Poems

Can I have a look at this?

good stuff man, read it out loud and it was a smooth ride. Only line i actually kinda didn't like was the last one. might sound better in portuguese though.

i wrote this last night.

O, Daedalus, Daedalus,
Your labyrinth where,
Old linear slaughter
Stays fresh in the air
Yonder in Athens,
Oblations are found,
Their frail spotted hands,
Till Crete copper bound.

Daedalus, Daedalus,
Do tell me thee
Did tears cool the fire
For your kin drowned at sea

What do you dislike about it? I'm always looking to improve a piece.

bump for (you) senpai

as OP, im very happy i made this thread, damn

Why?

Great poem. I really like the imagery and writing in general, like "its glass again to sand," and the fact that it all consistently communicates an interesting theme really completes it.

In the reflection the locks of untamed hair
An insurrection
Water falls
Washing dry what does not want to be
Her glass eyes follow you
But she isn't there
A figment
Only something that could be in another time
Phrasing, my dear
Why do I
You laugh
I smile and feel like crying too
Moments that last forever, feelings fade so fast that once burned like a graphite rod
This pencil only in mind tells the story of no one
Some one you know

are we still doing phrasing?

I misread "old" as "odd" and kinda liked it better that way. Daedalus has a great sound to it. I think there's potential here. Find a multisyllable rhyme with Daedalus, maybe?
Beef up the metaphors in some of the lines. "But she isn't there" is weak, for example. The idea is pretty neat. You can get something from revision.

Tell me if this isn't too obvious.

Sage: Just, Wise

If should no single more critique reveal,
If lend no further snide remark nor curse,
At once have thine alone have reached appeal
And even'd every debt, or reimbursed;
If God allows a seventh serpent's zeal,
If Luce denies a mourning by the hearth,
At last found thou the everlasting meal
And lessened mortal coil's scorn by Earth.
Lest time hath cornered thou, as if to jest:
Upon thine newly found abysmal creed,
What say, you sage? At us, we plead, suggest!
Do leave thine high command for us to heed.
Alas, thine wisdom echo'd through the void,
Had not a single tennant seen deployed.

If you notice, the poem is like a palindrome. The title, "Anna", reads the same backwards. Backwards, same the reads... Anna, title the palindrome, a like is poem notice. You, if

Maybe put Anna in between the stanzas? Leave it uncapitalized for extra effect?

Regret

Labyrinths inside my dome
Closely resemble a hive
Where horrid creatures like to roam
And nothing seems alive.

Walking through its corridors,
I saw a ghost strolling loose.
It seemed to be a foreigner,
Its character I tried to deduce.

Many alike I had already seen.
None were as ugly or strong.
It kept writing: "you have sinned",
On the dark walls all along.

Attempts to soothe it were fruitless -
They magnified its passion.
Every wall is painted now, yes,
I'm stuck here as its ration.

Could you give me an example of ways to "beef up the metaphors"? I consider myself more of a songwriter than poet. Thanks for the feedback. I attempted to make it somewhat better:

In the reflection locks of untamed hair, an insurrection
Water falls, washing dry what does not want to be
Her glass eyes follow, a figment
Only something that could be in another time
You laugh, I smile and feel like crying too
Moments that last forever, feelings fade so fast that once burned like a carbon rod
This pencil only in mind tells the story of no one, someone you know

LIVER ULTRASOUND

The room is small and dark.
Charcoal smears the walls
As she walks and breaks what
Little light dances from the crack
Under the exam room door.
Watch the ceiling roll down
As I lay back and she mans the
Machine beside me. It hums alive.

“Pull up your shirt”, she says softly.
I tug it close to my skin, up to my chest
Slowly revealing my belly;
It’s little hairs and stretchmarks alone
In the air-conditioned room. I count pocks
In the ceiling tile.

The technician spreads the warm gel
Over my hillock, her bulbous instrument
Her proxy and I imagine it could be her hand,
But it isn’t. Belly rises and falls with
Encumbered breath. She pokes her instrument
Into my folds and swells and I feel it’s cold machinery.

Then the lights come on. She hands
Me a towel to wipe away the gel.
“That’s it?” “That’s it.”
Her eyes never leave the clipboard.
Then she walks out
And I remain to work refuse from my body.

I've spent the lifetime making up my mind to be
More than the measure of what I thought others could see
Good luck and fast bucks are too far and too few between
Catalog buyers and old five and dimers like me.

She stood beside me letting me know she would be
Something to lean on when everything ran out on me
Fenced yards ain't hole cards and like is not never will be
Reason for rhymers and old five and dimers like me.

