Looking for Work, a new poem (my first) by Huck Pilgrim

I just posted my first erotic poem to Lit! I'm so pleased with myself.

So of course I'd love to hear your thoughts on the work. Anything you'd like to comment on is fine, it's all fair game. I've written poetry before, but this is my first erotic poem. It's about an experience I had when I lived in NYC. I was thinking about posting it as a story in Exhibition category, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's definitely a poem. It feels more original and personal than any of my stories and I'm really pleased to share it with you all.

Edit: I'll add a link once it goes live. I read the sticky at the top of the forum, but if I'm forgetting the protocol or not getting it right, please let me know and I'll do what I can to make it right.

Oh, hey! It's live as of right now!

https://www.literotica.com/p/looking-for-work-1

In all honesty, it is like reading a very short erotic story.

Rather than meeting the readers halfway and letting them become engaged with the wording, you are doing what most story writers do - refusing to relinqish control over how the story is experienced.

Poetry is like an experiment in which a variety of results can manifest. You accept that everyone may not walk away with the same interpretation, but you ( can ) strive for a singular interpretation by choosing ( what you believe could be ) the right combination of words.

Here, you are simply relaying information from your brain to other brains using language in a manner that eliminates any possibility of the message being misunderstood.

It is like going to extreme lengths to describe what a character looks likes, rather than saying this person is bald and allowing readers to associate him with any bald person that comes to mind.

The less control you exert over the outcome of your work, the more the reader becomes engaged. The more engaged, the more the reader will experience above and beyond merely processing information.

HuckPilgrim said:

Oh, hey! It's live as of right now!

https://www.literotica.com/p/looking-for-work-1

Click to expand...

I have to agree with Magnetron, who said it so eloquently there's little for me to add. I agree that it feels like a story, a "short short," not a poem. There's nothing wrong with that - the characterization is spare, vivid, and the story -or scene - could stand on its own. But no, not a poem, in my opinion.

Yes, as stories go, it is very competently written.

Okay then! So you don't think it's a poem because its message is too clear? Huh. I'll have to give that some thought. Thanks for your time and effort Magnetron.

HuckPilgrim said:

Okay then! So you don't think it's a poem because its message is too clear? Huh. I'll have to give that some thought. Thanks for your time and effort Magnetron.

Click to expand...

It has more to do with the message being one dimensional.

A story is an experience related to the reader. The reader will visualize or better yet virtualize bits and pieces of it as he reads and processes the information.

A poem is an event to be experienced by the reader. Depending upon both your choice of words and the attention span of the reader, the experience will range from mild to intense.

Another way of looking at it is this:

A story is like taking a tour of a house, walking from room to room under the direction of a real estate agent. You see only what the agent wants you to see.

A poem is when you let the prospective buyer run amok inside the house while you as the agent stand outside having a cigarette.

You know that if the buyer fails to see every room, you can still sell the house. All it takes is one room to fall in love with. You know that the buyer will eventually move in and explore more of the house, falling further in love with it as more rooms are experienced. Even though some buyers may never experience the entire house you intended for them to see, they still got their money's worth.

And ..... if you return to see how they settled in, you may find the buyers made a few of their own additions that were never in the original blueprints.

I'm not sure I buy what you're saying about poetry.

A story can do all the same things you're taking about as far as having different meanings for different readers. It's not like there is some sort of special quality to a narrative that makes all readers interpret the words the same way. Look at any story that has had more than one critical analysis done on it, for example.

But this is apparently how you write poetry, what you strive for in your poems--a certain poetic vagueness, a multitude of dimensions.

Good for you! I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts on poetry with me.

I consider Looking for Work a poem because of what it means to me, and I am the first to admit that it is all very subjective. And, of course, it's fine for you to evaluate the work and decide it's not a poem. It's art and as such can be evaluated by any metric you choose.

I just subbed another one, but I'm not going to ask for a review this time. I've decided it's enough for me to just post my poetry.

Have a good day!

HuckPilgrim said:

I'm not sure I buy what you're saying about poetry.

A story can do all the same things you're taking about as far as having different meanings for different readers. It's not like there is some sort of special quality to a narrative that makes all readers interpret the words the same way. Look at any story that has had more than one critical analysis done on it, for example.

But this is apparently how you write poetry, what you strive for in your poems--a certain poetic vagueness, a multitude of dimensions.

Good for you! I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts on poetry with me.

I consider Looking for Work a poem because of what it means to me, and I am the first to admit that it is all very subjective. And, of course, it's fine for you to evaluate the work and decide it's not a poem. It's art and as such can be evaluated by any metric you choose.

I just subbed another one, but I'm not going to ask for a review this time. I've decided it's enough for me to just post my poetry.

Have a good day!

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I can accept Magnetron's analogy, but there is something to your summary of it:
"a certain poetic vagueness, a multitude of dimensions." It's not vagueness, it's ambiguity -- there is a difference. And by ambiguity, I mean precisely a multitude of dimensions or meanings. To my mind, a poem expresses an idea that cannot be captured in prose. It has a paradoxical quality, because there are many meanings, and they are all the right ones -- you can't digest this logically. If you try to understand it using logic, you must choose one meaning and reject the others. That's why computers can't write poems.

