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View Full Version : Quarterfinals: 3. Split vs. 2. Darth Yoda \\ Darth Yoda wins 4-2


Certain
09-08-2014, 05:56 PM
http://i.imgur.com/wCR30UC.gif

Welcome to the quarterfinals!


The Basics

Check-ins are not required but are always appreciated.

Verses are due Thursday, Sept. 11 at 11:59 p.m. PT. THERE ARE NO EXTENSIONS.

Votes are due Sunday, Sept. 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Three votes are required from each competitor, one on each other battle. For each missing vote, two votes will be deducted. Don't worry about proving you voted, as I can handle it.

Verses may not exceed 12 lines. If the length of a writer's lines is called into question, the standard will be 15 words per line, and verses of more than 180 words will be disqualified or required to be shortened.

Standard writing and voting rules are in effect. No biting. No recycling. Votes must be explained. No editing verses after the first vote or the verses deadline. Any other issues will be resolved using Art of Writing League Season 3 rules as the basis.


Topic


Photograph


Good luck, Split and Darth Yoda.

Split
09-12-2014, 02:58 AM
a semblance of close as different as treasure and cove,
a sense of remembrance so vivid, it's an extension of home.
cyan. printed on redness. a red eye. the bedside,
a light I leave on right by my post- & abandonment easens.
to my lighter i'm senpai. CONFESS- I cancel my evenings to manage my demons,
and plan to confide in the handful I don't. Beauty and cameras can lie.
regress into the cure of a cancer I breath from. I could sample my throat,
bleed, and ramble for evenings, with every gram that I smoke,
then coalesce to a vanishing point to let the impending develop.
Send a sad little note I had stashed- I've an preference for relics.
Polaroid photo attached, know why I chose it- to stow in the past.

Darth Yoda
09-12-2014, 02:58 AM
memories worth a thousand words, printed in negative light
daydreaming extended exposure. with perspective on bright
monocle & hour-glass. one minute to shoot; rifle frames the soldier
digitized optical mass. where eyes glued became the beholder
most say numbers lie. corner stone appeal til' the hero is sung
time-stamps read the binary our life defined in zeroes and ones
hypnotic shutter cycle.
ricocheting luminescence, risk displays of absolutely pleasant blooming presence
to give away the thick vignetting, of river glaze where ink connects a blue fluorescence
cigarette burns stain the altar, where..the sun gave it's luster
patented by clouds of smoked butter, & tobacco paved in its structure
chromatic deliver. most dabble the 'what ifs'. photographic absence of tincture
I grew fonder of my heart locket that didnt feel the same with half of our picture

kannon
09-14-2014, 04:04 PM
Typing on my phone again.

Split. Your rhyme schemes are weird in this one. Usually, it's a little uncommon, but still easy to follow, this time it kinda fucked with the flow of the piece. I gotta be honest, this is probably my least favorite piece you've wrote thus far. I found it kind of confusing. And I'm honestly not a hundred percent sure I understand what you were trying to get across. It vaguely seems like maybe a soldier writing home to a lady, whose picture he keeps my his bedside. But I don't know that I got much else out of it than that. I've read over this piece like 6 times, and I get more confused with each read. I'm sorry if this is a shit breakdown. The flow started well, and then kinda fell apart on the back end. I felt like the schemes had a bunch of call backs, and inner rhymes, but the inners came like a bar and a half later, sometimes when you'd gone into two new schemes, and it kinda threw me off a bit. I don't know man, I wasn't particularly moved by this piece. The content or the way in which it was written. Sorry, bud.

Darth yoda. So this is more clearly about a soldier. I kinda liked the similarities played against a camera lens shoot vs. A scope "framing a soldier." But I kinda felt like this piece fell a bit short on the back end. The flow seemed to stretch way more in the back six, and not really even in a way that I felt assisted the story. Bars 9-10 kinda brought me back in, but then it finished kinda weird. And why did you write "most people say numbers lie"? That seems made up. Men lie, women lie, numbers don't. The closing of this story seemed more about a man coping with the idea of never seeing that person who is in his photograph. Which at least feels a bit more complete to me. Piece was okay as a whole, but I didn't love it.

This is a weird battle. I came into this thinking Split was gonna take it easy, but I don't know what happened. After re-reading split, your strongest section to me is definitely, "manage my demons, and plan to confide in the handful I don't." But I still feel like something was missing when I finished. Yoda had some wording that was weird to me, but overall I felt like his story was more complete. Especially since I (maybe wrongly) assumed that split's piece was about a soldier, it kinda makes me lean towards yoda a bit more because I like his ending more.

