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12/2/2018 5:14:22 AM
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Cryptor
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consider adapting this to the sestina form
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12/3/2018 1:33:00 AM
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Learn To Be Still
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I'm sorry you've removed your poem. My opinions are frequently in the minority on here. The value of your work remains immutable regardless of the presence of artistry. Your work is greater than the response of one critique. There is no doubt in my mind many on the site will connect with it in a meaningful way. I hope you will repost it and allow them the opportunity to receive your thoughts for themselves.
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12/3/2018 2:27:03 AM
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Please Critique
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the emotional themes of your work seem to be grief, yearning, nostalgia, angst, anxiety.
the poetic insight/ contemplation seems to be the revelation of interdependent existence: harming your world harms my world (which could be elevated to a universal theme).
One of the strong impressions I get from the work is that you've written it for yourself, sort of writing down an imaginary conversation you're having in your head. One of the most seductive qualities a poem can posses is the reader feeling that the author is aware of their presence and is speaking to them, or at least if not speaking to them has created something for them to experience. When an author writes a poem essentially talking to themselves, or someone other than the reader, a lot of the magic of poetry itself is lost (in my opinion). (How fun would a rollercoaster be if it was built only for the girlfriend of the CEO to ride? I guess the crowd could stand around it and think pleasent well wishes to the CEO and his girlfriend, but no one is going to be raising their hands as they go over a hill, or yelling as they feel their stomach float on the drop.) This a very common critique I make; it is not something unique to your poem.
Personally, I'm (usually) a big fan of imagism, using images and concrete details to tell the story or to convey a deeper level of emotion. But, that's a personal preference. I would like to encourage you to explore use of imagery in your poem.
There is a device in poetry called 'the Proustian Moment,' The author writes in first person. The poem begins in the present, describing going about a daily activity, observing details in the environment. Suddey the speaker stumbles upon a small detail, inconsequential to anyone else, and the author begins remembering a moment from the past, in lush, rich detail, perhaps a scene of happiness. Then the speaker returns to the present moment. One can either emphasize the absence of the thing/ person remembered, or one can express the spark of life has been restored through the remembrance, or some other dynamic, but the point is that the rememberance impacts being in the present somehow, the past and present do not exist apart from each other, which touches nicely your poetic thought that your world and the world of the lost one are connected. Perhaps the speaker discovers their worlds are still connected, that she is still alive, a part of him/her because the past is a living thing, not a dead thing and the speaker is freed of his/her madness; or, perhaps the remembrance only deepens the madness and angst of the present.
I think you should play with your poem like this. Even though you will be writing in first person, write as if the only person that will ever hear it is the reader, and you don't know who that person is. When you refer to the lost love, use third person pronouns she/he etc...
hope some of my suggestions are helpful. thank you for letting us read your poem.
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12/31/2018 10:27:50 AM
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Dreams by Bob Atkinson
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very spare on imagery.
the mood seems to be restrained/ quiet resignation, desolation. The volume is so low, it's difficult to catch quite.
Passing through a maze of strangers is a very powerful concept that I think you should develop more.
I wasn't familiar with the practice of salting ground, but after having looked it up, mentioning it merely in passing doesn't quite capture the intent and scope of such an act. It seems to be the old world equivalent of dropping an atom bomb on local flora and fauna.
The image of the tree of wonder growing from salted ground has power, but its power relies directly upon the reader's comprehension of the poetic significance of salted ground, not merely the science of the attack, but the emotional and social poetic content of who would do such a thing to someone and why, a sadistic and dominating contempt or self righteousness. The power of the tree is its rebuttle to the poetic content of salting the ground, but you have ommitted it. I think it would be stronger if you expanded this section.
the use if second person in the first stanza is inconsistent with tge rest of the poem
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12/31/2018 10:42:30 AM
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Please critique my poem
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this poem could literally be about anything or anyone. there's nothing personal about it at all.
it could be a mother with empty nest syndrome; it could be a woman in Yemen grieving about her staving child; it could be about a young woman experiencing her first break up; it could be a young woman experiencing abuse; it could be an old woman saying goodbye to her husband dying of cancer; it could be a woman that didn't get a bank loan for her business; it could be a young woman that just became homeless because she's a lesbian and her parents kicked her out; it could be a woman that lost everything she owns in a wildfire; it could be a CEO that just lost her business in a stock market crash; it could be a woman serving in the military that just realized she lost both her legs; etc...
