/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2031996]

as is always my problem, i feel that there is some value in a critique of my poetry and this being perhaps the fastest place to accumulate a semblance of such— though sincerity and effort often lacking, i'm going to post a few new OC poems.

critique, contribute OC, or whatever.
1
What of originality then
In our own hand unraveling
Becomes a string
Of yellow traffic signals
Ubiquity fortuitous to us who
As cartooned copied individuals
Fading ink in funny pages
Aging thousand reproductions staged
By hand who've captured, captioned
Underneath us
And mock some static glowing rage

2
A glass of wine with dinner
The way you won me over when
Glowing rosy cheeks to match
The light refracting in the glass
Asking if you'd ever
Had that overwhelming want
To sink into the couch
Forever between cushion folds

[Anonymous No.2032014]

3
Patriot in that—
I do enjoy My:
Comfortable television chair
And coffee table
Shopping malls and car
Grass between my toes
Knowing little of the world
And world's general throes
As I upward stare
Still, in my yard
Toward— cloudless ten a.m. sky
ErICan and white picketing
My own large Being
Here

[Anonymous No.2032017]

Aw gay dude.

[Anonymous No.2032028]

>>2032017
ahw yeah well it is poetry dude
its almost inherently gay, though i am professingly straight.

[Anonymous No.2032042]

one more?

4
As if you
Your neverchanging
Self —to under
—and glowing wonder
Ing reflected incandescent
String of patio-christmas-bulbs
—Stand, were staring
Off and sharing:
'Just— so very
Very claustrophobic
Stoic, steadied jaw set
Rigid anaerobic
Arabic something on
Painted on cement
Where the light was
Impeded and meant
More than it was under
Stood to mean

[Anonymous No.2032064]

someone take a second and tell me something wrong with em at least? so that I may better craft future poems

[Anonymous No.2032071]

Publishable.

[Anonymous No.2032074]

>>2032064
Your poems don't have a concrete theme or meaning. They feel haphazard and some lines seem a little forced. Think about if your poems were set as paragraphs how they would read. The point of that thought is to help you realize that you need to establish a better coherence throughout your pieces. It isn't stable enough, but it's good.

[Anonymous No.2032077]

>>2032071
do you know anything about the publishing process?

i feel as if i'm about to make the jump to trying to do so.

thank you for your exceedingly gracious compliment

[Anonymous No.2032082]

>>2032074
Oh and things like this:

>More than it was under
>Stood to mean

It's a nice device but only use it when it adds a depth or alternate meaning/feeling/etc. Not every clever construction you think of should go into the poem. You should learn to differentiate between flourishes which contribute to the soundness of a poem and those which are superfluous and only for show.

[Anonymous No.2032084]

>>2032074
first of all thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful comment.

yes— i do see sort of what you mean.

are you referring to incongruity from piece to piece or rather contained within the piece?

i'm not so sure my goal is to have any particular confluent meaning within a poem, letting it meander a while before settling in a sort of conclusion.

but yes, i do want at least the form to have some congruence within the poem. less jarring phrasing &c.

[Anonymous No.2032091]

>You should learn to differentiate between flourishes which contribute to the soundness of a poem and those which are superfluous and only for show.

good, thank you.

with that one, i'm setting up a character as physically "standing", though its not immediately apparent i guess

[Anonymous No.2032109]

These are pretty good. I don't really have anything to say about them, though.

You've inspired me to go look back at some of my old poetry though. Thanks for that, and good luck!

[Anonymous No.2032119]

>>2032109
ah well good i'm glad i've inspired you with my somewhat insipid verse. and thank you for the flattering comment

last one for the night. just feel like i've got to get 'em out there sortof.

5

A kiss sloppy and
On your neck,
Wet as—
You, legs crossed,
Sat there on my bed
Something about:
"But the ceiling light"
So switched on
The desk lamps
Dark, damp and
Unfiltered; filled
Glowing incandescence
Incinerating pupils
In order to
Leave neon holes
In closed eyes

[Anonymous No.2032135]

>>2032119
It started out good but just became awful after the ceiling light line. I mean, what the fuck. The biggest problem I see in promising young writers is some inexplicable affinity for images. There are often too many and they are often only there because the words sound nice or the author had to regurgitate them raw from their mind. It never reads well. Ever.

