A splendid thread idea. Have a jab at this, then:
Autumn Colours
The trees are covered in gold and rust
Beauty, reaching its peak, turns to dust.
As Autumn colours the trees and leafs,
So it colours my thoughts, and I must
Face it: my time here will not last.
I like the fact this a serious poem. The images and the theme are quite well worn, however. That does mean it cannot work. For an example of the same theme at work in the hands of a master, see Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay.Originally Posted by North Star
The poem needs something surprising. All its images, ideas and phrasings are conventional and used many times. After the first line of iambs the meter disappears, or at least goes underground. Sometimes just giving a piece more metric shape leads to very large and pleasant surprises.
Because this is a serious poem it is quite harder to score high on the master's scale than for tirvialities like aphorisms and limericks. What you must do (and I hate to have to tell you this, but I have promised no dilly-dallying) is start over. You need to find a way of approaching these images and ideas that does not sound like it has been done a million times.
Imagine gutting and rebuilding a house without first tearing it down. I seriously doubt that I must face it will be part of the new house. It does not do the job you want it to do, I promise, because I see what you want.
More and deeper revision of a five line poem is possible than civilians would think. You might hardly recognize it when it is through. When he truly believes he has caught the tail of a comet, the poet is a pitbull of tenacity. A great deal depends on how badly you want this poem to work and believe in it.
My advice again: start over. Find a unique way to use these generic images. Put your own stamp on them. Always try to make a poem work metrically, as well. Even when read silently it must roll off the tongue smoothly.
I give this poem a 3.
A fair and just critique, and sound advice too. Thanks.
I relish acerbic criticism. I find this entertaining. If I get a decent rating I can build on this poem of the Botanic Park:
Through a small and gilded gate
I see a place of wonder,
Where people stroll and view and breathe
A verdant place and wander.
In this place, which calms my mood,
Stands every shade of green.
From lofty palms to shrouded seeds,
And all plants in between.
The olive coloured cactii,
whose rough and parched [parch-ed] skin,
Are only steps away from ferns
Whose dew the ground soaks in.
And jagged, spiky, spike like horrors
From the cactii point at me,
While smooth and gleaming skin of ferns
kindly soothe my skin
But every plant that's in this Park
does fill my heart with glee.
A very stilted piece. Way too formal for its subject matter. Why should this piece rhyme at all? It wants to feel more like free verse. Get rid of all anachronisms such as the last line. What is the point of all this description? Sorry, nothing natural about this one.
Awarded a 1.5 on the masters scale.
Even most poets do not realize how hard they have to work on their pieces. Some feel this will destroy spontaneity in their poetry. But spontaneity is not what you want. The feel of spontaneity is your lodestar, my dear poets. Because it walks and talks like spontaneity does not mean that it is. For it is better than spontaneity almost every time. It is the hammered gold and gold enameling Yeats is talking about.
Why all this hammering in so many of Yeats's poems, anway? Why do you think? Billy was hammering out spontaneity. It was not easy. A blacksmith sweats plenty.
...a line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world...
W.B. Yeats
The work is hard and the standards are high.
I'll take the challenge - here's one of mine. Tear it apart, if you want to.
Apple a Day
Way back when in Eden,
God made an apple tree.
Said to Eve an' Adam:
"Don't touch it, let it be."
Eve went kinda crazy,
talkin' to Mister Snake:
"Woman, eat that apple,
it ain't no crime to take."
Evie ate the apple,
with evil got to grips.
Then knew herself and found
the fire between her hips.
Adam came a-lookin',
she gave him that sweet fruit.
He saw she were right fair
and wearin' birthday suit.
The Lord, He walked abroad,
lookin' for His chillun'.
Found 'em actin' scand'lous,
not as He was willin'.
Man He set to workin',
woman to givin' birth,
then poor ol' Mister Snake,
He ground into the earth.
And now we pass our days,
makin' love and workin',
and our old snakey friend,
he gone back to lurkin'.
We grow them apples now,
grow under every sky,
we take our daily fill,
we bake 'em into pie.
Keep the apples comin',
keep lovin' while you may.
Take joy in bein' free,
keep mean ol' God away.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
I like it. The narrative flow is clean all the way to me, with no spots where it feels like you are stretching to make a rhyme, etc. We know the story, but it is easy to follow on its own. Rhyme scheme is adhered to nicely. The slang or black talk, or whatever it is, works. Almost singable as a blues song. In fact, singable as a blues song. In line four of verse four, I would probably go ahead and insert the pronoun.
