Analyze This Poem

Cafe Society
1

I’ve never done one of these threads for my poetry before, but I’m really interested in a response to this. I’m not looking to see what people think if its merits as a poem, or anything like that (unless you want to give it, of course; I’m not averse to criticism.) I just want to know if the message can be understood with enough analyzation.

So pretend you are in a college-level English class (or a high school AP English class) and give me the tone, theme, message, or whatever of this poem:

http://www.ritualistic.com/modshack/poem/poem.htm

I’ll probably reveal the actual message after a couple of days unless people are right on the ball, in which case I’ll acknowledge them.

Thanks for your time.

2

HoldenCaulfield:

Lesson #1:

Fuck you.

If you have something to say, say it in the poem. If you have to explain the poem, it sucks. If you have decided that the reader may not be deep enough to appreciate the your brilliant fucking message, and you have to explain it, you have said `fuck you’ to the reader, and therefore fuck you, junior.

Come back when you have grown hair between your legs and gotten over the damage your high school did to you and figured out that it is not the reader’s job to figure you the fuck out. On the contrary, it is your job to make the reader care what the fuck you think.

3

Im my analysis:

The text is too clumsy to have any sense of flow. Example:

And meeting my nose was the pungent smell
Of fine plywood finish on cupboards and shelves
Which could have housed hundreds of volumes of text
And food stores to last from this year to the next.

You have way too many mundane words. Somehow “hundreds of” is not poetic (nor is “thousands of” or “dozens of”). I’d try:

And as I breathed the pungent smell,
Of plywood finish on cupboards and shelves,
I saw the void wanting volumes of text,
And larders, if full, that could sate winter next.

And be careful with phrases like “The blunt cut lawn”, since this may lead to an embarassing spoonerism.

If anything, you should streamline your writing by eliminating “the” whenever possible:

“The hearth that holds the house together”
could be written as:
“The hearth that holds house together”
without sacrificing meaning or imagery.

Overall: not a particularly interesting poem, with little flow and inconsistant ryhme (if you’re going to rhyme at all, at least do it throughout). Words like “artificial” and “automatic” are unromantic and synonyms should be used if possible. As for what the poem is about… well, if you aren’t really talking about an empty house, I’d hazard a guess you were using a metaphor for your computer. If it’s more subtle than that, you should be clearer. And the final paragraph is far too cryptic even as metaphor. You were quite sorry that the trees had hid “yours” ? Your what? Roof? Peak? In keeping with the house metaphor, the roof isn’t hidden by trees because you mention the “roof bleached” in the first paragraph. For that metter, who is the “you” implied in “yours”? The house itself?

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I read your poem,
It sucks to be you.

4

I have problems expressing myself; I know that. In fact, that was primarily the reason for posting in the first place. I wasn’t posting as if it were one of those lateral thinking puzzles, you know, “Figure out my poem if you are smart enough.” I wasn’t testing the members of the SDMB, I was testing the poem. I really was asking if it could be understood.

Unfortunately, I didn’t even express that well enough in the initial post. So I’m sorry that I didn’t say it well enough the first time. (Chances are I’m going to flub something again.) So, yeah, I didn’t mean to say “fuck you” to anyone, and I’m really sorry if it sounded like I did.

You see, I was trying to see if I did explain myself enough with the poem. Whenever I write something or say something, it is always clear to me what I’m trying to get across, but I never know if the person I’m talking to understands (mostly because I’m not a very open person, and I’m often quite confusing.) I wrote down that poem the other day, read it back, and wondered if it would make any sense to someone that hadn’t already been tainted with what it was supposed to mean.

And you two informed me that it wasn’t able to be understood, which is exactly what I asked for. So thanks to the both of you, and thanks for the tips, Bryan.

(And I sure did crash and burn with that attempt at a poem. But if you guys really want to know what I was trying to say, then I’ll tell the story behind it.)

I just wanted to try to clear up my motivations a little bit with this post. Here’s to hoping I didn’t fail miserably for the third time in the same post. :slight_smile:

5

I get it. It’s about a vagina, and not a particularly nice one.

*The blunt cut lawn perfumed
The walk inside the open door.
No homely carpet like I’ve known,
Just bare feet on the cold wood floor;
(Such costly things I’d never own.)

And meeting my nose was the pungent smell
Of fine plywood finish on cupboards and shelves
Which could have housed hundreds of volumes of text
And food stores to last from this year to the next.*

6

Moderator hat on

Johnny Angel : you’re probably aware that these kinds of personal attacks are not allowed in this forum. Take it to the Pit if you have to, but take it out of here.

Moderator hat off

7

Okay…
I understand that it’s a house. And that it’s not really a house, but a metaphor for something else. I look eagerly to the last paragraph, where I expect to see some hint of what it truly is… and am thrown into confusion.