The ocean is made of tears; who survives crossing it is far more interesting.
Good luck.
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12/31/2018 10:57:14 AM
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PSYCHOLOGY of POETRY
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it's like a seashell. A little beat up, but whole and properly shaped, just enough color to catch the eye, pleasing to pick up, but destined for a jar of shells, none of which are more beautiful than the others.
the meta-view on the poetic process was fun. very playful.
my only suggestion is to work on punctuation, and phrasing.
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2/1/2019 3:43:48 AM
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Dreams by Bob Atkinson
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huh. well, I commented on the content and suggested ways to make stronger the parts i found most powerful. I didn't really address form. I'm not a big fan of the rhyme scheme you've selected. there is no function without proper form. you might want to explore free verse to better express the mood?
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2/1/2019 4:54:58 AM
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Testing First Submission (Please help critique:)
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It is not clear to me if English is your first language. The concepts are very developed, the vocabulary is good, but the phrasing and syntax in the complex sentences structures seems almost invented rather than something natural. If English isn't your first language, I would recommend writing the poem out in your native language first, then work with an English tutor to translate it correctly.
Prefacing the envoi of your poem with "Remember!" is really heavy handed.
In stanzas 1-3 the persona is chasing away something. In the envoi the persona is chasing after something.
St 1: the instinct to daunt, to tempt, to set ablaze
St 2: yesterdays, todays, tomorrows, lonely eyes
St 3: the name Ozymandias
St 4: the unknown and unwritten (familiar lovers)
There seem to be at least 5 allusions
1: Prometheus
2: tower of Babel
3: Gone With the Wind
4: Earnest Hemingway's quote about writing is sitting at the typewriter and bleeding
5: Percy Bysshee Shelley's poem Ozymandias
Overall the poem seems to be about the desire to write, but a profound experience of writer's block from feeling one has alienated one's Eros (or in this case, one's Prometheus), and from an alarming sense of having procrastinated for so very long, the feeling time has slipped away (stanza 2), and a nihilistic fear that accomplishment doesn't really matter because it is all swept away in the end anyway (the allusion to Ozymandias, and the idea one is born simply to die). The enoi seems to be a final affirmation, or resolution in the face of the aforementioned obstacles. The envoi seems to be a new covenant forged with the Prometheus aspect in stanza one, a commitment to illuminate life whatever the cost. The envoi is foreshadowed in stanza 3 by the refutation of nihilism and the affirmation there "fires" to be set (which pucks up the Prometheus thread).
The poem might express what Mary Oliver states in her essay Of Power and Time: "The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."
The psychological landscape of the poem is coherent and dynamic, however struggling through the syntax is a big obstacle to the reading. My advice would be to strive for natural, conversational phrasing (even if elevated to a larger than life scale). If you are not in the habit of reading your poems aloud as you compose them, I would rely on this method constantly. Also, set your poems aside for a week, and read them aloud so you are honestly reading it as another might, instead of how you know it was intended.
it is an intellectually rigorous poem, and the sense being small in the passing of time on the verge of being palpable in the poem, but I think the emotive quality and the scope of the scale will be more profound when a more natural phrasing is found. It is a bit like a grammar jigsaw puzzle.
Also, the rhyming in the first stanza is distracting without any kind of meter. If there were a lexical, moraic, or syllabic meter the end rhymes might not feel so awkward, but the lines just stop arbitrarily and then the rhyme happens which just emphasizes the arbitrariness of the line.
an example of how the first stanza might be edited for clarity is:
[
Blank,
pens and paper pile high ---
Babel without spires.
The instinct
to daunt, to tempt,
and like Prometheus set ablaze,
I have chased it away.