I gotta go with Yoda for the upset.

Vulgar
09-14-2014, 09:57 PM
Split - Serene at certain parts, over salted in others. I thought it was about the extravagant yet painful habits of a modern narcissist, but who am I to develop your photo album? It was good stuff but a little underwhelming.

Darth Yoda - The language usage here was good, and actually struck me as a little formulaic. You used strategy within to lodge a satisfactory vision of what a photograph is, to the reader. Hollow interpretation but tenderly written and interesting.

Vote goes to Yoda.

Soulstice
09-14-2014, 10:06 PM
split - thought this was great. the stream of conscience style is working quite well for you in this tourney.

a semblance of close as different as treasure and cove,
a sense of remembrance so vivid, it's an extension of home.

thought this set the scene nicely. treasure and cove is a great metaphor for the proximity of emotion between two people. you have my heart, the treasure, in your cove - but the cove is unaware and unfeeling and totally apathetic to the existence of this treasure.

cyan. printed on redness. a red eye. the bedside,
a light I leave on right by my post- & abandonment easens.

i took this as a sort of going back of sorts - cyan printed on redness reminded me of a ticket. but i took it as a late night trip back to this memory that is referencing. there was sort of a sleepless, dreamless feel to the travel - as if your character isnt available during their flight, there just - vaguely existing, lost in nostalgia as they go back.

to my lighter i'm senpai. CONFESS- I cancel my evenings to manage my demons,
and plan to confide in the handful I don't. Beauty and cameras can lie.
regress into the cure of a cancer I breath from. I could sample my throat,
bleed, and ramble for evenings, with every gram that I smoke,
then coalesce to a vanishing point to let the impending develop.

I thought CONFESS was a little wink to black's piece in OM. haha. anyways the senpai line is cool but i wouldve reversed it, like your lighter is training you by lighting the weed that leads to some previously unreachable state of mind. the wording was strange here but not bad. coalesce to a vanishing point was great - it once more evoked feelings of nostalgia - in that when you start to recall memories you 'vanish' from the present.

Send a sad little note I had stashed- I've an preference for relics.
Polaroid photo attached, know why I chose it- to stow in the past.

this wraps up your character nicely, and brings a lot closure to a journey i could visualize - maybe a few nods to the actual memory would be nice, depending on how you wouldve wrote it, but the absence of that was good too - really focus on the character's reactions and growth through the journey. enjoyed this.

Darth - this was pretty wordy. i dont think there was a clear disconnect between describing actual things, altars, rivers, fluorescence, and story/image stuff vs the thoughts and concepts, the topically stuff. i think this was just a discussion on what a photograph can represent. the ending seemed like a a culmination of something but on my later reads i think it was just the final entry on a list, sort of. i think you touched on the artistry of photographs, as well as how they can be technical as seen below - especially the rifle part which was cool.

monocle & hour-glass. one minute to shoot; rifle frames the soldier
digitized optical mass. where eyes glued became the beholder
most say numbers lie. corner stone appeal til' the hero is sung
time-stamps read the binary our life defined in zeroes and ones

after hypnotic shutter cycles (hypnotic is a good entry point to this following concept) i think you go on about how there can be artistry as well as practicality in photographs. you follow up on how no matter what photos are capable of they can be flawed and cause pain as well. that was cool but very difficult to extract from your piece.

vote - split. better technically and a more clearly defined piece. both were good

oats
09-14-2014, 10:27 PM
Split:

a semblance of close as different as treasure and cove,
a sense of remembrance so vivid, it's an extension of home.

I didn't care much for the "semblance of close" description, seemed faux-poetic. Comparing treasure and cove was meaningful, though, worked well for the photograph (cove) that housed the memory (treasure). Extension of home is a straightforward, impactful line. Overall strong start.

cyan. printed on redness. a red eye. the bedside,
a light I leave on right by my post- & abandonment easens.
to my lighter i'm senpai. CONFESS- I cancel my evenings to manage my demons,
and plan to confide in the handful I don't. Beauty and cameras can lie

red imagery worked to evoke old, possibly weathered pictures, good homage to childhood memories/the past. Photograph as a nightlight is dope. Being master of your lighter is fun, faute de mieux a more literary (and less patronizing) way to say I liked it. But that's just how it made me feel, like a modern day Prometheus, except I don't want to share my stash with the rest of humanity, mostly just a friend or two. I like the play off of red eye.

