Poetry critique thread

I think this is the only serious attempt in this thread (other than that French thing), so this is the only one I'll respond to.

I can't help but feel you would benefit from some kind of a meter: I don't find the line breaks very compelling as it stands. Also, while I think you're probably trying to imitate Spanish verse, I don't like the fact that the line heads aren't capitalized; in English, verse needs that special dignity.

As for more substantial issues, I think it's not bad as a minor poem, but it certainly needs sharpening up. Some of the imagery and phrasing is quite good: 'gibbet-lintel,' while misspelled, is richly suggestive and yet unpretentious in a way neologisms have a hard time being nowadays - did you get it from somewhere? As for the 'scarf rojo' and 'bird negro' stuff, I say drop it. It might be worthwhile if you merged Spanish with English in a more interesting way, but placing adjectives after nouns does not a poetic voice make. Though you may not have meant to imply it, I do like the image of the Negro bird beating his wings against the current, so you can keep that 'negro' so long as you refer to the African-American ethnic group (though this would then require developing that imagery). That the bird is 'letting the wind underwing' is good in its portrayal of Romantic journey as both a struggle and a letting-go, although I don't see why the scarf merely makes the sound of a bird: why can't it simply BE the bird? You need to justify that, just like how you need to justify the painful injection of Spanish color adjectives. Also, 'fly, fly, fly' needs to go: it's just empty space on the line, the poetic equivalent of a fluffer-nutter. I also object to the idea of the wind roaring into its battlefield and doing a war dance. War dances are such a 20th-century metaphor: good enough for Ezra Pound, but not for us today. You'll have to find a more original metaphor there. The fourth line from the bottom is good, and recapitulates your ideas about Romantic struggle. Find a word other than 'jubilation;' again, it's outdated.

It has potential, but I feel you're using formal devices here that you haven't earned. The soul of it is good, though I can't help but feel it is a touch reminiscent of indie pop lyrics. Something about it seems in danger of being commercialized (and of course indie pop and the idea of the hipster constitute the final death of Romanticism, though we may try in vain to revive it.)

Now here are two little ditties which totally disregard all the advice I just gave. One gives qualified praise to Harold Bloom; the other condemns William Carlos Williams. I think I may soon try to say something that is not about a dead white man, but first I will have to write a little something in praise of Franz Liszt, and hopefully something better than what follows, since he deserves the best one can give, though in my case that is not much.

'The Anxiety of Being Uninfluenced'

The learned professor Bloom
Most wisely says the dead forever loom
Over every would-be poet
Till they just have to have a go o’ it.

But did he take into account one such as I
Who knew not till old age the ancient symmetrye?
(By now the Muse is but a hag;
Far better to have been a fag.)

He says that poetry will be self-slain,
But in that that there’s much to gain:
Far better ‘tis to play the Roman fool
Than to succumb to final mob-rule.

O, the poetic flame of which they speak
Has grown ay feebler and weak.
Far better to have been a rav’ning artist mad
Than to wander in ironic Dunciad.

But something’s to be said for the attitude Yeat,
Whereby malaise of magic mind and daily toll
Intersect as unreal vapors and equate;
Alas, it can no longer be assumed.
Far better to be ruled by ancient scroll
Or by a liberal idealism plumed,
Than to lapse into pedantic state,
Blot out the generalities of Soul,
And, by side of deep romantic Chasm, debate.

'Contra Guilielmum'

Thy protozoic eye
Gives off a fouler light
Than death-glazed carcasses
On which the sugar-fly
Spreads his ‘visionary’ blight.
Fools fools surmounting:
That’s how poetry is.

I have nor use nor rhyme
To get fro’ thy ‘murals’ or
Enjambments! Forcing verses,
At least, makes pleasant struggle o’ time—
But from thy ears thou makst sows’ purses!
And know not ‘cellar door.’
And what is more—!

The Faceless rose, spoke, and so came forth this:
"There lies a land, near, past reach nonetheless,
where mournful peaks glance to ley below,
and roads no feet have tread nor builders kept
in memory of page or scribe. Yet said,
’tis no empty land, though stirs naught within.
Scribes, it has, and builders and fathers and sons.
A King, it had, and courtiers and pipers and drums.
Tables, there are, set beneath still faces,
and no food, though untouched by creature or beast,
but mouldered and rotted to stain.
Those scribes, they hunch, over parchment gone to dust,
their hands stayed, in monument unwilling,
of those deepest crimes for greatest cause
wrought in vain, and none left to lament."

These would make good lyrics in a song out of a musical stage play, about a young man who begrudgingly becomes a literary superstar in some alt-Romance Era.

I'd go see it.

