Your Opinion

[Safe_Bet]

I'm just starting to get back into the writing 'groove'. This piece ran yesterday and I'd like some peer 'opinions'. It's the first serious thing I've done in some time and I am too rusty to tell if it's crap or not. Thanks.



Peering From the Darkness
by Safe_Bet©

She is silhouetted.
I watch. She carelessly unbuttons.
Could she hear the rapid beating of my heart?
Does she feel my desire…my hunger?
Can she perceive my regret?

The shadows hide me.
I wrap them around me as others would wrap a warm coat.
She looks, but she cannot see.

Pushing downward until they lay lifeless and inert.
I watch. She sinuously unzips.
Oh, are they dead things now?
When she wore them weren’t they vibrant living artisans?
Didn’t they sculpt as if she were a work of art?

My hands clasp together as I gaze upon her flawlessness.
Almost as if it were possible for me to pray.
No. I no longer pray.

She reaches behind her.
I watch. She brazenly unclasps.
Would I survive being that thin silk delicacy?
Dare I risk the honor of dwelling on her perfect breasts?
Could I handle the obligation of lovingly restraining her impertinence?

My hands now become separate fists.
My anger flares at the tragedy of anything or anyone else being near her.
This faultless form should be mine and mine alone.

She slips her fingers under.
I watch. She eases them downward.
How can she perform this Herculean effort that would slay mortal men?
By what right do I dare gaze upon the pure, erotic contour of her hips?
Can I bear it as they break free and fall as departed things onto the floor?

I fully view the supreme perfection of her form.
She is my everything and I am, and always shall be, her shadow.
To her I am nothing.

She is silhouetted.
I watch. She takes the offered hand.
Could I hear the rapid beating of her heart?
Do I feel her desire…her hunger?
Can I perceive her regret?

 

[WickedEve]

A bit wordy. Of course I think that about all my poems and that's why I edit them to death.
I'm particularly interested in the stanza below. It's rather fascinating.

Pushing downward until they lay lifeless and inert.
I watch. She sinuously unzips.
Oh, are they dead things now?
When she wore them weren’t they vibrant living artisans?
Didn’t they sculpt as if she were a work of art?

 

[Safe_Bet]

A bit wordy. Of course I think that about all my poems and that's why I edit them to death.
I'm particularly interested in the stanza below. It's rather fascinating.

Pushing downward until they lay lifeless and inert.
I watch. She sinuously unzips.
Oh, are they dead things now?
When she wore them weren’t they vibrant living artisans?
Didn’t they sculpt as if she were a work of art?

Wordy? Yeah, I can see some of that. I see a couple of places that could do with a bit of pruning.

I just adore tight jeans on a nice butt! They do such wonderful things and then, once removed, they are simply cast aside.

 

[WickedEve]

Wordy? Yeah, I can see some of that. I see a couple of places that could do with a bit of pruning.

I just adore tight jeans on a nice butt! They do such wonderful things and then, once removed, they are simply cast aside.

Pruning is good. I actually enjoy editing my poems.
Anyway, wait until you get some other comments. Some readers may enjoy the poem the way it is or have other suggestions. I'm glad you're writing again!

 

[Senna Jawa]

[...] I am too rusty to tell if it's crap or not.

It is.

 

[Safe_Bet]

It is.

My thanks for the wonderful input! Care to expand a little bit?

 

[unpredictablebijou]

It is.

Senna, fucking STOP it. Seriously. That's so completely unhelpful.

I used to be fond of you, you know.

bj

 

[Tzara]

Senna, fucking STOP it. Seriously. That's so completely unhelpful.

I used to be fond of you, you know.

bj

Unhelpful to SB, yes. But, I'm sure, his honest opinion. So no point in getting upset about it. She raised the question, after all.

When the PF&D flares up into flame wars, it often tends to be escalating comments such as:

Person 1: You're an asshole.

Person 2: No, I'm not. You're an asshole.

Person 1: No, I'm not. You're...

{Repeat, indefinitely.}​

which simply freak the not-so-experienced people out and we lose people who are uncomfortable with confrontation.

So, I would suggest we leave this with SJ leaving his comment for SB (who seems not that upset about it) and just the rest of us look at her poem and comment.

Which I will do in a bit.



Shiny happy people, you know.

Yes, I am doing that to irritate you. It's a kind of twisty love thing.

Yes, the emotionalcons, too.

 

[Angeline]

Senna, fucking STOP it. Seriously. That's so completely unhelpful.

I used to be fond of you, you know.

bj

As you know my dear Skunky, SJ usually has very specific reasons for his opinions. and I'm guessing that he feels like he tries to explain them over and over (no, not to Safe_Bet, who as T-zed notes, seems not perturbed by Senna's drive-by brutal honesty), but no one ever listens.

And believe it or not, SJ has mellowed a lot.

Safe_Bet, welcome to the forum. Keep writing and keep your good humor about critique. I've been here a looong time and I can tell you that Senna does better critique than anyone I've ever read here. If he does come back and explain himself, I can promise you it'll be thoughtful and--if you're open-minded--extremely helpful.

Senna, you cranky guy, come back and splain yourself.