It's taking me so long and now that I know I believe
All that I do or say is all I ever will be
Too far and too high and too deep ain't too much to be
Too much ain't enough for old five and dimers like me.

they
stopped selling my
favourite cigarettes
and

these new ones i
bought
i
inhale them
until the tar covers the
bottom of my lungs and
still i
don’t get the same rush
those old ones
gave me

(he isn’t you)

lmao is this a serious effort?

Many of you have posted beautiful writing. I've only written a handful of poems in my life, but I don't ever read them. Where do you all get the moxxy to post them? Do you write them because you like writing or did something specific inspire these poems?

I love it.

The anonymity helps. There's no social pressure to say, "wow! What a great poem," see, you never have to pull your punches. Even further, if your poem is garbage... no shame!

Why'd everyone sleep on my sonnet?

What inspired me to write this poem was the regret of something I didn't do. I tried to capture the awful soup of feelings associated with it. I find it hard to write poetry without inspiration, they always come out lacking something - maybe because I'm used to loading poems with emotions.

Here's another one, though not as good I suppose.

Weak, strong, right or wrong:
Such concepts to the mind belong.
There's little beside consequent reactions
Following the choices of actual actions.

Two doors stand on a quicksand,
The choice in which I currently reside.
One of them offers a promised land
The other might forsakenly misguide

There's to be more to decisions than logical contribution -
It once forsoke me into regret and no chance of retribution;
So far no answers the horizons of rational has provided
To the drag of heart towards the path irrational and misguided.

bump

Emo song tier

Desperate and falling now
Tripping over lies that I made
Can't give up on the past
It's the center of everything I say.

This would go down well at a Slam Poetry reading.

Can I have some other opinions on my sonnet?

>The wheat of friendship forged in carnal bread;

doesn't make sense in this context

>sun that solves icebergs

meh.. not sure about this phrase.. try to put it differently

>Emptiness in the me, in the us infinity

just doesn't work, really

>The coma of reason; desire made tyrant;
I like this

summary: needs work

too short and cliche

You fuck grammar up too much for me to enjoy this poem (yes I know it's intentional). Some rhythms are a bit of a squeeze there as well.

---

Grey air is thick with diffracted adverts,
plastic rainbows that fall through gutters,
through the blood-brain barrier,
osmosing with psychosis.

Teenagers huddle on a park bench
despite blue-sky warmth, transmitting
time's passage in a smoke-signal,
laughing at shapes in clouds
as if they couldn't strike lightning.

Constellations float on silence's surface tension
as the ocean sleeps, drifting in ripples
from the back of a humpback whale as it breathes.

Watch as potential turns to certainty,
dichotomies conquer possibility
and waves appear as particles.

A mirror in darkness is the most truthful.

Paper Ladder

They stare and laugh mockingly
Vapid rotten perfect heads
Downstream of consciousness
Runs red again

But compress your side
Protect your pride
Push out the shame in a sigh
Death throes of your ego

Feedback in ambiguous clutter
Influence eyelashes flutter
If not for thankless servitude
Then crushing contempt

Later essays of virulent virility
A peek through the curtain of civility
Accept your genes are better for all
What am I if not dirt on a cave wall

>Later essays of virulent virility
A peek through the curtain of civility

5

the sky was yellow with a hint of pink
maybe it rained smelling of tangerine
but i can't tell whichever way
it's time to sleep my spoil

(a man sees a tree and walks right past it
a bluebird is perched on a high ball basket
it looks down lordly on the other birds
and the man is safe in loss of his words)

and i'm just too tired to tell it strong
i'll wait my hundred words apiece
refuse to some use give somnambulant
relief from this hellish continent

the start of a short poem for my pregnant friend. is this a good start? was thinking of adding just one more stanza.

Never have I seen so fortitudinous a flower
Blossom from such sudden fertility.
Never have I heard so sonorous a sound
That has plucked at the heart within me.

Fourteen, ten, eleven, nine. Syllables are feeling a bit awkward here.

One idea is back pedalling on those adjectives and adverbs. It all feels kinda vague.

Another thing you might wanna try is hijacking that dope anapestic meter of the last line and polishing the rest of the lines in the same way. Consider an alternating pattern of four foot lines and three foot lines.

"That has PLUCKED at the HEART within ME"

This line has the best rhythm of the whole sample, but I had to reread to feel it! The cumbersomeIt'll feel very Seuss-like if you do it right, and I feel like that's appropriate.

