I wonder.
I wondered,
yet found nothing.
Motion is a guide,
so trust the projection,
trajectories are fatal
but each phase has a new ignition;
I am born,
I will be born,
I will be dead,
I will be born,
I am born,
I will be born,
I will be dead.
A cosmic discharge,
and as such all honesty,
all being comes down to that;
the spine is shared
from a rib of each other we are born.
The cerebral linkage of mind and matter.
Sperm ignites,
catalyst,
cataclysm.
Oh how fatal.
Dragged into this world,
kicking and screaming,
a pulsating mass,
permeating the air,
the very fabric of the ether,
with our screaming.
Rending and ripping,
born violent
and already filled with the potential for love,
just in-expressed.
Ignition
Lars,
I have been leaning more and more towards this fractured and phonetic discharge of a style. It has a certain music.
But I think at times it can a little garralous:
I'm questioning the first three lines? The scale of the statements are somewhat symptomatic of what i think is the problem with this poem.
I'm not going to knock the presentation beyond advising you to chuck out 'Oh how fatal', but I am going to raise a digital eyebrow to the content. I think, simply, you are biting off more than you can chew. If life can be summarised in as many lines as this poem takes to finish, then there wouldn't be much point in poetry, would there? This poem, in my eyes, doesn't really show any scepticism to quite a lot of rigid narratives about the world:
the rib, the kicking and screaming, 'the very fabric of ether'...
For a poem that attempts to be as abrasive as this does, it relies on quite a few established nuggets of wisdom that I, as a reader of poetry, would often expect to be perverted. This 'man against the world and nothing more' stance would've been pertinent 60ish years ago (and that's not a bad thing), and I know this struggle is an eternal one and whatnot, but this poem doesn't seem to want to think about its situation. It seems content in its state of pessimism and doesn't intend to explore anything outide of that. Now, you write poetry... I would've thought wanting to explore the world was the one things you do want to do? So I'm struggling with the grand soliloquoy of this I'm afraid.
If you didn't deal with lots of abstractions here (albeit some very good ones) and instead focused on something specific that represents the same man filling the same vacuous space, then this would work. But the histrionic tone of the piece seems to be to be trying to tell us something we don't already know. And we do know it. If you went for the subtle approach of showing how one thing in our lives can lead up to this vacuum, then you'd be an explorer and not a prescriber. And I think that's my problem.
Was that harsh? Sorry if it was so. I just think poetry these days needs to deal with more specific things. Not necessarily the often dull quotidian, but at least sights and sounds modern readers may not have heard.
N.B. Note the use of 'I just think poetry these days...' - this is an entirely prescrptive crit and you may wholeheartedly disagree with it. Take it as you may.
Welcome on board though. I've been really enjoying your criticism and posts so far.
Dave
I have been leaning more and more towards this fractured and phonetic discharge of a style. It has a certain music.
But I think at times it can a little garralous:
I'm questioning the first three lines? The scale of the statements are somewhat symptomatic of what i think is the problem with this poem.
I'm not going to knock the presentation beyond advising you to chuck out 'Oh how fatal', but I am going to raise a digital eyebrow to the content. I think, simply, you are biting off more than you can chew. If life can be summarised in as many lines as this poem takes to finish, then there wouldn't be much point in poetry, would there? This poem, in my eyes, doesn't really show any scepticism to quite a lot of rigid narratives about the world:
the rib, the kicking and screaming, 'the very fabric of ether'...
For a poem that attempts to be as abrasive as this does, it relies on quite a few established nuggets of wisdom that I, as a reader of poetry, would often expect to be perverted. This 'man against the world and nothing more' stance would've been pertinent 60ish years ago (and that's not a bad thing), and I know this struggle is an eternal one and whatnot, but this poem doesn't seem to want to think about its situation. It seems content in its state of pessimism and doesn't intend to explore anything outide of that. Now, you write poetry... I would've thought wanting to explore the world was the one things you do want to do? So I'm struggling with the grand soliloquoy of this I'm afraid.
If you didn't deal with lots of abstractions here (albeit some very good ones) and instead focused on something specific that represents the same man filling the same vacuous space, then this would work. But the histrionic tone of the piece seems to be to be trying to tell us something we don't already know. And we do know it. If you went for the subtle approach of showing how one thing in our lives can lead up to this vacuum, then you'd be an explorer and not a prescriber. And I think that's my problem.
Was that harsh? Sorry if it was so. I just think poetry these days needs to deal with more specific things. Not necessarily the often dull quotidian, but at least sights and sounds modern readers may not have heard.
N.B. Note the use of 'I just think poetry these days...' - this is an entirely prescrptive crit and you may wholeheartedly disagree with it. Take it as you may.
Welcome on board though. I've been really enjoying your criticism and posts so far.
Dave
-
RobertFlorey
- Productive Poster
- Posts: 58
- Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2006 5:00 pm
- Location: Washington State USA
lars3939 wrote:I wonder.
I wondered,
yet found nothing.
Motion is a guide,
so trust the projection,
trajectories are fatal
but each phase has a new ignition;
I am born,
I will be born,
I will be dead,
I will be born,
I am born,
I will be born,
I will be dead.
A cosmic discharge,
and as such all honesty,
all being comes down to that;
the spine is shared
from a rib of each other we are born.
The cerebral linkage of mind and matter.
Sperm ignites,
catalyst,
cataclysm.
Oh how fatal.
Dragged into this world,
kicking and screaming,
a pulsating mass,
permeating the air,
the very fabric of the ether,
with our screaming.
Rending and ripping,
born violent
and already filled with the potential for love,
just in-expressed.
I agree with the above critique.
And I'll add that the general tenor of this piece is to me
one of indecision as to what you want to say. So I think
you may have shot-gunned it, and ended up peppering the
target with shot, except, perhaps, in the bulls-eye.
But of course, I could easily be dead wrong...
But if it's any help whatsoever, here is what might or might not
be a fair use of poetic economy on this piece (not carefully done
at all, and not meant as an edit or re-write, but just as an example
of what kind of thing I mean by economizing)...
I wondered.
I wandered;
Motion is a guide,
so trust the projection.
I am born,
I will be dead.
Sperm ignites
cataclysm
fetal.
Dragged into this world,
kicking and screaming,
and already filled with the potential for love,
but as yet
unexpressed.