I hope the CONFESS wasn't a reference to dead man's verse in the OM lol, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here, not your fault that I thought of that upon seeing CONFESS in all caps. The CAPS and - combo helped the rhyme though. I really love the last bit from "I cancel" to "cameras can lie." The vanity and insecurity that we all shrivel from and confide in, depending on where we're at at the moment. Insightful and honest. Cameras lie, looks can deceive, etc. Dope.

regress into the cure of a cancer I breath from. I could sample my throat,
bleed, and ramble for evenings, with every gram that I smoke,

Nice play with the words "cure" and "cancer," shows the dichotomy interacting here, the self-loathing stoner. I can certainly relate. Dependence on smoking to ease the pain of...something? I tend to leave my footprints all over others' work, so I've injected nostalgia as the driving velocity of the character's demons, likely a nostalgia for a simpler time when smoking wasn't as central to his happiness as it is now.

then coalesce to a vanishing point to let the impending develop.
Send a sad little note I had stashed- I've a preference for relics.
Polaroid photo attached, know why I chose it- to stow in the past.

I think what was missing for me was the clarity of the photo. I'm guessing this was a risk you took to create a more powerful visual and strengthen the interplay of smoking and the photo itself, but ultimately I feel a little lost about the central conflict of this character. It's clearly a pained yearning for something in the past. But what it is, I don't know. I was hoping for a final reveal, even just a glimpse, in this last part, but it pulled back even further to talk about generalities of coalescing into a vanishing point etc, which was dope photography imagery, but didn't help me to access the verse. Overall, I thought this was a dope verse, if not unsatisfying in some ways. The writing, the content, was all on point, I just wish we a slightly more concrete look at what was pulling the character from within.


Yoda:

memories worth a thousand words, printed in negative light
daydreaming extended exposure. with perspective on bright
monocle & hour-glass. one minute to shoot; rifle frames the soldier
digitized optical mass. where eyes glued became the beholder

The first couplet was a good welcoming into the verse, makes it clear that this is more of a meditation on photography and its place in life/how it's representative of it. I like the idea of the camera being the rifle and the photographer being the soldier. The last bit is a bit unclear to me, didn't know if that meant that the subject of the photo was the audience? Which makes sense to me, and is a dope perspective, to flip the medium on its head like that. So I'm sticking with that interpretation. Dope start.

most say numbers lie. corner stone appeal til' the hero is sung
time-stamps read the binary our life defined in zeroes and ones

At first, I didn't like the "numbers lie" bit, but you helped me suspend that disbelief by following up with the binary code reference. Like here are the 0s and 1s that make up our photograph, this is life! But it's not. Photography, like any art form really, can be so hollow a representation of real life. Good couplet.

hypnotic shutter cycle.
ricocheting luminescence, risk displays of absolutely pleasant blooming presence
to give away the thick vignetting, of river glaze where ink connects a blue fluorescence

Here's the Yoda we all know and love. Barrages of rhymes. Good blurring of life and the art that tries to capture it, indicating the areas of overlap and the borders. Dope.

cigarette burns stain the altar, where..the sun gave it's luster
patented by clouds of smoked butter, & tobacco paved in its structure
chromatic deliver. most dabble the 'what ifs'. photographic absence of tincture
I grew fonder of my heart locket that didnt feel the same with half of our picture

Cigarette burn as the sun, like you're pissed off at the picture and rubbed a lit cig on it. Clouds of smoked butter was really descriptive of how the photograph in the locket was aged. The third line was hard for me to place in the verse tbh."Most dabble the what ifs" was a little rigid for me. And I'm not sure what the "absence of tincture" refers to. The final line neatly wrapped up the verse, though the wording was again a bit rushed to me, usually your penchant for strong rhymes and smooth wording are more pronounced, this seemed a little sloppy by your standards as far as the writing goes.


Vote: This is really difficult, because both had up-and-down verses that seemed opposite each other. What I mean is, Split had the smoother writing and better concept, but lacked some key points of clarity, whereas Yoda had the better rhymes and was more clear with the content, but the concept was less engaging and he ran into some wording troubles sporadically. Once again, this is one of those push and pull matches where I really see personal preference deciding the final verdict. In this case, I appreciated how Split attacked the topics of nostalgia and pot smoking (the highs and lows of it, if I must) compared to Yoda's representation of love and love lost via a photograph, which, while perhaps better executed, wasn't as impactful to me on an emotional level, which both verses appealed to. This is on par with Eng-Cake imo for the amount of dope crammed into 24 lines, difficult to arrive at an obvious winner. Dope match gentlemen, also potential BOTW.