I will wring from the silvery sequence the billowy truth
of your imperturbability, that I hath dressed too uncouth
when the sly, unabashed parley of my petty speech is grinding the mind’s eye image
of you and me and the
cerulean epiphany that flames in your sight when I say
in manner deceitless, and without wile, that I am as you,
which is captured by an awful cavalcade of belief in anachronism
from free trade to the permanence of the nation-state, this is
a scar on my conscience, and consciousness, and consistently
pricks, like the deep undertone of a serotonin-starved brain on
Tuesday evening.
Please banish the unenclosed sentiment and
believe me when I say I believe all of God’s creatures to be
sentient, and that it only is the misused provincialism of
my narrowed upbringing
that elicits such froth after I’ve unbuckled
my grimy, and seedy, and unintelligent views,
a red flag that I fear will uncover
a history of all the inexcusable crap
I’ve ever said
.
Lo! you once quivered so earnestly
into my Carling-stained shoulder, that I was morally superior,
and wondered aloud how one so high could deem himself betrothed
to a straggler of virtue’s rays
such as yourself,
only to learn, and in unbecoming fashion,
that many parts of my brain are contaminated with fascism,
a malady I have sought cure for all over this green and pleasant Earth
but have found lacking even in art of the loftiest worth,
and so repressed to an inanity, where after a beer or two I spout garbage without vanity,
it becomes a ceaseless shame to the liberal agenda
I espouse when not under
the boot-strap
of trying to impress you
with a false likeness
derived from a foolish theory about the ways in which we were raised,
improperly used to justify my belief that two souls so pusillanimous
should be forever enamored thus.

i i am it is who deals devilishly raw,,,bigoted, brazen, so trumped up,
ur arrogant, she says
ur ego is too big, she says
ur an elitest prick, she says

i i formed out of hyper-provincialism saunter with insouciance in greenness
bathed brilliantly my rotten sociology
in an apparel befitting to a megalomaniac
birth-right it is mine to dominate all discourse

i i am the brass wind timber that school playgrounds bitch about
defeatist is no word in my mouth
for half a quid ill seize upon ur fickleness
ready and willing to cast all enchantments off

i i major in specialized pharmacology intended to annul marriages of idealism
too sea-sick from all this heavy-going literature longing
spelled out all the various offences it is possible to commit
did each and every one of them in an utterly illiberal fashion

i i i i i i i i reamed the round-a-bout of consensus making in SU bars
fragmented consciousnesses are frailty to me
before even gender was a thing i travelled in eternity
the freest cerebral psycho since Twain, or was it -

the essentialism of understanding the morose platoon trump trump trumping after
theyve all been proved marginally wrong
by me

I took some of your advice, but honestly, this seems a bit too bloated to me. What do you think?

My scarf roja, lanar y cálida
that is wrapped around my throat
is a noose that ties me to the gibbet-lintel
of propriety. I rip it off;
it flutters in the wind like a blackbird
that bats with all his strength, and lets the wind
underwing for that he can fly away:
un ave negra que cuelga en azul.
With one hand I hold the scarf high above my head
as the other grips the handle of the bicycle plateada
que es hecha de titanio que deslumbra en el sol
and it catches the wind roaring into its battlefield
that is encircled by clouds
and it does a war dance that it hails its passing.
I loosen my grip, or the wind is too strong,
but mi bufanda roja, it flutters violently,
and it slips my grasp and is lost forever
in the tumbling wildness of the Tierra del Fuego.

I worked on it a bit more.

My scarf roja, lanar y cálida
that is wrapped around my throat
is a noose that ties me to the gibbet-lintel
of propriety. I rip it off;
it flutters in the wind like the wing of a blackbird
that bats with all his strength, and lets the wind
underwing for that he can fly away:
un punto negro en vista azul.
With one hand I hold the scarf high above my head
as the other grips the handle of the bicycle
and it catches the wind roaring in its playground
that is encircled by clouds
and it does a dance for that it hails its passing.
I loosen my grip, or the wind is too strong,
but my scarf, the wing, the noose,
un revuelo rojo en la vista azul de libertad
it slips my grasp and is lost forever
in the tumbling wildness of the Tierra del Fuego.

And upon the proclamation of moses
A man did arise to say
Delet this

pastebin.com/6vBZUjq3

your girl giving me a striptease but i dont know nothing like im socrates

what do you think lads

wow yes very musical, best one in the thread

In this ever fleeting feeling felt many times before
Hollow claims of absolutes, the feeling is a void
This propounding growth within me, feelings past alloyed?
Or a continuous kindling, conscious of its joy?

A tale was once told me, by a conscientious soul
Of many loves abound deemed reckless by the old.
Does this not just amount to regenerated love, absurd yet profound, a feeling left untold?

