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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Ok, so you've made it clear that you're not going to gently caress off on your own accord, I'm going to actually try to sincerely crit this, and all the other stuff you've posted in CC over the last few weeks. The same three issues keep coming up again and again drat you butchered my poem pretty hard, those things don't quite come apart in 'clean' cuts like the corpse of a bovine. btw I do not use a thesaurus
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# ? May 1, 2014 16:56 |
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# ? May 6, 2024 02:44 |
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:I'm just going to go ahead and proclaim myself Supreme Poetic Shade-Emperor of CC and drop this shot across all of your-all's bows: That's nice, dear. PHIZ KALIFA posted:I HAVE FOUND YOUR GOD I have no idea what this means and it doesn't even sound beautiful. You use 'adjective' 'noun' three times in such a short poem and they're all clichéd. Complete revision. Other folks, I don't care if you're a first timer, but don't come in here proclaiming your ignorance like a defense and expect us to give a poo poo about critiquing something you spent no time on or something that's empty word posturing with no personal connection. Revision and sincerity are everything. And I want to see what you do with it. Submit it until it's right. Not 'good enough' - right. Poetry gets to break the rules in order to make an astonishing connection. RichardGamingo posted:RUNNER Every single line here has a cliché. Get rid of them. Re-write. Think about the sound of the words. Read it aloud. It's not worth critiquing further until it has substance and personality. Hypothetical Hose posted:I've never written before, nor have I posted in this thread, but I want to share this thing I wrote. Criticize away, gentle goons... I've cut so much because you're trying to focus on too much here. Stick with the idea of "we can't see each other except virtually and I miss them." The last segment even sounds gloating, which ruins any sentimentality the poem established earlier. You're also thinking in prose; ditch the dross like YFDHippo suggested and distill down to the fewest words you need. on the other side of electricity, waiting crickets cursing at the gray-lined dark while i tap and tap and tap again "They don't know your laugh like I do" We secret ourselves in the hard pressure/kiss of Send Just an example using your theme. Rewrite and let me see what you can do.
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# ? May 1, 2014 19:57 |
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Let It Title Itself I can’t speak, there’s a signal loss here But malevolence doesn’t preclude single licks of life I’m chattering without much to open Can’t be, I dilate: diluted, deluded Can’t be, I feel a sinister tickle of the chieftains in the sky Ghost lilliputian currents in my shadow, gills I’m always there, it’s a little town and it’s shadely grown Don’t tarry dare stare stray slowing you down as you ride up the coast I’m in the little things, like the noise the gravel makes on your approach.
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# ? May 2, 2014 05:01 |
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RichardGamingo posted:drat you butchered my poem pretty hard, those things don't quite come apart in 'clean' cuts like the corpse of a bovine. "Oh," says Little Richie form his computer chair "this old man just doesn't get it. I'm such a rebel, I'm writing on a level above his tiny consciousness. I smoked weed at a party, I know the true nature of the universe." Your job as a writer AND as a poet is to communicate. Articulating yourself poorly and then acting smug when nobody understands you doesn't make you smart, it just makes you a lovely communicator. wait let me do this in your language Oscillating gyrations hep to the hep cat pistol whipping motherfuckers cos I'm still a hep cat antidulvian walpurgian manifesto I go where the cats go where the bitches go and go go go something something capitalism yeah yeah yeah UNIVERSE DEEP CHAKRA THIRD EYE PENIS IN THE THIRD EYE PENIS PENIS PENIS motherfucker Gibbs I'm wandering bad writer bad writer bad writer BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER BAD WRITER bad writer peace
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# ? May 2, 2014 11:40 |
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lolling all the way to the internet bank
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# ? May 2, 2014 21:20 |
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Poetry thread got hardcore Wish it would do so more 'cos before it was a chore ~fin
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# ? May 3, 2014 20:24 |
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Jeza posted:Poetry thread got hardcore and what a chore! really, it was a bore, but now! Fist are Flying! word bombs a' diving! but really, people are getting trolled. I really do hope someone gets culled.
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# ? May 4, 2014 22:26 |
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I'm a newbie to poetry as it is, but I wrote this last night and wanted to share for feedback. code:
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# ? May 11, 2014 13:29 |
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TheRamblingSoul posted:I'm a newbie to poetry as it is, but I wrote this last night and wanted to share for feedback. For a ABAB rhyme-scheme in quatrains (4 line stanzas - heroic stanzas), the meter of this poem is pretty out of whack, which lends itself to a stumbling rhythm that you probably aren't looking for. Meter means roughly syllables per line. So for your first two stanzas: 5 7 7 7 7 8 6 9 I have to go but I'll edit in the rest of what I was gonna say.
