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I am aware that my poems are totally disorganised and I know that many of you are very well read in literature. I appreciate all of the feedback I get, good or bad, thanks for reading guys.
Frost,
The car door slammed
Cold gripped the frigid wheel
The key turned
The engine wheezed
December 10th, he's at her house
The snow was there when he arrived
Somehow it's colder now
He sees her standing by the window
He'd felt warm until she'd spoken
Now he was just like the ignition's spark
Blowing out in the wind
No matter how hard he tried
He felt it give up
The spark had died
His eyes slid shut
Turn the key again
The engine choked
Press on the gas
The spark drowned
He's sick of trying
He looks back at the home, she's gone now
He floors the gas, turns the key one last time
The engine starts, the wheels spin and catch
He almost smiled but caught himself
He's gone but it's still December
His hands were still freezing
As if to say
It may not matter if he got away
Sometimes emotions are like seasons
And much as summer's warm every day
Some feelings you can't run from
Sorry, December's here to stay
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When I press your petal
you lurch forward to your death
though you're a sexy hunk of metal
I fear you have drawn your last breath.
--
I don't know how to tell you this
but no one read your Christmas list
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I feel like it's time people who write poetry on here stop using the A,B style of poetry (not this in this case) and move on to more complex things like Sonnet form or Ballads.
To be honest, it isn't bad. However, I can't help but notice you don't understand how to use meter and you can't control the tone or speed in the poem. Work on how the words flow rather than the words themselves I guess, otherwise it isn't bad.
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here's a tip. if you read your poem and you have to do like an emergency brake thing with the back of your throat to split up the phonemes (i.e. enforce spaces between words) you are doing it wrong.
basically it means you have too many stressed syllables in a row. You have too many stressed syllables in a row.
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On December 11 2012 13:22 docvoc wrote:
I feel like it's time people who write poetry on here stop using the A,B style of poetry (not this in this case) and move on to more complex things like Sonnet form or Ballads.
To be honest, it isn't bad. However, I can't help but notice you don't understand how to use meter and you can't control the tone or speed in the poem. Work on how the words flow rather than the words themselves I guess, otherwise it isn't bad.
I feel like it's time for people to stop pushing the idea that meter = poetry. It doesn't!
However, OP, this is an improvement. Still, though, a lot of garbage in there, but less abstract-y.
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it's not that meter = poetry, it's that poetry without attention to meter is shit
that's like saying "stop saying music = notes". I could make music without thinking about what notes I'm playing, but it would be shit
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Slowly all the forum posts
Changed from prose to verse,
But skeleton of girl blog,
Adorned in new ways
Still moves the same.
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poetry is what (you) make of it;
all the rules; (i) don't care one bit
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On December 11 2012 13:50 sam!zdat wrote:
it's not that meter = poetry, it's that poetry without attention to meter is shit
that's like saying "stop saying music = notes". I could make music without thinking about what notes I'm playing, but it would be shit
Some people find meter to be restrictive of the words they feel suit the idea of the poem best. It's personal preference. Notes don't equal music, nor is it the other way around. Rhythmic poetry is a genre of the art, much like metal and jazz are genres of music. There's a lot of edgy-as-fuck kids who think certain metal bands are the best "musicians" in the world, but they don't even have a second of the day to listen to things like japanese noise. I'm sure that genre would sound like shit to you, but to me, it's actually pretty fucking cool.
A poem shouldn't be dictated by sound or structure, but the ability to convey an idea. (One that's preferably fresh!)
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i like noise quite a bit as it happens
I don't mean meter as in you have to do iambic pentameter without any substitutions. that would be shit.
I mean meter in that you have to pay attention to the rhythmic structure of your poem. that is not negotiable
this bit about "convey a fresh [lol] idea" is missing the point entirely. If you want to convey an idea write a fucking essay. A sure sign that someone does not know how to write poetry is when you can tell they are trying to convey an idea. same goes for fiction (c.f. ayn rand, arthur miller)
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Baa?21243 Posts
On December 11 2012 14:00 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 13:50 sam!zdat wrote:
it's not that meter = poetry, it's that poetry without attention to meter is shit
that's like saying "stop saying music = notes". I could make music without thinking about what notes I'm playing, but it would be shit Some people find meter to be restrictive of the words they feel suit the idea of the poem best. It's personal preference. Notes don't equal music, nor is it the other way around. Rhythmic poetry is a genre of the art, much like metal and jazz are genres of music. There's a lot of edgy-as-fuck kids who think certain metal bands are the best "musicians" in the world, but they don't even have a second of the day to listen to things like japanese noise. I'm sure that genre would sound like shit to you, but to me, it's actually pretty fucking cool. A poem shouldn't be dictated by sound or structure, but the ability to convey an idea. (One that's preferably fresh!)
