Poetry Forum

Thanks for the comments. I went to a wedding in the summer and the bride sitting at the top table, surrounded by courtiers, reminded me of a chess piece, in her row of eight. Then I started thinking about the different types of queenhood, and whether it's better to be a chess piece or a bee. Still t...

Nasturtiums In white so white it vitrifies, the dress of a queen glass chess piece, you take up your position. As you glide the aisle your name's effaced, replaced by someone else's. The two men nod and pass you on. Woman, you could have chosen a circus of colour - nasturtiums, reds and yellows, in...

Hi Robert,

I agree with twoleftfeet. I think if you're going to go for very short poems/lines, there has to be a strong poetic technique/imagery behind them.

Maybe you could try setting the scene a bit more, expanding it out and develop the story.

I really liked this - liked the brevity of the first line, the statement that leads into the rest of the story. Felt it definitely was a story, this one. Enjoyed 'pudenda down' and the last two lines - only bit I wasn't sure of was the 'like migrating fowl' simile, it just felt a bit forced, and the...

At first I thought it was the punctuation putting me off a bit, but I think it's the overall form - felt you could make more of it generally. I was expecting 'games' in the second stanza to then rhyme with some other line. My eye snagged on the 'beady eyes' phrase; felt a bit too like a cliche there...

Hi Saul, I liked the feel to this one, the way it made me sort of curious in imagining the scene. Wasn't too keen on the first stanza - I couldn't see how pomp and ceremony were antonyms, and didn't really get the stubbed toe reference. Liked the second stanza though, and imagined the person blindfo...

Thanks for the comments. Ray, do you call them babooshka dolls? I've never heard that term - we had some in the house when I was young but they were always just called Russian Dolls. Kind of sinister looking things.

Hi Cameron, Thanks very much, glad you liked it:) My mother was also a Russian teacher for a while, when she was pregnant with me, and I kind of had that in mind. I was thinking of bloodlines and Red Riding Hood, and the war of the roses. Also the phrase 'left on the shelf'...hmm. I had stuff publis...

Russian Dolls You loved all things concentric; Russian dolls and tree ringed trunks, labyrinths and ripples. But Russian dolls the most, I think, exiles in parentheses. I remember them all as fat red squaws, a tribe in single file. How your hands could conjugate their perfect painted smiles! It was...

Ray,

I'm afraid I agree with Bombadil - this one doesn't do anything for me. I've seen some of your other writing and I think you could pull off something a lot more subtle/crafted to make the same point in a more effective way.

Your last line, Saul, really appealed to me - I like lines that mess about with verbs and nouns. It may not make grammatical sense but I get the sense from the rest of the poem. Also liked 'she angles a geometry'.. .the quiet poise of the dancer I think comes across really well. I think Ray's arrang...

Hello, I liked the feel of this, got carried along with the story. Sometimes the rythmn of it felt a bit off though - like in the first stanza, you'd set up the rythmn nicely but then it seemed to jar in the break from 'from the paper bag of food' to the next line. I wasn't sure what 'second skin sp...

This is an area I'd like to learn more about but am finding it difficult to know where to start.

What do you all think of prose poems, and what do you think makes a good one? Also, how can you tell if it would be better suited to another format?

Thanks. I was trying to get the poem to be the equivalent of a slap in the face...don't usually write them as short as this but thought it suited the topic better.

Cheers.

He Was Going to Meet Me by the Ferris Wheel


Bring me
the coruscating certainties

of a stone,
or a ring.

Not this bedizened
tilting tambourine,

this winking ellipsis,
this doughnut hole,

this wry rictus
taking the piss.

I liked really liked this one, found myself responding to it very naturally. I love the idea of the piano crouching. I read the line Ray brought up as epitaphs being the verb - is that right? - as in, provides a sort of soundtrack to events. 'Mimics that discordant dialing tone' - have you ever hear...

Keith, I felt like I shouldn't like this but I did. Some of the line breaks struck me as a bit out - wasn't sure about 'in my employ' where it is, with the hyphens. Maybe putting 'a naive pupil' onto the second line would make it read more comfortably? Of course this would bugger up your four line f...

Well kind of - it's more based on a photo I have, of me and my dad clearing snow from our driveway. I would have been about 5 and I'm wearing a red cardigan my mum knitted for me. So I embellished slightly. It started off trying to be a sonnet but I quickly gave up on that. Don't have the patience, ...

Coal We waited till the snow had hemmed the house as high as me, aged five, ready in wellies and red knit mittens. Along sacred ground we rolled his boulder of a body, me puffing and pushing with all of my might, you letting me think I was pushing. For feet we saved him splayed out twigs, a carrot ...

I liked the tone of this - after reading the first few lines I found myself hoping it continued in that way, since it seemed to immediately settle into its own rythmn. I found I got a bit lost in stanzas 2 and 3, though, more with the images and trying to work out what was going on. Maybe the clue's...

Made me think! I really liked the second stanza.

Wondered about the fourth, the punctuation of it, also didn't know who Jeremiah was?

Agree with Minstrel the last stanza's great.

Hi Ray, This reminded me more of song lyrics than a poem, I think because of all the statements (I know you, I see you, etc). I think if you were to write something with an image, or metaphor, to get across the point "You make me see/things clearly" it would be more successful. I thought m...

Thanks Pseud, that's how I wanted it to look.

Cheers. (And I quite like witches.)

Ray, I'm not advocating violence, but I can understand people's frustrations when you post two lines in a foreign language. I sometimes write in Spanish but would never post any of it here - it being an English language forum, it wouldn't be appropriate. It's the same thing when you post in Japanese...

Thanks guys. Is there any way to move over the one slug text, so that it's kind of under wife?