|
death .cab for qt posted:Immigrants Congratulations, you have written a STDH poem! This has absolutely no nuance to the subject matter whatsoever. So it feels like you are just writing stereotypes in order to like say stereotypes are bad? There's no uniqueness to this story. What's the point? "Racism is bad and racists are bad people." But like, that's it. And you're presenting it in such a boring and generic manner. There's nothing in this poem that feels original. It's all just parroting ideas of the generic hick racist and you dont even show that well. Now, I'm not a big traditional poet. I write free verse when I do write poetry, but I'm not like a big expert on meter or beats and stuff. I just kind of read the poem to see if it flows well for me, or if it doesn't flow well, there's an intentional reason why. These just feel like sentences strung together without any regard as to how a reader will actually read them. It's choppy and doesn't flow like, at all. Like that fourth paragraph, each line just exists on its own. I feel like you didn't have any consideration of how your reader would read the poem and as such, it lacks that flow that helps make a poem more effective. Lastly, I think images are very important in poems, especially if you're going to do free verse. Your poem needs something, and racist stereotype conversations aren't enough. I need to see, or feel, or touch, or hear, or taste something in poems. You have a few that gives me images, like "white knuckles wrapped around a black coffee" and "His wife owns..." Personally, I think those images are kind of weak. The whole white knuckles/black coffee doesn't really work because you don't wrap your knuckles around the coffee, but like, the actual mug it's in, so then I'm left to make up some kind of mug. The "His wife owns..." could work stronger if you made it more specific like "His wife pulls out her pile (i dont know makeup terminology im sry) of foundation and tries to find the right one for the bruise." That doesn't flow well and I'd edit it to make have a better flow, but now I got the wife actually doing thing and a more vivid image in my head. Anyways, yeah, thanks for making the thread, I might post some poems later.
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2016 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 18:37 |
|
|
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 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. I don’t know how it feels to have those crosshairs trained on a gray shivering uniform. I don’t know how it feels to take in the air, and taste the dirt scrape against the tongue. I don’t know how it feels to press the trigger and see the other boy turn and fall. I don’t know how it feels to be that boy who falls to the ground, to feel the sting like a needle stabbed into the back of the skull, breaking bone, to feel the hair get cold and heavy with blood, to feel that moment of relief like a black bird, breaking through the chest, to feel the wings glide through the haze and land on smooth metal, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. I don’t know how it feels to be that boy who takes in the bombs and the bullets, the blood and the body, the bird and the name, the bristles and the colors and throws the ink, everything into a white lockbox now stained with reds and blacks and browns and grays. 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. I don’t know how it feels to be that boy, but I know that boy.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2016 23:27
|
|
|
Entenzahn posted:
Ah, a love poem. How adorable. I think the issue with love poems is a lot of times is that love poems embrace the cliche. Hell, even Shakespeare like a million years ago called out poets for being so cliche. You're aware of the cliches but instead of actually writing a poem that isn't cliche, you use a cliche (what, she's an ANGEL?????) and you're like "no, no, you see, I know it's cliche and I'm calling it out." Well, how about you just not use the cliche? Meter wise, this is just very... normal? The first stanza is too long and starts to drag as I read it at around the fourth line (especially with the repetition of and) because each sentence are constructed the same way. Adding periods or varying your sentences will make it flow much better. That second stanza is... I don't like that meter. It starts then STOPS........ then starts and STOPS (do you get what I mean? i'm not sure how to explain this through text tbh). Doesn't sound good. The third one is kind of like your first but it works better because it's short so you don't need to vary. But that end of "a rainbow" is just so abrupt. There's some kind of build-up I feel with this poem but it's just a rainbow? That's all you got? A word standing on it's own should be something huge or big. Why a rainbow? What is it about her that makes her a rainbow? What would be so amazing about being blind your entire life and looking at a rainbow? When I think of rainbows, I think of colors. I think of all those colors in the gray sky. Your poem doesn't have like any color. "Night-sky" is probably the one color I see. Maybe "dark beer" a bit but that's bit too vague. I think an image like a rainbow needs to come from something that's given us a lot of color. Have her BE a rainbow in the poem. Have her be that color in the gray sky. Make the reader think, unconsciously, that she is a rainbow. And then, when you get us to understand that, and we get to the end and you say "she's a rainbow" I'm like "hell yeah she is!" instead of "I guess?"
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2016 03:22
|
|
|
Jitzu_the_Monk posted:I've got a question about submitting poetry to lit mags. For mags that accept multiple submissions, am I better off submitting one poem I think they will really like, or should I submit as many pieces as they let me? Lately I've been using a "throw gum at the wall" strategy, thinking I should submit as many stylistically varied poems to a single outlet that I can, all in the hopes that one will stick. On the other hand, I'm wondering if a lack of consistent style between poems will hurt ALL my submissions. That is, if an outlet hates most of my work, will the staff there really ignore all that dislike just to print the one piece they do enjoy? What's the conventional wisdom on this within the poetry publishing community? so if a publication is saying "send us up to 5 poems" they generally aren't looking to publish a collection of poems. rather, they're just looking for you to send them up to 5 poems and they'll pick the ones they want to publish. it doesnt really matter if they're connected or not in any way, just send them as if theyre unrelated because they prob are. so dont worry about them being disconnected/thematically dissimilar/one of them is way worse than the rest because that shouldn't have any bearing on getting any of the other ones published.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2016 00:25
|
|
|
Electric Owl posted:oops this is a good poem
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2017 21:43
|
|
|
dont answer ur questions thats boring just make ur questions more interesting imo
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2017 05:07
|
|
|
anyways into a real critique of i grew a beard, i dont really care for it since im an image man when it comes to poems and theres no like real images to the poem. while i feel like the central conceit and question is cool, it never goes quite beyond that. it just kinda says to itself "yeah that was deep" but doesnt rly ponder the question and is just like "well reader what do u think" w/o really convincing me to put in the time to think about the question. its just there and there's nothing really there, nothing really to see, and nothing quite there to feel. u dont convince me to think about ur question so im just left thinking ehhhh w/e
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2017 05:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 18:37 |
|
|
Radio du Cambodge posted:Poisonous Dick 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2017 07:29
|
|