As many words attached to energy elude my grasp,
Just as did my love, i couldn't take it back
For it was never truly mine, but a hope yet avast
I may commence again, an action that won't last

First posted poem

Niggas be all up in my grill
They be so jealous cuz I'm making skrill
Why the fuck these niggas be all up in my grill

So quick to prescribe, you fail to see inside
And outside, and above, and below
You fail to see through, so I cant see through you

How I'd love to love all your imperfections, but still I reach for your fullest
Conceding to a lackluster will is a recipe for life at its dullest

Shifting your gaze at something imagined, I wish I could catch it
Just a glimpse of you, but the window is stained
I cant remember the last time it rained

Now your marvelous eyes dropping like flies as I pass
Mine dry, searching for what i felt when I last
Saw you near seeing, but you've further withdrew
I spin you a web of widowhood, but still you recluse

There once was a day you thought I was someone you knew
But you'll never know me, if you don't know you

Second posted poem

It destroys the future and preserves the past in what It deems just vengeance - The Severed Remembrance
Defaming the walls It built by keeping it up, cowering behind Its legacy, preaching Its hollow peace
Through a tear, are piercing prayers, It's libeled as terror
They're so scared of what It Can't see,

Through Its tinted screen, clouded with Its dreams, nor Its forsaken black sea
It can't see past the wall of Its past, steadfast, Its gaze is cast back leaving its own sky black
It forgets the sun, and craves the moon. If the garden was ever in bloom? it wouldn't know
On the peak of its own mount of olives, all it sees is snow.

If Its attention is ever set on the present its hazy
its not that Its lazy.
But if Its sight is behind the present in time, can It still give birth to life?
It seeks a virgin to lift the burden
With a gift from a bird that's so miserably high
It cant lift Its own eyes,

To the duty compiled as smoke from a burnt out torch Passed long after It died
Infecting Its air, now a cloud of despair, sits looming.
But how It finds this smog so seducing.
Complacent It sits, in Its negligent narcissism, swooning.
It cant bear the reflection of Its severed remembrance, so It repels retrospection
Approving reprobation, consuming.

A serpent hangs from Its mouth but parasite fangs are not made to pluck
So It twists and It writhes, still grabbing at straws in which there's no life left to suck.
Its mind, Its peace, Its life in pieces to a long forgotten puzzle, don't forgive these words that may be muddled.
Forgive me for allowing to be muzzled..

If "It" is a wall, then let My words be a bridge
If "It" condemns a Creator with diluted truths and polluted lies, then allow me to be the one to bring Him back to life
The Creator endowed with power renowned
Let me awake Man, to make life in Her own image
May I be as the first wrung of the ladder that You let It take away?
My only hope is to rouse the conscious with a wake.

It is now high time I use My mouth to bite the head off the serpent, to use My mind to break this cyclical nature of Time
As an eagle I Will fly beyond "It." And what lighter load than "I"?

First poem I've ever written. Too heavily bitten off Nietzche.

Plastered saran wrap all over my chest,

hoping it’d feel like a bulletproof vest.

All it did was restrict my breathing,

numbing the feeling,

of being.

So I guess,

this transluscent mess,

with which I so aimlessly covered my chest,

protected far better than a bulletproof vest.

you should write a rap

Different user here but how do you come to that conclusion? His style is way to verbose for rap no?

capitalizing line heads is an editorial decision that mostly went out of style in the 80s, just sayin. personally i dont like it because it is not the case that all first words are important

>writing in antiquated english in the current year
>writing in antiquated english ever
nothanks.jpg

He seems good with multi-syllabic rhymes, verbose can be good because it paints a picture.

Thanks man. I do write raps sometimes but the culture is limiting in regards to what I'd like to get across.

A ljodaháttr I wrote just now.

Härligare has det,
Med ölen hårt,
I grova grepp,
Ty utan smärta spilles,
Söderlandens sura vin,
Men tappad öl för alla tårar.

Can I see? I love poems with lyric styled writing.

So symmetrical, I guess I'm a perfectionist
Or I just have the vision to realize what perfection is
Maybe I have the wires to feel a connection with
A perfect individual, an enigmatic existence

Aligned with mine, placed in time, so conveniently
I know that life doesn't really have a meaning
But you feel like mine, I cant take it as a sign, but considering the time, i sure did catch a dime.

All i have at hand. I've written a lot of ignorant stuff off xanax, but they're all written in a notebook somewhere.

If I could write a line for every one on your face, curving my letters in correspondence with yours
If only I could have my words interlace, they'd come together as a bow, but still I'd need more

For words can't elucidate the way an image of you radiates in my brain
No rhyme can illuminate a glimpse of beauty your being contains

Your elusiveallure should remain a mystery I cannot provoke, paint, or intellectualize
No matter how much time i spend crossing my t's, a million words can't amount to a dot in your eyes

And this kinda

...

