Category: Writers Block
Cancer, consuming your life,
Reducing it to a shrunken shell,
A mere image of what it used to be,
Sucking from it, all it's substance,
Draining away, meaning and perpose,
Only entrapy remaining,
Nothing growing,
Nothing new,
Nothing living,
Only clinging,
To the bare bones of reality,
Only existing,
In some empty place,
A life with out a perpose,
A soul with out a face,
Cancer, changing you,
Your perspective fallen away,
And your strength and emotion,
They have flown as well,
Your thoughts transformed, your will power gone,
Your judgment impaired,
And your independence shattered,
You are contained with in the opinions of others,
Worth no more than their beliefs and perceptions,
Your strength of will and charictor abated,
Now you bend at others' words,
At their urging change your psychy,
Things outside your realm of comission,
You now permit them daily,
No longer who you used to be,
"The Zone is a cancer."
There are those persons who are the SURVIVORS of Cancer
This writing of yours so UNjust
The comments of this Zone may be hurtful
But can in NO way compare to that of the tragic illness
I personally know those with cancer who I am so proud of
Those persons who have NOT as you put the words forth saying,
"Your strength of will and charictor abated"
That is absolute rubbish!
~*Thunderous MidNight*~
Well, it just so happens that my soon-to-be husband is currently going through cancer treatment, and let me tell you he lacks neither character nor will nor purpose! This post is not only pretentious but also presumptuous.
Hmm, where to begin. I am a Retinoblastoma survivor currently completing chemo for lynphoma on top of that (though fortunately 25 years later).
Firstly "nothing growing" is one of the stupidest metafores I've ever seen for cancer. Cancer is in fact the uncontrollable growth of rogue cells so growth is rather the problem, not the lack thereof. May be some depressed pathetic rich kid can sit and whine and get depressed at the prospect of having cancer or think in some way writing about it is cool. Reality is cancer makes you see what life really means, the prospect of it ending really makes you appreciate every moment, fills it with purpose, motivates you to fight. I'm pretty sure you've never been through this treatment, if you do I wonder how you survived it with this attitude.
"You are contained with in the opinions of others,
Worth no more than their beliefs and perceptions,
Your strength of will and charictor abated"
So how exactly does having cancer have anything to do with becoming part of other people's words, I'd be curious to know that.
In short, comparing a Zone post about you that was nicely backed up with facts incidentally to 6 months of intense chemo treatment that is like the worst pregnancy sickness multiplied and constant, is, well, quite frankly, pathetic and kind of makes me agree with Jared's original post.
I would never suggest you try to go through chemo, wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I would like you to go out and look around you and change your pathetic perspective. It's truly an offense to millions of people fighting this disease every day.
cheers
-B
hugs to b, and Heather, just no comment
I thought you had a life? If so, why are you bothering to write a poem about this website? Clearly, your school, family, and work obligations should be more important. Further, if you don't like it, instead of equating this place to a horrendous illness, why not just leave? The difference between cansir and this website is that you can't just get up and leave tumors behind, whereas, you can this website. This site doesn't kill people and it doesn't cause the family and friends of those who use it to suffer great losses. If it does, then you have even bigger issues than any of the others do on this site.
Talk about drowning in a glass of water. The Internet is a great tool, but man, how some people transform it into a substitution for reality escapes me.
