Stones growing

[Munshie]

STONES GROWING (January 1995)


I waited
a rock of time.
Unseen,
silence crept in filling all the corners.
Disappointment like a pall of smoke,
infiltrated the delicate alliance
between hope and happiness.
Slowly,
the poison worked its chemistry.

[Nikonani]

> Corners
> Smoke
> Rock

Think someone picked up too much of TS Eliot's vocabulary.

That being said, I have absolutely no idea what your poem is about. Things like "silence creeping" are cliche, especially when the silence creeps "unseen", or disappointment does anything other than find itself expressed in a less oblique way. What is your rationale for the line breaks?

[YesNo]

The phrase about waiting a "rock of time" kept my interest.

[Munshie]

I've never read T.S.Elliot.

Perhaps you were expecting a rhyme at the end of each (or alternate) line?

[Nikonani]

I've never read T.S.Elliot.

Perhaps you were expecting a rhyme at the end of each (or alternate) line?

No, I'm just curious -- what impels you to press the enter key after each line in your poem? To bring emphasis to certain words or units? I'm not exactly an opponent of free-verse, Merwin and Ammons are two of my favorite contemporary poets -- the former (generally) uses line breaks to break cadences of related thought, the latter to organize statements by urgency of thought (e.g. The City Limits). I have no idea what your usage entails, and if you don't take offense, I'm not sure if you do either.

[Munshie]

The original version was penned 20 years ago and then set aside.

It was trying to capture the feelings experienced in waiting for someone that I cared deeply for, to call me. I have now now tweeked the original to produce the version below. It is written in the format it is because that's how I wish it to be read, giving it a certain rythm.

STONES GROWING (Aug 2015)

I waited
a rock of time.
Silence creeps in,
filling the emptiness.
Disappointment infiltrates
the delicate alliance
between hope and happiness.
Slowly the poison of suspicion
works its chemistry.

[Nikonani]

This version is better in form in my opinion. However I think it's counterproductive to post such personal poems without also telling the intention of the poem ahead of time -- since you're knitting with the heartstrings, and only yours at that rate, the rest of us have no idea what to make of your poem. Poems for print should deal with a higher order of emotion, that on the scale of humanity, and perhaps not even in the traditional sense of the word -- poems for private consumption can tackle anything of choosing in any way. Posting a private poem is like telling an inside joke and frowning when nobody else gets it.

[Munshie]

Poems for print should deal with a higher order of emotion, that on the scale of humanity,

When I read the above I had to do a double take.

The idea of higher order emotion is problematic. In the UK many people would call you a 'snob' and the attitude it represents is more likely to put people off reading poetry. Already many poeple consider poetry elitist and not for the masses.

BTW there are other cultures where poetry is regarded differently e.g. Indian subcontinet and Japan.

[Nikonani]

I think you'll find all of the great western poets, at least starting from around the time of Spenser and Marlowe and Kyd, are snobs, then. One can write a "personal" poem while tackling higher order emotion, so there's really no excuse. I've probably posted it three times throughout the forums now so while I'm getting a bit trite, a landmark example is Crane's Voyages -- a love poem to a sailor that doubly serves as so much more:

--And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.

And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,--
Hasten, while they are true,--sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

And please don't use "problematic", it doesn't mean anything useful at this point.

[Munshie]

I think you'll find all of the great western poets, at least starting from around the time of Spenser and Marlowe and Kyd, are snobs, then.

And please don't use "problematic", it doesn't mean anything useful at this point.

And that is why the majority are unaware of these poets let alone, having read their work! (Of course they could have been force fed it at school/college.)

'Problematic' is useful because it's saying your statement was open to dispute and not straight forward as you think.

Frankly given your views and mine, it seems you and i are not going to get on. Let's just leave it at that.

[Pompey Bum]

Apparently you don't enjoy it when someone tries to make you look small or ignorant, Munshie. I sympathize, but I also wonder what you think it feels like when someone does the same thing to a Jew or Christian or Hindu or Muslim because of his or her religious convictions. I don't mean that polemically. You are free to gain insight or not from what Nikonani is doing to you. Good luck with it.

