Welcome to Delectable Mnts. (new members please read) https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/t5 Runboard| Welcome to Delectable Mnts. (new members please read) en-us Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:07:54 +0000 Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:07:54 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Welcome to Delectable Mnts. (new members please read)https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p13,from=rss#post13https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/p13,from=rss#post13Welcome, everyone, to the board. By way of an intro let me explain the board's name, Delectable Mnts. E.E. Cummings coined the phrase, actually borrowing from John Bunyan. In WW 1 he and another American friend volunteered as ambulance drivers in France. They were brash young men and maybe a little too honest. Their letters home were critical of officialdom's handling of people and of wartime practices (stupidities). Their letters were intercepted and read by censors. Their letters got them into trouble with the French government. They were taken into custody and they were deposited in a holding facility for undesirables, the Depot de Triage, in Normandy. Cummings spent the better part of a year in the Depot. There he was shoulder to shoulder with prostitutes, pick-pockets, petty thieves, undocumented foreigners, and gypsies. Cummings knew immediately he was in the company of people living dawn to dawn, meal to meal. And he noticed something about them. They lived by a code of conduct amounting to honor, and they carried themselves as if one day matters, one day at a time. Cummings called his fellow inmates Delectable Mountains. I think of artists, thinkers, all creative types as Delectable Mnts. Thus the board's name. I figure there is an identifiable art to conversation. Many years ago I wrote a short story whose main character is described in its first sentence this way. 'He was the most perfect conversationalist I've ever known.' The character is one of those people we sometimes meet who is always thinking about what he is doing, and what is going on around him, and who has a talent for drawing out in his companions the same. I've always loved the idea of a salon, which simply means 'a gathering.' As an institution its history is fascinating. Long before it became the property of professionals, and other men, it was the provenance of women who were thinkers, but who were excluded from the officialdom of professionals. I've read that in the 17th C. a salon became a place where a woman could pursue a higher education otherwise denied to her because of her sex. Following their lead, perhaps, I figure a salon can also be a gathering place for unprofessionals of all walks of life who happen to be artists and thinkers too. Delectable Mnts styles itself on the salon notion. It looks to be a gathering of free thinkers, dilettantes, amateurs (which means 'lover of the thing'), aficionados (which means 'to have an affection for the thing,'), and conversationalists for whom conversation is as essential as bread and water. Ideally the board is a place where doctors of philosophy, mathematicians, poets, outlaws, technicians, experts, liberal artists, housewives, garbage collectors, and desperados can bounce ideas and experience off each other. Here is a Wiki article with a thumbnail sketch of the word salon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering) Now for some helpful info. If you are a member of Runboard.com a post to Delectable Mnts automatically grants you membership to the board. If you are not a member, and here as a guest, you first need to register with Runboard here: http://www.runboard.com/ After registering with Runboard a single post to Delectable Mnts will grant membership. If you are a poet coming to the board from other poetry boards you might experience some confusion. Delectable Mnts (but how to say this?) is not organized vertically. There are no rooms called 101, 201, 301, or called Mild Critique, Intermediate Critique, Severe Critique. The board is organized more horizontally. In fact, there are only two critique forums, what are designed to accomodate both poetry, prose and the critical comments. The other forums for creative and journalistic writing each have their own, slightly nuanced objective. Delectable Mnts wants to chase down the idea that there are several ways for writer and reader relating to each other, the poet to critic axis being not the only one. Delectable Mnts does not have a quota system prescribing so many critiques for every work posted in a prescribed amount of time. The operative principle being: quid pro quo. In my words, we get back what we give. Spend a half-hour or so reading through the fora. (For the board's protocol there is The Art of Conversation forum.) But also, and finally, by way of an intro here is a list of the board's fora with a brief description of each: Salon Chat: Chat away, my Darlings. This is the forum for Board Business, the Dew Drop Inn (where old members can hang out and new members can introduce themselves) and for conversation about anything that doesn't fit anywhere else on the board. Writing News You Can Use: Announcements and