For example:

As the last of the ducklings had headed back home,
And the birds had now latched to their nests,
All the hearts of the boys and the girls on the roam
Only now had completed their quests.

I believe in you, user. We'll make a poet of you yet.

CRITIQUE THE SJW SONNET YOU DINGUSES
please.

Quoted the wrong one. Fuck

This one. Look at this one. Please.

Bound to the image of men we need
Never to be mine
Never to be me,
Entitled to discourage what we don’t like,
Roadkill on the side,
Drilled into my mind.

Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.

Of what we believe to be the natural state
Turned, burned and confined
To the view of something greater than
What is it we find in each other,
Despite these inclusions evidence suggests
That we don’t want anything to actually change at all
But we have the nerve to throw others away
When they aren’t what we believe we deserve.

not good. funny if intentional

Within me isn't anapestic,

r9k tier

Within does have its own stress but it is weaker than the long e sound of "me", I would argue that it is

If the rest of the poem was, it'd be more likely to be read that way. That was sort of what I was saying

>If the rest of the poem was, it'd be more likely to be read that way
It's be a bit of an irregularity, but I agree.
fortitudinous mess this poem up p bad.

looks shakespearean

Nobody?

well done

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows, look up.
Red stream wetting the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and be reclaimed.

Fingers of the unsullied hand, dip into cupped,
precious gore now lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the vehicle of flesh but challenge
the master, with shape and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, where letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,
but in the corners of the mind– lorn and fey–
that no thoughts reach.

Sedent in the dark now, decoration done, painted,
in that ink shared common to beast and borne.
Cryptic signs play and whisper as they dry,
set in memory without meaning, so now to rest,
to nest, to lay in the dark, to chase those mad signs,
to dream.

Sometimes our decision-making is challenged by the choices we're faced to make. I'm not sure whether you intended to or not but I found it interesting how subtly the poem portrayed the dualistic nature of men - heart vs rationality and logic. Do or do not, think rationally or not, you may still end up being wrong no matter your choice.
Not that the poem is bad, it's a fine piece, but I think the messege you're trying to convey is richer than the structure and rhythm of the poem.

tl:dr great messege, ok flow.

These Anons should feel ashamed of themselves.

As poets, I believe, we are weak to feeling superior to others. Because we put words in lines, or something. If anything, don't let that extend to fellow poets. Read the thread. Offer critique, praise, or questioning to at least a single poem before posting.

I'm jealous, dude. Reads like Sandburg. He's my favorite.

I was writing a poem but I lost steam. Would've been right here. Maybe next time.

The images can be grouped into two clusters:

Love: pollen that the rose of the heart creates;
The wheat of friendship forged in carnal bread;
A sun that solves icebergs and warms the chest;
Human carbon harmonized in diamond;
The heavens when in the human clay they make their nest;
Flesh and blood hosting a god as an inhabitant;

a narcotic harp;
Virus that inflames the soul in honey; the milk of joy;
A tempest in which the thunders have teeth of satin;
Drunkenness of ambrosia and cirrhotic corrosion;
That submerges in ocean; fruit and thorn;
The coma of reason; desire made tyrant;

Basically the whole poem is mere alternation of images – one that aims at the rising transcendent quality of love. You even use three variants that basically say the same thing (clay, flesh & blood, carbon transmuting into something higher).

The other alternation is the idea of love having a destructive quality as well. Virus, tempest, drunken-ness, thorn, desire made tyrant.

The last two lines actually build up something different, although not too different from the main cluster. “Tender whispers under sheets” is a cliché, and it only becomes slightly subversive when contrasted with the other imagery because it stands as a starker description rather than a metaphor, but it doesn’t do much else.

‘Road of roads’ is a shift from the rest of the poem because it actually draws out to the idea of ‘struggle’ rather than merely alternating between the clusters, and that’s the part that I like the most.

The line about ‘emptiness in me’ is different, but quite standard, given that tons of poets have drawn on this Taoist kind of thing. The way you use it, describing love, isn’t anything special compared to something like “the nothing that is not there…” that comes at the end of Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man.

Overall, I would rate it okay at best. If I were harsher I would throw it in the bin. There is not really a good build-up and it becomes repetitious in sentiment although the imagery is varied. It may possibly be better in the original language due to lyricism, but that is merely a stylistic boost, while the structure itself is stuck to that limit. Shakespeare’s “My mistress eyes” does a better job at the build-up and the twist at the end.