Sigh, the whole "free verse = i can do whatever i want cuz ITS POETRY ITS MY EXPRESSION U CANT TELL ME IM WRONG ITS FREE VERSE ITS MEANINGFUL TO ME" is the worst bullshit ever
jus because its free verse doesn't give you license to get diarrhea of the hand and shit out whatever you want to paper and call it poetry
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i dont like the first line.
consider the choices u make in the first stanza compared to the second. in the first everything is happening without any real agency. it happens on its own. the key turns. the door slams. we dont see the agent of this action. i think as a reader i feel a little separated, a little distant, and a little blind. where do we go from here?
we go to december 10th. it is oddly specific. i think it is an interesting idea to be oddly specific but i dont think you are oddly specific enough to justify being oddly specific here. there was snow here when he arrived. there is ambiguity here. i feel like the time spent between stanzas that we have driven here. later i find out in the poem that we were here to begin with.
our narrator is a little bit incredulous about the temperature. maybe he doesn't understand how temperatures work. sometimes they fall. sometimes they rise. sometimes they stay the same. the temperature is like a relationship. sometimes it changes. sometimes it stays the same.
maybe the snow makes the narrator incredulous. if there was snow before and snow now then only by looking we would think that the temperature was the same. how can it be different it doesn't look like anything changed? the snow is like a relationship. sometimes things look the same but it is colder outside.
the narrator grew distant because of something she said. he watched her as he starts his car outside as hes leaving. it is colder. she was in the window. maybe she wanted to be seen. the car wont let him leave. it keeps dying. he thinks he is like the ignition of the car. it doesn't want to leave.
the car wont start. he is about to give up and go back inside. the house is like a relationship. sometimes you want to leave but it is cold outside and you have to go back in.
she is not watching him anymore. maybe she doesn't think he will come inside. he has new resolve and starts the car. the car is like a relationship. sometimes you just need an extra push to get started and move on.
his hands are still cold. even though he is leaving he is still cold like he was before. relationships are like the cold. sometimes the cold is here to stay.
change home to house. you shouldn't include home in this instance because it feels strange and even if it was his home that he is leaving (i assume its not because you said "her house" earlier) its not something that we explore and so its unnecessary and only confusing. i don't know much about cars but i think it's strange that the ignition has trouble because it's windy outside. clear up the action. i felt confused reading through it. the car trouble stanzas could be better executed. i dont think we need to know "the spark had died". i think i understand that you want to say the spark in the relationship died but i think that it is already obvious what you are trying to say and you are kind of twisting the image of a having trouble starting a car in order to fit it in there. when my car stalls out i dont think "oh man the spark has died". maybe i should.
the spark drowned. where did the water come from.
he almost smiled but caught himself is a strange line. why would he stop himself from smiling.
i dont like the rhyme of "as if to say" and "got away". similarly, i dont like the rhyme of "every day" and "here to stay". i feel like at the end you are trying to tie everything up with a neat little bow which is insulting to the reader given the nature of the poem and the complexities that relationships present. you are overthinking it. end it when he is driving away and his hands are cold.
i think that you explore a lot neater of ideas in this poem than you did in the last. keep it up.
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Sigh, the whole "free verse = i can do whatever i want cuz ITS POETRY ITS MY EXPRESSION U CANT TELL ME IM WRONG ITS FREE VERSE ITS MEANINGFUL TO ME" is the worst bullshit ever
jus because its free verse doesn't give you license to get diarrhea of the hand and shit out whatever you want to paper and call it poetry
i have been thinking about something similar to this for a while. i think that we should remove the entire idea of an analysis of "quality" and assigning art labels like "good" and "bad" from our mindset when we approach art and literature. i think that when we engage with a piece of art or literature, that we do best when we actually engage it rather than trying to decide it's merits or values. i think having a conversation with the work, about the work, is the best sort of thing that you can do. when we talk about romeo and juliet (im pretty sure this is taught universally) we don't assess the quality of the work. instead, we try to engage with the text. it is strange to me to see people come so far away from this and begin to approach art and literature etc. from this perspective of an analysis of quality rather than an attempt to engage the work.