In the words of Scar from the Lion King "I'm surrounded by idiots." First of all, haven't you people ever heard of a metaphore? Likening one thing to another is one of the most common and effective poetic devices. I have many many friends, acquaintenhces and even family members who have been treated for and some who have died of cancer. With all of the many varied types of cancer: I doubt that more than a very few people do not know at least one person who currently has or has had one sort of cancer or another in the past. I think cancer is a very apt compareson as like extreme internet involvement in a community such as the zone, cancer can sneek up on you. One might not be aware that they have it for a very long time, sometimes even years, which is the same of becoming overly in-grossed in the online world. One day a tiny bump is barely noticeable, the next day it appears just the same, even a week or a month later you might see no difference, but in a year you find it again and alarm springs to the forefront of your mind when you see how it has grown. When you begin to start assimilating events and people you've incountered online into your real life it seems like nothing, from day-to-day you see no change, but looking back over months you discover that you have become entangled in a place that exists only in electronically stored data. Cancer takes over your body, often for a long time with out your knolege, internet overinvolvement takes over your life in much the same way. A great deal of authors, composers, lyricists, playrights and poets use Blindness as a metaphore, and although it is not the most accurate of analagies it does convey a certain concept and evokes a particular feeling. Writing is meant to be representative and often uses hyperbole, but that is understood by both the writer and the reader. That is how creativity and expression is possible. If one takes everything as a direct comparison, an equivalent meaning, then they will always be far too literal to take more than a basic understanding away from any writing aside from a dry non-fiction piece. When an author says that "He fell to his knees, staggered by the realization that until now he had been blinded to the truth." or that "It was clear to all of her friends that she had been living the life of a blind woman the past four years: her marriage a hopeless and rotting thing which she stumbled through unable to see it for what it was." Are blind people in denial, ignorant, foolish, stupid, unobservant or any of the other things that such literary excerpts might signify? No, of course not, but it is a common immage and perception that the author can employ in order to unite his or her readers in understanding and comprehention of the situations in his work and the feelings of his charictors. If you are taking this literally then perhaps you should remember what the title of this board is. This is not ment to be a board about any particular subject, rather it is meant to be a place to post things we have written, literal or metaphorical, true or fictional, pureley fantasy or based at least partly on real life experience. If I post a poem about the pain of a mother loosing a child it does not mean that I have lost, or claim to have lost a child. If I post a monolog of a thought stream of consciousness from say, Hitler, Stalin, a cerial killer or a KKK member as a literary excersize it does not mean that I endorse any of those people or organizations. As for it being a response to the board topic created in "Let's Talk": if I intended to answer that topic I would be posting there, I am instead posting this because over the last few months I have been experiencing these feelings and have been enspired to write this by these past few days' events which have brought my feelings to a head. If you come to the "Writers' Block" board, you should be prepared for people to write things that may relate to their lives, but you should always bare in mind that writing for some people is an outlet, a way of expressing feelings and thoughts, to use paper and pen, or a blank computer screen as a sounding board. If a man finds a poem written by his girlfriend that deals with the agony of loosing a partner he should not immediately believe that she is still stuck on her previous partner, or assume that she has heard some terrible news about his health that he himself has not yet heard. If a mother happens upon a writing by her son that tries to explore the feelings that a person might have to have felt to be able to commit an act of terrorism, just after nine eleven, she should realize that he is attempting to rationalize, understand or come to terms with human motivations and the human propensity for cruelty or fanaticism. She should not jump right to the conclusion that her son is an Alkaida sympathizer. If I get this reaction to each and every poem I post I will just have to conclude that I am dealing with a readership made up primari
Metaphor you say o.k. so,
I stand by what I said
for your words of "Cancer" are just that...as a cancer
What my post was all about,
Consider it as a form of a chemo treatment {it's a metaphor for
my words are not actual chemo you understand}
Find fault and say you are surrounded by idiots all you want,
After all Cancer seeks to grow
It desires not to be Eradicated
{To wildebrew, Keep strong
You went 25 years the first time...I encourage you to "do it again, another 25 years"}
~*Thunderous MidNight*~
agree with thunderis stay strong b, and people can walk away from this not cancer heather.
I know what a metaphore is, and that's exactly the point I'm getting at. It's an inaccurate one. Being blind to something means you didn't see it and is not the same as compairing cansir to a stupid website. Like was said earlier, you can get up and walk away from this site at anytime, unlike cansir. Or, maybe you should have taken on the metaphore of crack instead. You don't like it here, but you can't stay away. Everytime you try to go away, just like crack, this site keeps calling you back. How's that for a metaphore? And, BTW, I'm drunk right now, so maybe it makes no sense. But my point is, if you don't like the "cansir" that is the zoneBBS, simply walk away and stop wining.
