And the word is...

Can someone tell me what's wrong with this poem or how I could improve?

Quote:

---

My Fog: The Moral Cleaner

I sat by droplets licking the light of a sunset's glean;
It dubiously trickled, then quickly took form,
On my shoulder's, in the guise of compassion it waned my forlorn,
And just like a friend on whose shoulder you lean,
When adversity is the visage of all that you've seen,
It seeped out my woe in the form of an evil conformed,
and hurled it in the crest of a volatile storm.

My heart was set free in a verdurous green,
My sockets of fog-lifted pupils now showed,
Life in creatures and redolence for what it was,
the last frost on the end of a dead tree bow,
a silver-limped collection of mushroom villa-fuzz
the rebirth of green from a seed moist sowed,
and a pollen adhered bee irradiating every petal with its buzz
while I sat by droplets licking the light of a sunset's glean

---

It's my first real Sonnet (I think).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

Yes, you're right. I'm sorry. Is the vocabulary in my poetry really difficult? I might have been oblivious to that..

---

Prince is so right about using the language of another age.

I think that happens because we are forced to study the classics in school and only the best teachers bother to tell you why or bother to encourage students to write from your own time and heart.

The classics of literature are to illustrate a lineage of form and style, an evolution of language. On your own read Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Mark Strand, Ann Sexton. Try to find poems that sound like you talk, that are about things you know about. These will help you find your own voice and you do have one like no one else.

The French 'lai'

The stalwart chief came,
to guard the king's fame,
for he,
was a pompus stout,
with a case of gout,
and a
flee infested cat,
which tore his cravat,
with greed

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

Can someone tell me what's wrong with this poem or how I could improve?



It's my first real Sonnet (I think).

---

My hope is that no one will try to tell how you might improve any more than they should try to tell you how to be more like yourself or a better version of yourself.

READ! READ! READ! More contemporary stuff... the poets Firefangled suggested or pick up an anthology of 20th c. poetry that catches your eye and BROWSE through it. Do not consciously try to copy anyone else's style, but the things that are right for you will sink in more or less on their own.


By all means hope for and appreciate those who like what you produce BUT TRY TO BE YOUR OWN BEST AUDIENCE. Don't try to BE a poet - write poetry!

You've got a point. I've been reading far too much of John Milton's Paradise Lost (this is my second time reading the unabridged epic) and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbary Tales.

I've read absolutely nothing in contemporary poetry so I may fathom why my style of writing appears to be so pretentiously quaint. Thanks for your thoughts, Myshkin. (I would have called you Prince but that would make me look obsequious :p)

As for reading... I do that.. A LOT (but no, not contemporary literature, so you make a point there as well).

I actually like and appreciate a lot of my poetry. But it tends to get ignored so I'm stuck with the presentiment that my fellow audience of Lit-net forumgoers don't share my respect for my work. Well... I'll try HARDER! :D Let me just get out of this bum stage (or writer's block).

AND SO......THE WORD IS......tell us firefangled.....what should our new word be?

Since we have all been guilty of sinful desires...

The new word is Penance.


Get out your cat-o-nine-tails, your hair shirts. Down on your shameful knees poets and start writing those things that will forgive us all.

Mea culpa, mea maximum culpa. Et cum spiritu tuo.

hehehehe very good

that's not my offering, just my comment ;)

Penance

If a true plea had wings so innocent and fair,
through which place or time would mine have to
sour to show that penance is the threshold,
desire, the door, which needs be unbolted to liberate
my stall of lashes, wrinkles, blood and gore. For I've
waded in the depths of evil's shore and have delved
in the caves of leviathans galore
who dented my flesh,
halved my soul and
residued the rest
of me
on the deep sea floor.

She sings of pins, the mouths of birds,
among the sheets her mother hangs,
of wings which rise with night
and stir the air of dreams throughout the house.

Monsignor tells her, God hides in song,
and waits for her at the hour of death.
She is more direct with spirit things,
dreams of Kyries to feed the wings of sleep.

Father guides the choir, gives her scales
she evaporates in meadow larks,
and thrushes on the way, the room left quiet,
hushed and still like unnoticed rain.