Events: The place for announcing new publications made, performance events, and shows members are engaged in. The place also for sharing submission opportunities and web sites. InterBoard Poetry Community: Delectable Mnts is associated with the InterBoard Poetry Community (IBPC). On a monthly basis we nominate 3 poems for IBPC recognition. This is the forum for IBPC nominations and announcements. Chalkboard & Board: This is where creative types get to riff and run the voodoo down. Type to the screen. Create improv. Games. Even show and tell. This is where poet and reader can feed off each other free of critics. Poetry Spectrum: This spectrum is the forum where writers post their works, looking for critical comments and suggestions. Dialogue between writer and critic is encouraged. As are all the forms of poetry, traditional and nonce, and all the hybrids between poetry and prose imaginable. Prose Spectrum: The Prose Spectrum is a place for short(er) prose and for the dialogue between writer and critic. Dialogue, essay, short story, vignette, it's all good. Novel Spectrum The Novel's Spectrum is a space for longer works, including novels, short story cycles, novellas and novels-in-verse. Writer and critic dialogue is encouraged. Field Notes: I thought of calling the forum 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,' taken after Agee's and Walker's famous reportage on sharecroppers in Alabama during the Great Depression. Then I thought of calling it 'Life Studies,' and stealing from R. Lowell's collection of poetry that inaugurated the stuff of the so-called Confessional poets. One moniker would not have been readily understood. The other, and through no fault of its own, has accrued intellectual baggage. So Field Notes it is. Reportage. Life Studies. Field Sketches. Journal Notes and Narratives. From Bagdad to Islamabad to the Australian outbacks to the dirty streets of any city to the roads of some current dharma bum to the mountains to the sea coast to the demilitarized zones under UN control in suburban homes... Life Studies & Field Sketches. The forum has one rule, what is simply a matter of courtesy. No name identification of any individual living. The forum looks to engage in a different kind of conversation than what is customary in a workshop setting. Here engagement is based on content, not on textual analysis. Right Words & Library: The Right Words is for posting and sharing the works of other writers that have impacted and influenced us. Yeats, Lorca, Sexton, Emerson, Dickinson, etc. (Naturally, copyright laws, in general, and Runboard's protocol for copyright protection, specifically, are respected.) The forum is also for sharing book titles. What are we reading and what have we read that has impacted us? Ateliers: Here members can create their own workshops and studios for longer works, works in progress, collections, serially thematic pieces. Poetry, essays, novel chapters, art, musical compositions (in link)...It's all good. Members also get to set their own parameters on how their showings get spoken to. Ateliers is a forum visible to registered members of the board only. In Translation: In Translation is a forum for both discussions about the art of translation and for trying our hand at the art. The forum is available to registered members of Delectable Mnts only. Spoken Word This is where we get to hear what we are normally limited to reading. The works of poets and writers, including that of members, in recitation. Music & Dance: So what is the Music & Dance Forum about? I am not sure I know. Maybe it is about music and dance, and links to music and dance, and links to stories involving the musical greats, even if they've been forgotten. And about World music and dance. I just want music and dance on the board, no matter from where it comes. Visual Arts: The visual arts, all visuals: film, video, painting, photography, embedded images, and discussion/links to all of the above. Discussion I: Discussion I is the place for writers, readers, visual artists, musicians, all aficionados, and critics to idea play. Discussion II: Here the conversationalist has free range. Cultural studies, religion, politics, current events, the sciences. Have I left anything out? Probably. Gaia's Gown: A note of explanation about the forum. 'Gaia's Gown' reflects a certain bias on the part of the site owner. "Greek name for Mother Earth, the 'Deep-breasted One,' called Oldest of the Divinities. Though the Olympian gods under Zeus took over her shrine, yet they swore their binding oaths by her name because they were subject to her law." Barbara G. Walker. While Gaea, or Gaia, is not the earliest name for mother earth, the Egyptian Maat came much earlier, the name has currency because of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis of the seventies in which he theorized about the earth's biosphere, accounting for a single living composite. http://www.gaiatheory.org/synopsis.htm The forum is meant as a venue for poetry, narrative, conservationist thinking, alerts, natural history, success stories, conversation and debate concerning Gaia's gown. Terresonnondisclosed_email@example.com (Terreson)Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:42:25 +0000