cool image, RL. I too am an old-school spelling woman, so if I were you, I'd change that, even though it's hip right now and it's not just you. It's going to look faddish later, like spelling "Amerika" with a "k". (Although I might prefer that, for obvious reasons.)

Okay, can I just say this?

However ridiculously, I'm getting really upset that you are calling me faddish. I'm not trying to be in vogue. I'm not doing this just to be kicky and cute, or just because I think it will make my professors like me, or just to blow air up the skirts of people I think are old fogies, or just unquestioningly because it's all the rage. For fuck's sake. I'm using these abbreviations because I think the poem is better with them, and of course I considered whether or not to use them. I'm a very, very careful person about that sort of detail, and-- however silly it is of me to get my feathers ruffled by this-- I feel diminished when you-- plural-- insinuate I'm just trying to be fashionable.

She wasn't insinuating any such thing, RL. She said in the future it might seem faddish. She didn't comment in any way on your intent.

It was that on top of connie's. I'd had a post earlier that I deleted. And, dyrr, I'm not not "old-school" spelling myself! I'm not a kid. I'm very careful and conscious of language, this is a fairly well-established tradition already.

... And I'm defensive. Hot button me.

What MM said. For that matter, the fact that several people -- Buffistas, who are smart by definition, right? -- have raised the issue suggests that whatever the intent, those choices aren't coming through to your audience as "better". Don't take it as any intentional diminishment, but do take it as feedback that should be considered seriously.

Also, "yr" for "your" is v. old-fashioned, unlike Ur.

Yr obedient servant,

Jesse

Hey, I didn't mean you were being a StyleBot. But people do pick up stuff that's floating around, don't they? Like the story I wrote is in second person, which some writers loathe pretty much. I had my reasons too, but if I hadn't seen other writers do it, I probably wouldn't have.Maybe someone will make a case for 1st or 3rd.

Also, "yr" for "your" is v. old-fashioned, unlike Ur.

Which is always amusing for me-- I like to sign things "yrs to command in some things".

And those "Amerika" people thought they were saying something too. Some of them did. But now it says "Seventies much?". It's the Harvest Gold of poems. Talent like yours needs to think long-term. And, Jesse, you are right. I didn't even think of that.

I liked it, RL. The abbervations are an issue I'm not going to comment on. I felt it was slightly 'jerky'... um... how to put this? It's not clumsy, which is what I'd say about similar things, but it has things in it that jar the reader and not in a good way. You know: some things jar you into thinking more deeply about a poem, and some things jar you out of understanding it. It may be that I'm not getting the allusions, or that the expericence I'm drawing on is different, or something, but I'm not enteirly sure I've understood what you were trying to say. As soon as I got hold of the meaning, the sense as I saw it, something jarred me and I lost it again.

Did any of that seem not-crazy?