Rather than merely list out disjunctive images, try to make it such that every stanza creates a totally new layer of feeling or meaning. Shakespeare’s sonnet starts out with physical descriptions, then builds up to witty couplet subversions of romantic clichés – and shifts from physical to sensual and divine (music and goddess), before ending with his final turn. Yours tosses and turns in between varied but ultimately homogeneous images before having a muted twist at the end.

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows, look up.
Red stream wetting the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and be reclaimed.

Comments: Good, hallucinogenic, and interesting. I especially like how it shifts by the third line.

Fingers of the unsullied hand, dip into cupped,
precious gore now lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the vehicle of flesh but challenge
the master, with shape and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, where letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,
but in the corners of the mind– lorn and fey–
that no thoughts reach.

Comments: Using “blood to write words” is pretty much a cliché. I even remember seeing someone posting a poem here before about spraying “bile on paper”. You make it different by giving it a ‘ritualistic’ kind of feeling. The ending is kind of weak though. In the third last line you have that equating something with nothing thing that I critiqued over here, and you develop it over 3 lines. Really, it can probably be condensed.

Sedent in the dark now, decoration done, painted,
in that ink shared common to beast and borne.
Cryptic signs play and whisper as they dry,
set in memory without meaning, so now to rest,
to nest, to lay in the dark, to chase those mad signs,
to dream.

Comments: This stanza doesn’t seem like much different from the last one. Only a variation in that it’s more ‘muted’. But it also starts with the blood and then shifts over into the ‘abstract level’ of mind/signs/memory. The ending I don’t like, because it’s definitely a cliché and doesn’t do much to propel the previous stanza.

There’s also a lot of excessive modifiers that can be cut

My edited version would be something like this:

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows,
Red wets the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and reclaim.

Fingers of the hand, dip into cupped,
precious gore, lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the flesh but challenge the master,
with shape and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, where letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,

Cryptic signs play and whisper as they dry,
set in memory so now to rest,
sedent in the black now, decoration done,
to lay in the dark, to dream mad, to nest.

R8 my poems M8s

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

6-7/10

Once you take away the lyricism, all this poem is is a shitty Hallmark card poem. That’s the limit of lyricism. And most of it is repetitious of the more famous Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Cliches:

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;

(All these are the same old clichés in Christian style poetry)

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;

(this sentiment is repeated 3 times and is a mere variant on the above)

No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;

(generic ‘silence of death’ type shit.

Self-fellating imagery for its own sake without much contribution beyond pizzaz

With the man in the wind and the west moon;
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
And the unicorn evils run them through;

Either you're retarded or Dylan Thomas has risen from the dead and started trolling /lit.

Grey air is thick with diffracted adverts,
plastic rainbows that fall through gutters,
through the blood-brain barrier,
osmosing with psychosis.

Teenagers huddle on a park bench
despite blue-sky warmth, transmitting
time's passage in a smoke-signal,
laughing at shapes in clouds
as if they couldn't strike lightning.

Comment: Lame and reads like shitty po-mo prose trying to masquerade as poetry with line-breaks. The metaphors are all that kind of William Gibson, Don Delilio or Mashall McLuhan bullshit. It also doesn’t have the high lyricism of Hart Crane.

Constellations float on silence's surface tension
as the ocean sleeps, drifting in ripples
from the back of a humpback whale as it breathes.

Comment: Non-sequitur imagery for its own sake. Just because the ‘whale’ image corresponds with the ‘ocean’ image – there is no follow from the previous two stanzas, so it merely becomes excess.

Watch as potential turns to certainty,
dichotomies conquer possibility
and waves appear as particles.

Comment: throwing out a reference to quantum physics doesn’t make you cool, especially when there is no follow-up from the last few stanzas.

A mirror in darkness is the most truthful.

Comment: The old kind of oxymoronic style preening. Obscurity = Clarity, Hatred = Love, War = Peace. This is the most abused kind of ending to make one seem as though one is reaching towards the ‘unexplainable unknown’

When writing it you must have thought something like “Oh, I’m gonna make like the microcosm into the macrocosm by starting out with ‘small-scale’ and turning it into ‘large-scale’ – then I’m going to end it with an oxymoronic statement about reality to make it seem as though I’m touching onto some kind of hidden hermetic truth!”

The problem is that every Modernist poet and their mother has already touched on this kind of structure, and adding electronic or sciency imagery doesn’t help at all. Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man is the most notable example, but his is well structured and lyrical and doesn’t try to pull off the lame shit that yours is pulling.