I wholeheartedly agree with Scott and B.
While I don't necessarily think this poem is worth getting all bent out of shape over, I do think it makes a very inaccurate comparison and shows that for all you say you know people who have suffered with and/or died of cancer, you really have a very poor understanding of what it means and what it's like. I don't pretend to understand much more myself, having never experienced anything like it, but even I can see that this is, as has already been said, very pretentious. Not to mention unnecessary. It's true that you can pretty much post whatever you like, but why bother? If the Zone's such a horrible, draining, all-consuming evil, why not just stop coming here?
Heather, it may be a metaphore (as I dare say most of us "idiots" realized), but it's a crappy one. We are right to point out how the supposed personal characteristics of a cancer sufferer do not in fact hold true for the cancer sufferers we know--that is the very point of a metaphore! You want to make a point about your metaphorical concept (the Zone) using a literal concept (cancer). But the very things that are supposed to make them alike (the loss of will, purpose, and personality you refer to) simply aren't a legitimate part of your literal concept. That makes it a bad metaphore. Now, in your subsequent post, you mention that you are mostly refering to the way in which the Zone sneakingly invades one's life, just as cancer does. *That* might have been a better metaphore, but you address this point only in passing, and devote the bulk of your poem to other supposed shared characteristics of the Zone and cancer that simply don't exist. Just saying "It's a metaphore" does not automatically make a poem good and those who choose to comment on how the concepts are dissimilar idiots. As the author of the poem, you have the responsibility to make your metaphore an apt one. It if it is not, and you choose to present it to us anyway, we have every right to react to the inaccuracies. By the way, using the blindness metaphore is not any kind of excuse: That metaphore too is a horrible one.
Also: I realize full well that literature is all about jumping into someone else's life and imagining what it might be like--that is what I love about it. However, you have a duty to those who have actually lived through the situations that you are merely imagining, and that duty is to approach their demons with sensitivity and respect. You do not. You slap cancer patients over the head with your characterization and call them names (will-less, personality-less, etc.) That is presumptuous and insulting, and not very insightful. You might have said that cancer is *trying* to do these things to a person, but insisting that it *does* is a bit much. It is one thing to imagine, and another entirely to claim to know the truth about an experience.
Susanne, the Idiot
By the way, in case I failed to make this point clear: You are, of course, right in that a metaphorical concept and its supposed literal counterpart do not need to share *all* their characteristics--if they did, they would be the same concept. However, they do need to share the characteristics that are the basis for the comparision. In your case, they do not. Cancer lacks the characteristics that are supposed to liken the Zone to a cancer.
I hope you take these thoughts into consideration as suggestions about how to improve your literary skills, and do not simply dismiss them as the rantings of an idiot. Heather, I understand how vulnerable and perhaps defensive it makes you to post your writings on the Zone, and I really do not mean to attack you personally but rather to offer you feedback. I admit I might come across a bit confrontational because I don't much like being called an idiot and because it upsets me to hear cancer sufferers described in that way, seeing as my fiance is one, but I don't want animosity to overshadow this dialogue. So, I apologize for my part in it, and hope that you can step down from your high horse for a moment and meet me down here.
To those who wished me luck with my treatment, loads of thanks, it's actually going very well. But I wasn't going to use this post to draw attention to myself, I merely pointed out my fight to ligitimize my criticism of this poem, which has not been answered in any way except with a childish insult, but I expected as much. My original points still stand, firstly that liking the Zone to a deadly disease just does not work and secondly that the supposed characteristics of a person described are simply wrong, not just inaccurate. Cancer isn't trying to change your personality, it's simply trying to kill you, how you react to it is up to you. So this metafore is awful, to try a few ones myself.
This poem is like a fart in a thunderstorm, stinky and unimpressive.
It's like Jaws 5.0 on a Linux machine, it simply doesn't work,
it's like a 1972 Hoover, sucky but powerless,
you would probably say it's like a suicide bomber in an elementary school, but that would be inappropriate.