The sisters give her pages, signed with clefs,
and birds in cages fluttering solfeggios:
she sets them free before their paper clouds,
in a sky the sisters do not see.

She sleeps in sheets crisp with the day.
Like will-o'-the-wisp her breathing winds
around the bed, the chair and past the open sill,
as birds wait silently in the unfinished air.



Oh, I hate being first, but I do know penance.

I don't know how you do it, fire. I wouldn't be able to come up with something like that if I spent a week on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

Penance

If a true plea had wings so innocent and fair,
through which place or time would mine have to
sour to show that penance is the threshold,
desire, the door, which needs be unbolted to liberate
my stall of lashes, wrinkles, sours and gore. For I've
waded in the depths of evil's shore and have been delved
in a cave of leviathans
which tore my flesh,
halved my soul and
residued the rest
of me
in pathogenic spite.

---

*******
If you have ever read the passage in Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man where Stephen Dedalus is enduring a sermon on the torments of hell, these are worthy lines to that effect. Go in peace.

Really? Thanks. I sort of tweaked it though..:

Quote:

---

Penance

If a true plea had wings so innocent and fair,
through which place or time would mine have to
sour to show that penance is the threshold,
desire, the door, which needs be unbolted to liberate
my stall of lashes, wrinkles, blood and gore. For I've
waded in the depths of evil's shore and have been delved
in the caves of leviathans galore
who dented my flesh,
halved my soul and
residued the rest
of me
on the deep sea floor.

---

I'm not sure if it makes a difference though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

I don't know how you do it, fire. I wouldn't be able to come up with something like that if I spent a week on it.

---

There was actually a young girl named Magaret in my grade school who was like Charlotte Church and could fill the rafters with her voice. It was truly amazing.

For this she was envied by both the sisters and the choir master, who preferred supplication to exaltation. So she was surreptitiously persecuted. She was about 8 years old I guess and never flinched no matter what was thrown at her.

When she moved the people of the parrish asked about her so frequently, they made an announcement of it from the pulpit and the entire gathering sighed.

She always comes to mind when I contemplate the act of atonement, for she was, and is, one of the primary examples of the truth of that act in my life.

Penance

I point myself to the corner and I shuffle there and slump against the wall, pouting.
I knew what I did when I did it and was sorry, but here I am wondering how tall I am.
I straighten myself up trying to measure myself by the bookcase across the room.
Am I really up to Tan and Tolkein and Trollope when surely it was only yesterday I stood with Updike and Uris?
I yawn and lean again against the wall, looking at my fingernails and I begin to hum some song in three-quarter time.
I hang my head and my face contorts like some dried apple dolly and I cry terrible tears.
"Oh God, I am so sorry. I am so pitifully pathetic. What you must think of me."
I stand there silently, holding my breath, looking around, as if to see if I am still here.
With a deep breath, I shake my head back and forth very slowly while looking inside myself.
At the count of ten I dislodge myself and walk over to the open window and pull back the lace curtain.
I sit on the plush, flowered window seat and sing to the birds, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."
They stop for a moment looking toward the window where the sound is coming from,
As if on springboards, they fly off into the sky as if to say, 'we know, we know, we know'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

Penance

I point myself to the corner and I shuffle there and slump against the wall, pouting.
I knew what I did when I did it and was sorry, but here I am wondering how tall I am.
I straighten myself up trying to measure myself by the bookcase across the room.
Am I really up to Tan and Tolkein and Trollope when surely it was only yesterday I stood with Updike and Uris?
I yawn and lean again against the wall, looking at my fingernails and I begin to hum some song in three-quarter time.
I hang my head and my face contorts like some dried apple dolly and I cry terrible tears.
"Oh God, I am so sorry. I am so pitifully pathetic. What you must think of me."
I stand there silently, holding my breath, looking around, as if to see if I am still here.
With a deep breath, I shake my head back and forth very slowly while looking inside myself.
At the count of ten I dislodge myself and walk over to the open window and pull back the lace curtain.
I sit on the plush, flowered window seat and sing to the birds, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."
They stop for a moment looking toward the window where the sound is coming from,
As if on springboards, they fly off into the sky as if to say, 'we know, we know, we know'.

