IF Comp Poetry Review Thread!

Well, yes. That’s true. It likely dates back to those innocent days before the World Wide Web was even a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye.

Creatures Such As We (ghazal):

[spoiler]What game could reconcile two creatures such as we?
What can flesh articulate? mortals how much be free?

Alone in the moonlight, I cast seeds on regolith
Warm below, a bright blue marble reaches up to me.

You grant me forms, lovers, modes of an argument.
So it would seem, Socrates; the teach never touches me.

Whose hammer, chain, could join these hidden tigers?
What manner Job dare address speeches up to Thee?

I know all this hymnal, my thumb marks the good parts.
Love’s apostle, apostate, perforce preaches touchily.

Solaris, eclipsed, won’t return my symmetriads.
A beating heart seems water leached through dust to thee.

We wrestle in the dark what we know not in the morning.
Men live in man’s city: no hijra for such as we.

I am, am not, Kabo; I shape not what shapes most.
Such gifts are not granted to creatures such as we.[/spoiler]

I’m free! I’m free!

I was going to try and do all of them, but this is probably as far as I’m going to get. Maybe next year.

And Yet It Moves
(Terza Rima)

An interactive Life of Galileo!
I’ve always longed to type into the parser
not “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”

but “Eppur Si Muove” – so the stars’re
right and into Italy we travel,
the Renaissance to boot, to see the Master.

It’s Brecht with added puzzles to unravel,
though sadly the designer’s really goofing
off – they’re merely fetchquests – and, to cavil,

the spelling and the grammar need a proofing,
the drama’s well beneath iconoclasm,
and story needs more research or it’s spoofing.

A brave attempt, but sadly there’s a chasm
between the work and the enthuasism.

Begscape
i[/i]

I have two coins, yet shelter costs me four tonight.
And only one blue link to click: it’s “Beg” tonight.

The city and the passers by are generated
by a script, and so is charity tonight.

I’m shaken by the brutal randomness of giving.
I’m shaken by a roving gang of cops tonight.

The setting’s fantasy is spare and vicious glamour;
the background character becomes the lead tonight.

As commentary on real-world ills the text is lacking:
the lack of agency is overplayed tonight.

But read it as a text on texts, a game on gaming,
a grind on grinding and the twine untwines tonight.

Building the Right Stuff
i[/i]

Again with the bleak sci fi missions,
again with the AI suspicions:
the writing is fair,
the jokes mostly there,
but I quit due to slow screen transitions.

Caroline
i[/i]

She takes my hand, but she’s not real.
The story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
She leads with missionary zeal:

and takes my hand, but she’s not real.
The writing’s nothing that appeals
and much I could have done without.

She takes my hand, but she’s not real.
The story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Creatures Such As We
i[/i]

I like to think I don’t like dating sims –
that playing dolls is but a parody
of love where only one side rules and wins –
but “Creatures” loves both games and balladry:

the game here’s thinking what we mean by art,
the ballad’s rich and subtle in its telling.
Relationships are built with life and heart,
not resource allocation: that’s compelling!

The dialogue is rather on the nose,
the author’s hand too clear in marking Theming
in each and every option that I chose –
but rather this than games without a meaning.

And though in games I’ll never change the end,
I’m dreaming of the emails I could send.

Eidolon
(Greek Elegaic Couplets)

Waking at midnight with barely a sense of what it might mean,
clicking compulsively as prompted and still just unsure.

Whether the writing’s too vague or too turgid, moving so fast
story and character don’t settle til much futher in.

Once I’m committed I find myself rapt by every move:
metaphors multiply and now I believe in the tale.

Eidolon captures quite flawlessly something crucial in kids:
curious impulses twinned cruelly with terrible fears.

Family’s dangerous, children are brutal, parents are worse:
fantasy offers a way we can find a way home.

Though the work’s puzzles and structure and writing clearly need smoothed
rarely am I so impressed with such depth in a game.

Enigma
(Murder Ballad)

The gimmick is the centrepiece
and here it’s neatly turned:
a PC frozen in a flash
til memory’s relearned.

Just like an exploration game
we seek to map a world,
but here it is a consciousness
we’re playing to unfurl.

And all this is appealing as
a way to spin a tale:
a shame then that Enigma’s plot
is hardly one to hail.

So guy meets girl, and guy kills girl,
and guy’s best friend is mad,
'cos girl was best friend’s sister and
murder’s awfully bad.

The tale is told, the world is mapped,
the PC has a gun –
but I don’t care who lives or dies:
the tale is old. I’m done.

Excelsior
(Left-Handed Lipogram)

we’re taxed, as few acts are stet
a terse, severe text breezes fast
weaved dares are set, braved, beat
we fear a raw teaser wears: we zzz…

Fifteen Minutes
(An invented form: 15 lines of 60 characters, one rhyme. Sorry about the scansion.)

The most complex of puzzleboxes have a certain weird appeal:
the more fiendish they are, the more headstrong is our zeal.
Yet as I load up this now my drained brain begins to squeal;
it’s scarcely functioning and this seems too like an ordeal.
The walkthrough’s awful tempting as I set my nerve to steel.

I twiddle with the time machine, hit knobs and spin a wheel;
I gain a sense of how it works, some sense of how I’ll feel;
I laugh at jokes and goings on, though the comedy’s genteel;
I lick a single puzzle, though its mechanics seem concealed;
but this is all half-hearted as my mood’s so far from ideal.

I say I’ll save it up for when I really need a Gordian spiel
and wait for the reviews whose super marks’ll seal the deal.
But as the thoughts have come I think I might instead repeal
my plan to solve it later as the scores have been low yield.
Yet that sounds harsh. So will I solve it? Time will reveal.

That makes me very happy.

(I tried, and utterly failed, to get a Fifteen Minutes review into a sestina, which would have been just about perfect. Sestinas are fucking rough, yo.)