Compare this with Sunday Morning by Stevens

poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/13261

Especially this part with the last stanza:

She says, “But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.”
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

or

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

Compared to Dylan Thomas' generic sentiments which is all that struggle through life and hope for revival stuff, Stevens-level abstraction and rumination about the nature of Mythic Paradise after death simply kills it dead, and that's not the only thing that Sunday Morning encompasses.

MOTH LOST IN A LABORATORY

A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.
Swarmed, such creature’s willful sounded plight
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Do the eyes not soften upon the tile,
among the whimsical gesture-sifted flight?
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.

Aside a wall, tilted wings, brazen, while
nearing investigation: a severed sight
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Toward the cosmos, artificial light files
between air’s shifting flee into flight.
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.

In landing, where the dishroom is, docile,
it commands, dashing spans of whispered height,
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Textured wings, swift in horizontal style,
cross tethered interiors of light.
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles,
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

And death shall have no dominion is about immortality you fool

The first stanza is about immortality through loved ones, the second about immortality through your actions on the world and the third from the POV of the dead.

A jeweled harp
A thousand bloodless pigs descend
After ruled, rotten under a tarp
Newly wed, yet progenitors weep
For the soon dead
Let us watch the orbiters
Dance, merry-make glorious
Fuck you
I'm Chuck Norris

thank you friend!
I'll be sure to stick to the meter you advised and cut back (or change) these adjectives.

>lame
um, okay?
>William Gibson, Don Delilio or Mashall McLuhan.. Hart Crane
Not familiar with any of those

>Non-sequitur imagery for its own sake. Just because the ‘whale’ image corresponds with the ‘ocean’ image – there is no follow from the previous two stanzas, so it merely becomes excess.
incorrect
the first two stanzas are actually not linked to each other (through my theme they are but you know what I mean). I'm presenting different scenes, though they are all pertinent.

>throwing out a reference to quantum physics doesn’t make you cool, especially when there is no follow-up from the last few stanzas.
this is a retarded comment..

>Comment: The old kind of oxymoronic style preening. Obscurity = Clarity, Hatred = Love, War = Peace. This is the most abused kind of ending to make one seem as though one is reaching towards the ‘unexplainable unknown’

That's not what I'm doing at all. You missed the point of the poem, friendo.

I'm not going to bother explaining myself because you don't care.

>The problem is that every Modernist poet and their mother has already touched on this kind of structure, and adding electronic or sciency imagery doesn’t help at all. Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man is the most notable example, but his is well structured and lyrical and doesn’t try to pull off the lame shit that yours is pulling.

mate I'm a physics student. It's how I see the world. I see no reason to keep it separate from poetry.

I don't think I've ever received a critique on here that was so thorough and apt, thank you. I'll definitely be taking quite a few of these observations to heart.

I'm glad that the ritualistic aspect came across well in the poem. The subject matter is, after all, a sort of personal ritual that arose mostly by accident.

Hello.

Thank you very much for your accurate and careful analysis of my poem. I am very honored that you have dedicated your time and to attention to something that I produced. A pity you did not like it that much; I have other, more organized sonnets, but I do not have them here with me now to translate and post. This one was a specific experiment, this is the reason for an uninterrupted sequence of metaphors and concepts on the same subject (in this case, Love). I wanted to produce something like the sonnet Prayer by George Herbert:

Prayer (I)
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

Thank you once again for your help.

Since when did I say it wasn't about that?

I said it said it in a cliched way.

>that's not what I'm doing at all

I don't care what you're attempting to do. I'm merely telling you that even if that's not what you're aiming for, your poetry has the same trappings as a thousand other people who have done the same thing.

>I see no reason to keep it separate from poetry

Neither do I, but the reference doesn’t hold itself – it must have grand meaning. Poetry is communication. A monk ruminating on the Trinity like Donne can splurge all about his scholastics if he wants, but Donne is great simply because he uses those references to build up to something else.

Here are two examples of poems which use Scientific references

BEAUTY BARE
What Turing knew is that 1 or 2 were more
than mere numbers, beauties, or markers of place,
laying powerless and prone in their own space,
nonexistent till pondered by computers,
organic or not, for the subtle motions
of emotions belonging to them, in shifts
of state. Anyone can relate to the drift
of numerals, from the infinite oceans
of conscious thoughts, where no regions of the heart
can distinguish dyspeptic pepperonis
from insights, that change the worlds we think and see,
or that they create. What Turing knew is that
science is sense made reason, that 1 or 2
are tools, and you are the memories of you.

What about yours? Where’s the twist of the concept? The play of ideas?