]
I think these ideas are related but are clearer as two. stanzas. I would omit the Gone with the Wind line entirely.
I hope I've said something useful or worth considering. If not, good luck! Keep writing. Never too late, and fire has no age.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/1/2019
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/1/2019
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2/1/2019 7:02:07 AM
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Critique, please. This poem is called Fish
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you use the refrain "just an ugly fish" 4 times. I think it would be natural to rewrite the poem in 4 stanzas and put the refrain at the end of each stanza.
I think your choice of the word "dueling" shows an instinctive ability to use sound to convey other senses, in this case the physical sense of the fish moving through the resistence of the water, the doo being the solidness of fish against the thrust of the water, and the contrast between the oo snd the ing being the wriggle of the fish, the ling being the both the sense of something slick and the flick of the tail.
callous current extends the sense of motion of the fish, which is impressive, however callous is a curious word there. it clearly is personifying the current as uncaring, indifferent, however even when people are described aa callous it usually implies they are "rough", which is synergistic with its literal definition. There may be a better word than callous to use here as trying to reconcile the fact that water is smooth with the sense it is callous interrupts the momentum of reading the poem. BUT...
...if you decide to be audacious enough to leave it... (and that could be a very good thing, perhaps)... make "Dueling the callous current..." the first line of the poem. It's such a visceral, primal line it is powerful enough to open the poem
Throw the reader straight into the water! (don't forget the reader exists, the poem is taking them on a journey, an experience. open with a splash! when appropriate).
The reader needs a way to enter the space of the poem. "Just an ugly fish" is a thought, an opinion, there is no physical sense to ground the reader in the poem. Dueling the callous current, gives an immediate sense. the tension of the line allows the reader to hit the ground running, or rather swimming on this case.
you could rewrite the entire poem around the frantic energy and tension of the Dueling the callous current. the rest of the poem, as it is, is a bit Eyeore-ish, slow, melancholy, I-give-up-ish. Attempting to capture the physical sensation of the battle, the strain of the fight might be more engaging artistically. a battle leaves the possibility of winning and an uncertain outcome, and the yearning to succeed in happiness leaves the readee more options to connect to.
If you dare, I would reconsider rewriting the poem simply about the fish. It can be entirely about your experience as you wish BUT you can communicate your experience and emotion by showing an unusual empathy for the fish, an intimate understanding of its suffering. The reader will understand you truly know what it feels like through the authentic descriptions of how the fish feels, all without ever saying I or like me. The reader will find you at the center of the riddle and it will be more powerful because it is they who realized your presence, they in a sense have recreated you from the poem and you will be alive in it through their own act of understanding.
good luck. hope something i said i useful. lovely poem. keep writing.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/1/2019
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2/1/2019 6:28:36 PM
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Compassion
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this isn't a poem. it's not even a prose poem.
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2/3/2019 3:04:31 AM
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The Soap Box
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Wooden lines nailed together,
sharp points hammered
home with an iron-minded will,
(each strike rhyming with the last),
passes for a soap box,
one on which the author stands,
proclaiming what he understands,
what justice and dignity command,
the wisdom that will save the land,
and trying to fit the sky in his labor-calloused hand.
It is attention he demands.
How well such kindling burns.
He never feels the fire.
He doesn't hear the silence,
and no one knows who smells the smoke
rising from forgotten nails.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/3/2019
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2/3/2019 6:32:42 PM
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Tears
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There are no riddles in tears.
Everything is put plain.
A drop
will do.
No need for a puddle waiting
for someone's feet like
someone else's shoes to fill.
No need for the ambilavence of an ocean,
graceless sharks gliding
through a Mardi Gras of coral,
or darknss
so deep it touches the end of the Earth,
where its skin cracks open with fire
and crabs as white as paper gather in the boiling vents
chosing hell over the crushing cold.
No
A drop
will do.
A tear
that pats the page on the head
for being a loyal friend.
A tear that evaporates
leaving nothing at all
but an offering to the Beastly Bard
who looks upon the world with hollow
eyes, geodes of tears.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/3/2019
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2/3/2019 7:15:34 PM
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Please critique. Written for my deaf daughter.
