- Entenzahn
- Nov 15, 2012
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erm... quack-ward
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muffin is going to make poets out of us yet
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Feb 18, 2016 02:01
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May 3, 2024 17:26
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- Entenzahn
- Nov 15, 2012
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erm... quack-ward
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Immigrants
"I don’t want no loving Somalians living in my state,” he says,
white knuckles wrapped around a black coffee.
The irony is lost on him.
“Bunch of lazy no-good idiots if you ask me,” another grunts.
It is 10:30 on a Tuesday morning.
“They lie, and cheat. You can’t trust any of them.”
He is renting a motel room tonight by the hour.
“I hear they’re a bunch of rapists.
I’m worried about my daughter living so close to them.”
His wife owns a different shade of foundation depending on her bruises.
"At least I can provide for my family.
They just want to suck on the government's teat."
This will be the seventh consecutive year
that his government insurance
will cover his farm's drastically low yield.
“They just want to move in and take over.
In a few years, they’ll be everywhere.
If we don’t say no now, then this country is going to go to poo poo.”
The men sip their coffee,
and nod in quiet certainty,
on a land called Dakota
This is pandering to the pro-immigration camp so hard I hear Germany is closing their borders just to spite you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm in that camp, but even I feel a bit disgusted by this. Your heart's at the right place but you're writing poetry here, and not an essay on How Racists Are Actually Bigots, and even if you were, and even if these people really exist, the way you present them still makes it sound like you're sending an army of strawmen to preach to a choir that's too liberal to ever see a church from the inside.
Sorry if this sounds harsh but I really didn't like this piece and that's also the reason I don't line-crit it. It just has these gaping flaws. Like, it's super obvious what you're going for from the start, and sometimes obvious is good, but not when you're trying to manipulate people into accepting your political beliefs. Is this salvageable? I think so. But it needs to give me something else than what amounts to a smear-campaign about a bunch of anonymous Dakota hicks. Show me what makes these people tick. Give me facets. Give me something human. Make me go away from this with a learning experience. "Racism is bad and racists are stupid" is not a learning experience, but "Farmer Joe works his rear end off because big agriculture industry eats him up otherwise so in the evening he's too busted to do anything but watch Fox New's brainwashing" is. Maybe there's even a bit of irony in it, seeing how Fox News usually supports big industry. There's a lot of sad stories surrounding these people, and there's a lot of insight that can be gleamed from sitting down and honestly exploring their motives and the reality they've built for themselves, and if you're taking them seriously, I think you can come away with a sombre piece about the inherent tragedy of human ignorance. Then find a way to express that in interesting pictures.
ima just dump this poem i wrote for a class so it doesnt seem like im just being a dick in this thread, based off of a painting called "The Night by Max Beckmann. Cool painting, should def. check it out. maybe ill write new one tomorrow idk.
What I Know
The Night is a 20th-century painting by German artist
Max Beckmann... The Night's illogical composition relays
post-war disillusionment and the artist's confusion over
the “society he saw descending into madness.”
-Wikipedia
I didn't know this is a thing you do at poetry but WHO CARES
I don’t know how it feels
to sling a gun
over the shoulder,
to stare above trenches,
bombs pounding dirt like
a paintbrush
dipped into brown ink. that's an odd simile, and i know you use it because you want to reuse that imagery later but I really don't think bombs hit the earth the same way a paintbrush hits paint. granted I've never seen a bomb but I've seen a paintbrush and I assure you this is not the first thing i imagine when i imagine bombs. also this is your first paragraph and it's about war so make it INTENSE. where's the fear
I don’t know how it feels
to have those crosshairs trained
on a gray
shivering uniform. a "shivering uniform"? he's so far away that you can't make out anything but the uniform, but he's close enough to see him shiver? lol. i just imagine it as a sentient uniform running across the battlefield scared of its newfound sentience.
I don’t know how it feels i like the repetition of this line though it's neat
to take in the air,
and taste the dirt
scrape against the tongue. ok part, gives me some imagery, takes me there
I don’t know how it feels
to press the trigger and
see the other boy turn
and fall. this is a good part, a distant description of an intense moment
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy who falls to the ground,
to feel the sting
like a needle stabbed like the idea of this part but I don't think "needle stabbed in the back of the skull" is a good simile for bullet entry
into the back of the skull,
breaking bone,
to feel the hair cool
get cold and cool
heavy with blood, cool
to feel that moment cool
of relief like a cool
black bird, breaking uh ok
through the chest,
to feel the wings glide this is where you lose me. generally i think you use buffer words too much ("to feel, to see"). i understand why you need them. you need to keep some of them. but you also need to check for some that you can cut. they create distance between reader and character. why you really lose me though is this weird simile. How do you feel wings glide through the haze? I know it sounds fancy but wtf
through the haze
and land on smooth metal, these last three lines I don't get at all
claws wrapping around
a golden fence.