Well, it's certainly more interesting now, but I'm not sure I like it any better (this isn't to say it hasn't improved; of course one should take the advice of a man who can't write good poetry with a grain of salt). I still feel that the Spanish in the poem is not really justified; adding more Spanish adjectives to describe the scarf only makes it more obscure without adding a whole lot of information: why is it roja, lanar y cálida and not red, woolen and warm? Also, while I think you're imitating Spanish grammar with the 'for that's as opposed to the English 'so that,' I find it more jarring and offputting than syntactically intriguing. I think it might be interesting to replace the phrase with 'para que,' but that may also be needlessly obscure.

I don't find the 'un punto negro en vista azul' totally objectionable, although I'd remove the 'un': it slows down the line when it should be nice and quick. I still don't like what you're saying about the wind; the playful wind is just as much a cliche as the fierce wind. Furthermore, is the sky really its most compelling playground? What about a village? or the 'tumbling wildness' referenced later? Besides the 'for that,' I do like the idea that it is hailing is own passing. As for the 'de libertad,' I really think that's too much: it begins to sound like a nationalist hymn to Argentina (unless that's what you were going for). One last minor gripe: why is it 'IT slips my grasp and is lost forever'? There's no need to restate the subject here: this is a quick poem. Still, the last two lines are good.

As I said, take all that with a grain of salt; I may just be telling you to write the way I would write it.

I know that, but I think it's a bad decision, and besides which poetry (and literature) should not be subject to going in and out of 'style.' I think it's simply a bad ARTISTIC choice (the artist must have complete control over these things; if it's an editorial decision, so much the worse) most of the time, particularly in an age that is so inclined towards prose and disdainful of verse. Of course, it's not always a bad decision - Hart Crane, for example, uses it quite often to wonderful effect - but most of the time I think it amounts to false modesty and thoughtless minimalism. Besides, I just think it looks more balanced on the page.

So of everything wrong with those poems, you choose THAT?
nothanks.jpg

The Weatherman

A narcoleptic walks down Broderick
Dressed in immaculate surrender,
a novelty carnation sewn through his lapel.
He slings around his pocket watch ,
Convinces traffic he is not in fact God:
He's just a weatherman in waiting
prepared to sleep away the sleet
and silver pockets of snow
For the rainbows
that often ricochet in his direction.

They knew him at the funeral,
by his change of address, mostly.
Charlie learned his blackness from his suit
And office days of beetroot bartering the companies,
the motorcades, manila folded tirades in the tray.
Death arrives that way.
Diagnosis, lifestyle: Prescription -
Well, he dozed off in the languid retreat of the church hall
Dreaming of excuses to reinvent his style
Dreaming of past dealings
and his misremembered meanwhiles.

And time, he says -
it's like pocketing short change,
measured in the non-sequential gains
and parametric losses
(Listening to this, a myopic clerk
Dammed to decorate his lobby
With the languages of thirteen countries)
People die in such long pauses
Such as those a stranger brings,
when they talk of what the changes ring
and then of what they don't.

But can i play the piano anymore?

Any words on this?
>Saged, and will do some critiques after this.

I walked to the hospital through the city’s outskirts,
Where playgrounds are devoid of grass and the field is of texture of concrete,
But the kids are still playing, scraping their knees through pre-torn jeans,
Missing the shots, mister, kick it back, please.
You see they changed the law awhile back,
The music it goes to public domain once the artist dies,
CEOs shouted and fired interns and scratched their heads,
Until they strapped all the old folks to old-support, the one-hit mayflies,
Regretful coke-snorting geezers, rehab regulars, bright ideas branding
Marketable concept album conveyoring indie robots,
All them plugged into final retreats.
Suppose now some are repentant, within the system,
Like those anarchists vandalizing dedicated vandal places,
With them you need convincing, that the expiration dates
Etched on their backs are not God-given, but man-made,
We are all inmates and cannot just stroll out of the prison,
Bullshit like that.

MY JOB DESCRIPTION

get high like the moon

out of tune

on fire the sky is higher

no one ever wants to do poetry

but the notes keep flowing in me

get higher than ginsberg as I smoke this fine herb

and he smoked meth

what's this obsession in anime about prepubescents

You know your way around words and how to put them to meaning. Nothing with this style of verse at all. But I would enjoy seeing you work with more concrete descriptions of a vivid scene using your lexical skills. I love poems that can be read several times and still be enjoyed in different aspects.
8/10

Depressing--which is never my first love with poetry. But it's written well as verse and I enjoyed the flow.
6.5/10

This guy critiqued well, so I'll leave those be.

Eh. The meter and rhythm tend to bounce around a little too much. And there's a lot of abstractions used, so I'm not getting a vivid image, though I am getting something. I do like some of the lines like:
>Charlie learned his blackness from his suit.
But I'd honestly rather read that in some prose, and would enjoy it even more.
6/10

>Nothing WRONG with this style of verse...

Thanks a lot! I just started writing so i have quite a bit to learn. It's such a great feeling though, and knowing someone else enjoyed it that much is cool.