A person can write poetry about Pop culture, Philosophy, History, Religion, Science etc… but there is literally no point in writing if these elements are not subservient to the communication in a powerful way. Even if I know your poem is about the collapse of the wave-function and shit like that, why should I care if you give me nothing to care about? Poetry isn’t just specifics laced with weird imagery.

>the first two stanzas are actually not linked to each other (through my theme they are but you know what I mean). I'm presenting different scenes, though they are all pertinent.

Of course I can see the ‘connection’ – but there’s simply none of that buildup and addition in the way that really great poems can pull-off.

Have you read Robinson Jeffers’ Margrave? You can see it over here: poemhunter.com/poem/margrave/

That is a massive poem that dives out and contemplates the world, then dives in on a certain scene, ruminates on biological determinism, dives out again, contemplates on death, philosophical pessimism etc… with disjunct scenes – all while building up this narrative of a doctor being condemned for murder. It also uses scientific imagery.

But yours has: diffracted adverts, plastic rainbows, blood-brain barrier, blue-sky warmth, laughing at the shape of clouds etc… etc…

The preciousness is so obvious.

Incidentally, this is my edit:

Air thick with diffracted adverts,
osmosing with psychosis.
time's passage in a smoke-signal,
as if it couldn't strike lightning.

A mirror in darkness is most truthful.

Constellations on silence's surface tension
as the ocean sleeps, drifting in ripples
Watch as potential turns to certainty,
dichotomies conquer possibility
and waves appear as particles.

I actually really like this.

I am a stupid fucking asshole
Who’s never understood how to make that cash flow
I’ve had a whole lotta bad luck
Bugs in the bed where I don’t get enough love
Bad decisions, desertions of sick minions
Turned into the mother of many
Held together with thick pinions.
I’m still dusty in the shark tank
Fucking a million holes in your opinions.

I was born to tear apart
I was laughing to myself at the start
Of something a little less ominous
But the hyde side resurfaced
And filibustered your fucking omnibus

I was born to break your heart
I am pushing a heavy cart
Invite your whole family
I’m hosting the greatest lark
In the history of world, sing bird sing
Forgot the whole homily
Became something of an anomaly, sting bee sting
I’m not even looking for a bandaid
To fix this broken wing
I am a thing done dubious
I am the king of bad intentions
My throne I dipped in blood
Of the enemies I never mentioned

I am a thing done dubious.
Against my will against my will
I am the pill you take
When you can no longer kill
Take life to live, I say
And blow the whole place up
When you enter the dire fray.

Could anyone recommend some kind of poetry guide to me, preferably an online one?

It's just that I want to start reading poetry but I have never been taught stuff like verse and meter and whatnot.

Thank you very much x

Freestyle rap. I'm serious.

If you can match the words to a beat, you can sense meter. Try to grab any book, put on a random instrumental beat, and try to read the book such that you land the beats on the stresses.

Lighter poets would probably be some of Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Dickinson, Countee Cullen, Robert Frost, ee cummings (experimental, but his verse itself is very light), any major haiku master (Basho, Issa)

You also have to get past Shakespeare of course.

Also recommended is Du Fu, although the translation isn't lyrical. But all of his poems can be found here degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/246946

>Even if I know your poem is about the collapse of the wave-function and shit like that

It's more to do with how perceptions can change and still be valid, how reality is what we perceive; it is limited by our axioms/ the system we use. Wave-particle duality is an aspect of that.

I think I could have done it better, I agree.

> none of that buildup and addition in the way that really great poems can pull-off

I see.

>Have you read Robinson Jeffers’ Margrave?

No, thanks for the rec. I'm enjoying it.

I think I'll try again.. I clearly wasn't articulate enough.

I don't like this but anyway, thanks for the criticism. It's by far the most useful I've had in one of these threads.

Dear Leona

Please tell me
You don't hate to read.

Please tell me
If you have a selfie
With the Eiffel Tower
You don't think you know everything
About France.

Please tell me
You know Hungary
Isn't a town in Poland.

Please tell me
You know there are differences
Between boys and boys
And there are differences between fun and fun
Just as much as there are differences
Between being funny or ridiculous.

Please tell me
You have more ambitions
Than to find an idiot
Who buys you drinks
And in exchange
You let him have sex with you
From time to time.

And please tell me
What can cure
My brutal hangover.