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# ? May 11, 2014 17:11 |
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TheRamblingSoul posted:When Canaries Dream Rather than picking this apart line by line, I would recommend a search for "forced rhyme". It's happening repeatedly here and is the #1 problem for people getting into metered verse. Plenty has been written about how to deal with it, there's no one magic solution but you can look at various examples and pick up ways to improve.
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# ? May 13, 2014 18:44 |
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TheRamblingSoul posted:I'm a newbie to poetry as it is, but I wrote this last night and wanted to share for feedback. Jeza covered meter, but your word choice needs some serious work and your style is inconsistent. Sometimes you write a complete sentence; sometimes a fragment. Remember that this isn't prose - you can abandon the dross, just make it consistent unless that's part of the point. A poem should be no longer than required to get the point across. Any line that simply rephrases another is redundant. poo poo should be constantly flowing and shifting. Revise and post again.
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# ? May 14, 2014 17:33 |
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So. I'm writing a sonnet sequence and could use some help. quote:Words And Phrases I Cut from My Dating Profile Not that this sonnet doesn't have bigger problems, but I'm considering whether it makes sense to use whitespace to separate the list items but make them clearly part of a single metrical unit. E.g.: code:
EDIT: Included a complete whitespaced version of the poem. Brainworm fucked around with this message at 13:28 on May 19, 2014 |
# ? May 17, 2014 20:21 |
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Try it and post both versions? Personally speaking, I'd find adding white space would make it visually interesting. Anyways, I never knew there was a poetry thread on SA. I occasionally write, mainly as a therapeutic pastime so I rarely show anyone it but I'd love to get some constructive criticism. Here's one I've been sitting on for a few months. I want to grab your hips And dance the waltz Rock smoothly as a ship Steps as straight as Baltz Walls, tall in the desert So barren and bland Your words are such a flirt Mine are dry as sand I'll leave you on the shore To cast your net out I'll walk back to before I met you, in doubt Telling you how I feel Clothed as a beggar Won't help me seal the deal With you heartwrecker
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# ? May 18, 2014 21:32 |
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Brainworm posted:So. I'm writing a sonnet sequence and could use some help. I like the whitespaced format much more, definitely reinforces the list format. The "Linux" line is much funnier in that version.
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# ? May 20, 2014 19:17 |
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I found the whitespaced version harder to read, but I'm averse to artsy formatting in general so there's some bias in that opinion. The mental pauses are already there so the extra whitespace doesn't do any extra work (except for the break after 'erotica' because of the natural connection between hospital and burn wards). Does it work better if you conceal the metrical units altogether and just give the list items?
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# ? May 20, 2014 21:25 |
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Promethium posted:Does it work better if you conceal the metrical units altogether and just give the list items? It might, for a given value of "work." What I'm trying to do here, and with somewhat decreasing success, is make it clear that this piece is a sonnet. That's only important because I want to invite comparison to other sonnets, which are chiefly love poems and frequently rely on a complex characterization of the narrator. You can have those in non-sonnets, of course, but then I end up having to set those expectations some other way. So what I'd like to be able to do, somehow, is suggest fourteen metrical lines using something other than spatial logic. I think it would take a very attentive reader to catch a rhyme every twenty syllables in a bullet-pointed list, but that may not be an impossible task if I can get smarter about formatting. I'm not sure how, yet, but I'm open to ideas.