We get it, poets.
Things are like other things.

But things I care not about,
and people are all the same
so why not
write some poetry about them ?

Bards are dead, talent is thin
and poets are locked away
until the great second sin
is burnt down in my ashtray.

I should have given everyone a face.

I have worked on the poem since, and removed all of the gratuitous Spanish, replacing it with English words of almost-strictly Latinate origin.

By the way, it's not the wind that's hailing it's own passing, or the wind that's doing a dance: it's the scarf fluttering in the wind that's doing both those things.

My scarf, carmine, woolen, calid,
that is wrapped around my throat
is a noose that ties me to the gibbet-lintel
of propriety. I tear it off;
it flutters in the wind like a blackbird
that bats with all his strength, and lets the wind
underwing so that he can fly:
a dark punctum on the azure vista.
With one hand I hold the scarf high above my head
as the other grips the handle of the bicycle
and it catches the wind roaring in its empty sprawl
encircled by clouds
and does a dance to hail its passing.
I loose my grip, or the wind is too strong,
but my scarf, the wing, the noose,
the carmine fluttering on the azure vista,
slips my grasp and is lost forever
in the tumbling wildness of the Tierra del Fuego.

Artificer’s Death (Bright and Gleaming)

Shining spikes of Giza stripped of quarry edge,
Glory flayed as skin, skin a hoary casing.
As the quarry was left a gash, you a skeleton—
Mountainous bones housing bones housing nothing.

Timelessness brought to an abrupt
End. The four humors became misaligned
As blood wore down the mountains,
And as men of blood trod down the banks.

The Nile became of blood, both vein and artery.
That cardinal humor spread blackward.
Wroth wine spilled from the hand of Mars,
Fermented mythologies ache, aching to speak.

Artifex working in Corinthian brass, your cannon
A trumpet, sound off as I strain my ears,
Yet still I fear that I may not hear
The writhing of Philomela.

>Charlie learned his blackness from his suit
these are the types of lines I want to write
I'm not sure the "Dreaming of" repetition has the effect you'd want. Maybe just use dashes?

The articles in the following lines, yea or nay?

>a dark punctum on the azure vista
>the carmine fluttering on the azure vista

This one is incomplete.

I turn my head around and see behind
a barrage of uncounted centuries
congesting in their endless file the course
of history, pages of the almanac,
extending to the furthest reaches of
recorded time, where paper frays and frames
the forms of kings, and mounds of plebeian dust
ride the backwards-floating wind of time.

In the primal bush in golden sunshine robed,
perspiring blackened topsoil underneath
to cool the crib, the little feet of lizards
now long returned to loam and dirt would drag
their little bellies through the oozing mud
and scrawl across the land in scurried streaks
a city in relief embossed in dirt,
winding its ways through the swaying tallgrass,

until the primal simian learned that if
he tucked his throbbing thumb against the rock
cupped in his foregathered dactyls, it would
repel the haul of gravity and taste
the glassy higher air unsullied still
by smoke and breath, and fly to where it pleased
him that it fly to hammer muck from meat
and speckle red his ragged face through art of

slaughter. The blood of grassland peasantry
made flush the lining of the arteries
that plotted lines awry about his face,
and on his temple set a bony crown,
and fed the marrows of his kingly bones;
the bulbous mouth, the downy cheeks, the squat
phallus resting in its matted nest, like
the monkey-king upon his fleshly throne.

Of morbid curiosity I chase
with eyes the lives of my progenitor,
and deep within my chest the drum begins
to beat at sight of savagery to match
the savagery forever etched upon
my cardiac wall. What in me is human,
whatever masculine, testosterone
trails afire, descended the lines from him.

But what in me is human had been boiled
and fused together in bubbling womb-water:
the primal male had swum towards the female
and had cocooned himself within her, sharing
blood and spirit to build a progeny, like
the baby hominid that stood just slightly
taller than his hulking parents and shuffled
around the shelter that his mother built him.

i'm not that user but i just dropped in to say "carmine fluttering" and "azure vista" sound to me like completely contrived phrases. i don't see their value.

On their own or in the context of the poem?

I'm throwing dried cereal at your bedroom window
pal around with me I'll take you to the movies or the aquarium
watching you watching the king krabs or cowboys crawl from one side to the other
watching you track the movement might be the perfect end to my miserable life

I'll just as well fall down a flight of stairs and crawl into the next life with my neck at a right angle
doomed to become a waiter, balancing plates on my left ear
I'll find you in the parking lot of olive garden one day
and blushing very slightly, say hey, lets catch a movie

Quite good, got any more?

Snow in Summer (Getting There)

It was an out-of-season snowfall:
A flurry of seeds, whisked by the air,
Sink and bob, as sunfish eggs
Rafting down a spring-thaw rill.