A blossoming major triad
Graceful in its adagio
Unperturbed in its consonance
Free from distractions of the concert hall

Atonal density
Manic progression
G#m11
Impromptu, Chromatic and confused

A grandiose fugue
Seemingly infinite allegro
C major
Fully believing itself to be the only music

The score is blank
Measures beg for signature

This is your suite
Aleatoric
Littered with fermatas
Accidentals

Cadence

fine

What?

Petrine and Latin

Head to toe, pursed lips around a rosy bud;
Divinity a kiss planted on wet, pink petals.

the grief of the early riser
is bound to his company ,
who wars with the lonely phantoms of his dreams
who braves the hallows of his fears
which, by your mark
fades into the dusk
like a cloud imposed upon a gaze of stars.
Like the rainy blades of green
and the dewy mists of morning,
how they cloud my sight.
As is the fogginess of dawn.

on a morning so gracious
to bring our connection to mind.
Nudging at my shoulder, pointing to you
adorned and on display.
Painted with a brush so new and fine.
And the wind carries the scent:
what a warm alarm it is to wake to
and be reminded
that I'm embraced and accompanied
day in and day out

for all its humours,
reacquaintance
has found us furnished at the heart,
burning behind the eyes.
On fire with the same force
that lights the sunrise.
Soothing
like the smell after rainfall
before the heat of the day
has a chance to meet my cheek

how warm it is to see
the thawing of the damp,
smoothening the coarseness
of the early hours as they
burn, torrid
with the same fever that struck
the embers once
glowing shyly
by our toes

This was pretty cool. A bit out of my school so I can't quite offer substantive critique but some parts felt a bit jarring or out of place, like the word "seemingly". I felt like that screwed with the pacing and threw me off for a half second.

No profundity to be found here but I like it's adolescent charm it's got goin on.

This is some hot, hot garbage

I enjoy the repitition and imagery here. Also some is lost on me. Substance of the spiral and horizontonal in style are terms I'm just not buying and don't seem to have any clear denotation they could be referring to here. Weird choices in diction are bringing this down a notch.

gimmicky, it's unimpressive in its actual content. give me words, user. focus less on doing something and more on writing something

clichéd, very much so. you seem to be emulating, keep doing what you're doing but be less direct about it. don't take the things you like from older poems, adapt them. canvas, rising sun, shadow etc very clichéd, tired. cute imagery but not good imagery.

kitsch, in my humble. too contemporary but not new. i don't know what to say except that you'd do good to read some poetry, both more classical and i think you'd benefit from an imagist like pound or rilke

same as above, very kitsch. there's not much poem about it, to me.

you're trying. it is difficult to walk the balance between uh "classical" and contemporary in a way that comes off neither pretentious or undisciplined. just keep practicing, and keep reading.

4chanlit.wikia.com/poetry

this was written exactly for you

>gimmicky
yeah, it's a form I'm not ready for, but I'm working on it.
thanks for the feedback

>the lonely phantoms of his dreams
>the hallows of his fears
>like a cloud imposed upon a gaze of stars.
>Like the rainy blades of green
>and the dewy mists of morning,.
>on a morning so gracious
>And the wind carries the scent:

>and be reminded
>that I'm embraced and accompanied

>burning behind the eyes.
>lights the sunrise
>like the smell after rainfall

>the embers once
>glowing shyly
>by our toes

Why would you do this to me?

These are the most horrendous violations of genericism, but the rest edges into it.

Edit:
the grief of the early riser
is bound to his company,
who with phantoms war lonely
but, by your mark
fades into the dusk
and fogginess of dawn

on a morning to bring connection
you, adorned on display
painted with fine brush
what a warm alarm to wake to
(a wind, carries the scent)
and to be reminded

for its humors, our acquaintance
is furnished in the heart
(embraced, and accompanied)
how warm it is to see
the thawing into damp
of the early hours

they burn, torrid,
the embers once glowed
they glowed by our toes
soothing, after rainfall
the day meets my cheek

The first stanza has two parts, the ‘grief of the early riser’ and the awakening section. The problem is that there are so many repetition of this sentiment and shitty pastoral imagery that anyone can come up with. Poetry is about the most power in the least amount of words, and so, you have already committed so many violations to that rule. Thus, all that dreck is cut out.

The second stanza is meh, but it’s functional, and leads up into a standard ‘I am happy to meet you’ shit. Neruda laughs at your face. Rather than lead up to that generic conclusion, I let it linger a bit before edging it in within the next stanza.

In the third stanza, burning with the power of sunrise is lame, and soothing smell of rainfall is dreck. I bet several hundred others have already abused those combinations in their many permutations.