Your other poems may or may not be any good, I am not much of a poem appreciation person and most of what I've seen on the writer boards doesn't appeal to me. But this one I could not leave alone.
cheers
-B
Ok, obviously people are taking this far too literally. I am not saying that cancer makes people weak in mind, but rather weak in body, whereas the zone makes people weak in conviction. Cancer drains the body, the zone drains the will and the intellect. Cancer eats you from the inside out, growing within you and destroying your body's most critical organs and tissues, obviously the zone does not effect your body, and equally obviously cancer does not destroy your personality. My whole point is that cancer hollows out the physical essence of you, your looks, your health, whereas the zone hollows out the essence of your personality. Perhaps if I had begun each stanza with, The zone cancer of the mind, or the spirit, which ever, but that takes away from the literary merit of the piece. It should be clear that direct corrilations are not meant to be drawn. If one needs to spell everything out then their work is written in vain. If the author needs to put prologues, afterwords and disclaimers in every available space then they are wasting their time in writing to the audience they have targeted. If for example you are writing to elementary school students and using a doctoral thesus approach with highly spacific and high level vocabulary then of course there must be explanations in laymans' terms all over the place. Or if a student was writing a paper for school and using an abundence of slang and peer oriented virnacular then of course his or her paper would not be well-recieved. But, a murder mystery writer doesn't appoligize for describing the thought process of the rapest and killer to the reader, for that would deprive the reader of the insite needed to understand the twisted psychology of the criminal. A thriller suspense writer doesn't appoligize for using the word nigger in dialog between two charictors who are speaking in confrontational tones, as that would destroy realism. Also here is hyperbole. One exadurates in order to make a point. Of course the zone is not as serious or dangerous as cancer. It is pretty awful at times, but only a fool would make the direct compareson. Through writing one does however use hyperbole to get a point across. If someone says that something is tearing them up inside it does not litterally mean that their extreme emotional pain is causing psycho/simatic symptoms to tare them apart inside. And if some one says "I was so hungry I could have eaten a horse.", "I was so angry I could have killed her." or "This house is hell on earth." they do not mean any of those things literally, but we do not feel the need to call the police on the one who says they could have killed someone, launch into a religious descussion about how one's home situation can't even begin to compare with the firey pit of Christian beliefs or calculate the meat on a horse then translate that into hamburgers in order to argue with the person who claims they were that hungry. If the first reaction you have upon reading a poem like this is, "Damn, I'm so angry, I have cancer and I'm not like that." then you A missed the point of the poem and B dwell on your illness far too much. I made the compareson to the blind analagy that one finds in writing on a very regular basis, because it is so common. I as a blind person do not find it offensive or feel the need to be upset over it. One must learn to relax or one will have a heart attack. Now, I suppose everyone who has a family member who has had a heart attack will now be breaking down my door. Well, bring it on.
so overly dramatic and not in a good way
...Lordi I like, dramatic with a flare!
as for Cancer with the words that now follow ...you leave me flat
More than likely I won't be back
~*Thunderous MidNight*~
Well good, this topic all ready has too much negative energy. i don't want you coming back here, or anyone else for that matter, it's over and done with. So, come to another one of my different writings instead. That's the point after all. To share and experience many different works, not just one.
One final comment: if the zone hallows out your personality, again, you have many issues and should seak therapy. Anyone who lets a website determine something in their real life is obviously escaping from some reality that they can not face.
I agree, That was the point, finally someone got it. Thanks Scott. I don't like seeing what the zone does to many people. Pushing people that all ready have problems over the brink. This poem was not about me, I thought that was understood. I am refering to the conversations I see in publics, the posts I see on the boards etc.
Well, if you indeed meant that cancer does these things to the mind, not the body, then your poem did not express that very well, seeing as it specifically talks about how cancer "robs you of your will", etc. The reason authors of good works don't need disclaimers and so on is that their works speak for themselves and are internally coherent. Most of the people who have replied to you here are, believe it or not, reasonably intelligent (I have an MA in Philosophy, so accusing me of being too literal is just funny, and Wildebrew graduated from Yale, so calling him an idiot is pretty laughable), and if we took your poem the wrong way, then that is your failure as an author, not ours as a readership.