I think part of it may be in your descriptions of the house. At first it sounds just like a regular house… maybe the kind of house i’d like to live in myself… but then you mention “artificial cooling vents”, which completely shatters the mood of the entire thing and makes it confusing, to boot. I mean, there’s all of this natural stuff, “blunt cut lawn”, “cold wood floor”, “fine plywood finish on cupboards and shelves”, and then “artificial cooling vents”. One of these things is not like the others…
And then, I see the bit with the “automatic flame”… gosh darnit, I know that the flame and the cooling vents are supposed to point to something, but i’m really not sure what it is. The last stanza only makes it more confusing. “When I noticed the roof was drawn down in a peak”… honestly, I find it impossible to visualize this. I can’t understand how this would look in real life or what sort of shape you’re trying to convey. I mean, a peak is like this: /\ , and somthing drawn down would be expected to look like this: /. I understand that this is an important line. The fact that it is impossible for me (as your audience) to make any sense of it is a grave failing in this piece. I don’t understand the last two lines either, but I suspect that results from not understanding the second line of the last stanza.
The rhythm as well is practically nonexistant. I can handle rhyming, and I can handle no rhyming, and I can even handle off-kilter rhyming, but inconsistent rhyming causes me to pay attention to that instead of the meaning. In addition to this I can’t find any sense of rhythm between the stanzas. Although individually most of them seem to have a decent scansion and rhythm, the style in each stanza seem to be different, and they don’t mesh well together.

Having said all that, I think a few rewrites would make this more palatable. If you rewrite the last stanza more explicitly and do something (please!) with the scansion, then I think it’ll come out right decent. I was with you for the first three stanzas; it’s the technological words and confusing lines in the last three that really mess it up.
I’m not sure how well my thoughts came through in this; it’s more like prewriting than an actal analysis essay. And I apologize for any misuse of the literary present :). Keep me posted; as a finished work the poem isn’t all that great, but as a work in progress, I think it has potential.
(Credentials: 4 on AP Eng. Language, 3 on AP Eng. Literature)

8

I’ll second that I do think it’s got potential. But no, I don’t understand it.

What I get out of the poem is that it’s very concerned with artificiality. Wet paint, walls tanned, roof bleached. Lawn recently cut. Stinky wood finish. Articficial cooling vents and automatic flame. “No feature kept untouched to be unique.” But then there’s some elements that contradict that, like the wood floor - I’d think of wood floors as more natural than carpets.

Then, as the others pointed out, there’s the inconsistent rhyme and rhythm. That’s not always a bad thing - some of my favorite poems use inconsistent rhyme and rhythm as a deliberate technique (I’ll give examples if you’d like) - but in this case it doesn’t seem to be used for any particular purpose that I can see.

Particular stuff I just don’t understand:

“Which could have housed hundreds of volumes of text / And food stores to last from this year to the next.” Huh? What does that have to do with anything? (And of course, this is the most striking example of what I mentioned in the last paragraph - suddenly, out of nowhere, a rhyming couplet! Maybe you did this on purpose to draw attention to those lines; but that just makes it worse if I can’t understand them.)

“To ward off the heat and, if it should come / the sun, too” I had to look at this for a while and think what it means, and I’m still not sure in just what sense the sun might “come.”

Is there a reason why you chose to set off the next stanza with “And this:”? It seems fairly arbitrary. And then “To constantly light and burn / as it whines, and pops, and dies.” One line it’s constant, the next it’s popping and dying. Maybe that’s a deliberate paradox, and I have a vague idea what it might mean, but I really don’t think it’s clear enough.

And, like the others, I’ve no idea what the last stanza means - what a roof that’s drawn down in a peak looks like, who you’re addressing with “trees had hidden yours” and exactly what the trees hid, etc. And is there a reason you phrased the third line in that particular way - “quite sorry I felt”? Does that just mean “I felt quite sorry,” or that you’re sorry you felt that way?

On the plus side, there are some lines and images I rather like; for instance, “The hearth that holds the house together” has a nice rhythm and alliteration. I do think it’s a poem with a good bit of potential, so keep working on it. (And, incidentally, you’re a far better man than I for not taking Johnny to the Pit.)

9

Some specific problems the poem suffers from;

  1. A wretchedly garbled meter and a now you see it, now you don’t rhyme scheme.

  2. Hideous grammatical structure, i.e. The blunt cut lawn perfumed/ The walk inside the open door. Just because this is poetry doesn’t mean the rules of grammar are suddenly thrown out the window.

  3. Sentence inversions; these are one of the pre-eminent characteristics of bad, bad poetry.

  4. Trite rhymes; i.e. text/next, door/floor.

  5. Nonsensical phrases, i.e. No feature kept untouched to be unique

  6. Cliches, i.e. “crossed my path”, “caught my eye”.

Unlike some of the other posters here, I really don’t see anything worth saving from this piece. Trash it, and I wish you better luck with your next piece.