Finally, it is also a generic thing to try and ‘funnel feeling’ by ending with a stanza that grows smaller and smaller into a brief impression. Over here, your rainfall sentiments hit a better purpose when it’s laid at the ending, because its carries more weight. Also, rather than end on the minor sentiment of ‘we recall our adolescent love’ and shit like that, it is better to leave the feeling floating a bit in ambiguity.

in some thousand hours i'll be gone,
but the earth will still keep spinning.
rivers will rage, winds will wail,
life will linger on.
and although my body will lie interred
cold, dead and scored
my soul will soar to such great heights
that i will rule the world

Thank you for that, young blood. I like your rendition.

If you’re aiming for a gimmick poem, be leaner and wordplay more.

Edit:

Seraph, glancing
With eyes –
Her attention burned
Love last.

Lass-love
Burned, attention her
Eyes width
Glancing seraphs.

The obligation of angst poetry to be higher than its station is to be equal parts self-effacing, which, at least, shows the knowledge of clarity

Edit:

Dear Leona

Please tell me
You don't hate to read.

And you know a selfie
With the Eiffel Tower
Isn’t everything in France.
Nor is Hungary
A Polish town

And you know there are differences
Between boys and boys
Just as the differences between fun and fun
Just as much the differences between ridicule and fun

And you have more ambitions
Than time to time
Letting have sex
Who buys you drinks
And drinks you in fun

And please tell me,
In exchange
(My brutal hangover)
What can cure
You.

An Idiot

BACHELOR CREED

Girls with pink slips
Bring my conscription
But I’ll fight with my life
To make wars of attrition

I’ll never say those
Altared words
What I lose, I lose
But my gains have their worth

Teens with long socks
Up to their thighs
Flatter my heart
But I bite my tongue
I long, I long
But love snakes in my tongue

You’ll be needy for self
Then I’ll be too
We’ll sit on the shelf
We’ll play love for a fool

Even though white angels
With fishing-pole dangles
Bless our parallels
With perpendicular angles

But I’ll tide against junctions
I’ll avoid you in the street
My love of my life
I hope we don’t meet

you cut some bone with the fat but yeah. Also the puns destroy the constriction of the form. I'm definitely a work in progress however.

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.

the pupil postmodern
in falling out before the veered sky...
audible the velocity, rill abide
emerging dismissed fro the
gaseous plane of tide,
descending, individual
yet perpetual o, they dive...

This fucking sucks. It doesn't even rhyme.

Gives the illusion of substance.

The user you're praising did the same exact thing as the rest of us; posted a poem without critiquing.

will comment, but I can't even make heads or tails of this
>audible the velocity, rill abide
is worded especially strangely. why is "the" even there? to keep a semblance of iambs? that comma and "velocity, rill abide" is such a halting rhythm anyway.
I don't feel like 'fro' adds anything worthwhile that from wouldn't.

write ten more poems and then come back to this one. It's very rhyme-y whim-y.
Altared words is a good phrase, and so is 'love snakes in my tongue'.

here's mine: I'm currently unhappy with the last two stanzas (particularly the last).

While waiting for a God as patient as a tree,
I move upon the waters, stirring quiet wells,
The rust of waiting, waiting slowly breaking me.

I carve these waves in silence, cut for royal We,
A gentle spray of newly fractured swells,
While waiting for a God as patient as a tree.

The dewey spray a sheet, a coat, a gift from Sea,
To mask eroding salts in shining fluid knells,
The rust of waiting, waiting slowly breaking me.

I glide across the waters rising as I ski,
To beach on barren shore and dry in tepid hell,
While waiting for a God as patient as a tree.

A wash of sand that covers dripping streak of sea,
The grooves a grainy chain, please feel my coat of braille,
The rust of waiting, waiting slowly breaking me.

You hear my baleful shriek? My shade’s attempt to plea?
Against the roaring sea it’s but tinkled bells.
While waiting for a God as patient as a tree,
The rust of waiting, waiting slowly breaking me.

I'm liking these poems guys. Keep it up!

Defenestration of Prague

The lush grasslands Bohemia doth bear,
Betray a sleepy visage lacking flair.
Its fields often will yield a pleasant crop
By arts betwixt peasant and tamed raindrop.
Forego to fourteen nineteen where with gall
The vulgar folk had tossed its friar haul
From tower tall to dye cherry with spear
And war to livid life their freedoms here.
Forego to sixteen eighteen where with rage
The prince protestants righteously rampage
And Catholic lords defenestrated fell
Into a cart of lard and stunk foul smell.