I thought your poem was okay. I didn't have the problem understanding it that Nikonani did. It wasn't apparent that you were waiting for a call, but the underlying idea of being slowly rendered dead inside by a lingering suspicion was clear enough. And you don't need to please anyone with a supposed higher order of emotion. You have written a perfectly legitimate poem that might touch the emotional experience of many readers. It is even, in is own way, subtly disturbing.

I suggest, though, that you try to be a little more explicit about the situation of the poem rather than just recording raw emotion. It might be effective make the poem an address to the person who didn't call (even just using a name would help the reader to understand). But my major criticism is that you need to use the sound of language more effectively in communicating the process of hardening inside that you seem to be describing. You do this a little in the middle of the poem (second version) with shifting-sounding words like emptiness, infiltrates, and alliance; but all that slithering never solidifies. It doesn't go anywhere. You end as you began, just describing feeling and creating metaphors (which is fine as far as it goes), but you do not allow your reader to listen to the sound of what was happening inside you. Remember this sort of poetry is a kind of song.

Thank you, by the way, for having the guts to post your poem here. If it means anything to you, I stopped doing so (and still won't) precisely because I got tired of having to spoon feed readers who couldn't be bothered to think for themselves. Now I post doggerel here (if that) and save my real poems for my friends. Pearls. Swine. It's an old story.

I hope that was helpful, but if not, I hope someone else's comment will be better.

[Munshie]

Apparently you don't enjoy it when someone tries to make you look small or ignorant, Munshie. I sympathize, but I also wonder what you think it feels like when someone does the same thing to a Jew or Christian or Hindu or Muslim because of his or her religious convictions. I don't mean that polemically. You are free to gain insight or not from what Nikonani is doing to you. Good luck with it.

I thought your poem was okay. I didn't have the problem understanding it that Nikonani did. It wasn't apparent that you were waiting for a call, but the underlying idea of being slowly rendered dead inside by a lingering suspicion was clear enough. And you don't need to please anyone with a supposed higher order of emotion. You have written a perfectly legitimate poem that might touch the emotional experience of many readers. It is even, in is own way, subtly disturbing.

I suggest, though, that you try to be a little more explicit about the situation of the poem rather than just recording raw emotion. It might be effective make the poem an address to the person who didn't call (even just using a name would help the reader to understand). But my major criticism is that you need to use the sound of language more effectively in communicating the process of hardening inside that you seem to be describing. You do this a little in the middle of the poem (second version) with shifting-sounding words like emptiness, infiltrates, and alliance; but all that slithering never solidifies. It doesn't go anywhere. You end as you began, just describing feeling and creating metaphors (which is fine as far as it goes), but you do not allow your reader to listen to the sound of what was happening inside you. Remember this sort of poetry is a kind of song.

Thank you, by the way, for having the guts to post your poem here. If it means anything to you, I stopped doing so (and still won't) precisely because I got tired of having to spoon feed readers who couldn't be bothered to think for themselves. Now I post doggerel here (if that) and save my real poems for my friends. Pearls. Swine. It's an old story.

I hope that was helpful, but if not, I hope someone else's comment will be better.

Thanks for the time and effort of rendering constructive criticism. Much appreciated. :thumbsup::)

[Pompey Bum]

You are very welcome. It's nice to have you on the site. :)

[virtuoso]

I do not fully subscribe to the Reader Response theory of poem interpretation (no authorial intent), but I think that anybody can generally interpret this poem, taking from it the neglect and loneliness of a spurned soul. It does not matter about the specific circumstance that inspired you to create the poem. I can clearly see the metamorphosis in this poem. The rock, your soul, is inundated by the elements, and there is a chemical reaction. The rock, a sturdy substance, changes into fragile, powdery mixture. What is there not to understand, Nikonani? This is a well-conceived, and artfully-written poem.