 

[Anschul]

Senna, you cranky guy, come back and splain yourself.

Actually, wasn't this BJ's real point? We who have felt SJ's wrath and his honest critique are better poets for it, aren't we?

SB, stick with us. We're a pretty decent bunch.

 

[Angeline]

Actually, wasn't this BJ's real point? We who have felt SJ's wrath and his honest critique are better poets for it, aren't we?

SB, stick with us. We're a pretty decent bunch.

Yeah but I sense her frustration. I've seen many people, including me, get really frustrated with Senna over the years. I don't always agree with every little thing he says, but overall he understands how to write poetry better than anyone I know. And he'd be the first person to agree with me on that lol. I was just soothing our Bijou and reminding her why we love Senna, even when he acts like a nudnick.

 

[Anschul]

Yeah but I sense her frustration. I've seen many people, including me, get really frustrated with Senna over the years. I don't always agree with every little thing he says, but overall he understands how to write poetry better than anyone I know. And he'd be the first person to agree with me on that lol. I was just soothing our Bijou and reminding her why we love Senna, even when he acts like a nudnick.

Miss you, babe! Especially miss the Yiddish.
:HEART:

 

[Tzara]

Well, these comments are simply my opinion and I am no one particularly suited to comment on poems. So, just my own reaction, for what it's worth.

Having said that, I would agree with Eve that this seems wordy to me. And, mostly, telling, rather than showing. (Believe me, I know all about that, since I do it all the time myself.)

Take your first strophe:

She is silhouetted.
I watch. She carelessly unbuttons.
Could she hear the rapid beating of my heart?
Does she feel my desire…my hunger?
Can she perceive my regret?​

Much of this seems passive to me. We've had arguments here before about whether passive voice is a problem or not (most recently, over one of my poems, so I am not above this), but I think passive voice detracts from the reader's involvement with the poem.

Now, it is always dangerous to suggest rewording of something, as that tends to take someone's poem and rewrite it into one's own style, but were this my poem (please note that it is not and I likely write very differently from you), I'd do something like this:

I watch her silhouette.
She carelessly unbuttons
her thin blouse.

Can she hear
this racing heart? Does
she fear my hunger

and regret?​

The point I think I'm trying to make here is the switch from a passive construction like "She is silhouetted" to an active one "I watch her silhouette."

Is that better? Well, obviously I think so, even if I often don't follow the idea myself. But just take it as comment and decide for yourself.

Only thing that actually matters, really.

 

[Angeline]

Miss you, babe! Especially miss the Yiddish.
:HEART:

Me, too. I miss being with people who speak it. For years, I wanted to take a course in it because I understand a lot of it when I hear it and I can speak words and phrases, if not sentences. I could have gone into NYC to take classes in Yiddish. Sometimes I read my copy of The Joy of Yiddish because it makes me feel like my family are all still around, being the marvellously dysfuntional Walton-witzes that they were.

 

[loststar]

I like the piece, I think it has alot of potential it just seems a little unfocused, although it gives a very good impression of what is happening. I believe it could tightened up a bit, the wording is a bit excessive, the excess wording takes away from the the very strong impact of the imagery. For example


Pushing downward until they lay lifeless and inert.
I watch. She sinuously unzips.
Oh, are they dead things now?
When she wore them weren’t they vibrant living artisans?
Didn’t they sculpt as if she were a work of art?

could be trimmed to

She sinuously unzips the vibrant living artisans
that sculpted her as if she were a work of art
She Pushes downward until they lay lifeless and inert
are they dead things now?

the balance between what you are seeing and what you are feeling seems a bit choppy, I am not familiar with your style, but it seems like you have two subjects here, her, and the way you are reacting to her, I personally feel that this would make two very strong sister pieces, one the uninterrupted image of her, the other the uninterrupted self refection of your reactions. I may be completely mistaken, for I am a complete novice, just ask anybody, I am an amateur, but you ask for options, and I offer you mine. I look forward to reading more of your work. ~the little lost one

 

[Senna Jawa]

My thanks for the wonderful input!

Input was yours. Mine was a summary.

Care to expand a little bit?

Much more than from comments about your own texts you will gain from two other sources:

• from comments about the poems by other authors;
• from intensive thinking about great poems (this may be difficult, since some poems by recognized poets are considered to be great while they are not so--life's not simple).

But let's go back to your text. It has but problems, so many of them that it is hard to start. First of all, strategically, you make an impression like there is some heavy drama, while there is none, it's only your words like "tragedy", etc. The tall structures, from twenty five to over a hundred floors have a deep foundation, they often have four and more floors under the ground, and there is rich life there, fashion stores, cinemas, restaurants, ... When your text has words like "tragedy" then it is supposed to be a huge and heavy structure. Instead your text is like a 10 foot high balloon, hanging from a rope, and painted into words like "tragedy". There is nothing to it. You can paint heavy words on your balloon but it will not turn it into a tall structure, full of drama and life. It is still a somewhat heavy balloon, without any foundation.