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This is absolutely lovely. The form is perfect for the audience. The rhymes work well, and not only do the refrains work well the volta in the middle where there is the transition from not being able to hear to hearing, the contrast between the old refrain and the new refrain really powerfully captures the excitement of being able to hear.
some suggestions for consideration as you feel appropriate.
I think the final stanza would be stronger if you omit the refrain and end simply with cochlear. Since it is a rhyme, it should not feel awkward the refrain is omitted at the end. The mind will anticipate the refrain due to the repitition, but the rhyme will close the poem and the mind will unify the meaning of the missing refrain with cichlear. Read it aloud with and without and see which sounds best to you.
Similarly I would omit the refrain at the end of "figure it out", for the same reasons above, with the addition that the omission of the refrain creates a pause because the ear is expecting the missing refrain, and this pause alerts the ear there is a change, a shift, which silently announces the volta andthe transition into the second half of the poem, which is affirmed also by the new line "my ears didn't work.
In stanza three I would change "Not" to 'when' and omit punctuation on the preceding line. Similarly, in it's parallel stanza, stanza 8, I would change "My" to 'when' and omit punctuation on the preceding line. They would read as:
My ears don't work.
I can't hear a word
when Mummy and Daddy tell me my worth.
My ears don't work.
(and)
My ears do work!
I can hear every word
when Mummy and Daddy tell me my worth.
My ears do work!
I think this an important change as the way it is currently written there is a semantic ambiguity that leaves room to feel the worth exists because of the ability to hear. using "when mummy and daddy tell me my worth" as a third refrain is significant because it emphasizes the affirmation of worth is unchanged and has always been there and it is only the ability to hear that has changed. It also rephrases the third stanza in a positive phrasing.
lovely, lovely, lovely. Hope some of my suggestions are useful.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/3/2019
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2/3/2019 7:24:16 PM
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Please critique. Written for my deaf daughter.
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To be perfectly honest, with the above changes you could probably get this published by a store-brand publisher as a children's book. Not sure if they take pre-published work though. I would talk to an publishing agent to check it out.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/3/2019
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2/3/2019 8:36:18 PM
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The undestined
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only use adjectives if you are using an image in an unexpected way.
The white polar bear lumbered across the frozen glacier. (redundant - no need to say a polar bear is white, nor that the glacier is frozen. Cleaner to say: the polar bear lumbered across the glacier.)
The careless polar bear lumbered across the glacier.
(unexpected - we didn't know the polar bear was careless till the adjective told us. Now we want to know what happens.)
The starving polar bear lumbered across the melting glacier.
(unexpected - we didn't know the polar bear was starving or that the glacier was melting)
The mountain is powerful on its own. No need to say 'tall, standing'.
Choses images that don't need adjectives, that way you can save room for adjectives that add depth.
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2/5/2019 7:51:52 PM
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Liars Can't Face the Truth
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This is not a poem, nor a prose poem.
You are proficient in conversational voice, this is good.
You are proficient in making sensible divisions of space, such as line breaks and organizing stanzas in a way that makes sense. This is good.
You are mindful of reserving the last word of each line and stanza for the most important word of each line. This is good. (If you like, you could also work on finding stronger words to begin the lines with as well).
You are not afraid to move away from fixed forms or rhyme schemes. This is very good.
You do not make overt statements of emotion in the poem, and rely on the concrete details rather than attempt to manipulate the reader with phrases like "I took her home and sobbed/wept." This restraint is very good.
The reasons I say this is a not poem is for several reasons.
The first reason is that there is no real take away for the reader. The reader is basically reading an account of something that happened to the persona. It does not elevate the consciousness of the reader or allow them to see the ordinary in an extraordinary way, or offer them a literary experience where they can experience an emotional reality they might otherwise might not have access to, etc... This piece runs into the rather harsh and politically incorrect "so what?" factor.