You definitely need more practice. The only way to practice poetry is to write poetry. There are no further instructions. Just keep doing it and you will grow naturally. Don't publish yet because it will either make you complacent in your mediocrity or you will hate yourself for doing so once you can see the problems in your work.

I definitely feel that some of this stuff is forced. Like, you're writing when you're not inspired. Sitting there, thinking about writing something, making yourself do it. That's not how poetry should be. Even if your prolificacy takes a nose-dive by not doing so, your quality will shoot up and your satisfaction with your work will be much greater.

[Anonymous No.2032141]

>>2032135
>affinity for images

there's where, i guess, you and I disagree.

i'm of the mind that the concrete image is exceedingly important in the success of both poetry and fiction.

I do thank you though, for your thoughtful response and will certainly consider the practice of inspired poetry as opposed to the uninspired, which is certainly a problem i tend to have.

as far as the prolifery (real word?) goes, i've written about a hundred poems in the past 6 months and have certainly seen a general trajectory toward more concise and quality work, in my own perception.

[Anonymous No.2032170]

The boy stood there
Blood pooling around his sneakers
And the smell of death in the air.
He opened his eyes
And saw his with father knife in hand
The body of his mother limp on the floor
Her eyes blank and lifeless
Just like the rest of her.
Sirens echoed through the room
The red and blue lights flashed on his father’s face,
On his curved lips,
His yellow teeth,
His eyes glowed, filled with hate and satisfaction.

Years later,
The boy kneeled on his father’s bedside
He looked into those same eyes and saw age and regret and sadness
But the hate stilled lied within them,
Like a sunken boat at the bottom of an ocean
Like a distant cliff on the horizon
Like the ember of a fire clinging to life on the floor.
The father apologized for what he’d done
His eyed turned blank and lifeless.

The boy stood at the edge of a cliff soon after the death,
The waves carved away at the edges slowly
Slowly shaping the cliff creating points like daggers.
His father’s ashes in hand sealed within a plastic jar.
The boy unscrewed the jar
And dumped them over the side of the cliff.
They fell quickly downward
As if the wind decided not to carry them.
And he smiled
His lips curved baring his yellow teeth,
His eyes glowed with hate and satisfaction.

Hate plz?

[Anonymous No.2032175]

>>2032119
I liked it though the first few lines were a little weird. For example "You, legs crossed."

[Anonymous No.2032179]

OC here.... nice and quick:

"Forward!," he cried, as he hoisted his spear,
"And crunch on ye tacos with a purple veneer!"
But the marmoset died, and the horse lost a tooth,
And the seer was seething while saying the sooth--
"Although it be over, ye shall rise again,
When the creepy crow craps on the lackluster hen!"

[Anonymous No.2032181]

>>2032170
>>2032170
not bad certainly though perhaps
you tend to do more with content than
with form. so try to tap
something out which plays
with structure, visual analogies
and complicated inter-linear rhyme

[Anonymous No.2032184]

>>2032175
i like unconventional syntax, yo.

but i understand its jarringness

[Anonymous No.2032188]

>>2032179
fun, but sadly, will never really be taken seriously.

do i ever love the high diction and low content though

[Anonymous No.2032190]

>>2032141
This is where you fuck up:
>there's where, i guess, you and I disagree.

Just because I think you can't do something well doesn't mean I think it doesn't belong in poetry. What the fuck is poetry without images? No, I mean that you use poorly linked, ill-defined and superfluous images where you should be concentrating on giving your attention to only one. Flying through a scene and picking out a dozen small things give a grossly deficient sense of the scene as compared to properly describing one aspect of it.