Sub-lime sunlight streams about the seeds,
And channels their sinuous meanderings.
Like the humble land’s supple bough^
To the sky’s sighs and the sea’s pleas.

The easterly ebb of slowly zephyrs
Tickles stems and trickle pad rapids.
As a prowling kingfisher ever years
For (up)drafts to rest his rowing wings.

Cumulonimbus plumes drift on the-
Breeze atop the westerly horizon;
Frothing on eddying cirrus wisps,
And stead’ly dousing the rising sun.

To avoid the lightening and thundering rain^
I hurriedly march to my nearby car.
I drive straight home and straight inside
Where I pace along my everyday.

Two days passed ‘til I return to wander.
Walking the water-felled woods, I wonder
Why I wore nice shoes,
And fear their sheen a thing to lose.
Quick to spring the waterlogged trees
Brainstorming of my weathered boots,
I fail to see, sailing aeronautically,
skimming over hundreds of emerging dandelions.

^lightening/lightning
^bough/bow

blackthorn pierce slowly
a familiar scent of rot
night air haunt me
despair in thought

creep into my life
only reveal lie
and no longer face
death breathless sigh

I'm gonna push you down
Into the river you left me to drown in
I'm not gonna stick around
To watch you burn your way to another man
I can't help but find
That you have lost to yourself this time
But I don't really mind,
You'll always be mine

i love you baby
dont say maybe

Boggling Froggle=dogs,
My whelp peeps for you.
Willard whines the castle doors.
My grind is at an end.
Poopy.

Shimmering dragonfly carapaces
Floating amongst the two whitish seas,
Sapphire, to complement the red veins,
Which so abysmally fractured that
White mass, symmetrically framed by the
Purple veined dunes underneath the two
Ovals with angular corners, the
Portals through which one might gaze upon
This tired, overworked countenance,
Just as they looked at themselves in the
Ghastly, misty morning mirror.

How sad you look
How melancholy your aqualescent sphere
You float downstream to an inevitable whirlpool
It’s maw silently agape, waiting.
You wish to be as I am
Not a curse I would wish upon anyone.
You believe I have all the answers
But in truth I have only infinite questions.
My stardust children, frolicking in your burning playpen
I have engineered thee, every curve concise.
And yet what else is one to do with such time?
Not ponder, as I had done for eons before
To not create, but instead to question.
If all things are created,
Then what hands once held me?
What infinitely nimble fingers molded me?
Tossed my very skin around as dough?
And set each single hair upon my head?
So confide. You are not alone in your questioning.
But alas, alone in all else.
You were my masterpiece
Perfect in all ways
Yet still I find myself unsatisfied.
I have given you all
But still you want more.
You make a mockery of my work
Bathe in the filth which you have wrought upon yourselves.
And love it.

In the beginning,
I sprinkled stars as carelessly as one might spill their drink
And flung oily, spurting galaxies
To the furthest reaches of that dreadful dark
Just to make it go away.
I know not what I feared
But indeed that is the route of ALL fear.
So alone you sail, your canvas windless,
Adrift.
Even now I doubt my very existence.
You are the light.
Do not journey to the stars,
You will find only darkness
Find solace that you are here,
And let those glittering orbs in the night sky
Be nothing but a backdrop
To those many glorious nights in the arms of one another.

And still you envy me?

My mind is a closet,
won't you cum inside?
I have all kinds of toys for us
made from plastics and woods..
What a beautiful time to be alive:
There's electronics in my buttplugs and they
vibrate my prostate.
I am the envy of all past human civilization

best poem here tbqhwy

8/10

6/10
You could do more if you're going to use this type of language, more complex rhyme schemes(in line rhymes?), maybe some sudden rythm stops. You're on the right track, experiment, have fun.

4/10
Untighten your asshole.

Not bad, 7/10
That said, read some of this aloud, some of the lines are awkward and don't transition too well, especially the higher ones. They honestly seem out of place with what you're trying to convey here.

2/10
Honestly bad imo
Seems like you really went along with the first thing that popped into your head and tried to pass it off as something meaningful.

You have to write poetry before you can write poetry about poetry.

The line breaks don't seem to have any poetic importance here, like you began a new one whenever the last one had enough words to make it look neat.

Don't be afraid to write long and short lines, especially with this type of poetry.

5/10

Mumfred man/10

The actions are very mundane. You're leaving the reader out if the thoughts. I feel like your conveying less than you think you are. Be more introspective with your poetry,

5/10

I don't quite understand why you're taking on a godlike presence at the beginning, and some of your language is rather bland, but overall it's good.
8/10

Fuck u

10/10

I'm
Thank you very much for the critique, but it's not that I broke a line when it had enough words to make it look neat, but when it had enough syllables to fit the meter (iambic pentameter). I can't write long and short lines because I'm strictly (usually) following a pattern.