10

Hmm, KidCharlemagne thought the subject was a vagina, and I thought it was a computer.

One of us is fucked up.

11

Personally, I think the sound of the poem is decent. You do, however, fail to make your point. 'Cause I’ll be damned if I know what it is. Also, your conclusion is especially weak.

You do make some interesting plays with sound though (so sue me, I’m a word geek). Eventually, you’ll learn to combine playing with sound with making a point. When you finally do that, it’ll be a day to remember. Trust me.

You should probably let this sit for a long while and start on something new. Good luck with your next work, though.

And, um, Johnny Angel? There are really better ways of making your point than personally insulting the author with the repeated use of the phrase “fuck you.” Chill, dude.

12

Just a quick chime in…

First, I disagree with Bryan’s suggested rephrasing of those two lines. “I saw the void wanting volumes of text,
And larders, if full, that could sate winter next.” The “poetic” inversion at the end of those lines is, well, pretty awkward and quite a jarring change from the syntax of the rest of the poem. Poetry doesn’t have to have poetic words or poetic syntax. In my opinion, poetry should read as effortlessly and logically as prose. If you’re muddling with syntax too much, then you’re confusing the message, in my opinion.

Otherwise, on Bryan’s other points, I generally agree.

Let me start with what I do like. I like your use of direct language and words with monosyllabic force. You generally seem to be aware of the sound of your words and fare well in using assonance, alliteration and consonance. I particularly like the sound and the simple, even mundane, image of “cold wood floor.”

You’ve shown decent use of enjambment, as well.

I think you have some potential here.

However, there are also a lot of problems here. As posters before have said, what the heck is up with the rhyme scheme? And “no feature kept untouched to be unique,” “so home quick I raced,” and so forth. You have some odd changes in syntax which at best are jarring (the latter) or at worst are indecipherable (the former).
Oh, and the “ward off the heat…the day dead” lines need some work, too.

You generally seem to keep to some type of tetrameter throughout the poem, but it’s inconsistent. The third stanza particularly stands out for me in contrast with the previous two stanzas. It almost feels to me like this stanza was taken from another poem. Rhythmically it has a much different feel than the other two. This is not a problem in and of itself. Rhythmic variety is crucial in good poetry. However, I fail to see how this change is exactly appropriate.

Oh, Jeff what’s wrong with this:
2) Hideous grammatical structure, i.e. The blunt cut lawn perfumed/ The walk inside the open door. Just because this is poetry doesn’t mean the rules of grammar are suddenly thrown out the window.

“The blunt cut lawn perfumed the walk inside the open door.”
I don’t see a problem there. Maybe I’d say “to” instead of “inside” but otherwise, you basically got S-V-O there. If you read “perfumed” as an adjective, not a verb, then I can see why you made the statement.

That’s my general overview of the technical side of this poem. Technically, it shows promise, but it does need to be wrought into shape.

Now, more importantly, what the heck are you trying to say in this poem? So it’s supposed to be some clever metaphor we’re all guessing, but the text doesn’t give me enough clues. I understand Johnny’s vitriol to some extent; some people expect and approach poetry as enigmas. A poem should not be a puzzle. My main problem is this poem just seems to wander and not go anywhere. So it’s a description of a house. OK. Have you offered us any kind of insight into this house/computer/vagina/whatever it is? In my opinion, no.

Unless I’m missing something, you just seem to randomly describe different aspects of the house and I don’t get any feeling this poem adds up to a greater whole.

13

Huh-huh-huh-huh… he said “hole”.

14

Smartass. :slight_smile:

15

Hello again. I’ve been out of town, but I’ve been expecting that it would behoove me to apologize for crossing the line, so here it is:

HoldenCaufield:

You do not appear to have deserved the slam you received, although if you had come back complaining about how I’m just not sensitive or deep enough to grok, I would stand by every word of it. You came across very strongly as an archetype I have encountered many times before of a person who uses poetry as an affectation, and on whom the effort involved in considered criticism is wasted, and it was to that archetype that I was reacting. I’m not apologizing for being an asshole, I’m apologizing for being wrong.

Eutychus:

I acknowledge that my comments were neither proper for this forum nor useful in the sense that someone who deserved them would likely stand to learn from them. I am chastened. However, I still think it was a good rant. In the future I shall try to post it in its proper place.

16

Way to go, Johnny. Now he’ll NEVER tell us what the poem was about.

17

Keep this line:

“The hearth that holds the house together”

You may find a place to use it someday. As for the rest of the piece (it’s not a poem, Holden, although it does look towards poetry), consider time well spent since it did turn out a good line. You’ll find, if you keep working at writing, the good lines will come closer and closer together. And that, too, is worth putting in the time to achieve.

jm

18

So what is it about? Is it a metaphor for Mom? Or family?