"Dwell on your illness far too much"? That's just insulting. Trying to make it through chemo one nauseating day at a time while keeping your spirits up enough to continue on, and being offended when someone belittles your experience and calls you, essentially, a shell of a person, hardly counts as "dwelling on your illness too much", I would think.
I really would have liked to make this a theoretical discussion about the responsiblities of authors and readers, but your condescending and sarcastic tone isn't conducive to that. Is it possible for you to consider the possibility that we might just have a shimmer of a point here?
The reason that it was directly stated that "Cancer did such things is because it was refering to the "cancer" of the zone, If I sat down and said out, cancer does this, the zone does this, and so on and so forth it would be an essay, not a poem. The reason for not putting the cancer of the zone, or some such at the beginning of each line is that the point of the poem would be lost. One is supposed to read it and think, "What?" as they are reading it only to experience the "Ahah!" feeling at the end with the last line. In saying that people dwell on their illness I mean, that if their first reaction is to pick up on the cancer reference and miss the point of the work then they are thinking about it far too much. Just as we are blind, we should not be thinking about it all of the time, and thus can put it aside enough to recognize that something is not a literal statement or a personal attack. This whole mess comes down to overly deffensive people who are quick to jump on something that perhaps reminds them of something they'd rather not think about. If one gives everything away at the beginning of a piece then it is worthless. Fore example a poem that a woman writes, we think, to a man, perhaps a past boyfriend speaking to him as if he is a dog, we wonder at the cruelty or the bitterness until upon reaching the end we find that she is indeed talking to a dog. There are many many poems of this sort and one would do well to remember that not every writing style on this board is going to conform to one school of literary thought or another.
Oh, and do some of you have a point? Yes, to an extent and I can see where some of you are coming from, but doesn't it occur to you that perhaps there is some overreaction going on here as well?
Yes. Totally. Exaggeration and stubbornness are two of my favorite vices :-).
Way to much text to read, but I skimmed it. Everyone but Heather 589387298837, Heather 0. I've watched people die of cancer, and the zone is nothing like cancer. I would explain all the ways that this pome is flawed, but I do have to get work done at work. For a start though the survival rate of logging onto the zone is much higher then cancer.
Well, to me basically the poem just doesn't work. Yes, I've seen quite a few of the "aha" enduinc poemts. They are neat when they work. But when you reach the end of this poem and read the last line it makes you think "what the heck is she on about, that's just stupid" (not saying the author is). I understand the purpose behind the poem but the metafore, in my mind, does not work at all. Like I said, it's not personal but after battling cancer I just think it totally misses the point of what cancer and cancer fighting is all about, not that people have to be 100% serious and respectful of it all the time. I still maintain that when you use a metafore to such an extent as you did in the poem it has to correspond at least a little with how the thing works in reality and those two things just don't go together as imagery.
That being said, keep writing and that's as much criticism as I'm going to add. Again, it's the work, not the author that I am expressing my opinion on and if someone likes the poem that's fine with me.
cheers
-B
I find it rather interesting that you have taken some constructive criticism on a piece of writing as a personal attack on you. I don’t believe anyone who has posted a response here was trying to insult you, but rather make suggestions on how you could improve your writing. If you are always trying to defend yourself, then you will most likely find yourself in senseless arguments that will only distract you from learning and growing as a writer and as an artist.
I think this is bashed too much...it seems that her point was to show frustration when emotions take over, rather than rationality. that's what writing's good for...I don't know...she has a purpose for writing it, and it might be something totally different than what it is being seen as.
*sighs* You are not giving cc you guys are flaming, so unless you want a flame war here, you all better shut it.
Your bashing makes me afraid to put my metaphorical works up here, because we do use the same style.
SensuallyNaturallyLiving4Today: Man, that was great! Keep it up! I liked your metaphor, and yes, I feel you on the addiction thing. I am known as one, and I completely feel it. Metaphorically, good, and everything else was great too.