>The actions are very mundane. You're leaving the reader out of the thoughts. I feel like your conveying less than you think you are. Be more introspective with your poetry.

Tbh I really just wanted to paint a pretty picture of nature.
The water theme is there to show how nature 'flows' to as it should be, and the contrast is the rigidity and of the characters actions and his bland/dry thoughts. That's about the all of it.
Did that not work? Any other tips?

How, exactly, is my asshole tight?

bump

'Ballad of a Socio'

Some say I am deluded
I'd say I'm insane
Wishing for what some call a miracle
Guess that means we're all the same.
Never thought I'd live to see
The world that we would make
All in all it's just the same,
Vanity in place of hate

And I know
This life could use a change
And I know
That we'd all much rather runaway
In this world of mine
Delivered by another lie

Some say I am offensive
I'd say I'm aggressive
Waiting for what they call opportunity
Guess that means I'm not successful,
Never thought I'd live to see
Passerbyes living through memories
All in all it's just the same,
Index finger shifting blame

And I'm gonna push you down
Into the river you left me to drown in
I'm not gonna stick around
To watch you burn your way through another chance
I cannot help but find
That you have lost to yourself this time
But I don't really mind,
You'll always be mine

I'm kissing your feet
While you're kicking up dust,
No I don't think there's much left of you
That I can trust.

I was told that I was boring.
Unwavering and static
Bark resting on an old and weathered tree,
So, in a strike of genius
I made myself as wide as an ocean,
And as deep as the sea.
I surrounded those who I had loved
Or those I had wanted to,
But felt no comfort,
Other than their warmth of their breath
As they drowned themselves in me.

>tfw your poetry is so bad it kills the thread

if i keep waiting i know someone will critique me ^w^

Hey guys, I'm a beginning writer, and I write in the style of Plath with the lyricism of Neutral Milk Hotel, and with an admiration for the grand themes of Tennyson, mainly about mental illness, UFOs, childhood trauma, and alchemy. I'm currently working on a series of poems that would document my experiences with electroshock treatment. Here is the first one:

docs.google.com/document/d/1LAUHFejL-dHRCUAPjp7CnBtxQ9zTFotIEmjsyjv-urg/edit

It is about me waiting for the treatment. Although it is my most ambitiously reaching project, it is my weakest one from a literary standpoint. These other two smaller poems are better:

docs.google.com/document/d/1UoJ3jHMvFRrjWkyKTOvsrTGzWEfDixoN1kU6QFSSsus/edit

I wrote this while I was in the mental hospital after I found out I was going to be transferred to a long-term residential facility and going to receive ECT.

docs.google.com/document/d/1ZySYYINi27qnkwBsmKmfwRhZLRtQ427UzhOcmNs-fWA/edit

I wrote this last year when I thought a lot about the occult, mythology, and alchemy.

drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bz7T9Cdaj9rGOS1zTHZ2TzNKZ1E

And here are the rest of my poems, but I don't recommend reading these because they're trash.

Anyway, I used to write all the time, but I would destroy my writing, so this is the first time I'm actually keeping, editing, and growing with my writing, which is why I have such a small body of work.

I really put my soul into these poems, so I would greatly appreciate and return all critique if it's wanted (I doubt I'm qualified to give the critique though).

Mountain Rain
Yawning blue clouds shade
in grey the heights as green
rolling hills remember their form
and the hearts they feed.
The rain reaches down and up
like ash burnt souls
gaping for spring.
The angels of wind
pit an unmoving Titan
against the Deus of new.

I hardly hear them now.
Just auditory clues,
cues to signal– keys to
slot in neuropaths and
drafts to notes to sheets to
this music. Peace in the
pieces– where I sit but
don't listen. These songs that
tend to sidle step in,
change some stone to flesh and
numb law to love. I want
rest but instead this sly
test sets in for the night.
I hardly hear them now.

So your poem has converging lines on the point that you no longer her these soft notes of calming beauty, but it has too many diverging lines, see:
>test
>neuropath
I think the poem has a good concept and good artistry but you are lacking enough convergence to actually hammer home a point. The poem could, with those points, mean that you lost music you love, mental illness (this test, what test?). You also dangerously give the songs the power to seat you, when the poems have a soffenting and relaxing property.

songs and not poems*

For whatever reason, this transformatiom doesn't work for me. There is no flow. Old bark-> sea
Honestly bark defends the innards of a tree, these are not contradicting items but emotionally inferior compliments so to say.
The poem has good writing in the beginning but then delineates into weaker prose. I would refocus on symbols that properly display meaning

Read your first poem
You are not a series of quiveling definitions with poetic defintion
as Wolfe would say you are exactly you, and that's your greatest sin.
Don't fall into that timely trap of writing "I am I am I am"
It's for feminists and cheap poets.
Look at the descriptions of the different aspect of the poem, do they actually amplify the poem or sound good?
Pound was genius because he realized that words can be wasteful. I would wager your poems would be extremely well received by the poetic crowd and the artist crowd. I think overall if you want to appeal to people that are poets and very much invested in the art form as their expression of life, you're doing a better job than all those shmucks. Your poems though -at a higher level- are inward focused and not literature. If you want the reader to be impacted teach me something.
Basically if I was a literary only focused 9/10 could do most MFA programs
As me judging purely on the my opinion 4/10
The third one is much weaker than the first but the feely "look deep at shit and weak brained" would love it

Thank you for your input user.

