hazel eyes

[spally]

Through these hazel eyes,
This world looks like a desolate playground
For ones sinful soul,
Show a game of hide and seek.
If upon a rock you fall,
Be weary of ravens feasting on the fallen.
River red, joyful screams.
Watching ravens feast,
Slowly watching, waiting.
They’ll find you where you hide.
They love the game of hide and seek.
But be weary, do not lose,
You’ll not play the game again,
Ravens feast upon the fallen.
Joyous screams with the river red.
Your soul is theirs to feast upon.
But watch your tongue, speak not a work.
They may take that too.
Then you'll not say a word to any who pass,
Passing to the playground their fated to be,
When you reach the playground of sinful souls.

[blp]

This is so so much better, Spally. Gets a bit confused towards the end - speak not a work? - but the overall picture of a bleak, rocky landscape full of treachery and gore and the way it sits alongside the playground image works beautifully. It's got some of the feel of Eliot's Hollow Men.

[spally]

you think so...? i guess my slightly older poems are better than my new ones. lol. but hey, they've only gotta get better, right? :D

[Dirt McKert]

that was amazing

[Xamonas Chegwe]

This is much more like it Spally. You are using imagery to do your work for you, rather than merely saying, "I fell such-and-such" like you did in your earlier poems. I like this a lot more than anything else I've seen by you.

One typo - it's tongue, not toung.

[blp]

One typo? No, there are a few more: joyfull, paly, speak not a work. Also 'theirs to feast' should almost certainly be 'theirs to feast upon'

[Xamonas Chegwe]

One I spotted immediately - I never said that was all there was. :D

On typos: Typos can usually be ignored with no problem, but in poetry they betray the fact that the poet may well have written in haste without revision - this is quite acceptable in a normal post, but poetry requires (nay, demands) far more of the writer. A poem should be polished and perfected - every word weighed to see if it fits its alloted purpose - letting a typo get through shows that this has not happened.

I still say that this is Spally's best yet. I never said that she had got where she needs to be. Poetry has a steep learning curve - I know that as well as most - the more you write and read, the more you realise just how bad you were before; how much further there is to go. The important thing is to keep going. An author writes (mainly) to be published - a poet writes (again mainly) because he/she needs to write (lets face it, there's no money in it - even poet laureate pays only £70 a year and a case of wine!)

[spally]

sorry about the typos...thats why i don't post in the morning. :lol:

[Dirt McKert]

One I spotted immediately - I never said that was all there was. :D

On typos: Typos can usually be ignored with no problem, but in poetry they betray the fact that the poet may well have written in haste without revision - this is quite acceptable in a normal post, but poetry requires (nay, demands) far more of the writer. A poem should be polished and perfected - every word weighed to see if it fits its alloted purpose - letting a typo get through shows that this has not happened.

I still say that this is Spally's best yet. I never said that she had got where she needs to be. Poetry has a steep learning curve - I know that as well as most - the more you write and read, the more you realise just how bad you were before; how much further there is to go. The important thing is to keep going. An author writes (mainly) to be published - a poet writes (again mainly) because he/she needs to write (lets face it, there's no money in it - even poet laureate pays only £70 a year and a case of wine!)
i totally disagree with the poem having to be polished. i rarely edit my poems. in fact, it usually takes me months (if not years) to actually change any sort of wording in a poem. i feel that a poem isn't real unless it's the original words written in the heat of the moment.

polishing is for bowling balls and novels.

[spally]

polishing is for bowling balls and novels.

:lol: thats funny, and partly true. some of my poems i like to polish up a bit, others i like to leave the way they were writen the first time.

[Dirt McKert]

exactly. i will change a poem if it looks and sounds like a plane crash
otherwise i try to leave it the way it is...

the rhythm is in my head at least :)

[spally]

exactly. i will change a poem if it looks and sounds like a plane crash
otherwise i try to leave it the way it is...

the rhythm is in my head at least :)
i don't think i could have put i better myself. and most things are inside our heads, right?

[Dirt McKert]

indeed they are

[Jarndyce]

i totally disagree with the poem having to be polished. i rarely edit my poems. in fact, it usually takes me months (if not years) to actually change any sort of wording in a poem. i feel that a poem isn't real unless it's the original words written in the heat of the moment.

polishing is for bowling balls and novels.

Easy there, Shelly. I thought Baudelaire killed poets like you.

[Dirt McKert]

sorry to crush your dreams

[Jarndyce]

No crushed dreams. It's just that the Romantics were all about the grand inspiration of poetry, the divine spark, the perfection of the immediate, etc. Then again, so was Allen Ginsberg.

Me, I'm much more of the "each word carries the weight of the poem" camp. First cuts are nice. Sometimes they can be damned good. But it's the final cut that's the hardest to make.

[Dirt McKert]

allen ginsberg's one of my favorites.
my poetry most resembles his and bukowski's...

on occasion it's of the dickenson & poe style though.
but i'm not too fond of rhyme & meter all the time though.
it gets boring to me.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Dirt - Do you honestly think that Ginsberg didn't rewrite his poems and edit them? That he spouted whatever came off of the top of his head and just left it intact? Treating it as sacrosanct?

If so, I really must disagree. Ginsberg's work - even "Howl" - especially "Howl" - is not the work of a few minutes of feverish activity; but rather the result of weeks, months, perhaps even years of polishing that initial outburst.

That it sounds so spontaneous and "free" is precisely the reason for all of the effort that he put into it - freedom is hard work - something that most of the hippie generation missed; something that, had they emphasised it, might have led to them avoiding the ridicule that was heaped upon their ideals (good and bad) by subsequent generations and which led the inevitable rise of neo-conservatism in the 80s. (Just a thought...)

Anyway, we are supposed to be reviewing Spally's poem here - I apologise for any unwarranted hijacking - Spally, please don't listen to his beguiling words - poetry is not easy, whatever Dirt and his ilk say. Please do return to your poems after writing them and cast a critical eye over them. Make changes. Correct typos. Rip out clichés. Create the best poem that you can from your initial feelings - not the first thing that pops into your head! Please...

[Dirt McKert]

typos are one thing. correct spelling is a must in all writing.
that's a different story.
and i never said it was easy.

i know ginsberg didn't just write a poem and say "it's done" all the time.
but i know he did that with many of his poems.

i do edit my poems, like i said, but i never do it immediately (and i don't edit them all, for not all of them need it)
if i do edit a poem it takes time. it takes many reviews to know where to edit.
what to change.

anyhow.
i apologise for getting caught up in this as well.
i'm highly argumentative and defensive at times - even when i try not to be.

i just enjoy a good debate (which all of you have offered this day)

[spally]

please, do not aplogize. its actually amusing. :lol: