|
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.
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 17:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 04:22 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 20:33
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2014 03:11
|
|
|
Jitzu_the_Monk posted:Debtor’s Ocean The single biggest issue with this is its sing-song prosody. The premise is good and some of the imagery works, but the strict iambic ABCB structure of it makes it sound like a nursery rhyme and counteracts any sense of urgency or fear or hopelessness that the poem might be trying to induce. Jitzu_the_Monk posted:my eyes are bleeding sand, Also this image doesn't make any sense. Take it out. Jitzu_the_Monk posted:But while I feign hydration This could be interesting, as I like the idea of drinking seawater as a metaphor for indulging in a convenient lie, but it's the end of the poem and we haven't been taken to a different place than the start of the poem, which renders the poem static. I would suggest recasting this poem as a sonnet in blank verse, which will let you keep the meter but break up the sing-songy rhyme structure that's holding this poem back. Also, in the tradition of sonnets, make the last two lines indicate that something has changed. It can be a very small movement or a big one, but you shouldn't have the beginning and end of the poem be in the same place, i.e., just a guy floating in the ocean with birds. You've got the bones of a good poem here, you just need to kick the poo poo out of it. Jisei fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 17, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2014 04:50
|
|
|
RichardGamingo posted:Rememberances Not really sure what this poem has to say except "Video games ate my life and made me a homicidal maniac". It doesn't really move anywhere and reads more like a eulogy than anything else. quote:Videogames somehow more interesting that real life, "Somehow"? How? Show, don't tell. quote:Phantasies of a transient things through a youthful mind, Unless you're making a reference to Phantasy Star (which is neither recent nor particularly violent), not sure why you're going with that spelling. quote:Manhood made up into blind murder, Now, this is a good, musical line. It's the only one I'd keep. quote:Lies, damned lies and half-truths controlling me, This basically seems to be echoing the right wing panic about video games turning kids into killers. Is this what you're going for? It's not a place I would suggest going. If you want to talk about videogames, I'd suggest either making VG a metaphor for something more urgent and/or lonely (a la David Bowie's "Space Oddity" as a metaphor for suburban isolation and loneliness) or make something else a metaphor for VG (the idea of escape and dissociation).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2014 02:49
|
|
|
nomadologique posted:She had when we first met that white lace hat upon her head, This works, except for the stumbling meter of the last line. However, this sounds like fondly remembering one's own child as opposed to a peer, as it (especially the last line) infantilizes the subject. quote:though nomad time has come and gone and ev’ry bird has fled, This scans really well, but doesn't make any sense. It's highly imagistic which is good, and I like each line individually, but together as a unit they paint a rather confusing picture and the images don't form a logical arc driving towards a conclusion. On a high level I get that it's a way of saying "time moves on" but the first line says what needs to be said and the next two lines just repeat the same information "poetically" and come off as filler. Which may be common in plays, but I would counter, sure, it's common in bad ones. (I realize this is the coda to a play, but here we have to judge it as a poem on its own merits, and since this isn't a traditional form like a sonnet or villainelle, there's no need to pad the structure especially since it muddies the water a bit imagistically.) quote:and though of passersby my mind could not detect a trace; Again, we'd probably know where "this place" is if we saw the play, but as a poem I need to know where "this place" is, and what relevance "passersby" have to the narrative. quote:still: squat upon some distant mantle stands a granite vase, Logic problem: if it's distant, how are you waving your hands around it? quote:and by this movement wish to weave white lace of ghostly thread –- Meter stumbles again here on the last line. Also, the soul-fingers clash with what I assume are real fingers in the previous few lines; I'd keep one or the other but not both, because now I don't know if the narrator is actually in front of the urn or imagining himself in front of it. Overall, the poem does have movement, it's image-heavy (a good thing), and evokes the Romantic-era elegaic. It's definitely not a poem I'd recommend throwing out and starting over (as I often do). But its two key issues are internal logical consistency and a kind of affected preciousness that detracts from the reader investing in the sentimental nature of the poem or sharing its sense of loss. Work on these two issues, and don't be afraid to make the poem shorter--you're not getting paid by the word after all--and I think you'll have something really nice here. Jisei fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 24, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
Jitzu_the_Monk posted:I've got a few questions about submitting poems online for publication. I submitted a piece (not the one I posted in this thread) to an online journal that publishes similar pieces. Roughly ten days went by and I did not receive any acknowledgement of receipt for my submission nor any indication that it was under consideration. So I emailed the journal and asked if they would kindly send an acknowledgement of receipt. They eventually got back to me and they were polite about it, but they basically said "Yes we got it but generally our policy is not to acknowledge receipt of poetry submissions prior to any decision being made." My question is how normal is that policy among publishers? If it's normal then how is a poet supposed to know whether her piece is still under consideration as the days eventually turn into weeks and months? Unfortunately yes, this is standard procedure. It's because of the volume of submissions and the time it would take to respond to each one. Most publications will list a response window (typically 4-12 weeks, but can sometimes be 6 months or more if it's a annual, quarterly or bi-annual) in their submission guidelines, after which you can assume the poem wasn't selected. It's a pain for the writer trying to remember what you sent where and whether it's time to resubmit somewhere else, but there it is. When I'm actively submitting I keep a simple spreadsheet of the markets I have submissions out to, the date I sent them, whether they accept simultaneous submissions, and the stated response window. That tends to make things easier. Jisei fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Sep 14, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 19, 2024 04:22 |
|
|
Khashie posted:
In all these poems, you've got a good sense of alliteration pushing the prosody, which is nice. Here, there are only two real things that stuck out at me, one specific, one general. First, the lines "Old CEO's trimming their\kingdoms of Kentucky bluegrass" is kind of a nonsensical metaphor, and I can't see whatever the image is you're trying to convey, which isn't a problem anywhere else in the poem. Basically I'm saying it's awkward. Second is a general issue of the poem itself, which is that it's not really "about" anything. It's just a quick, static vignette, and the poem doesn't really take the reader anywhere or leave them with a sense of anything except "Yep, that's an old town". This is a common issue with beginning poetry writers: poems need to move. The word "metaphor" itself is literally Greek for "to transport". The poem doesn't necessarily have to take a moral stance, or tell a story, but it needs to end up in a different place than it began. This poem reminds me of some of the poems of Zbigniew Herbert, who wrote a number of poems about fictional and real towns. I highly recommend checking him out. quote:Richmond Nights I actually like this pretty well. But it has the same problem of not going anywhere. I'd consider adding a couple of lines at the end, maybe that allude to what drives the narrator to lose himself, maybe pulling back to say something general about Richmond as a city/character and how it's connected/influenced by the events of the poem, maybe something else entirely. For example, why "Richmond Nights?" Why not Topeka? Juneau? Something about the character of the town should intrude into the poem, other than just the fact that the author obviously lived there at some point. quote:“Loneliness” 1) Leave out "really" in the first line. 2) The tea becoming bitter is a) cliche and b) doesn't make sense in the action of the poem. Is the narrator literally drinking the tea while being held close by the old man? Otherwise how would he know it was bitter? 3) "I wasn’t prepared to become my own father." This line is kind of confusing, particularly in context of the action of the poem. Combined with the last line of the poem, I'm not sure if you're meaning to imply that the crazy old man is actually the narrator's father. If that's not your intention, I'd rewrite this part. I think you can change just a few lines and have the poem make better sense and flow a little easier. This is just an off-the-cuff suggestion (the removal of italics is intentional): quote:“Loneliness”
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2014 21:39
|
|