---

My favorite parts of poems are endings and you have an enormous capability of leading your poems to endings that make me just go...oh yes.

This is so honest describing our attempts at penance with our corporeal preoccupations as humans and our self pity for which we seem to have no means of fighting outside a monestary. I loved it. And isn't it always the birds with the resolution...Billy Collins come to mind here...In the Room of a Thousand Miles

Well done.

Some folk make poems as if with a dictionary, a thesaurus, a book of quotations at their elbows and thousands of half-remembered poems flipping through their minds while they wrestle the syntax to the ground, best two out of three falls,

But not you! It is as if this is the simplest way to say what you have to say, the most direct - and it needs to be said!

From

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

I point myself to the corner and I shuffle there and slump against the wall, pouting.

---

to the very end I was caught, mesmerized.

The slow pulse of the black-water ballet,
in the deep country of the fireflies:

In yellow memory, in chains,
fragrance cupped from the dark lawn
— every petal was a mouth —

hungry, efflorescent stars,
one for many on a milky stem:

They fell with the veil of night, laden
with the bright of sun, and we would wait
for what was done in the dale of evening,
in the pale of the moonlit grass. They died,
if patience failed to hold us for their flights,

such fragile dolia of blossoms gone to light,
we galled them with a child’s haste,
watched their constellations slide
down blades and on our skin
with the scent of dandelion.

Oh silent aria of desire,
world of blind intent,
keep the secrets of your child:

wild flowers can redeem us

wishes gray make wishes green

fire hides in the quiet air

the choired whispers of the sea
are born in the twists of shells

and this cool water with its stars
ripples briefly in our eyes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by firefangled

The slow pulse of the black-water ballet,
in the deep country of the fireflies:

In yellow memory, in chains,
fragrance cupped from the dark lawn
— every petal was a mouth —

hungry, efflorescent stars,
one for many on a milky stem:

They fell with the veil of night, laden
with the bright of sun, and we would wait
for what was done in the dale of evening,
in the pale of the moonlit grass. They died,
if patience failed to hold us for their flights,

such fragile dolia of blossoms gone to light,
we galled them with a child’s haste,
watched their constellations slide
down blades and on our skin
with the scent of dandelion.

Oh silent aria of desire,
world of blind intent,
keep the secrets of your child:

wild flowers can redeem us

wishes gray make wishes green

fire hides in the quiet air

the choired whispers of the sea
are born in the twists of shells

and this cool water with its stars
ripples briefly in our eyes.

---

My God, how beautiful this is! I have started a file on my hard-drive in which to keep your poems aswell as whatever communications pass between us.

I don't know quite what to say except that I feel what Prince wrote. I also love the picture of the jar with perhaps small chains wrapped around its base.

So, Prince, will you have an offering of Penance for us?

Adolescent09...be thinking of our next word, please.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

So, Prince, will you have an offering of Penance for us?

---

For this, Oh Lord, I am heartily sorry,
that when you permitted the lambs
to be led into the gas chambers,
I was not one of them.

That I am not worthy
of the life of this one or that one
who was brutalized and done to death,
I wish I could do penance.

That I have bread and meat
and fruit when others
all over this teeming earth
have none,
I would do penance...

http://www.hungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

For this, Oh Lord, I am heartily sorry,
that when you permitted the lambs
to be led into the gas chambers,
I was not one of them.

That I am not worthy
of the life of this one or that one
who was brutalized and done to death,
I wish I could do penance.

That I have bread and meat
and fruit when others
all over this teeming earth
have none,
I would do penance...

http://www.hungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1

---

thank you............................................... .........THANK you.

Laconic or Negligible. If you don't like them I can come up with something else.

The other week, not being sure
of what I wanted to say,
I wrote 2,514 words.

Following that,
growing more confident of what I knew,
I wrote 1,257.

Given enough time
and careful study
I will write nothing at all.

