earlier - I just hadn't noticed this thread until now (it was mostly posted during a holiday weekend for me - Dragon Boat Festival.)

So, two things: when I have used the term Formalism here, I was referring purely to Formal Poetry, not to any school of criticism. In other words, what I meant to say was "Let's spend a week or so writing and talking about sonnets (or haiku, tanka, sestina, roundelay, terza rima, triolet, whatever)."

And second, I find this site (http://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/) a very useful guide to a wide variety of verse forms, including those mostly used in English and some better suited to other languages.

[Dichroic]

Would anyone be interested in posting a poem where the scansion is marked and a meterical analysis is given with it?


I think I'd rather give a few examples - too boring to do the meter for a whole poem. I'll use ones that should be easy to find online in case you want to see the whole thing. I'll use capitals to show stresses and slashes to separate feet.

Let's start with Shakespere:

my MIS/tress' EYES/ are NO/thing LIKE/ the SUN/
CORal / is FAR/ more RED/ than HER/ lips' RED/
if SNOW/ be WHITE/ why THEN/ her BREASTS/ are DUN;/
if HAIR/ be WIRES,/ black WIRES/ grow ON/ her HEAD./

First, a note about the poem in general: it's a sonnet, with 14 rhyming lines. Second, it's (as you might guess) a Shakespearean sonnet - not because Fair Will wrote it, but because it has the rhyme scheme he made famous. You can see the rhymes above are abab - that is the first and third lines rhyme and so do the 2nd and 4th. The full poem goes abab/cdcd/efef/gg - the second and third stanzas also have 1st and 3rd and 2ns and 4th lines rhyming, but not the same rhymes as the 1st stanza so we use different letters. The final couple has two rhyming lines.

Next you can see this is pentameter - five feet per line. (Easy, just count the slashes. You can also see that in general it's iambic - each line goes
daDAH daDAH daDAH daDAH daDAH.

But wait - look again at that second line. Does Shakespeare mean us to read the first word as corAL? Of course not - he's sneakily slipped a trochee (DAHda) wolf in among the iamb lambs. This kind of thing is not at all uncommon - see Medievalist's note about Keats ending lines with spondees. You need to be careful with it, though, and mixing metric feet is definitely more an art than a science. I think the best way to figure out whether a metered poem works is to read it aloud - can you speak the words normally without feeling like you're forcing them?

This is getting long: I'll put another couple of examples in separate posts.

[Dichroic]

Let's switch from Shakespeare to Poe:

It was MA/ny and MA/ny a YEAR/ aGO,/
In a KING/dom BY/ the SEA,/
That a MAID/en there LIVED/ whom YOU/ may KNOW/
By the NAME/ of AN/nabelle LEE;/
And this MAID/en she LIVED/ with NO/ other THOUGHT/
Than to LOVE/ and be LOVED/ by me./

This one is a lot harder to classify; you can see it's much less regular than the sonnet. Nevertheless, it has a readily identifiable and regular meter. As it also tells a story, I think I'd call it a narrative ballad. (Note to self: Now that would be a fun topic for our Formalist workshop, especially with so many storytellers here!)

These lines are alternating tetrameter (4 feet) and trimeter (3'). They could also be written as heptameter (7') lines:
It was MA/ny and MA/ny a YEAR/ aGO,/ in a KING/dom by the SEA,/
That a MAID/en there LIVED/ whom YOU/ may KNOW/ by the NAME/ of AN/nabelle LEE;/

Longer lines were commoner in Poe's time than now; I got the version posted above off the web so am not sure whether the line breaks are Poe's (I think they are, actually.)

Poe is also doing that meter switching thing, swapping anapests (dadaDAH) and iambs with a liberal hand. He does seem a bit more likely to end lines with anapests. But it works - as this is one my mom read to me when I was little, I can vouch for the smoothness of the singsong lines. (There's another way to check your rhymes and meters: read 'em to a little kid. Or if the content is inappropriate, to a baby too young to understand. If it works out, you probably have it right.)

