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10/24/2018 6:41:35 PM
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3rd poem, I just want some honest feedback.
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You lost me in the first line: "dark embrace" of what? love? death? night?
"Deeply lost" and "searching eyes": don't think you can do both at the same time, only one or the other.
"searching eyes"": sounds cliched
"dark embrace": depending on context, could also be a cliche
"lingered like a broken clock": lingering means eventual resumption of motion; a broken clock does not.
"Above", "Beneath": above what? beneath what? at first I thought above the sky, and that "meadow of glittering flowers" refers to stars (not bad if so), but no, clouds are visible so can't be night.
"chorus of cricket's serenade": pick one or the other, although both are a little cliched.
For a visual poem, the introduction of sound in the last line kind of breaks the spell for me. Consider a very short poem of Ezra Pound as an example:
As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.
Now a horticulturist knows that lily-of-the-valley also has a sweet scent, but he doesn't complicate his poem with that, which frankly might sounds a little cliched. Instead he focuses only on the delicious feeling of coolness at dawn. And note how he says "in the dawn", rather than "at the dawn" - he's "in" the moment, as we would say.
Doing a short poem is a terrific exercise. You have a couple of good images, and one not so good (clock) that could be fixed (no pun). Maybe start over and begin with the strongest line you can come up with, probably using the maiden image. You could also do it in meter as part of an exercise in getting a great sound (be sure to read it aloud), for example, "I saw a maiden peeking from the clouds" would be iambic pentameter (although that does sort of change the tone of poem). But above all, be sure to make sense!
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10/24/2018 7:12:02 PM
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Women in the Waiting Room
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Need to tighten the language.
"Bosom of their torsos": "bosom" is either a euphemism for breasts or a metaphor; also the torso is the only area with breasts, so redundant to say it that way. Just say "for easy access to their breasts" - blunt and without euphemism.
"ready to be examined and x-rayed / by doctors, nurses and machinery." - maybe simplify: "ready to be examined by doctors and machines"
"thick hair locks": locks means hair; drop one or the other.
"hairless heads": the next line tells us that with "once housed" so maybe just reword this. And "housed": does a head house (enclose) hair? I think you've got the wrong word there. And "sun kissed" - yeah, I guess, but what about suggesting their hair was once kissed by lips rather than by the sun, to suggest that they're no longer desirable.
"snatched away by radiation. / All realize that society defines / a woman’s beauty by her hair." - seems like you could just drop these lines since everyone knows these things, or come up with a poetic equivalent. And "society" is just a blah word - "society" doesn't "define" anything; people do.
"Some are complete strangers… / from all walks of life." - only some are from all walks of life?
The 10 lines beginning "Some share stories" are your strongest because they sound good when read aloud (s sounds, rhythm). The other lines sound more like prose. I like "voice to voice" and hope it isn't a typo. Don't be afraid to repeat the same word for effect. Look at how Eliot does it in Prufrock (what you reminded me of): "To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet".
Go, go, go!
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10/24/2018 7:22:31 PM
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Woman (Please critique)
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First line starts out fine, then everything goes flat in the next two lines, which kind of repeat the first line, right? And the double negative - ouch.
Cliches: "weaker vessel" (does anyone still believe that?), "To God the glory".
"breed": in this context is surely a most distasteful word and anyway you probably mean "gender"; confine "breed" to livestock, please.
"force a gentle touch": maybe unintentional, but I like this anyway - gentleness being forced (implication of violence).
Maybe try stripping this down to half its length. Perhaps first write out what you want to say in declarative sentences, probably only about two or three needed. Then rewrite them using more poetic language, rhythm, etc. Be sure to read aloud at all stages - if you don't hear at least a little music, well, try again.
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10/24/2018 7:32:34 PM
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Impending Nuptials (Please Critique!)
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"I cannot bear to entertain / Thoughts veiled in white, wearing a train / Trimmed in lace" - I like the image of thoughts being like a bridal gown, but after this you lose me.
Maybe write out in a couple declarative sentences what you're trying to say, then rewrite them as lines of poetry. Be sure to ask yourself: will the reader understand this poem the way they would understand the declarative sentences? The reader can't read your mind, only the words you write. You don't have to say everything directly, but you do need to say it in a way that allows the reader to figure it out.