You have chosen a universal situation, however, you have expressed it in the most mundane way possible. The golden opportunity that universal themes offer both the author and the reader is for something to be written that takes the reader out of their ordinary reality and allows them to connect their individual experience of reality to something expansive, that transcends the ordinary and connects them with every person that has ever lived, something that leads them back to their own humanness, an aspect of humanness that is immortal even though the mortal individuals that express it and live it fall away.
The way you've written your work comes across more as a rant poem.
There are no metaphors or similes or use of rhetorical devices in your work elevate it. You have not created a work that can be entered by the reader. It is read much the same way a newspaper article might be read. This happened, this happened, this happened. etc... It is not a bad place to start at all. In fact it is a good place to start, but you must open it so there is somewhere to go as a reader.
The universal humanness of the persona in your work is loneliness, reaching out, investing in something perceived to be safe, then finding it was not safe at all, then not only being lonely but also having one's hope and the joy of having been found, darkened by wounded trust. Telling us the family history of people we not only will never meet, but have to names or faces to put with is not nearly as powerful as being able to capture the emotional truth of the persona's love and lose. In this work, the power lies with the persona, not reading about how her mother is fake, she hates fake people, but she's really a fake person too --- none of that has any emotional power. The only take away for the reader there is judging anonymous people and that there is no poetic power in that.
Let your love and pain be a jacket the reader can wear. let us in. The wonder will be in finding the jacket is just the right size.
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2/8/2019 10:17:17 PM
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Seriously... Examine my poems under a microscope..
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you could copy the url for one of the poems you'd like critiqued and put it here.
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2/8/2019 11:47:37 PM
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Seeking Unrestricted Critiques
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I like the aspiration to cover a vast expanse of time through the extended metaphor of the passage of the day. I like the idea of the poem fading out into the idea of eternity.
I found the image of the book on the desk confusing and disorienting. I strongly feel it would be better to keep the image grounded in nature, especially since animals can't really gather at the edges of its pages.
If you wish to invoke the book theme, I would make it a larger than life book through the use of simile: the sun sets, shadows stretch out like the pages of a closing book, as animals gather at their edges. This way you can infuse the feeling of the closing book without changing the image.
If you are worried about losing the bookmarks, gravestones will serve to mark the memories: The sun sets. Shadows stretch like the pages of a closing journal. Gravestones mark so many memories made. Animals gather at the edges of each page.
Something I would focus on is reviewing the first and last word of each line to see if it could be made stronger, or simply seeing if multiple lines could be said more simply. for instance the first 10 lines could be reworded in 5 as:
Starry curtains part.
First Dawn peaks over the mural of
roses, daffodils, and tulips.
Rays of light fill the sky
and open the earthly stage.
I'm not sure if this is in keeping with your voice, but I think expressing things with concise language keeps the images clearer and more accessible to the reader. There is nothing wrong with ornate descriptions, but be sure they are ornate rather than simply lacking efficiency.
I would review your use of adjectives. If you can, attempt to find images and and verbs, or groups of images and verbs that natural evoke these feelings you wish, and save your adjectives for functional roles, rather than doing the work of nouns and adjectives to create the mood. For example "The trees have now begun to sprout into a jade, emerald hue." Just choose one color. You can simply say: the trees sprout jade. Magical, no? If you're attached to emerald too, save it for something else: the earth sweats emerald through the snow. Lovely, no?
Also using graceful to describe ballerinas is redundant. Crystalline is the much more important adjective because it is unexpected and is not restating a natural association with ballerinas. If you're attached to graceful, make it an adverb for descend as it is giving us information we might not naturally associate with descend:
crystalline ballerinas descend
gracefully from the woolen balcony.
"gentle buds, adorning a spectrum beyond belief, delicately take their place among the arbor bodies at the back of the painting." Here you seem to be mixing metaphors. In some parts the world is a stage, other places its a painting, other places it's a movie set with a director. It would be nice to just have one consistent metaphor throughout. Also, it's not clear by what you mean by "adorn a spectrum" (unnecessary to say beyond belief, because it gives no information than the testimonial of the persona).Do you mean: a spectrum of gentle buds delicately adorn...?