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# ? May 23, 2014 02:52 |
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I can't tell you what's good or not, but I know what I like. So let me start there.Fragrag posted:I want to grab your hips This is going to sound spergy, but I'm confused by the first two lines. Hips-grabbing is forward and passionate, right? But the waltz is not a forward and passionate dance -- choreographed and graceful, done well, but not a hip grabber. It's only passionately sexual in the sense that witty banter and evening-wear are sexual. Fore-foreplay. So I'm unsure what kind of relationship the narrator wants to have with this person. Maybe the narrator is confused about what he or she wants, but if that's the case the confusion ought be multiply signaled, I think. Second, I'm seeing some filler words. Seeing "so" used as an intensifier makes me twitch mentally, and the fourth line could be "steps straight as Baltz," assuming the first "as" isn't there to round out a meter. Likewise, "dance the waltz" could just be "waltz," and other phrases could be inventively economized ("rock ship-smoothly" and so on). This is a place where I think meter can be more forgiving. Good free verse, like good prose, makes every word tell. quote:Your words are such a flirt The frustration is clear here, but the metaphor is mixed. That's not bad, but it's mixed in a confusing way -- the logical or connotative relationship between "flirt" and "dry" or "sand," it passes my power to make sense of it. Clearly there's contrast, but the tenor of that contrast eludes me. I say that also seeing that the "dry sand" picks up on the desert imagery you were using before. So I think the problem word here is "flirt." quote:I'll leave you on the shore Things take a turn, here. The narrator's moved from sounding longing to sounding bitter and even a little vindictive -- he or she is name-calling in the last line. That makes me wonder why (which is good), but the change is so sudden that the process of trying to answer the question doesn't feel compelling. It's sort of like a detective story where I have a corpse on the sidewalk, everyone in the city's a suspect, and there's no set of clues I can use to shorten the list. Given that, some clues would make that shift a really compelling one -- the kind that makes me go back to the poem for a re-framed re-read (the way a good volta does). And here's the thing. I think poetry is an inherently self-indulgent and occasionally obnoxious form (thought not the only one), which means that a good poem ought to be clever, perceptive, or wise enough to make up for that. There's potential to do that here by giving a concrete, specific, and deeply relatable example of how infatuation turns to bitterness, right? That's a common experience. So I don't know what that's worth. Fill that "change in attitude"-shaped hole with something interesting, and I think you'll have a really enjoyable poem. If you can line that change up with the diction so that every word tells part of that story, I think you'll have a really good one.
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# ? May 23, 2014 03:36 |
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Brainworm posted:It might, for a given value of "work." What I'm trying to do here, and with somewhat decreasing success, is make it clear that this piece is a sonnet. That's only important because I want to invite comparison to other sonnets, which are chiefly love poems and frequently rely on a complex characterization of the narrator. You can have those in non-sonnets, of course, but then I end up having to set those expectations some other way. Ok, I see the intent a bit better. But the reason the rhymes in this poem are hard to catch without formatting is because they are such weak rhymes. The first stanza has "dogs / Hog-warts" with the mid-word split and "fiasco / So.." with the syllable stress mismatch, so if the poem is being read aloud the reader will not hear the rhymes at all. If you start off with more obvious, audible matches then that should set up the reader expectations. As for the evoking the sonnet form itself, I associate it not specifically with having 14 lines, or a rhyming scheme, or being a love poem, but the existence of a volta somewhere late in the composition. If you can do that then the comparison will come naturally.
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# ? May 23, 2014 19:24 |
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I felt myself melt into street crack weeds slowly seeping into city gutters evaporating under the street lamps turning to mud while mixing with roadside fifth the incline has me meander under the feet of strangers, following them to the ends of the ends stinking like a vagrant and feeling like the drunkenness saint incarnate. In the morning now incorporated however something was missing pieces of my brain heart soul or something like that and soon enough the other parts of me found their way to a ceramic drop off my body was exit only I reserved myself to a sweat bed of convulsions.
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# ? May 28, 2014 04:15 |
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I made some new poo poo for presenting at my local open mic, but it's a first draft so still pretty raw and unedited. I'd appreciate feedback, but please be gentle. I'm trying to dig out some real emotion/life events to be genuine on the stage and got choked up several times just reading it to my girlfriend earlier, so I'll have to take extra precaution not to take any criticism personally. I also censored any outright identifying info in the draft below (ie names, etc). Lastly, there is special tabbing/formatting in Scrivener that doesn't show up here and pasted over, even with the code tags. Any idea on how to retain tabbing for posts? Enjoy. quote:“I open my arms for you” Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 23:08 on May 30, 2014 |
# ? May 30, 2014 22:54 |
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The Joys of Graduation We`ve danced the last dance. Laughed our terminal laugh. Jerked out the final O. -Now grim fate beckons. No I don`t have a problem with open space offices. Yes I do believe in this company. Of course I don`t mind overtime. Hire me ! Hire me! Hire me !
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# ? Jun 2, 2014 01:41 |
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Baudolino posted:The Joys of Graduation I really like this, simple and to the point. However two things: I'd pare down the title (maybe just 'Graduation'?) and also snip out '-Now grim fate beckons.' so the link between the stanzas is left more to the reader's imagination rather than having it spelt out for them.
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# ? Jun 3, 2014 22:32 |
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First time posting, so here goes nothing. I wrote this a little while back. I've not seen the light of day, In I don't know how long, My only friend remaining is, This lonely delver's song. I long ago had daughters, And a lovely doting wife, I've naught rocks and echoes, In the twilight of my life. The depths withhold their secrets, From the weak of heart and mind, If my eyes can't bear the darkness, There's no secrets I will find.
