Talking about "The Poetry Thread."

Cafe Society
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I just started The Poetry Thread Here in this forum. Here is my idea, to go along with the thread. Let’s use that thread for poetry only, and come here critique our work, or throw rocks, or whatever. You have to post only your own work, and I would appreciate it if we try to avoid being silly, although that is just a matter of choice.

So, I have posted the OP in both Threads. I suppose you should bump this thread when you add to the other, with a comment about your submission. I will do that, too.

Tris

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“Telperion’s Child” is a part of a mythology I invented, which I have never really finished writing about. The name is from Silmarillion, the name of the elder of the famous Two Trees of Valinor. The idea is one of a mythological tree, and its place in the world before men, before animals, before everything, and the idea of its fall. You might be able to tell, I like trees.

Tris

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Well, Triskadecamus, I might have posted a poem, but after the two in there now, and yours especially, I think I will refrain.
Awesome Poem!

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I have written a number of poems. Most of them I can’t even stand to read anymore, but something about this one always brings me back. This may be due to the fact that most of my poetry is fantasy based, but this one was written almost exactly as it happened in my real life. Anyway, I have no objective idea whether it is any good or not. I wrote it for English class and got an “A”, so maybe that means something. When I posted it here, I couldn’t help but tinker with it a little bit. I hope to have improved it some. No one else has read it since I wrote it in High School.

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** Epimetheus**,

Please do share your voice with us. I suppose if you do not feel comfortable, I will certainly simply read, and remain silent. But I think we serve our interests as writers if we accept comment, and offer comment, in a spirit of interest in our expression, and how it has crossed that gulf between reader and writer.

Thank you for your praise, by the way.

** Genseric**,

I like the resolution, the sense of identification with the boy, so long ago. I think you could pare it down some, (although that tends to be my outlook on a lot of poetry, and may just be prejudice toward my own style). I think you underestimate your audience a bit, and tell them a bit more than they need, for them to see what you saw. The dam, the sunset, the handprint, the shadow from the setting sun revealing the message, and the boy, still standing in your mind are really all you need. By themselves, they tell the story. It is still a very nice image, but I think you can make more of it, with less detail. And then, you will have room to put yourself into the picture, too. I feel you there, but do not see you there, if you follow me. Climb the dam alone, and walk back with the boy? I don’t know how it happened for you.

Good one, though. Thanks.

Tris

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Thanks for your comments Tris, I pretty much agree with you. I knew there were elements with the poem I didn’t particularly like, but I guess if I could spot them and knew how to fix them, I’d be a much better poet (Tennyson, practically!:D). It gives me some ideas on what to look at. I guess no one else has any poetry to share, though. Too bad, I was looking forward to reading more. I know we’ve got some good poets here, surely. Maybe I’ll bang on mine some more, and post again, if I come up with anything.

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Genseric,

I share your somewhat surprised disappointment at the response to date. I really thought this one would be more interesting to folks in the forum.

I also am rather pleasantly reassured at your response to my critique, which I had hoped would be an important and useful aspect of the thread pair. Not that I am a qualified teacher of poetry, but rather that all of us could share our insights into how a poem has reached us, and what worked well, so that we can learn and refine our skill.

Anyone out there? If you want to just post, without eliciting comments, post here first, asking us not to critique, and I will be happy just to read, and enjoy.

Tris

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Wow, and I thought this was such a good idea.

Tris

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OK, screw sublte.

Bump

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Hey man, I’m helpin’ ya out in the other thread. :slight_smile:

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Hey, thanks man.

The thought processes of children are generally more poetic than logical, don’t you think?

There is a definite Suessian influence in this one. I don’t think of that as a bad thing. Neither do most children, in my experience. My eldest son and I used to have entire conversations in Suessiform. It was a lot of fun. So is your poem.

Tris

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I was just waiting for the right time to post! Anyway, I used to be a pretty fair poet, and I’ve posted one with a brief note. I’ve got a few others up my sleeve, if anyone’s interested. I am interested in commentary/critique, because all my stuff tends to sound hopelessly trite to me.

CJ

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I posted in the other thread as well. Please feel free to comment if you like, but be gentle for I am yet young! :slight_smile:

Tana

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Tris - I was thinking more Silverstein myself, but Seuss will do. I’ll post some critiques soon enough…

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Wow, we have a wealth of new poems!

I feel so . . . vindicated!

I am also on my way to work, and will have to wait for comments on the new poetry until tomorrow. But, I will respond. I encourage everyone to respond, as well. Critique, if you feel comfortable, or just give your reactions. The spirit should be one of communication, not judgement.

Tris

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Cjhoworth:

Very poignant.

I am not sure you haven’t taken a view of simplicity such as my own a step beyond even what I generally do. It works well, though. I am sure it is not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, what with the absence of flowers, and sunny days. But very personal, and real.
Tanaqui

I rather like the tea story. It has a nice train like feel to it. I think that it stumbles a bit, metrically, although it seems to recover. Enough of the train is still is still there to help me get the feel of it, but I think it would benefit if that train ran all the way through.