chef posted in an earlier thread that saying that this free verse is bad is bad because it sort of implies that that if the poem were more metric, were more traditional, etc. that you would think that it was better. there is a lot of very finely metric verse out there that i dont enjoy because it is not engaging to me. if someone were to put this poem into iambic pentameters, do you think that it would have any more merit as a poem than it already does?
this is an interesting perspective because when we are reading poems and trying to engage with them, i don't think that we usually enjoy dealing with cliches and expressions and words and ideas that have already been said a million times before us: and yet when we are presented the same situation but rather focusing on a different aspect of prosody, a lot of people will automatically turn away and say that the only way to go is to write the same way that we have been for the past 300+ years. i think it is a little ridiculous that we want our writers to write freshly, but the tools that we give to them and the standards by which we judge them are centuries old and rotting away.
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if you
On December 11 2012 15:33 AiurZ wrote:remove the entire idea of an analysis of "quality" and assigning art labels like "good" and "bad" from our mindset when we approach art and literature
how can you
actually engage it
?
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whenever you are engaging a work you are disregarding the idea of quality etc. because the entire idea of assigning a value or whatever to a work is ridiculous.
ill assume that since ive seen you post on some kind of heavy literature stuff and seem concerned about prosody that youve written some stuff on literature before. during your papers etc. are you really trying to actively evaluate the worth of any given piece of literature? when you write a paper about a short story, is the drive of your paper really to determine whether the story was "good" or "bad"?
if you were going to write a paper about romeo and juliet (which im sure you've done before), would the main stab of your paper trying to say, finally, and conclusively, whether or not romeo and juliet was a good play? would it be to finally close the door on the whole shakespeare thing so we can move on?
when we look at art we should be looking at ways to approach it, to engage with it, to play with it etc. rather than trying to determine whether or not it is "good" because for as long as there are interesting things to say about it, for as long as there are interesting ways to approach it, and for as long as people are interested in reading it then it will be read and talked about. leave squabbling about what makes a "good" poem "good" to old depressed white dudes, you only live once, do something better or more useful with your time and try to find beauty in all things. have fun.
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On December 11 2012 15:57 AiurZ wrote:
whenever you are engaging a work you are disregarding the idea of quality etc. because the entire idea of assigning a value or whatever to a work is ridiculous.
ill assume that since ive seen you post on some kind of heavy literature stuff and seem concerned about prosody that youve written some stuff on literature before. during your papers etc. are you really trying to actively evaluate the worth of any given piece of literature? when you write a paper about a short story, is the drive of your paper really to determine whether the story was "good" or "bad"?
if you were going to write a paper about romeo and juliet (which im sure you've done before), would the main stab of your paper trying to say, finally, and conclusively, whether or not romeo and juliet was a good play? would it be to finally close the door on the whole shakespeare thing so we can move on?
when we look at art we should be looking at ways to approach it, to engage with it, to play with it etc. rather than trying to determine whether or not it is "good" because for as long as there are interesting things to say about it, for as long as there are interesting ways to approach it, and for as long as people are interested in reading it then it will be read and talked about. leave squabbling about what makes a "good" poem "good" to old depressed white dudes, you only live once, do something better or more useful with your time and try to find beauty in all things. have fun.
This is an unacceptably narrow conception of evaluative discourse; the concepts of "good" and "bad" are unavoidable insofar as the consumer of a piece of artistic expression is concerned. What changes, however, are the frameworks through which one appropriates tangential applications of qualitative criteria via piece specific critique. If one writes a paper on the representation of gender in Romeo and Juliet, there necessarily exists a qualitative framework behind that analysis of source material and viewing lens, even if it only takes the form of selection narrowing. Think of it this way. One can never simply cite the entirety of a work when they seek to make a cogent point in regards to said work, necessitating an evaluative maneuver on the part of the writer as it pertains to the choice of specific reference. Even this is merely one qualitative aspect of an appropriately rigorous literary critique, where the others lie depends on the writer.
