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miter's avatar

This is great- feels really lyrical to me- except for those Franklin lines!

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Josh Datko's avatar

Franklin does fuck up the flow sometimes.

Yeah, I could probably do something where those lines kinda float behind my voice perhaps and don’t interrupt the main flow. I’ll experiment with that.

Thanks for stopping by :)

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Wil Price's avatar

This is amazing, Josh! I'd love to hear what you liked and disliked about the stream of consciousness style.

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Josh Datko's avatar

Well, I tried. Not sure if I did it right :) I kinda just let it make a first draft and take it to a point where it felt forced. Then I went back and tried to shape it.

Like I poured the beaten eggs in the pan, let them settle a bit, and then once they had some shape, they started to look like scrambled eggs.

I don’t know how you did this for as long as of poem as you did, it was difficult to maintain this state. There is a version of this poem I think that could be much longer, and maybe I will try it one day.

Actually I might try it again in a ghazal form maybe where there is a ring to reach for each couplet.

But for this one I just tried your idea of and opening and closing image.

I think for me, when I do this, it brings out my cynical nature. I’m also reading some Thomas Pynchon what resulted seems a bit too post modern but I tried to just go with the flow.

In the spirt of the activity, I should probably not hate too much on this cynical part of me. But there are some images here, that I don’t really need to encourage and I find bubbling to the surface a bit too quickly. I don’t know, it’s perhaps ok in moderation.

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Wil Price's avatar

Of course. I feel it’s better to give such things a voice in art as opposed to life. The danger is also that certain cathartic self-explorations can be very narcissistic and consequently not helpful to anyone. I didn’t get that sense at all from your poem here.

It certainly helped to have the grounding image and the repetition of Ben Franklin quotes to cement it.

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B. Eldon Calder's avatar

Powerful. You might be interested in Shakespeare's Richard II. There are many overlapping themes I see. If you ever rewrote it, that would be a useful source.

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Brandon Westlake's avatar

I want to see more stream of conscious poetry after this.

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Josh Datko's avatar

Wil Price did a great job and inspired me. Check him out for sure! Thanks for reading 😊

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Rasmus Rosenkrantz's avatar

This is incredible Josh! You definitely should do some more exploration of the stream of consciousness style! It suits your writing well

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Josh Datko's avatar

Appreciate that Rasmus. It was an interesting experience. I’m glad to have tried. It bubbled up some things that I probably wouldn’t have written otherwise, so I will keep it in mind!

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B Stings's avatar

I like it and those Franklin lines serve the other verses well in my opinion.

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Josh Datko's avatar

Yeah, maybe I will just have to work on Ben Franklin voice to make it obvious when I’m reading it :)

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B Stings's avatar

Ha! Yes.

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James Hart's avatar

Very nice, Josh. I'd love to see this fully fleshed out visually; I can see the compatibility with bills and the magnetic strip.

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Josh Datko's avatar

Oh yeah, that would be interesting. It would go well on VHS I think. Thanks :)

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Rea de Miranda's avatar

Brilliantly done, Josh!

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