Certain
09-15-2014, 01:43 AM
This battle is tied 2-2.

Eŋg
09-15-2014, 01:53 AM
splitty - interesting. you're so off-kilter, sometimes, i wonder if it's more for projected effect than a product of your nature. you rhyme more than i remember you doing, which is cool, and you're unorthodox - letting the thread of the bedside rhyme dangle before tying a knot in it with senpai - which i thought should have been kohai, incidentally. you had two typos in your verse, i'm not docking points from them, just saying. i'm not so sure 'semblance of close' works, practically, but it sounds cool. there's an anxious uncertainty manifested in a passive and resigned individual. i'd say the bedside/beauty and sad little photo i stashed/polaroid photo attached (coupled with his patently nostalgic attachment to it) most likely allude to a former lover. it wasn't thinly veiled, it rarely is with you, but i still feel that's a bit of an obvious interpretation on my part (and your direction). did you actually allude to black? i really thought you did, lol. regress into the cure of a cancer fucked up the cadence of your piece for me, but it was a transient hiccup amid some curious writing. coalesce -> impending develop was line of the battle. that was a dual threat, with the first being the image of a wonderful paradox, and the second a superb wordplay given the context. the sombre, reflective and self-destructive tone seemed earnest and weighted what could easily have been an airy piece. you built a condition in a microversed sphere of existence to centre on the attention of the photo. to the point the content of the photo was immaterial? good shit.

yoda - i think whatever wording issues anyone before me ran into could, for the most part, be swiftly remedied with the littlest of grammatical tweaks. i can read through/past it, as it's not usually a problem for me, and suggests you didn't proofread or are a bit lazy like myself. either way, i don't care, it's inconsequential. though i cared enough to mention it. anyway, i won't lie, this is a difficult verse to digest. looking at it as a literary writing, it has significant aesthetic appeal. if six lines, either side, were divided by 'hypnotic shutter cycle' the latter half is vastly more lyrical - not in the hip hop sense. it's pretty. the two lines immediately after the split are ridiculous, though clouds of smoked butter threw me, a bit. this was a thinker's philosophical approach to photographs, whereas split invented a single scenario in which the photo was central. radically different approaches. the idea of the rifle framing the solider (presumably the scope) was outstanding. numbers lies/binary life defined was an excellent pair of lines, but the beholder bit before it was a bit awkward. i'm not sure if i'm being obtuse or you're being arcane, but i did have trouble swallowing some parts of the verse, which almost made the beauty that much brighter. it was a weird, almost erratic experience reading this. i presume you meant trace by tincture, and not a drug. that works for me.

my feed has been pretty shitty this evening, i'm sorry. but that's effectively my vote. both did well with the topic, but i suppose i enjoyed one marginally more, even if i laboured through parts.

v/yoda

Certain
09-15-2014, 02:49 AM
I'm not sure why this battle was so neglected, but I'll vote here even though it's not tied and I said I would only vote as a tiebreaker. I'm not going to go full-scale breakdown, though.

Split: This verse felt like a diversion from your traditional style in the opposite direction from last week. While last week, you told an unusually fleshed-out story and perhaps went a bit light on the lyricism, here you went all-in on rhymes. The verse was very good, with a couple small things I didn't like as much. I wish you had ended a bit stronger. A few of your turns of phrase were remarkable (the standout: "I cancel my evenings to manage my demons, and plan to confide in the handful I don't."), but you didn't consistently bring together your message and your rhymes and your images into a clear picture. The nostalgia factor also seemed like the easy approach here.

Darth Yoda: Your approach was even more direct than Split's, though I'm not sure it was as obvious because it was so direct. This verse felt sticky, dripping unique phrase turns. It's tough to envision some of your verses in a vacuum because you have such a specific tone to your writing and particularly to your grammatical choices, but at this point, I've read enough to know them well. Split is pretty much the same way, and you two might be the most unique writers on this site for that reason. Here you bounced from concept to concept as a way of forming a whole, and the second half of the verse was outstanding. (I've only heard of smoked butter in the context of a wood smoker used to flavor butter, but I imagined a different context in this case.) The rhyming and assonance/consonance mix were outstanding and made this verse feel lush. I really loved it. This is the best way to handle a straight-on interpretation of a topic, to simply write more beautifully than your opponent, even a particularly strong one.

Vote: Darth Yoda