I Wrote a Book of Poetry!

deadsuperhero · Fri 10/10/2008 06:14:14

It took me all year to write these. I'm really proud of them, and I just want to show everyone because I finally have something to be proud about. I've been working really hard at it. I wrote it using OpenOffice.org 3.0, GIMP, and Inkscape. The resulting product isn't the most visually stunning thing in the world, but it's a bunch of poems that I wrote to cheer myself up.

Blog entry is here. (With links to the files)

I offer them in PDF and ODF (OpenDocument Format) on my blog (through Blogger and DeviantArt), and I'd love to get some input on my work.

Also, any work I publish will be under a very permissive license known as Creative Commons, the specific license I'm using will allow you to pretty much do whatever you like with my work, as long as I get the credit for my original work.

Well, It took me all year to write them, and I'd love to share them with you guys.
I just figured that we all deal with stress from time to time, and I think someone might get uplifted by a poem or two from in here.

Cheers, everybody!
-Sean

TheJBurger · Fri 10/10/2008 07:44:34

Haven't looked at them yet, but your link is broken.

Fixed: http://seantilleywritesalot.blogspot.com/2008/10/poetry-book-under-iron-tree.html

Tuomas · Fri 10/10/2008 13:43:10

Downloaded the PDF. Haven't had a chance to look through it yet, but I should think at least my gf will be interested. She likes poems, I do too. I'll get into it when I have more time

deadsuperhero · Fri 10/10/2008 14:15:39

Whoops, thanks JBurger!

RickJ · Fri 10/10/2008 16:47:55

I think it's great that you have used CC and ODF, which I have downloaded and looking at just now.

The ODf document's pqagination is off for me with OpenOffice on Linux. The cover fits an 8.5x11 page size perfectly and experimenting with different page sizes seems to indicate this is not the problem. What font and font size are you using. It come up "Tinmes Roman 13" for me. I think you can correct the format by putting in hard page breaks (in OpenOffice ctrl+Enter will insert a hard page break).

deadsuperhero · Fri 10/10/2008 17:24:30

Quote from: RickJ on Fri 10/10/2008 16:47:55
I think it's great that you have used CC and ODF, which I have downloaded and looking at just now.

The ODf document's pqagination is off for me with OpenOffice on Linux. The cover fits an 8.5x11 page size perfectly and experimenting with different page sizes seems to indicate this is not the problem. What font and font size are you using. It come up "Tinmes Roman 13" for me. I think you can correct the format by putting in hard page breaks (in OpenOffice ctrl+Enter will insert a hard page break).

Duly noted. Unfortunately for me, I'm using an earlier RC of OpenOffice 3.0 (I think), so I wasn't sure whether some of the incorrect formatting was just a few bugs, or lack of me knowing the correct way to do it.

The fonts I used were Freesans and Freeserif. It strikes me as a bit unusual that OpenOffice wouldn't come with them, as they are free fonts that I thought came with Linux.

Font size for most text is 10.5, with the exception of larger fonts, which are Freesans 20, and Century Schoolbook 32 and 22, respectively.

Sinitrena · Fri 10/10/2008 17:57:12

I downloaded the pdf and I really like your poems. I especially like "Prospensity of Rain" and "Forest".

(On a site note: The headline of "Hope" is on the wrong page in the pdf and there's a typo in "Hope" and in in the last stanza of "Telepathy" that I noticed.)

deadsuperhero · Fri 10/10/2008 18:23:51

Quote from: Sinitrena on Fri 10/10/2008 17:57:12
(On a site note: The headline of "Hope" is on the wrong page in the pdf.)

Yeah, unfortunately that was a formatting error when I tried to make the PDF in OpenOffice. I submitted a bug report, hopefully it'll help.

RickJ · Fri 10/10/2008 19:50:49

Sean, how did you do the page breaks any way? It seems like maybe you just inserted blank lines until you got to the next page. If so just go back, cursor to the last line of a page, press ctrl+Enter to get a hard page break, insert or delete blank lines to position the text on the next page, and then repeat for each page.

As far as fonts are concerned there is no guarantee what fonts will be installed on any given system. There is a discussion about OpenOffice and this issue here http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=45058 and here http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20370.

deadsuperhero · Fri 10/10/2008 20:11:21

Alrighty. I think I've fixed all of the formatting errors. Thanks a ton for the tip!

RickJ · Fri 10/10/2008 20:42:55

Format is Ok for me now in ODF. Thanks for the book...

Oddysseus · Sat 11/10/2008 06:13:25

Some nice poems with potential - I liked "The Concrete World" and "Amnesia" especially; they both seemed to have a clear message they were conveying.

I'm going to give the advice that I give to all poets, that no one ever listens to - poems don't have to rhyme. Rhyming can be a crutch sometimes - I find myself writing things just because they happen to rhyme, without regard to whether the line is honest or fits in the poem or not.

But hey, do what you wanna do. Oh, and there was a typo in "What Lights Transcend" it's 'ambitions,' not 'ambisions.' Unless you were combining the words ambition and vision to form a new word, which would also be cool.

Andail · Sat 11/10/2008 12:11:50

Is "Foreward" an intentional typo?

fred · Tue 14/10/2008 23:18:09

Good, solid poems.

voh · Wed 15/10/2008 13:12:58

I'm not really much a poetry aficionado, but I did like some of the poems. Then again, I've had the PDF open for a week now and after scanning them over time, have read most of them. It's a nice little collection

Kudos!