I do not know how to classify it, or if that particularly matters. Parody? A recasting in parody? I was smiling all the way, so apparently humor was intended. It has a wrap up and all. The last line provides a different food for thought.
An obvious understanding of rhythmic necessity is on display in line three, as well as throughout. A serious subject treated this well would score higher. The blues song I hear in my head might be an eight to an all time classic. As a straight poem it still reads well. Its frivolous nature is its strength but also its weakness, on the master scale. It cannot help what it is, I cannot either.
I will award it a score of 5.9, with the comment that I feel it is publishable in the right place.
I enjoyed the poem very much.
To me the subject is serious enough, the light, ironical treatment is deceptive. It discusses nothing less than the modern validity of the old familiar myth of creation.
But in poetry as in drama, comedy and humour seems to rank under tragedy in the rank of literary evaluation.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 04-25-2016 at 07:22 AM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I had a great time with it. And I have no argument with anyone who thinks it should be higher, for ranking it was difficult, as the two schools of thought pulled me in different directions. If this poem were slipped in with the collected poems of a semi-famous modern poet I was not overly familiar with, I would not feel let down when I came to it. It could even enhance my image of the poet as extra versatile, especially if it were among dissimilar but equally good poems.
As a one-off, it cannot have the same power as a steep poem. I do not mind if people disagree with this, either. I am just stating the criteria here.
Yes, it nags me, though. I keep asking myself: Would I rate this poem higher if it were my own poem? If it were my poem that was shoving perfect for what it is, would I still be giving it this score with the explanation it was not serious enough, and with the additional explanation that 5.9 is actually a high score? When you cannot get a straight answer from yourself, watch for dilly-dally. I think I would give myself a higher score, therefore I must give Loki a higher score. That is my reasoning. This score officially jacked to 6.4, and still no arguments with anyone who thinks it should be higher.
Ranking poems seems difficult to me, specially considering their differences in form, content, theme, tone, etc. Although I used the word rank in my comment, I wasn´t thinking about the score but about the relation between "serious' and "comic" poetry. In my country it is not usual to give scores for poetry. Anyway I am glad the score went up.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 04-25-2016 at 11:24 PM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Many thanks for such useful, reasoned and intelligent criticism! For the record, I would be proud to walk away with either of those scores - to be ANY percentage of Yeats would be more than enough. And well done on identifying the blues/blue grass elements of the piece - I regret only that I was born far too late to have written songs for Nina Simone.
This isn't one I've tried to publish - so I might have to rectify that in light of the positive reception here!
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
I do not know of a country, state, county or city where ranking poems is the norm. Just here.
The reason for it is to expedite awareness. A number is very relatable, but of course has shortcomings. The particular form of feedback offered here is not available anywhere else, to my knowledge.
The big factor is that people may withhold what they feel is their very best in hopes of preserving its publishing potential. I am not sure how that works, but it is what has prevented me from ever showing a line of my own, and it does annoy me.
Remember, poets, an edifice by a great architect is passed or failed by mere building inspectors who hoped to be architects.
* * * * *
Look at the collected poetry of any great poet. Surprise. Half of it, and usually more, is not great, it merely happens to belong to a great poet. Did you ever notice that? Some things that were really good probably did slip by you and me unnoticed, but that does not explain the rest of the inferior half or more. Is there a poet alive who believes The Three Beggars is superior or eqaul to the shorter Sailing To Byzantium? If The Three Beggars were missing from the collected poetry of Yeats, there is no noticable loss. But if Sailing To Byzantium were not there, that would be an awesome loss to the collected works. That poem is integral to the Yeatsian mythology of Byzantium. A few more losses like that and he might not be on top of the heap for the twentieth century.
The great poets have their smash hits, and they have the rest of their work. One poem of sir Thomas Wyatt is an evergreen in anthologies of great English poetry. They Flee From Me always makes it. Wyatt's one smash hit is so good, if you started paring down the poems by quality in that volume of greatest English poetry, even among such company it will survive many culls while each poem of greater poets is eliminated one by one, until many an illustrious name and poem is lost from that competition altogether.