HuckPilgrim said:

Okay then! So you don't think it's a poem because its message is too clear? Huh. I'll have to give that some thought. Thanks for your time and effort Magnetron.

Click to expand...

The detailing, the punctuation, the breaks, which feel like standard paragraph breaks, all read story to me. I wouldn't say it was because the message is too clear, rather that there is no message. The reader isn't lead to think about anything else, there's no underlying point, like questioning what the "straight life" is or nudging people to reframe their views on sex work, it's just a snippet of one person's narcissism.

HuckPilgrim said:

I'm not sure I buy what you're saying about poetry.

A story can do all the same things you're taking about as far as having different meanings for different readers. It's not like there is some sort of special quality to a narrative that makes all readers interpret the words the same way. Look at any story that has had more than one critical analysis done on it, for example.

But this is apparently how you write poetry, what you strive for in your poems--a certain poetic vagueness, a multitude of dimensions.

Good for you! I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts on poetry with me.

I consider Looking for Work a poem because of what it means to me, and I am the first to admit that it is all very subjective. And, of course, it's fine for you to evaluate the work and decide it's not a poem. It's art and as such can be evaluated by any metric you choose.

I just subbed another one, but I'm not going to ask for a review this time. I've decided it's enough for me to just post my poetry.

Have a good day!

Click to expand...

I did not say it was not a poem.

It is a poem ..... that reads like a very short story ..... because it lacks poetry.

Similar to how the event of a refrigerator falling from a high rise building and killing a musician who lives to create music is lacking in irony. It would be ironic if he was killed by a piano instead. It would be ironic if he was a salesman who lived to sell appliances instead.

The phrase poetic justice is meaningless if the justice served isn't somehow intimately relative to the crime.

A poem is a box. A container. An empty magician's hat.

Poetry is the rabbit that leaps out of the hat after you put choice magic words into it.

BTW, I'm probably the least poetic individual here out of the entire crew. And I'm not afraid to admit it. Most of my poems are short stories with a dash of poetry or a splash of musicality or both.

HuckPilgrim said:

Oh, hey! It's live as of right now!

https://www.literotica.com/p/looking-for-work-1

Click to expand...

welcome to the forum

i went, i read... for me, this falls short of what i'd recognise as poetry though it does flirt with the rudimentaries in places. nothing wrong with it as a write, but from my perspective i'm missing seeing/hearing the cohesion of sound, the layering of imagery, and the invitation - writer to reader - to become engaged, invested in it. for me, a poem is bigger than its sum. your piece was written well enough but ended the moment i stopped reading. naturally, those more interested in its subject matter might feel entirely differently.

would you tell me why you feel this piece is 'poetry'? i can hear from your other responses that you are deeply invested in it, but why is it poetry in your opinion? not saying you are wrong, just that i'm not understanding that so perhaps you can get me to see what i'm missing. lastly, all we have are our opinions and it's good to see you don't believe we all have to share the same ones

Magnetron said:

BTW, I'm probably the least poetic individual here out of the entire crew. And I'm not afraid to admit it. Most of my poems are short stories with a dash of poetry or a splash of musicality or both.

Click to expand...

meh, you have moments of brilliance in those floodwaters

and i felt your reasoning here to be pretty much the way i think about poetry.

Magnetron said:

I did not say it was not a poem.

It is a poem ..... that reads like a very short story ..... because it lacks poetry.

Similar to how the event of a refrigerator falling from a high rise building and killing a musician who lives to create music is lacking in irony. It would be ironic if he was killed by a piano instead. It would be ironic if he was a salesman who lived to sell appliances instead.

The phrase poetic justice is meaningless if the justice served isn't somehow intimately relative to the crime.

A poem is a box. A container. An empty magician's hat.

Poetry is the rabbit that leaps out of the hat after you put choice magic words into it.

Click to expand...

butters said:

meh, you have moments of brilliance in those floodwaters

and i felt your reasoning here to be pretty much the way i think about poetry.

Click to expand...

Always keep your flood pants handy.

Or muck boots, in case there is less water and more bullshit.

butters said:

welcome to the forum

Click to expand...

Thanks!

butters said:

would you tell me why you feel this piece is 'poetry'

Click to expand...

Oh my. I don't know if I can justify it for you, or that I'd even want to. Or if that's even what you're asking.

It's just a poem.

If I had to categorize it, I'd say it's a prose poem, because it's kind of prosy and there's definitely a narrative.

It's actually a personal experience I wanted to share with others. I've done a lot with nonfiction (not written as poems) under my real name, but writing about personal experience falls apart, I think, once you get into erotic content for a variety of reasons.

So I'm experimenting with poetry.

All the comments are really good and while I appreciate them and think it's all very smart and interesting, it doesn't sound like a good direction for the stuff I want to do. What I want to do might not be a good direction period, but I thought I'd post a few of the things I've written already as a way of mulling over what I want to do next. I already see a few lines I want to tweak in Looking for Work, but I suppose that's easy enough to do.