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# ? Jun 6, 2014 18:19 |
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Pretty lovely first post on here, but gently caress IT: We found ourselves at the corner of 5th and C Surrounded by lights, we believed Love was inifinitely simply pure The cure? Didn't want it, we were sure. Oh how drastically things had changed. Strange, we were in our ignorance deranged Bliss, amiss in the deep of the night The sound of traffic in and out of street light We held, tightly, together in our forever In dreams, a noose of eternal decay Shouting nay, your face cannot stay Remember the forgotten, a once upon a time Realization of crime polluting the sublime Wake up, hand to head, wake up, wake up A prophecy you call lies, but from lips to fears My words you made clear, but my soul endears We released, slacked, separated apart forever Promises so true, lies really imbued Who knew the feud that would soon ensue Our necks unknowingly waiting for the noose Obtuse you were to that bittersweet truce For moments, I gaze, every now and then To end was inevitable, lost and forever my friend Looking ahead, envenomed mind survived Derived from the fallout, ground hollowed with stride No more we Just myself for the better, forever I've surrendered
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# ? Jul 13, 2014 12:28 |
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A couple months ago, I wrote these the day after I met my partner Turn all the cool cool kids ashin luckies on her American Apparel overalls i spit shreds of Toasted tobacco trying to look cool. we spent the whole goddamn evening waiting for god to turn up. Hacks Her 98 mercedes’ trash mound spilled into my life it’s busted; so i put the fuckin uh seatbelt under my butt so it looks like it works. the Crayola tendrils trapped her ideas in the crimson moleskine crushed by my converse sole. on may twenty six, maybe we were superstars Or perhaps just slurpy coppin hacks. Pockets she told me i wear my heart in my floral contrast pocket where the camel straights keep my chest scarlet in the october snow storm But that just sounds like an excuse.
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# ? Jul 18, 2014 21:07 |
code:
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 08:12 |
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Good Morning Need the killin' fields to run red in blood, My mercy causing the subject to die, Burning incense fill the night sky, over rolling hills that nomads travel, Warbands march from East and West. Too many have come to this place from happy homes, This bloodshed is unnecessary And God knows there will be no life without it, Only another wolf howling over its meal in the paradox of time, Men must rise and fall
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 15:20 |
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Double post Mayhem in this bitch Oh Baloney If skating upon the ice were my only chore How pleasant life might be Oh wind blown, smothered in scarves How beautiful the passing faces would seem Lights above deflected at the surface, reflected in my lover's eyes By-and-by in my skating reverie, the loop of the rink And my great pleasure the twinkle in her eye.
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 17:00 |
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Black on White "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children" I watch Black muscles straining with passion Black buttocks glistening with sweat Black man loving my (white) wife "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth" He moans as his mighty black cock shoots long streams of white cum like a throbbing veiny Maxim gun
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# ? Jul 26, 2014 21:38 |
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@FreudianSlippers wow great poem CREDIT ISSUE Something I became Concerned for helping's sake as if I conflated some pleasure in my enemy's suffering for a wrong for an idea that there is some plea for help pleasantly ringing in my self And yet there is nothing for me to do as far as I can see Maybe envision I seek wholeness in order to know that I am not in energetic debt that's why these pages were wet Best Regards, RG
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# ? Jul 29, 2014 00:28 |
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Specific comments follow, but a few general points first: This reads like you couldn't decide whether the piece should feel strictly structured or not at all, so you compromised and accomplished neither. Also, the rhyming is forced yet inconsistent and doesn't seem to add to the piece. It feels like you generated most of the content not to communicate meaning but to see how often you could rhyme. I'd recommend figuring out what message you want to convey, what images best convey that message, and then trying a rewrite. Rewriting it in blank verse would give it the stricter rhythm and sense of structure that you seem to be aiming for, albeit without the rhymes. Runefaust posted:
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# ? Jul 30, 2014 02:20 |
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I'm curious to know what contributors in this thread think about the following poem by Lily Myers. It's award winning, but it seems to violate much of what makes for a good poem. It is by no means polished down to its bare essentials; in fact, it reads like prose. If it were posted in this thread by someone seeking crit, it would rightfully get torn apart. Yet there is still a certain beauty in its images and in its message. What does this say about what makes for good poetry?Lily Myers posted:Shrinking Women Armack fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Aug 7, 2014 |
# ? Aug 7, 2014 16:55 |
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I enjoyed it in a self-pitying fashion, it is just very real despite being self-defeatist and unempowering in tone, as is typical of that which receives public institution's acclaim as 'poetry' Best Regards, RG
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# ? Aug 7, 2014 17:40 |