The number of smash hits is a main element in ranking the poet's greatness. Most of us are ranking one poet's smash hits against another's, instead of the entire body of work, which may not be a mistake afterall, unless it is unreasonable to expect of any poet designated great to unperiodically produce pieces of such ultra-clarity and lucidity that they leave no doubt a special sensibility is behind them, and furthermore, who will probably have another "high performace," somewhere down the line. In more metaphorical terms, we expect flares from a true star. It is the height of these flares, not the average of the body of work, which determines the poet's legacy, along with the number of times the poet has managed to flare magnificently. These flares are statistical abberations, and a high average would often indicate higher flares in absolute terms, though we could even expect abberations from this trend, where a poet averaging only 5 on our mythical scale might be able to produce a 9 or 10 once in a great while.
Nor is the above some astronomical probability. I believe as many as 2 to 3% of people who give poetry a persistent, serious shot over many years, and read a lot of great poetry, may be able to produce a 9 or a 10 on the mythical master's scale. Something that might not be the first poem eliminated in the competition above among the masters, even if the competition took place in the future instead of now. Of the 2-3%, only some are recognized poets. That would mean there are a lot of unpublished masterpieces.
Many of these masterpieces are a little too short. If they belonged to a major poet, they might be one of his little gems, but by themselves they are not enough to acheive escape velocity.
But let us imagine that Crossways, the first slim volume of poetry by Yeats, dreamy Irish lyricism tinged with Indian mysticism, was also his last because of untimely death, yet the volume contained one more poem, Sailing To Byzantium. Because it has even that thin body of published work to rest atop, the poem now probably has the staying power that Wyatt's smash hit has shown. Totally out of place in Crossways, it would nonetheless mark a high flare in English literature for some time to come. But it probably did need that thin body of inferior work for this to happen.
For a single poem by an unknown to acheive escape velocity from the real world without a body of work, I believe it has to be a very long one, and I do not mean a hundred lines. It would have to be publishable as a volume by itself, albeit in some cases a very short volume of twenty or thirty pages.
That's the real world. Who's talking about that? In our mythical world you can compete against the masters right here. Just remember who the competition is. If your 6-liner can flare as high as John Donne or Phillip Larkin or William Yeats et al acheived in approximately the same number of lines, I will try to tell you so, even if you do not have a body of work for it to rest upon, if you have an attitude that allows you to show your best. I ain't sayin' you should, but if you do.
Last edited by desiresjab; 04-26-2016 at 10:30 PM.
Since I do not always have a plan when I begin writing a poem, I have different tricks to get going. The most effective one of all is to simply start writing, like a sick patient eating soley because she knows it is good for her. Sometimes the engine takes some primiing in whatever form works.
About 25% of my poems have a strong architectural plan I felt was necessary. Like most of us, I like to let things develop in a protean manner, during the process, a good deal of the time. Form and scheme have a way of sorting themselves out "on the road."
Sometimes you are desperate to write, but froze up like cement. The key, if you do not already know it, is to begin. To get out of a shooting slump you shoot.
As she grits her teeth over a blank page, the poet cannot unify overwhelming emotion. There is enough emotion there to drown an ocean liner, though the page remains blank. Things you need to say in person instead of on the page can often produce this state. The poems all come out train wrecks of things you need to say off-the-page to someone you are denied access to, gut spillings worthy of the crumplings they receive.
Unfortunately, poet, themes are born this way. They thought you were kidding when you compared writing poetry to childbirth. Pregnancy has its good moments and its bad, and plenty of both. A few births are easy, but generally--ouch! and much greater exclamations of pain.
To ignite the repressed bog which is you may require more tragedy or unhappiness than you would have agreed to in a Faustian bargain. I think anyone who writes poetry has made such a bargain. We have tacitly agreed to suffer so we can transcend suffering through poetry. We want to do unto others as has been done to us. We want to mangle and fondle their hearts in the same few lines. Religion we would not suffer for--but poetry, that is different. Sometimes we have to suffer even more than we tacitly agreed to. In fact, we did not agree to these continuations at all.
All those years of blundering--hundreds of crumpled sheets and a few smooth ones in a stack--the themes and technique raved but grew strong, and then
KaBoooom.
Are you sure you wanted this? It was always going to be yours anyway. It is what you practiced suffering for, what the years meant, while others were living. It is self-fullfilled prophecy, for you were not blind, you knew the bargain entailed everything.
Last edited by desiresjab; 04-28-2016 at 09:56 PM.
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