the low down
Tara is a poet, academic, teacher, reviewer, civil marriage celebrant, editor, blogger, lover, fighter, lion. The poems and prose here are mostly drafts of napkin scrawlings. More polished work, interviews, ramblings by Tara can be found elsewhere on the web, if you look hard enough.
This webpage is best viewed with whiskey.
Delightful! My kind of verse.
June 27, 2008 at 9:51 am
yes, instructions to drink always go down well in poetry classes.
June 28, 2008 at 9:14 am
Do you do children’s parties?
December 15, 2008 at 2:11 am
not since they tagged my ankle.
December 15, 2008 at 2:17 am
Miss,
Please pardon my intrusion. I wish only to say that your sequence of words, the rhythm of cumulative syntax and your prompts of comparisons truly captivate me. Your recurring themes reveal what’s really on the inside. The heart truly is a lonely hunter.
March 26, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Half cut? That’s great!
I assume that makes intrusions
half-ass acceptable.
My leaves do shake at times,
but I’ve no need to turn around.
Hello! Nice to meet you!Uncle Tree
March 28, 2009 at 12:05 am
What’s all this “intrusion” talk? This door is of the open variety.
March 28, 2009 at 12:54 am
Then I’m coming in bearing gifts of the alcoholic variety.
January 14, 2010 at 6:33 am
Didn’t Plato forbid poets in his Republic?
June 21, 2009 at 10:41 pm
‘Forbid’ is a bit harsh, isn’t it? I don’t know, I haven’t read the books.
Two thoughts here:
1. Art imitates life, and life imitates TV.
2. Plato and Socrates WERE poets.
June 22, 2009 at 1:59 am
Just had to say I Love this comment. Never looked at life like that before.
August 21, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Which comment? I can’t take credit for #1, that’s all Ani DiFranco.
August 22, 2011 at 12:30 am
How are you defining “poet,” then? I could explode the definition of philosopher to include very person capable of thought, but that’s hardly a meaningful definition. I suspect your definition of poet is thusly exploded if you include Plato and Socrates in your mix.
January 2, 2010 at 9:32 am
I believe in the “language distilled” definition of poetry – in that case, to some extent, a person who communicates that way is a poet. To take the definition further requires the poet-hopeful to experience life as a poem; to embrace the intuitive/intellectual/emotional truth at the core of all their experiences (I also subscribe to Imagism), to be too sensitive to live a long life and to never know the meaning of “get over it”, to walk around naked regarless of the persona they appear to wear, to have enough of an ego to feel they have something to say that is worth someone else’s trouble to read it, to hate themselves enough to wish they could live a bit more conventionally and have intimate understandings with people like they do words/rhythms/enjambments/endstops/images, to live a life outside of industry/writers groups/readings so that they know the world well enough to represent it, to accept the simple fact that they are only technically a poet while they are with pen to paper and the rest of the time they are human and have human responsibilities they must strive to fulfill, to be brave enough to put their work out for all to hate, to not require fame or money or recognition ever for anything under any circumstances… Need I continue?
January 2, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Is it or is it not a necessary for a poet to write poetry? To the best of my knowledge (which, while majoring in philosophy, is still less than omniscient) neither Plato nor Socrates ever penned anything that could be called poetry. (In fact, Socrates hardly penned anything at all, and some scholars wonder whether he even existed, or was a creation of Plato’s.) I appreciate your veneration of the noble characteristics you ascribe to your interpretation of poets, and would agree that Socrates and Plato had many of those characteristics, but… call me old fashioned, I think poets still need to compose poetry.
Or perhaps this is a dispute over what constitutes poetry. I understand poetry as a form of literary art in which language is used to evoke feelings rather than, necessarily, denote meaning. Socrates and Plato strove to know the world and know it unambiguously. To that end, (much more so Plato than Socrates, as mentioned) they wrote dissertations and theories, but I would hardly call their writing poetry. Poetry aims to be less denotative and concrete and is more concerned with emotional meanings and truths. Each has their value, to be sure, and there is also value in drawing meaningful distinctions between different things. It is not helpful to mix apples and oranges, especially if one were to be allergic to either/or (just for instance).
January 3, 2010 at 4:57 am
Emotion and meaning are not mutually exclusive, and poetry can do both or either. There are hundreds of poetic forms and movements and genres each of which aim to communicate different things in different ways.
When a tennis player makes an impressive shot we call it “poetry in motion”. Why? Because she/he has achieved a moment of perfection – the player appealed to the spectators’ intellects/intuition/emotion in one distilled motion. In the same way, there are moments of (as you say, non-ambiguous) perfection in the writings of Plato and Socrates. This is poetry in one sense.
January 3, 2010 at 5:12 am
hey x
May 31, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I love to hate myself
I love to bloom thy hell
whim and whisker
I love imperfection
Am I welcomed……….
June 11, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Sure.
June 12, 2010 at 12:09 am
I am a confused soul, ur way of writing is candid and soulful.
i read all ur comments and discussions ,
whether abstractuon of poetry always meaningful?
I dont know what ie poetry
but i beleif Something which connects is poetry.
June 13, 2010 at 9:55 am
Hi.. please consider joining http://simplypoet.com .. u really write good poems..
June 21, 2010 at 5:53 pm
You know, in all the time I’ve known you I don’t think we’ve really talked much about your writing. I’m really enjoying the ride on this blog of yours, suite pee. Hope all’s well in your world. We’re overdue…
October 10, 2010 at 6:25 pm
We have better (and stupider) things to talk about. Come back here!
October 10, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Love your drafts.
For the record, I liked Sonnet I, too.
March 30, 2011 at 9:49 am
I’m not very good at writing poetry, but it looks like you know poetry.
May 8, 2011 at 7:33 am
Well well, hey there Tara. It’s Mat Stone here. Don’t know if you remember me or not? I was in a few of your writing classes at St Albans VU campus not so long ag. Hahahah, I’m told I leave somewhat of an impression on people – odd chap who sat at the back, always wearing hats and coats, wouldn’t stop prattling on about Batman? In any case, I tried tracking you down there today, but it seems you’ve since moved on. Luckily a quick peek on google got some results, so that was that.
I was hoping to run into you there to thank you, actually. I’ve been quietly tapping away at the keyboard since then pushing out the odd piece every now and again, but I finally lucked out after a while; I’ve been offered a job in London doing some writing for a small video game company. It’s all going to be pro bono, so I’m probably going to be living off frozen hamburgers and sleeping under a bridge, but this is pretty much exactly what I’ve been wanting to land a gig doing for quite a while now indeed, so I think it’ll be worth it.
Where you come into it, though. I dropped out of the course last year (although I’ve been happily lying on job applications since saying that I passed, hahahah) for quite a few reasons, main one being it was just depressing me. What I did get out of it though was the foundations for some self esteem with my writing. You were the first person who ever though anything I did was worth a damn, and, well. I still have a lot of self-worth problems today, really, but I’m quite certain that if it hadn’t been for your kind words, I wouldn’t have taken myself any further. Yet, here I am romping off to another country with the express purpose of getting more work done. It probably sounds a bit hammy, but, really. You helped me more than you might have though, and I wanted to thank you for that. You left quite a mark.
- M. Stone
September 13, 2011 at 7:57 am
If you are living under a bridge, how will you cook the frozen hamburgers? Maybe a fire in a barrel like on tv?
September 13, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Laphroaig in a plastic cup was less than ideal. The company however, was perfect.
December 11, 2011 at 8:57 pm