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Dec. 12, 2005 Congratulations, big ups, Mr. Siluk, you deserve the honor and you have the gold medallion because you have cooked so much pumpkin soup for the soul. That sentence is a pastiche from the laudatory comments of Stan Grimes, Timothy Stelly, Ken Hughes, Brian Barbeito and Bonijean Isaacs. I have letters from both Stelly and Barbeito apparently contradicting the opinions that they posted in praise of Siluk’s ‘victory’ in the run-off. I have e-mail also from Frederick Smith, Kevin Garrity, Dayo Gould, Pat Hurley, Ron Lewis and perhaps others who agree with my comments on Dennis Siluk’s writings, which make a mockery of useless-knowledge.com. Unfortunately, almost all of these contributors elected not to make known their true opinions. I am much gratified that Thomas Pain has had the integrity to speak the truth and to write a much-needed critique of one of Siluk’s articles. In my article, “Useless-Knowledge.Com’s Run-Off is a Travesty,” I outline the same egregious faults that Pain details so masterfully. Although my article was blunt, it was entirely truthful. Siluk does make 20 to 50 grammatical mistakes per article. His statistics are meaningless. His knowledge of history is flawed. His opinions are ill-founded. I appreciate that he has traveled a great deal, as have I, but without any genuine ability to write English, he merely dishes up jabberwocky and garbage. I’ve noticed, over the past year, that hardly ever does anyone reply to one of his articles, either positively or negatively, and I began to feel sorry for the poor old fool. Most of his articles are simply unintelligible, inarticulate ramblings. So you can imagine my amazement when I saw that he was winning the run-off. This is arrant trickery in my opinion, a downright fraud, as Pain says. Apparently, Siluk’s books are self-published. What genuine publisher would look twice at his twaddle? If that is so, I conclude that if a man is willing to boast about books he paid a vanity publisher to publish, he certainly wouldn’t hesitate to engineer a ‘victory’. My shock is that people like Grimes and Stelly, who know better, would lower themselves to praise this stupid jackanapes. But let’s take a look at one of Siluk’s poems, to see if perhaps I am overstating my case against this inditer of doggerel: “If Poe wouldn’t have been born?” There’d had been no rapping or tapping— (at least for a while—at my door?) Nor would there had been morbid-beauty with depth and sin... That circles the globe: of HPL and CAS. What a mundane life (it would have been) without the devil’s pen. I gripped the legacy: lying on the savage ground, the third eye of the hunter, filled with wax— calls for breath, in the silent Valley of Shock; thus stung—I remain, by the fruitless trees of horror—than I hear a whisper: “Lord, help my poor soul.” In the first line, “wouldn’t have been” should be “hadn’t been”, the question mark and the quotations marks are out of place, and the line should end in a comma. In the second line, “had” should be “have”, and the dash should be a comma. In the third line, the first “at” should be capitalized, the dash should be a comma, the parentheses and question mark should be removed, and the line should end in a comma. In the fourth line, “had” should be “have”, the hyphen and the ellipsis should be removed. In the fifth line, the colon should be removed. In the sixth line, the parentheses should be removed, and the period should be an exclamation mark. In the seventh line, the colon should be a comma, and the comma should be a period. In the eighth line, the first “the” should be capitalized, and the dash should be a comma. In the ninth line, “calls” should be capitalized, and the semicolon should be a period. In the tenth line, “thus” should be capitalized, the first dash should be a comma, the comma should be removed, the second dash should be a period, “than” should be “then” and the semicolon should be a comma. The eleventh line is correct. So it looks as if Siluk made 28 grammatical errors in an eleven-line poem. His poem should read thus: If Poe hadn’t been born, There’d have been no rapping or tapping, At least for a while, at my door, Nor would there have been morbid beauty with depth and sin That circles the globe of HPL and CAS. What a mundane life it would have been without the devil’s pen! I gripped the legacy, lying on the savage ground. The third eye of the hunter, filled with wax, Calls for breath, in the silent Valley of Shock. Thus stung, I remain by the fruitless trees of horror. Then I hear a whisper, “Lord, help my poor soul.” I can’t imagine what Siluk is trying to say in lines 6 through 10, but whatever it is, it doesn’t qualify this writing as poetry, even when the grammar has been corrected. But Siluk has it posted on a beautiful website, very handsomely arranged. And it’s copyrighted yet! I guess this is to protect this gem from plagiarism. That’s like storing your rags in a bank vault. http://www.eldritchdark.com/trib/poems/poe_legacy.html ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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