Vocab problem: "chill" does not "quench" anything (water quenches thirst, etc.)
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10/24/2018 7:53:58 PM
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A Nihilisitic Pen (Would Appreciate Any Feedback)
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"A crude tool" - a nice way of describing an instrument that writes down language, but after that you lose me: "corpses of the animate" - how do the animate have corpses since they're, well, still alive?
"With surgical precision" - but you just told us it was a crude tool.
The rest doesn't make much sense to me. Try saying it in plainer language.
And perhaps look up the meaning of "nihilism" - not sure what you're getting at with that in the title.
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10/24/2018 7:58:26 PM
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I WANT TO KNOW THE MEANING OF THIS POEM
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What don't you understand? It's just a clumsy restatement of the commonly used phrase "You don't know me". Maybe bad song lyrics (the refrain suggests that)? Rhythm is not very good either.
Several little problems: "you're" --> "your" (three places), "unsatisfied" --> "dissatisfied".
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10/24/2018 8:08:35 PM
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Dust and Heavy Stone
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Let's just start with the first two lines: "Gold-plated wooden overcoats house the mighty dead / Enveloped with precious stone and Heavens pavements"
Okay, image of gilded wooden coffins, what we call caskets - not too bad. What if you used "overcoat" as a verb and dropped "house"? "Gold-plated wood overcoats the mighty dead"?
"Enveloped": how are the caskets enveloped? by earth, but precious stones - don't get that at all. And "Heavens pavements": maybe referring to headstones? Should probably be "Heaven's pavement" - I don't know what "pavements" plural means.
The rest of part I just loses me. What are you trying to say? Not aided by the missing spaces between some words. Maybe you could edit and fix that.
Parts II and III seem to shift away from the tone of part I - but to what, I don't know. Seems kind of jumbled and nonsensical in places. "A stone hit for the crying children": what does that mean?
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11/1/2018 8:36:41 AM
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New Writer Requests Critique
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The short form is fine, but the language is dull. You've strung together commonplace expressions and ideas. You need to juice up the language or the ideas, ideally both.
Example: "To listen with your heart" - that's a cliche that depends on our commonplace association of emotion with the heart, even though we know that emotional responses occur in the brain. And "listen" makes the heart into a metaphorical organ of hearing.
In the New Testament, John speaks of the "bowels of compassion" since the ancients believed that the gut was the seat of emotions. One idea would be the experiment with different combinations instead of "listen" and "heart" and see if you can find something more interesting.
The poem enumerates the three gifts (listening, touching, thinking?). You just need a way to say it memorably, rather than with expressions that are instantly forgotten.
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11/1/2018 8:48:51 AM
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Women in the Waiting Room
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Yes, "chests" is much better.
But "dangled" is pretty awful. Hair doesn't dangle unless you're trying to write comedy. Maybe something like "flashed" to tie in with both sun and radiation.
"All realize that society defines / a woman’s beauty by her hair." If you insist on stating the obvious, you need to find a way to express it poetically. If I were to some day write up a list of words you should never use unironically in a poem, "society" would be on it.
"burning skins" --> "burning skin" - otherwise it sounds like they were wearing furs.
These 10 lines are your best; everything else just reads like prose by comparison. Note the differences: these lines have some rhythm and sounds and the lines are shorter on the page. That's a clue to what's wrong with the rest of the poem. They could also be tightened a bit, as almost all poetry can be until about the 20th draft. For example:
"All have a voice to voice / about their journeys / to this waiting room."
That's a little bit wordy. Why not just "All have a voice to voice / Their journeys to this room".
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11/19/2018 1:14:37 PM
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A few feet away (Please critique.)
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A few feet away
Only a few feet away in distance
But in my heart and mind it’s miles
Through treacherous terrain and mountain
Icy cold and frozen
Not a terrible opening. I kind of like the repetition. Remember, though, you're writing a poem, not a travelogue. So perhaps drop "in distance" - it's redundant and not very poetic sounding. And "it's" is a little vague, maybe expand that. Then you would end up with something like this (just my suggestion):
A few feet away, only a few feet away
But in my heart the path is miles
Through treacherous terrain and mountain,
Icy cold and frozen
Do the same to the other stanzas and you might end up with a half-decent poem. Maybe shorten the lines a little if possible in a few places (eg, drop "in proximiy" [sic]).