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tommy hated those who shaded his light from what he thought was light and now he's fallin n I'maleddim/armageddon only that can hold him back if you see the sunrise don't turn away you'll find your shadow you'll save the day and if tomorrow doesn't turn out like you planned your friends are at the end to lend a helping hand so he waited slowly jaded keeping everything lovely like yesterday
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# ? Aug 8, 2014 20:07 |
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Jitzu_the_Monk posted:I'm curious to know what contributors in this thread think about the following poem by Lily Myers. It's award winning, but it seems to violate much of what makes for a good poem. It is by no means polished down to its bare essentials; in fact, it reads like prose. If it were posted in this thread by someone seeking crit, it would rightfully get torn apart. Yet there is still a certain beauty in its images and in its message. What does this say about what makes for good poetry? It puts me off initially because it's what I call a "kitchen table" poem, of which poetry is way too filled with, but there are things to recommend it. It tackles an old idea about the space taken up by men vs. women in a simple (in the direct sense) but powerful way. She does do something interesting with the structure: all the lines that are way too long are about men, mimicking that antagonistic expansiveness that's the subject of the poem. After the line, "I learned to absorb", the narrator expands a few lines talking about something other than men, but always immediately followed by a very short line, like a retraction, or like the narrator is learning to grow beyond inherited habits but isn't comfortable in her skin yet. But sections 4 and 5 shouldn't be there because they just restate the same idea from the beginning of the poem with more words. I think they're only there to give her more runway to hammer in the structural gimmick.
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# ? Aug 11, 2014 17:04 |
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Sweet jeebus, this thread's dead. I've been away for awhile but this place used to be hopping. I was going to offer some critiques but the most recent posts are pretty old. gently caress it, I'm swinging elbows inta this sumbitch. Also will offer critiques if anyone wants to post some new material.pre:Going Down South Even thirty years ago it'd be praised as industry, to go home, hop the next train or bus back to the dry hills stitching the dead fields all the way down to Georgia. To take up a line and drag a life out of the Tennessee rivers and onto the rails, flexing soot-streaked arms and singing the accepted songs in clapboard bars. It's a hard life but honest, they'd say, honest like sun bleaching church stone, and we line up to have songs written about that life. How the family is helped, the true friends made elbow-to-elbow swinging the shared hammer, how human life is measured in stacking steel against the original sin, inherited from those long-dead who stacked men in shacks like the ones the day-laborers now sweat out dollar beer night in. Now, the old home is a sleeping bear in the slow red rust, and the freedom of hard work is just confusion when the mills shut down and the bars stop taking credit and the too-rare wind can't do much more than shove a few eyelashes around in the heat, as though it, too, no longer had any real work to attend to.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 20:33 |
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I like the second stanza a lot. A few comments on the rest of it: L2: to go home, hop the next train or bus back to the dry This breaks up the rhythm and doesn't seem necessary, the word 'back' implies enough. L4: To take up a line and drag a life out of the Tennessee rivers Why not use a specific river name? L6: and singing the accepted songs in clapboard bars. Why not use a specific period-appropriate song? L17: and the freedom of hard work is just confusion This stands out because it's the only line in the stanza that's lacking any imagery, and I feel it doesn't need to be here.
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 00:55 |
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Promethium posted:I like the second stanza a lot. A few comments on the rest of it: Thanks for the feedback. All your points are solid, especially on L17, which I rewrote probably 50 times and still don't feel it's strong. You're right that it should probably just come out. Quick redraft: pre:Going Down South Even thirty years ago it'd be praised as industry, to hop the next train or bus back to the dry hills stitching the dead fields all the way down to Georgia. To take up a line and drag a life out of the Hiwasse and onto the rails, flexing soot-streaked arms, singing "Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill!" in clapboard bars. It's a hard life but honest, they'd say, honest like sun bleaching church stone, and we line up to have songs written about that life. How the family is helped, the true friends made elbow-to-elbow swinging the shared hammer, how human life is measured in stacking steel against the original sin, inherited from those long-dead who stacked men in shacks like the ones the day-laborers now sweat out dollar beer night in. Now, the old home is a sleeping bear in the slow red rust, when the mills shut down and the bars stop taking credit and the too-rare wind can't do much more than shove a few eyelashes around in the heat, as though it, too, no longer had any real work to attend to.
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 03:11 |
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Thanks
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 08:09 |
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# ? May 6, 2024 02:44 |
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I'm looking to get some solid crit on this one. Feel free to really let me have it! Jitzu_the_Monk posted:
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# ? Aug 17, 2014 02:02 |