I don’t know how it feels
to be a sculptor
etching in one name
in marble and hear
a black bird, that
boy in the dirt,
crying outside. what the gently caress is this part
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy
who comes home
and drops his gun on the desk
and looks at a white canvas. this part is loving stellar - but maybe that's because i draw the inherent connotation that it ends at the white canvas because he doesnt know what to do with it anymore - tbh i think you could almost cut to the final stanza from this, but then you need to beef up the wartimes, make them a bit more intense
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy who hears
water dripping from the faucet
but hears the other boy
dropping to the dirt. this is also cool
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy’s nightmare of
rough rope digging into
the neck, and gray faces
blurring like ink,
eyes and noses and mouths
shifting into sharp shapes. obligatory part about The Night, but I don't think it's very interesting. If you don't know the picture it's mostly confusing.
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy
who dips a paintbrush
into ink and slices
streaks of red
across the white paper
like a cut that doesn’t bleed,
a red stain across the wrist. not sure how i feel about this stanza. he creates the painting, but there's not much meat to it, no forza. it just happens along. you can defo cut that last line
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy
who takes in
the bombs and the bullets,
the blood and the body, how bout "the blood and the boy"? as in the boy he shot. body sounds too general for me here, not sure what it's refering to
the bird and the name, huh?
the bristles and the colors
and throws the ink, everything
into a white lockbox
now stained with
reds and blacks
and browns and grays. okay so I guess he's done painting and this and the following parts are supposed to reminisce about this titanic accomplishment, except the whole process of creating the painting wasn't really epic or anything. There's just not enough interesting language or imagery here, to, at this point, make me feel like I just witnessed the creation of something truly great.
I don’t know how it feels
to be a boy with wet paper,
stuck between fingers that look
like wings,
shaking, ready
to pull apart
the nightmare.
I don’t know it feels
to let the paper slide
against the finger,
and lets The Night land
on the desk, and stay. lol 'mic drop'
I don’t know how it feels
to be that boy, but I
know
that
boy.
This part sends shivers down my spine and tbh i think the rest of your poem does not do it justice
So I guess this is about Max Beckmann coming home from war and painting The Night. Okay, well. Max Beckmann has seen some hosed up poo poo and it transformed his entire art style, but all you show us is "there were bombs and he shot a guy" (Max Beckmann was a medical orderly). The cool thing about Beckmann is that he went into war all like "hell yeah this owns my art is gonna own after this" and then he came back broken and haggard like a dry twig in the way of an elephant stampede.
To be frank I would like this better if it were less about The Night and more about just a guy who was once a painter coming home from war and realizing that none of it matters to him anymore because he's so hosed up from his experiences. Also some of the hosed up experiences. Many of the parts where you reference The Night I feel are boring, but the whole human drama of him suffering through war and coming back home to deal with it, that's interesting, and I also think it gives the ending stanza a lot more power, makes it more personal.
If you really want to make this about The Night, and I've already said this, then the parts where he paints the picture need to a) have more of a cathartic feel and b) be much, MUCH more intense. This is the apex of your piece but it's over before it begins and the language is a bit weak.
Entenzahn fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Feb 18, 2016
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Feb 18, 2016 02:02
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- Entenzahn
- Nov 15, 2012
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erm... quack-ward
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okay maybe i should also write a poem
First I want to call her an angel,
but then she chuckles,
like we're about to do something forbidden,
and strands of her hair dance with each other as she turns,
and then she raises her bottle with a residual smirk
and squints at me as it touches her lips,
playful eyes throwing the night-sky back at me.
She drinks dark beer.
She doesn't need platitudes.
Instead I'll call her this:
Imagine being blind for all your life
and one day you wake up and see
a rainbow.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:31
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- Entenzahn
- Nov 15, 2012
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erm... quack-ward
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Posting in the Poetry Thread
1. Apologize
2. Post the poem
3. Do not post feedback
4. Do not get feedback (somehow this always works)
5. Leave forever
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Mar 30, 2016 13:32
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Feb 18, 2016 02:01