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11/19/2018 1:21:14 PM
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Critique for my poem 'ENSNARE'
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A pendant so shiny, covered in shroud,
I'm having trouble picturing this. A shroud tightly wraps a dead person (or thing in this case), so how do we see the shininess of the pendant. And "in shroud" doesn't mean anything to me; maybe "in a shroud"?
The rest of the poem is similarly troubled. Not sure what the point is of repeating "rot" and the clumsy attempt to rhyme some lines (rot, forgot, sprout, nought), but not the first two lines.
Maybe write out in prose what you're trying to say; use declarative sentences. Then you'll get your message straight and it will be easier to poeticize it in a way that will make sense to us (we're not mind readers).
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11/23/2018 11:21:30 AM
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Optical Illusions
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Good that you bumped your posting; I've only recently joined.
As a form, starting each stanza with a noun or short phrase and then sort of expanding on it with ever-lengthening lines is not a bad idea. Some may consider this kind of a gimmick, but I think it works for you (although maybe just a little predictable by about the 3rd stanza).
What doesn't work is the expansion. Some of those phrases probably won't make sense to anyone except you. One or two are not bad and might be salvaged if you were to rewrite ("Historic currency is a cold death" - although I don't know what that means), others are not as good.
Please read this aloud. Does it really sound like a poem to you? Or something that you could imagine reading to someone else and them actually enjoying it? Or making any sense of it? I really think the most important thing someone starting with poetry can do is to make sense, then worry about the poetics.
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11/23/2018 11:37:00 AM
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Don't Clap Gentlemen
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Lots of interesting things here. However, I can't decide if the numerous ungrammatical phrases and other problems with the English are deliberate or not. If so, then that's great, you really suggest how these "gentleman" sound; if not deliberate, that if you yourself are struggling with English, then I would say you've inadvertently stumbled onto a nice way of expressing things in a poem that suggest your own secret dialect and I like that a lot.
I get a nice picture of the scene from phrases like "having cup of tea in hand" without much additional description.
Perhaps the least interesting thing for me is the subject matter, the whole question of nuclear missiles and annihilation.
Could you weigh in and talk a little about what you were trying to do with the language? I think that would help us.
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7/17/2019 3:31:21 PM
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Critique please
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I usually don't comment unless something catches my eye. You've got some interesting phrases here, but also some things where the language doesn't work or just confuses me.
Stanza 1, line 1: It almost reminds me of some lines from PJ Harvey's song "Man-Size": "I'll measure time / I'll measure height / I'll calculate / My birthrite" so that's pretty good.
Line 2: Not sure a body can have diversity; a crowd can and a forest can, but a body is a singular thing. Unless you're doing a Whitman thing: "I am large, I contain multitudes."
Line 4: "placing sunken paws": are the paws already sunk, or is the anchor sinking them, in which case "placing" isn't needed.
Line 5: A pistol has a grip and tools often have what are called "pistol grips". Is that your sense here, grabbing the earth like a tool or something?
Stanza 2, lines 1-4: lots of horse imagery here with "stock", "restraints" and "gait", but not sure what "unhinged myself of / My restraints" means, nor how you would "conquor" [sic] a "gait". Last 3 lines don't add anything or develop the first part.
Stanza 3, lines 1-4: not bad; I think I would drop "the" from "the others" since it sounds like you're specifying a group previously mentioned, but no others have been mentioned.
Next 4 lines and last stanza: muddled and confusing.
A couple ideas: for most of us we need to pay attention to what words mean and not just freelance them in a kind of stream of consciousness. Sometimes apparently nonsensical constructions work, as in cummings' "My father moved through dooms of love". But I think those things might be best reserved for when you're more experienced.
You might also try starting with a declared theme. Again, it's hard to discern if there is one here as a reader, maybe something about "I'm uncomfortable in my own skin in the world". Once you have a theme then write "towards" it so that every word builds on it and doesn't just strike out on its own.
Glad you posted that here. It has some interesting things. Just keep working on it and maybe post an edited version.
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