One Look in a Grand of Words

A portion of our timeless past
takes a mile in written words
to piece a thought that fails to last
in lieu of what we've seen and heard,

Our greatest senses 2 of 5
Record by ear and witness live,
a tape of history's adverse glory,
far more profound than transcribed story--

For all in all a manuscript's
lines on lines will not depict
a starving youth of weak encumber
whose soul takes flight as his being slumbers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

One Look in a Grand of Words

A portion of our timeless past
will take a mile in written words
to piece a thought that fails to last
in lieu of what we've seen and heard,

Our greatest senses 2 of 5
Record by ear and witness live,
a tape of history's adverse glory,
more profound by far than written story--

For all in all a manuscript's
lines on lines will not depict
a starving youth of weak encumber
whose soul takes flight as his being slumbers.

---

I believe this is the best of yours that I have seen thus far!

All my other poetry was complete crap. It's all been deleted. I've been stumbling on a writer's block for two weeks. This poem in itself took me approximately a half hour to write... but in my normal phase it wouldn't have taken me more than three minutes.

Oh, I agree. That is quite nice.

Edit: Ouch! I was just rereading this and my reply here is in agreement with what Prince had to say about your most recent poem here.
Sorry if it looked otherwise.

If you care to do so, you may sing this to the tune of Fernando's Hideaway.

I..get tense..when you get terse
It makes..me wince..and I feel worse
When you're..concise..it's like a vise
That grips me by my little heart.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

For this, Oh Lord, I am heartily sorry,
that when you permitted the lambs
to be led into the gas chambers,
I was not one of them.

That I am not worthy
of the life of this one or that one
who was brutalized and done to death,
I wish I could do penance.

That I have bread and meat
and fruit when others
all over this teeming earth
have none,
I would do penance...

---

Oh, mon ami... This would bring tears to the eyes of a statue... a beautiful poem... so beautiful... how ungrateful for my own blessings it makes me feel... Shalom, mon ami. Shalom. http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...lies/Peace.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pendragon

Oh, mon ami... This would bring tears to the eyes of a statue... a beautiful poem... so beautiful... how ungrateful for my own blessings it makes me feel... Shalom, mon ami. Shalom. http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...lies/Peace.gif

---

And to you Shalom u'vracha (Peace and a blessing)

And by the way Pendragon, I haven't seen anything from you just lately...penance...laconic.
And where is firefangled?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

And by the way Pendragon, I haven't seen anything from you just lately...penance...laconic.
And where is firefangled?

---

He lives at a somewhat
acute angle
the one who’s known as “firefangle.”
And his poems never ever dangle
--that very sure-footed firefangle.
But seek him not! He won’t be caught!
And in his usual noble guise
He’ll be here when he has wrought
Something worthy of our eyes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

He lives at a somewhat
acute angle
the one who’s known as “firefangle.”
And his poems never ever dangle
--that very sure-footed firefangle.
But seek him not! He won’t be caught!
And in his usual noble guise
He’ll be here when he has wrought
Something worthy of our eyes.

---

Well, okay, but I don't have to like it. ;)

I do like your poem though. Hmmm, maybe I should answer...:idea:

Fishing For Fire

Early in the morning I walk to the pier's end glancing at the others fishing
in their yellow slickers covered with wet foggy dew.
They move just barely, a nod, a lift of the finger or stone cold,
remembering the sea or their night on the town.
Without making a sound I stretch and roar, beat my chest and breathe in
the sea air.
I look behind and around and nothing has changed and I give a sigh,
a silent sigh,
That no one has heard how much I love being here.
I find the spot, my spot, worn ever so slightly with my impressions and
I settle there with my feet hanging over the water, swinging lightly with delight.
I open my basket and search among the words for something fat and juicy,
something that would entice him, bring him up out of the water, dripping and squirming, and seeking,
to show himself.
Finally, I see the one that is right and I reach in and pull it out and place it
on my line.
I lie down and hold it out over the water, the word barely touching the surface, and my breath catches as I see him circling below.
Around and around, down, then up, and around and around, I am mesmerized......
I remove the seaweed ribbons from my hair and it tumbles to my waist.
With my hands gracefully pointed, I lean and slink into the dark waters.
He is nowhere to be found but I see a school and swim quickly to catch them.
They flick their tails and dart away from me but I beg them to share their recess with me, but mostly they stare with their round, innocent, unblinking eyes.
I am tired now.
I lean back into the water with my hair floating up all around me like a salty cocoon and I....
"Hey miss! Miss! You better wake up."
I raise my sunburned face.
Drool runs from my mouth.
With my hand shielding my eyes, I look up into a face decorated with a long mustache and sparkling eyes.
"I do believe, missy, something has taken your bait."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

