/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.649592]

aspiring poet thread

----
This is filler
like every other thing you've ever read.
A meaningless piece of slander,
taking up your existence and my existence
and the existence of everyone that has ever lived.

This is your story,
and the story of those that have
left their television screens on
for a little too long
or faced the glare of small computer monitors,
living for their small colored specks.

This is your inner-planet,
feeling motionless as we move
around the stars,
studying them on occasion
through small digests
with an envious narrow mind.


This is filler,
this is a world without perfection.
-------------

[Anonymous No.649622]

Insert a coin,
of which no one knows,
and when they end
well do not


do in peace.

[Anonymous No.649640]

we leaped out of ponds
we aren't frogs though
we're just desperate.

[Anonymous No.649653]

>>649592

I dig the first stanza -- the first line and the repition is spot on. When I got to the second though, I knew the technique and where you were going in the poem so the poem lost momentum for me there.

I do think the weakest stanza is stanza two. Because the surreal is buffered by the idea of "my story."

I'd cut the last two lines.

[Anonymous No.649654]

Poetry is easy
When you don't have to
rhyme. Or pay attention to meter.
It's like writing
prose. Only you don't have to write so
much.

[Anonymous No.649658]

>>649622

Nice short poem. Reminiscent of Bill Knott to me.

[Anonymous No.649659]

>>649640

The reference to Basho is good I don't know about the last line though. I do like the bluntness of it though, but "desperation." But I'd like to see more images to contrast the first two lines.

[Anonymous No.649662]

AFTER SAPPHO.

We argue, then fuck.
It's hardly unique.
And yet, it must work.

There are no pleasant wars.
But why pander to others?
You can't keep applause.

To know, post facto,
That she was implacable
Will not make you adequate.

[Anonymous No.649673]

>>649662

> You can't keep applause.

To me the sentence is syntactically awkward a bit. 1) it's the only place you have a contraction [can't] and 2) keeping applause is too abstract (pleasant wars is abstract, but you have an interesting adj. noun combination).

Just my thoughts.

[OP No.649689]

OP here, I'm aware the second verse sucks, will fix up properly.

Another one:

Stepping Back (The Inability to Accept Defeat)

My paper is snow.
Emotions are stacked
And my body feels like Sunday;
The breathing room creating an inner black hole,
Eating up the chance of a profound statement
To capture into verse.
My insides turn outside,
Shouting at me,
Another pseudo-witty poem
To distract the mind of some
All-seeing critic.

I wonder how this happens,
Six days of claustrophobic jesting,
Building up to an open-minded failure,
Words costing less than a cheesy pop-culture reference.
It's dark by five o'clock and everything I contemplate
Is wasted,
Deaf to the words of Charles Bukowski's tombstone:
“Don't Try”.

[Anonymous No.649700]

>>1) it's the only place you have a contraction [can't]

I was aiming for a more anglo-saxon style of prosody (one two buckle my shoe) like you get in early Auden. "You cannot keep applause" sounds a bit too much like "You cannot be serious, Becky."

>>2) keeping applause is too abstract

Well yeah, that's why it's a metaphor. The girl who dumped me was an actress, she went on to play minor roles in films, even getting naked in one. But at school she was just an actress in school plays. And I kept thinking, What motivates a stage actress? People applaud, but 2 weeks after the show is over, what do you have left? Pictures on facebook? The memory of people appeasing your narcissism by being forced to watch you strut your stuff for a few hours? At the end of the day, you can't keep applause, can you?

But I understand if it's kind of opaque, and your critique is fair. I have a terror of seeming "emo" when I write, especially when writing about a relationship that ended badly and wounded me badly.

[OP No.649717]

bumpin' this shit

[Anonymous No.649732]

>>649689

Lol I think I'm the only one commenting on all of them so far...I haven't posted one of mine up...meh. So far so good -- I'm just waiting for the trolls.

Now on to the poem.

> Emotions are stacked
the noun and verbs go together too well.. The way it is now, the line just cuts one way (a way I've seen before so I'm biased.

> And my body feels like Sunday;
This is a stronger line to me. The diction is weird but I like where it's going.

>Another pseudo-witty poem
Too meta-poetic for me...the transition to meta-poeticism isn't there or I'm just not seeing it.
(to capture another verse is there, but the line seems too linear to me).