[Anonymous No.2032194]

>>2032188

that's exactly what i'm going for!... i dont need to be taken seriously (i'm a scientist, i write for fun), but it's always fun to write something that sounds so awesome while saying so little

[Anonymous No.2032196]

>Flying through a scene and picking out a dozen small things give a grossly deficient sense of the scene as compared to properly describing one aspect of it.

mmh yes i agree, but— Plath, though i claim to be no plath, tends to fly through several different images and scenes to give her poems a very frenetic sort of feel.

To be honest, i'm not really in love with the ceiling light one— its just a description of a scene in which i wanted to capture a particular mood though perhaps the entire thing is ill founded

[Anonymous No.2032197]

>>2032170
This is not a poem. If you call it one then you do not know poetry. Not only is the content fucking cookie-cutter and entirely uninspiring, but you use nothing of poetic devices. The only resemblance this has to a poem is that you've cut it in to stanzas. Stop that. It's fucking awful.

Go write prose instead. Don't call your structurally insufficient prose poetry. I will fucking kill you.

[Anonymous No.2032200]

>>2032196
If you give me a poem by Plath which you profess to do this then I will tell you exactly why hers is acceptable and yours is not. I don't think much of Plath on personal level so I have none at the ready.

[Anonymous No.2032208]

I call her Flight Plan

There were, of course, the birds.
Each feather etched, their wings
tooled thin— the breadth
of a hair. But my grandfather spoke

other dialects too: the simple
block bears, square
unvarnished spaniels and raccoons
with wood-burned tails. I would enter

the shop, a tabernacle
of amber dust and nails. I named
the creatures and he got to cutting,
saw rattling the lacquer jars and paint.

But the birds still flickered,
their determined beaks upturned.
A chickadee shirring the blue air
to the uncle without a wife, a robin

resting on his youngest son’s sill.
Ours was a fiery cardinal, wings
that flashed a plucked cherry
stain. He said he could see them

fluttering in the great hunks
of basswood before he’d touched them
with the gouge: feather-tips combing
each bulk’s edges in the crush.

Wings folded or raised, he could not
carve them into the air. Sparrows perched
on driftwood, tupelo tinted and fitted
to their feet; Cranes arabesqued

with wire legs, looked beadily on
as he hunched, heron-like, over the shims.
His name singed onto their backs— an apology
to their yawning bones, their secret ears.

[Anonymous No.2032217]

>>2032208
First of any real quality whatsoever. Kind of loved it

[Anonymous No.2032218]

>>2032200
fuck, man. making me go get my norton anthology.

and by way of caveat, i'm not going to try to defend the hastiness of that particular poem; it really is lacking in the detail &c. my squab' with your original critique is that it seems you were asking something of it which it did not necessarily lack, though perhaps this whole confusion is over the hastiness of that original critique. as far as frenetically and sprawlingly shifting poetry, i don't think that necessarily would contribute to a detriment of any particular series of verse, insomuch as it is well done. That is though, perhaps a general values and tastes difference between the two of us. Do feel free to point out, in my poems, some similar flaws so that I may understand it as more than just a small rash of bad verse.

try "medusa" by Plath.

pretty expansive imagery and allusion.

thanks again for enduring my insufferably attitude. clarity's what i'm after, that's all.

[Pointman No.2032255]

Reposting my response poetry of John Donne's Holy Sonnet X from the perspective of Death himself - still looking for feedback, as I'm giving it up for a contest.

Fear superior ends by pride,
The might of your man, an ultimate curse.
As holy as He, yet no mercy;
To allow rest is sanctuary,
For heaves that follow, in deep tombs etched,
Sin rots, along with the body.
Willing souls burn in Hell's cauterized flames,
Slaves to fate, chance, kings, and wretched despair,
Lone suffer of earthly poison, men of war, rampant plague.
Lease of my cold grip; lands, beyond Eden, with charms so lush,
To make everlasting in proud rest, tainted within chains that bind,
Am I so proud an abomination, man?
Graceful fake redemption as unclean souls lock away.
And say death truly undying; Death, thou shalt be immortal.

[Anonymous No.2032392]

bump for eastern hemisphere