No problem. Though most people think I'm an idiot, take it lightly.

No, now that you point it out the flow really does not work. I actually started with the last three lines and work my way up, I just can't think of something that is dull and unchanging in relation to the ocean, sea side cliffs maybe?

Rate me Veeky Forums. I'm a newbie. Thanks

Our fingers touched
as you handed me the food
shouldn't that count as
a kiss?
You're already in my life
guiding my choices
will you remember our
anniversary, dear?
You have such
smooth skin, it'll be a
shame, if I never see you
again.

anyone?
its very short

horrible advice

your eyes are transfixed on a screenshot, a mirror, projecting false notions devoid of emotion. Just self preservation, met expectations speaking words without diction
atonal dictation

anhedonic believed strengthened by depression, terrified of death the unknowns not questioned just self immolation, sublimation, reincarnation or eternal damnation.

it's tentative lyrics for a song I'm writing any critiques would be greatly appreciated.

Really great criticism/feedback, thanks

Again, you're advice is great. Here's one of my first poems I wrote when I was a freshman in high school. It was published in a magazine. What do you think of this one?

docs.google.com/document/d/1lHE3Jl9jrwboDFAR4RjnvEkVRWTaTDUqd1E_kLDNfVo/edit

It's about nostalgia, bittersweet memories, and childhood.

For all the times that you rain on my parade
And all the clubs you get in using my name
You think you broke my heart, oh, girl for goodness' sake
You think I'm crying on my own. Well, I ain't

And I didn't wanna write a song
'Cause I didn't want anyone thinking I still care. I don't,
But you still hit my phone up
And, baby, I be movin' on
And I think you should be somethin' I don't wanna hold back,
Maybe you should know that

My mama don't like you and she likes everyone
And I never like to admit that I was wrong
And I've been so caught up in my job,
Didn't see what's going on
But now I know,
I'm better sleeping on my own

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I'm still holdin' on to somethin'
You should go and love yourself

And when you told me that you hated my friends
The only problem was with you and not them
And every time you told me my opinion was wrong
And tried to make me forget where I came from

And I didn't wanna write a song
'Cause I didn't want anyone thinking I still care. I don't,
But you still hit my phone up
And, baby, I be movin' on
And I think you should be somethin' I don't wanna hold back,
Maybe you should know that

My mama don't like you and she likes everyone
And I never like to admit that I was wrong
And I've been so caught up in my job,
Didn't see what's going on
But now I know,
I'm better sleeping on my own

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I'm still holdin' on to somethin'
You should go and love yourself

For all the times that you made me feel small
I fell in love. Now I feel nothin' at all
And never felt so low when I was vulnerable
Was I a fool to let you break down my walls?

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I'm still holdin' on to somethin'
You should go and love yourself

'Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think (you think) that I'm (that I'm) still holdin' on (holdin' on) to somethin'
You should go and love yourself

someone pls critique

I can see how it'd be a little confusing- the poem is about the songs I listen to every night before going to sleep (same three songs for three years now), and how the time I spend listening to them slides away from me, and I barely remember the songs themselves, only experiencing their effect on me.

Her eyes sat half closed
Her lips pursed, forward, dripping with an irony
It was thick and full and sheltering
Every act a way to distance
Smoke thickened around her
It was safer in the haze
Like Bromden and so many before him
Was her smile at least real?
She wouldnt like to be called her.

Most of your writing hinges on these similes that are very clever. I note that most of the similes though could be argued against to meaningless, but the art community argue for meaning to give themselves a job to do.

I like the poem overall and style wise it's fine, but you're using your words as sets of words
every
single
word
has
chickens
they
hatch.
Focus on the power of individual words and you'll write more meaningfully

>someone pls critique
doesn't critique anyone

write in English plz
brevity does not increase quality of content
not yours? don't post it.
it was cute it gave me feels
I don't think you think this is good
wrong thread
-5/10
>>>>>>>>>>>>tumblr
are you?
I think you need to reevaluate some things famalam this read creepy af

Light and dark. I guess that's what I feel
the light and bright, whenever we talk, the dark and hollow, whenever we stop
it's a nice feeling, getting to know each other, knowing that you smile
even if it's just for a while

bad pop song

yeah i know it sucks, it was the first time i started writing, but ah well, never throw away from where you have come.