>It's dark by five o'clock and everything I contemplate
Is wasted,
Deaf to the words of Charles Bukowski's tombstone:
“Don't Try”.

The last four lines...in my weird imagination I want them to merge together somehow -- separately it's too linear when the poem showcases great misdirection (the Sunday line for me).

I think I was attached to the misdirection a bit too much...

[Anonymous No.649742]

The dread deeds of men unborn
who pose in wombs and tombs alike
the budding breast of youth is torn
and hope is rotting on a spike

I do not fear the tide of age
or dream in sleep burning hot
my cure devised by cunning mage
delivers me with just a shot

poppy fields where beauty free
unburdened by the worlds care
runs through a vision only i can see
only i, with my blurry stare

and now you ask me with caprice
to whom i dedicate this verse
i say the secret of my release
is morphine--a blessing and a curse.

[Anonymous No.649744]

>>649700

I just want to say that the poem is not emo. I just pointed out the line because the line pays too much attention to itself for me.

Even with the Auden examples, Auden used cannot instead of can't. As for the metaphor..I can't clearly see what keeping applause is compared to (maybe I'm just dumb).

You have a lot of ideas for the poem -- I think making it longer (but being mindful of cliches and sentimentality) would do justice to what you want to do with the poem.

[Solipsist !!92AnjoujjQ5 No.649762]

>>649732

Thanks dude. (This is OP, btw).

I will consider changing some of the phrasing. I am going to try to get a full-length collection together this Summer to submit to a few presses. Wish me luck!

[Anonymous No.649767]

>>649742


You almost got the iambic beat going, but the most important part where the iambic beat should go is the first and last line (people fudge in the middle).

The poem made me chuckle a bit -- the turn at the end is quite nice...although I got to say "age" and "mage" is quite jarring.

Also your rhymes mostly comes at end stops (like a comma before a conjunction, or a natural pause). It's something I noticed in the first read.

Also you have a comma and a hyphen in the piece...I say either punctuate or go all out. Don't go halfway since any punctuation in a piece without punctuation pays too much attention to the form and not the poem.

Just make it smooth, that's all.

[Anonymous No.649774]

>>649762

Good luck man. From one writing rival to another -- may the best poem(s) win.

[Anonymous No.649778]

Walk down the sidewalk
Turn to the left
If you see a black man fleeing
He just committed theft

[Anonymous No.649780]

>>649767
Thanks, this really helps a lot. I'm going to revise it in my notebook. I've just begun to give form a try. The discourse on /lit/ about free verse has lead me to try out a more formal style. I have to say, the structure definitely helps my thoughts develop.

[Anonymous No.649797]

>>649778

[Anonymous No.649813]

TRIDENTINE

Dis mass is a mess. Even de priest is depressed.
Penitents reach de altar, he jes' say:
"Turn your head and cough."

But people ought to go to church more often,
Because there's no sensation like the one
You get by leaving.
I knew Doris Day
Before she was a virgin.
We all play
Fort-da with innocence, to find the soul
An incremental whiteness up de hole.

[Anonymous No.649833]

>>649813

I actually like the diction and voice of the piece, especially the, "Turn your head and cough." part cause you can tell the priest is "the other" in this situation.

You lose that voice here:

>Because there's no sensation like the one
You get by leaving.
I knew Doris Day
Before she was a virgin.
We all play

Although it has good line breaks and the Oscar Levant allusion is quite nice. But I don't know how it fits in the poem..I dunno.

[Anonymous No.649848]

I could have sworn that I saw you
weave a veil of rose petals
beneath the shade of the willow tree
where the pollen pours from the branches
into the mouth of the hanging ghosts
their feet rest just above your head
You sit on a sea of orchids
that bloom in the dusk like fireflies
this could all be a dream of the coming night
and all the stars, they surround you
speaking in tongues of prophecies
of fields burning bright

I could have sworn that I saw you
weave a noose of piano string
in the garden where the devil sings
and he hands you a paper hyacinth
scrawled with the ghosts of sonnets
he twists the roots around your neck
and he hands me a burning book
that's dripping pitch and empty words
before dousing me in gasoline
The fire spreads down my spine
and burns the whole garden down
and all that's left is the ashes
of what could have been

what do you think?