Especially, avoid using adjectives to instruct the reader how they should feel about a noun "The backdrop is an awe inspiring cerulean..." The persona telling the reader something is unbelievable or awe inspiring is simply testimonial, the reader no longer experiences the world the poem creates directly, but instead experiences the poem second hand through the testimonial of the persona. The reader should always be the primary witness of the poem. For the cerulean backdrop it would be better here to come up with a metaphor or fantastical image: the sky is a cerulean mountain/ the sky is a lapis lazuli mountain/ the sky is a sapphire mountain. Something like that.
I think perhaps the trouble you've run into here is you've written every image with the volume at level 10, so there's nowhere to go when you want something to be more awe inspiring than the other details, because you've made everything high definition Technicolor, so the only thing left to do is to say it is awe inspiring, because there's nothing to contrast it with.
the melting snow as baptism is a fun and original metaphor.
I'm not sure why you have curtains close after the snow fall.
Also, I hesitate to bring it up, but the image of animals prancing around the delighted child really jettisons the poem into the realm of Disney-like fantasy. It becomes a daydream rather than a statement about reality.
hope some of my suggestions are useful.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/8/2019
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2/10/2019 4:02:11 AM
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Sons of Eden
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There are no sons of Eden
only descendants of The Fruit.
They do their best with what they can
as Able still lies blue.
Long cast out of Paradise
they till the worldly soil
and blame the Lord for all their pains
and all their sinful toil.
Some give thanks for what they've sewn,
conceited, humble-proud,
thinking they're the chosen ones
as Hell still overcrowds.
The Lord made do with what Cain left.
(beggars can't be choosers).
With sword held high they judge by The Fruit
that made each one a loser.
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2/10/2019 5:15:34 AM
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Ness Point sonnet
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I love the humble simplicity of the scene. It is not trying to put makeup on anything or making it larger than life. it is very confidently letting the beauty of the contrast between the desolation and the togetherness of faith speak for itself and I think that's very wonderful.
I know there are a variety of contemporary approaches to sonnets, so I'm not sure if my feedback on meter is even relevant. However, you seem to have made a goal of retaining the syllabic count of each line at 10. All but one line succeeds in this. The line ending in "wall" is 9 syllables.
Similarly, I'm not sure what contemporary considerations are given to the volta of a sonnet. I would hesitate to say there is a flip in the position/ perspective/ idea of the poem, but the contrast between the environment and the faith is there, so one might say this is the volta, however delicately voiced.
touching on meter once again, you have 5 lines that end with an unstressed syllable:
'POP-u-late,-ed (trochee, trochee/pyrrhic)
'IN-un-date,-ed (trochee, trochee/pyrrhic)
'COM-merce (trochee)
'GUS-to (trochee)
'WASTE-land (trochee)
obviously this is only of interest if your goal for meter went beyond syllabic verse.
I do not feel iambic pentameter was your goal, however if so, a thorough review of all of your lines with the aid of a trusted source such as Merriam Webster would be greatly beneficial.
If iambic pentameter is your goal, but you do not wish to sacrifice your sanity, you might look to the rather cheeky John Keats for a role model, as frequently his method seems to be: 10 syllables per line, no more or less than 5 stressed syllables per line, always end on an iamb and let the other 4 stressed syllables fall where they wish.
The late, but immortal, Mary Oliver outlines in her Poetry Handbook a set of rules for substituting different metric feet for iambs when using iambic parameter, as well as conditions that allow for an 11th syllable in certain lines. If you wish, I would be happy to paraphrase them.
If lexical meter is not a consideration for this sonnet, the only thing to do is add an extra syllable to the line ending in "wall", and consider if the volta is voiced as vividly as you wish.
The final consideration is the use of the word salient in the first line. I admit it sent me to the dictionary. Perhaps this will not be the case for other readers, but for readers that must stop to look it up, having it in the first line is like trying to start a car but not popping the clutch properly and the car jostling to a halt before you've gone anywhere.
Lovely image. Hope my feedback is useful.
edited by superlativedeleted on 2/10/2019
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