[Dichroic]

Medievalist wrote that iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English. It is, by far - let's look at some very different things done with it:

The first stanza of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Three stanzas of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I haven't marked the meter here bcause I'm lazy and I hope you can see it by now. These are very different moods, and in fact different forms. Keats' piece is an ode: a form that includes a wide variety of variants and in fact encompasses several other forms, but every line rhymes with at least one other rhyme (if you give Keats a pass on Arkady / ecstasy) and each stanza is the same length. Also, I may be wrong here, but I think odes are generally to or in honor of a particular thing or person, as with this one or Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. This particular ode is very calm - in fact I found myself reciting the first few lines to myself, over and over, as I wandered around the quiet and ruined Acropolis. Somewhat ravished it may be, but "silence and slow time" suit it perfectly.

Dylan Thomas's poem has nothing in common with Keats' ode except the meter and a rigid rhyme scheme. It rages, as the words say, It is probably the most famous vilanelle in the English language; I've included three stanzas here so that you can see how the first and third lines in the first stanza are reused alternately as the final line of each following stanza.

But still:
Thou STILL/ unRAV/ished BRIDE/ of QUI/etNESS,/
Do NOT/ go GEN/tle IN/to THAT/ good NIGHT,/

Don't ever make the mistake of thinking a fixed rhyme and meter limit what you can say or the moods you can convey. It's juggling: you have to get the meter and the sense bot exactly right despite sometimes-conflicting demands. But in my opinion, when you do get it right you have something powerful enough to explode your reader's mind. I'll let Keats have the last word:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

[Dichroic]

Final note on above posts: Despite a certain tendency to lecture (oh, you noticed?) I am not an academic. So I apologize in advance for any mistakes in the above posts, but not at all for their casual and subjective tone.

[kdnxdr]

Dichroic,

Thank you for all the rich resources you supplied us with, they are much appreciated!

kid

[BrokenSword]

Okay, kid, since Dichroic sent me here, you can blame him! Heh, okay, the info in this thread is very good. There is a lot to absorb and unless you are a bit anal, it might also put off the newbie to formalistic stylin'! That said, this is what I've often done with those that wish to practice and hone their iambic skill. As noted in the 'other thread', I like to intro iambic meter with 'blank verse' type poetry. That is, putting only stress on learning about sounds and patterns while eschewing any issues re the rhyme. Blank verse consists of lines of iambic pentameter, but without end rhymes. Sooooo, what I've done is to start a Quatrain exercise in which some one such as myself starts with 4 lines of IP and then those that wish to learn, answer in form. It CAN be interesting both in what resolves re poetry as well as shoring up your metrics. It isn't that hard and 4 lines are easy to run the scansion on. I'd usually put up my Q and wait for an answer. Once I received them, I'd run the scansion and if it was pretty darn close, note the glitch and let the poster fix the line(s) in question before moving forward. In this way, you get both some inspiration and practice. No pressure to complete anything other than to have a passion to learn and try. Doing this enough will show you the patterns and along the way, discussion is born wherein such subtleties as regional accents can be explained, diphthongs, and even why one should only START with the dictionary re stress and not use it as your Bible. A line of verse/conversation is alive with intent and the dictionary is static. Anyway, let me know and I'll post you up a Q for your very own to work on. If I'm intruding, let me know as I'm not trying to step on any toes.


BrokenSword

will KID take UP the CHALLenge? QUEStions RISE
to SHOW iAMbic TENdenCIES can FLY.
it's NOT as HARD as OTHers THINK, i THINK,
unLESS you START with SAPPhics -- THEN you'll DIE!

[kdnxdr]

Thank you, B.Sword.

At the moment I'm pulling an all-nighter preparing for the matha-of-all yard sales. I'm in San Antonio helping my mom and her husband.

When I get some "feet" under me (he, he - get it?) I'll be happy to give it a twirl!

It's about 85 here in San Antonio at 10:30 pm! I usually can't work during the day because of the heat, it's been 100+.

I hope I don't get zombified tonight!

cheers,

kid