Well, okay, but I don't have to like it. ;)

I do like your poem though. Hmmm, maybe I should answer...:idea:


Early in the morning I walk to the pier's end glancing at the others fishing
in their yellow slickers covered with wet foggy dew.
They move just barely, a nod, a lift of the finger or stone cold,
remembering the sea or their night on the town.
Without making a sound I stretch and roar, beat my chest and breathe in
the sea air.
I look behind and around and nothing has changed and I give a sigh,
a silent sigh,
That no one has heard how much I love being here.
I find the spot, my spot, worn ever so slightly with my impressions and
I settle there with my feet hanging over the water, swinging lightly with delight.
I open my basket and search among the words for something fat and juicy,
something that would entice him, bring him up out of the water, dripping and squirming, and seeking,
to show himself.
Finally, I see the one that is right and I reach in and pull it out and place it
on my line.
I lie down and hold it out over the water, the word barely touching the surface, and my breath catches as I see him circling below.
Around and around, down, then up, and around and around, I am mesmerized......
I remove the seaweed ribbons from my hair and it tumbles to my waist.
With my hands gracefully pointed, I lean and slink into the dark waters.
He is nowhere to be found but I see a school and swim quickly to catch them.
They flick their tails and dart away from me but I beg them to share their recess with me, but mostly they stare with their round, innocent, unblinking eyes.
I am tired now.
I lean back into the water with my hair floating up all around me like a salty cocoon and I....
"Hey miss! Miss! You better wake up."
I raise my sunburned face.
Drool runs from my mouth.
With my hand shielding my eyes, I look up into a face decorated with a long mustache and sparkling eyes.
"I do believe, missy, something has taken your bait."

---

And the word was....
.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.


the word was.......

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

anchovy?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

And the word was....
.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.


the word was.......

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

anchovy?

---

:lol: :D :lol: :D

No silly, the new word hasn't been chosen yet. I was waiting for a few more people to tell us about laconic!

I am becoming dreams;
they stay open for me to enter,
to walk through the old doors left behind,
heavy with fear and moving shadow,
walking without going across the room.
So much happens in the small spaces
of yellow light, knees aching, head bent,
to see what can’t be seen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PrinceMyshkin

He lives at a somewhat
acute angle
the one who’s known as “firefangle.”
And his poems never ever dangle
--that very sure-footed firefangle.
But seek him not! He won’t be caught!
And in his usual noble guise
He’ll be here when he has wrought
Something worthy of our eyes.

---

Oh but I must dangle. I was written that way by Mr. Stevens.

The bird's firefangled feathers dangle down.

Thank you, Prince, for the portrait.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adolescent09

One Look in a Grand of Words

A portion of our timeless past
takes a mile in written words
to piece a thought that fails to last
in lieu of what we've seen and heard,

Our greatest senses 2 of 5
Record by ear and witness live,
a tape of history's adverse glory,
far more profound than transcribed story--

For all in all a manuscript's
lines on lines will not depict
a starving youth of weak encumber
whose soul takes flight as his being slumbers.

---

I agree with Prince on this. I am, however, sorry to hear you say you trashed your old poems. You probably had some unpolished gems among all those thoughts and words. But then there is something to be said for new beginnings if that is how you felt.

This one is one of your best though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

If you care to do so, you may sing this to the tune of Fernando's Hideaway.

I..get tense..when you get terse
It makes..me wince..and I feel worse
When you're..concise..it's like a vise
That grips me by my little heart.

---

In my haste to make up for lost time, I guess I missed that the new word is Laconic. Back to the drawing board.