The bridge story is quite nice, but it simply doesn’t lead me poetically. I like the story quite a bit, but I tried something after reading it several times. I pasted it into a text editor, and reformatted it as prose. Add in a paragraph break, and it reads quite well. I think it may well be too narrative for the poetic genre, as it is. Whether that means it would benefit from what would probably be an extensive metric reworking is pretty much a personal choice matter. It is quite enjoyable as prose, by the way, and no less a captured moment because of it.

NotWithoutRage

Well, talk about your absence of sunny days, and flowers. Ann is certainly missed.

The pale black boots come real close, but I don’t see them. And their verse doesn’t draw me along. It could, I think, but I was still lost on the pale black boots for the whole verse.

After that, it seems so very angry, which I don’t generally find to my specific taste, although you seem to have it down quite vividly. It gets in my way a bit, empathy wise, but that is more a failure of my perception than of your expression, since it would not happen if you hadn’t put the rage across so well.

So, well done, even if I am not your target audience.

Libertarian

Well, perhaps it was just too good a start, or just too quick a change of pace, but I end up feeling a bit led on, and let down. I was following you down into the very depth of hell. Triviality was the least of my expectations. But then, I suppose you aren’t suppose to like what you find in the depths of hell.

Then again, I like you too much as a person to suggest that you follow this particular trail any farther than you have. I doubt it would be a pleasant journey to read, and even less to take.

OK, now, everyone, listen up. I can’t continue to be the only one risking offering from the shoulder, straight up critique. There are several reasons for this. One is that it makes me look like a pissant pedant to do it, and the other thing is that my authority is only that of a casual reader of a particular work, without other voices it means nothing. I have no specific credentials for my point of view, aside from the fact that it is the way I see it.

So, I am going to post another poem, and you all can let fly with your opinion. I won’t cry. (Well, I might, but I won’t post about crying on this thread. I might write a poem about my suffering, but that’s fair game.)

Thanks for the renewed interest.

Tris

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I posted another poem.

Just to make it clear, in this case La La is a person’s name. She is a person worth many more than one poem, having shown enough determined courage so far in her life to shame Horatius, and Sisyphus together. At the time of this poem, safety conscious bureaucrats thwarted her first attempts at freedom with her best interests firmly in mind.

Tris

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Ah, Tris… on “For La La”, the things you tell us in your explanation of your poem, is there a way you can tell them to us with the poem? I find the vague and abstracted langauge makes it difficult for me to be able to connect emotionally – which, I believe, is how poems do their best work.
Angel of the Lord, “Statue of a nude” is a very good poem. My only problem with it is in the second stanza:

My specific problem is with “sandstorms”. I like the image, but the storms come out of nowhere. I have a suggestion that might mess up your 4 line stanza structure a tiny bit, but I think it would strengthen the poem; why not add a fifth line to the first stanza, a line which follows from “nude” and prefigures the "sandstorms’?

Both the explicit and the implicit “Ozymandias” references work very well.

And that closing image is amazing:

“my stone limbs draw me back to bed.”

I wish I’d written that.

jm

And, o yeah, I’ll post a piece of my own, one I’ve been hoping to get some feedback on.

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By the way, I gotta say that I’m right tickled you started these threads, Tris. Poetry is pretty important to me.

(Also, if you’re interested, there are a couple of poetry threads in progress in the Oh! the Humanities forum over at fathom – I, for one, would welcome your participation.)

jm

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Angel,

As an aside, I will first assure you that you have not conferred any rights to your work upon the Chicago Reader. Your posting is an implicit permission for them to maintain it on their server, and reference it, and allow others to access it, as a part of the service of the message board. In the event that they begin profiting from the message board, your work, although a part of the “content” that is helping them to profit is not published as a joint effort, and you are not due any payment for providing it. But the Chicago Reader is not allowed to further publish your work, for profit, except in normal excerpted quotation. You have the right to use your own work without notification or permission of the Reader, and no one can claim that it is their work, or that they own the rights to it except you.

The poem is a sensual and exotic journey into the view of self. It seems to work quite well, for the most part, and I, too like the Ozymandias references. I think this one deserves to be longer, and a little deeper. I want to hear those winds whistling through some years, and the face could become a picture painted of itself. I think this one could be very powerful, and as far as it goes, it already is.

John,

Geeks in love! Space time contractions as a bouquet. Well, it certainly has a view to express. I got a little bogged down, because I kept associating your poetic view with my own understanding of physics, and the nature of space, and gravity. It didn’t help you out. I don’t say either of us is right or wrong, but I had to chase every detail off into mathematical complexity, and it didn’t help the love poem at all. The apple was nice, too, as a multiphase symbol of gravity and love. But I never gave my self a chance to taste it.

You are quite right, too about the details of La La, and who she is making way to much difference to be left out. I am not sure just how much will fit into this poem, and how much has to be a whole new poem about DNR orders, and people who don’t know they should die, and eight pound two year olds trying to escape from their rooms. (and making it, which is a whole new poem, I think.)

Tris