Poetry's finer points

regarding pronouns:
Joe is littered with pronouns, but I had felt like it was a pretty good poem when I wrote it.
Now... I wonder if it is terrible... ??? :eek:

Also... I tried a rewrite on Three Men... working on showing rather than telling.
both the original and the rewrite can be seen in the link.

fixed the above link :eek:

[and since this is not a fix bad poems thread, but a discuss finer points thread, carry on :eek:]

Now... I wonder if it is terrible... ??? :eek:



Cassie, you and I have already spoken on this. I will say this here as well and maybe a little differently.

Poetry is channeled through you. Some words are perfect, some cliche, some work better in one piece and not so well in another. It's all relative. Being so, an expert can tell you your poem is terrible and yet someone else may find it pleasing in their own way.

Take what you can from expertise, ultimately though, it is still you behind the quill, writing, and that is no small thing. Write, write, and write some more, your poems are what they are.

Some poems never see the light
Or go unnoticed and forgotten
They are poems still and not nothing
A piece of someone's soul
A gift for all the world
Priceless and yet freely given
Celebrate them all with me
 
Now... I wonder if it is terrible... ??? :eek:



Cassie, you and I have already spoken on this. I will say this here as well and maybe a little differently.

Poetry is channeled through you. Some words are perfect, some cliche, some work better in one piece and not so well in another. It's all relative. Being so, an expert can tell you your poem is terrible and yet someone else may find it pleasing in their own way.

Take what you can from expertise, ultimately though, it is still you behind the quill, writing, and that is no small thing. Write, write, and write some more, your poems are what they are.


Some poems never see the light
Or go unnoticed and forgotten
They are poems still and not nothing
A piece of someone's soul

A gift for all the world
Priceless and yet freely given
Celebrate them all with me

:rose: the ultimate success of any poem lies in the connection it makes with the individual reader. all we can try to do is improve how we connect. H and i have written many poems back and forth - poems that mean a whole lot to us but maybe nothing at all to others. since H was the intended audience for mine, his responses to them were the one that really counted. of course, i'd like it if others enjoyed those ones and i still try to improve on those ways to make connections happen.
 
:rose: the ultimate success of any poem lies in the connection it makes with the individual reader. all we can try to do is improve how we connect. H and i have written many poems back and forth - poems that mean a whole lot to us but maybe nothing at all to others. since H was the intended audience for mine, his responses to them were the one that really counted. of course, i'd like it if others enjoyed those ones and i still try to improve on those ways to make connections happen.



Well said
 
Back to pronouns

I dramatized the issue of pronouns a bit too much. It's still true that most of the time they are poetically useless but often they still seem necessary. In (pre)conclusion, avoid some awkwardness of pronouns (it happens to the best of them), etc.

The last line of a Polish poem by me was:

i walk with Analogia

This is an exact translation. So exact that I used Polish word Analogia instead of English Analog or Analogy. Well, the English word sounds formal, scientific, not poetic. The Polish word sounds like the name of a Greek goddess. The upper case A was NOT accidental -- in the previous lines it was simply the lower case "a" (analogia or it's grammatic declinations).

The translation of that last line was exact but nevertheless, the Polish original had no pronoun. How is it possible?! Simple. The pronouns in Polish (and in some other languages) are often encoded into verbs. The English phrase "I walk" is "spaceruję" -- just one word, and it means "I walk".

In my experience the poetic trade-off between Polish and English is about even, you gain some, you lose some. In the case of pronouns, Polish has a clear advantage. In Polish, you can still use the pronoun, you could say "ja spaceruję" ("ja" = "I"), but this would be an extra emphasizing.

***

Many poems (from now on, let's talk about English only) require a dense application of pronouns, too bad. Whenever they have a narrator's story about themselves, you use "I" a lot. Also, when the narrator addresses that one special person then there is a lot of "you". There is hardly any way around using "I", you can't talk about yourself in metaphoric ways because it would sound... funny :). You seem forced to call "I" simply "I".

There is however a solution in many cases. Don't write about "yourself". Write about "her" or "him". Then you're free to apply all kind of poetic devices which replace pronoun "she" or "he". Suddenly, you get rid of a lot of pronouns, your poem gains images, emotions, etc.

***

And avoid writing about "I" like "I" is a belly button of the universe -- it sounds embarrassing. If in a real life this kind of belly button style would induce in a listener a nasty smirk or worse then the same would (or should) happen to a poem's reception. If it often doesn't, it's only because of a lot of readers (and writers) are idiotically fond of BS.
 
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Spatial poetry

I hope you can improve upon my translation of my old Polish poem. (I am even worried about my perhaps too adventurous English).




9th month



over the Earth's obtuse curve
i will tumble and roll like a wheel to you
and around your spherical form
my circular arms will close​











wh,
1974







Can you rhyme it? -- that would be a bonus.
 
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Hard references

The following page still exists, after 13 years and change:

It has very little since I was not getting much feedback. But it does include


I have made up word_ poemath;_ it also serves as a title of one of my summer poems.
 
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