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Baa?21243 Posts
On December 11 2012 15:57 AiurZ wrote:
whenever you are engaging a work you are disregarding the idea of quality etc. because the entire idea of assigning a value or whatever to a work is ridiculous.
ill assume that since ive seen you post on some kind of heavy literature stuff and seem concerned about prosody that youve written some stuff on literature before. during your papers etc. are you really trying to actively evaluate the worth of any given piece of literature? when you write a paper about a short story, is the drive of your paper really to determine whether the story was "good" or "bad"?
if you were going to write a paper about romeo and juliet (which im sure you've done before), would the main stab of your paper trying to say, finally, and conclusively, whether or not romeo and juliet was a good play? would it be to finally close the door on the whole shakespeare thing so we can move on?
when we look at art we should be looking at ways to approach it, to engage with it, to play with it etc. rather than trying to determine whether or not it is "good" because for as long as there are interesting things to say about it, for as long as there are interesting ways to approach it, and for as long as people are interested in reading it then it will be read and talked about. leave squabbling about what makes a "good" poem "good" to old depressed white dudes, you only live once, do something better or more useful with your time and try to find beauty in all things. have fun.
I don't understand your point; you rally heavily against the idea of "good and bad," but you can only do that, as sam!zdat and farvacola alluded to, by completely removing yourself from any qualitative evaluation of said work.
If you do not evaluate a work at all, how, then, are you engaging it? Do you mean to say that your enjoyment of a work rests entirely on going through it without thinking about it? Because any sort of thought or analysis of a work necessitates an evaluation of said work.
It's not, and never was, about "good" vs. "bad" literature. You are right in stating that this is not something that we write about when discoursing about literature. To go from that point to completely abstaining from evaluating a work is also ridiculous, though, since engagement and evaluation go hand in hand, and without one, we wouldn't have the other.
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On December 11 2012 15:57 AiurZ wrote:
whenever you are engaging a work you are disregarding the idea of quality etc. because the entire idea of assigning a value or whatever to a work is ridiculous.
I'm interested to hear why you think it's ridiculous, and how one goes about disregarding the idea of quality. That to me seems a rather difficult endeavor.
during your papers etc. are you really trying to actively evaluate the worth of any given piece of literature? when you write a paper about a short story, is the drive of your paper really to determine whether the story was "good" or "bad"?
Of course not. But I mostly only write on things I like, if I can help it - life is short. If I wanted to bring up a text that I thought was inferior, I might very well indicate that I thought so. Wouldn't waste any space arguing why - it's not a review - although I might mention a specific complaint I had against it if it were relevant. Probably in a footnote. Often, however, academics DO write reviews for journals, in which they of course will give some evaluation of quality, although that's only part of it.
So no, nobody's really interested in systematic theoretical evaluation of quality, for good reasons.
But this is different from the hermeneutic question of taking up a value-position with respect to the text, which I feel is unavoidable. Really, your choices are not {"judge" , "not judge"} but rather {"admit I'm judging" , "be in denial of the fact that I'm judging" }. I'd rather not be in denial. I don't believe there's any 'you' with which to approach the text that has not always-already taken up a value position (in other words, the subjectivity that is "you" is constituted BY value judgments in many important ways, and how will 'you' approach a text without that subjectivity)?
(edit: that is, you forget this at your peril)
if you were going to write a paper about romeo and juliet (which im sure you've done before), would the main stab of your paper trying to say, finally, and conclusively, whether or not romeo and juliet was a good play? would it be to finally close the door on the whole shakespeare thing so we can move on?
happily, I have not had to write a paper about romeo and juliet since the eighth grade. I'll go ahead and tell you that I rather dislike Shakespeare and I think romeo and juliet is not, in fact, a particularly good play - but writing a paper about exactly why is not high on my priority list. I agree that we should move on.
But wait
What is that about "the whole shakespeare thing"? Do I detect a judgment in this language?
when we look at art we should be looking at ways to approach it, to engage with it, to play with it etc. rather than trying to determine whether or not it is "good" because for as long as there are interesting things to say about it, for as long as there are interesting ways to approach it, and for as long as people are interested in reading it then it will be read and talked about. leave squabbling about what makes a "good" poem "good" to old depressed white dudes, you only live once, do something better or more useful with your time and try to find beauty in all things. have fun.
but how do people decide if they are interested in reading it? Or does it just decide them?
your jeux sound fun and all, but wouldn't it be good to play with nicer toys?
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What's the title of this piece, OP? btw, try to limit the use of the verbs "to be" and "to have"
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EPT