Objectively, there is nothing big or special about the scene which you have described with your words-words-words. There is just a peeping Tom who has funny pretenses. Otherwise, there is nothing to the characters in the text, they have no character to speak about, nor any looks. One should not be overly specific, each element should serve poetry, but there have to be the relevant specific elements. You got none. You could present an immature guy/girl but you didn't do it. Instead, you left me with the notion that it is the author who is (artistically) immature. BTW, the truly great poems don't even give a chance to think about the author and about the ink and paper. One absorbs a good poem like actual life.

Now let me write about concrete issues.

1. Your hero (lyrical subject) repeats "She is silhouetted" (which, BTW, is poor, unnatural, pretentious English) but then s/he, the lyrical subject, can see every detail, and s/he is seeing the woman (the she ) from her back and front and from the sides too, including small items like fingers, and the lyrical subjects can also see the detailed movements--how silly. As an author, you have to see the image which you create, because it is the reader's duty to recreate the images offered by the author. Thus the image which you provide should be sound. But yours makes no sense (despite the fact that there is very little of an image altogether).
2. The start of a poem is crucial. But you start your poem with two(!!!) nothing words like "She is...". This alone may cause many advanced readers to give up on reading the rest. Why should they bother when there are plenty of poems which start in an exciting or at least in an interesting way, and certainly not with a pronoun and a nothing-verb like "is". Already two words and zero poetry.
3. In a short poem it may be fine to have nothing but "she". However, when there are 37 lines of she-she-she-she-... then it's tiring. Your text has only she-she...-she + I-I-...-I. No sane reader should be forced to stomach such a pronoun dish. Do you see any poetry in your she-...-she + I-...-I? I don't.
4. A poem should be, in the poetic sense, objective. It should not have any BS. Instead, it should speak using images. For instance, adjectives are ok only occasionally. As a rule they are from poor to awful. It's better in poetry to base the adjective expressions on nouns. Instead of saying short or long it is better to say something like "one foot long", or "from twilight till dark" sounds better poetically than "short walk" or "long walk". Adjectives are dangerous because instead of information they provide author's opinion, which drags a poem down artistically. Thus "from twilight till dark" is an objective statement, while "short walk" is an opinion. An author may use subjectiveness on the behalf of the characters in the poem (including the lyrical subject) as a method of an objective-like descriptions of these characters. Otherwise, the descriptions should be objective. You don't want any BS in a poem. However, your text is full of it (and that's horrible). If the list of the objections below had but up to three items then possibly it would be acceptable (yin & yang), but not when there are so many of them:
   
   • line 1: unnatural BS-language, awkward;
   • line 2: carelessly--a cheap, non-poetical shortcut, which is meaningless in the given context;
   • line 3: BS;
   • line 4: BS to the third power;
   • line 5: BS to the tenth power;
   • line 6: pronoun "me";
   • line 7: pronouns "them", "me" and "others";
   • line 8: it must be pretty dark there--but the lyrical subject can see that "She looks, but she cannot see." ?! True poets don't write like that. The person in question may see at the best that "she" has turned her face toward him/her, and no more. Poetry is the art of words. Words have to be used very carefully, very precisely (in the artistic sense, which occasionally may be different from logic).
   • line 9: completely unclear, mainly because of the pronoun "they"; it is also not clear who's doing the "pushing down", and what is pushed down, what is laying lifeless and inert. Would a good high school teacher let you get away with this line? Poetry's standards are still much higher.
   • line 10: adjective "sinuously"--it doesn't even go well with unzipping; after all, unzipping is a generally smooth operation (unless there is a problem with the zipper );
   • line 11: pronoun "they" is ugly; and poetically totally impotent "things" is even more ugly;
   • line 12: three-four poetically dead words in a row--"...them weren’t they..."; poetry is supposed to be the art of words !!!
   • line 13: "Didn’t they ... as if she were a..."--this phrase is a nightmare, uck! And it's followed by a cliche "work of art", c'mon!
   • line 14: phrase "I gaze" is an oxymoron , which has no place in poetry; "her flawlessness--o my gosh! Her what?! I hope that you have a sense of humor, because you should laugh at your text.
   • line 15: too pedantic, be simple;
   • line 16: boring (who cares? It has nothing to do with the theme);

I'll stop now (I get tired fast these days, sorry). Further down the text, against all odds, the lines are even worse, and the text in general goes down the drain even lower (amazing, isn't it?). You should be able to see it now yourself. In particular, you should see that your text instead of being romantic is unpleasant, void of any delicate mood, style, expressions. Your text makes me feel embarrassed. Your cliches certainly don't help--all those generic pseudo-descriptions. They are simply in bad taste.

(I don't know if and when I'll come back to this thread, or forum; you should concentrate on comments about poems by other authors anyway).

Regards,

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Wow. Beautiful, seriously. I'm blown away. I just wish that someday, Senna will do this for me.

SafeBet, he's harsh but absolutely correct. You've just gotten an entire semester of Poetry 110, and believe me when I say that it's worth listening to. It's hard, it hurts a little, but we've all gone through it and if you're serious about poetry this is what it takes. Whether or not you agree, and of course you're free to do whatever you want, know that it's pretty cool to get this much attention from someone who is so totally serious and religious about the subject of poetry.

Senna, I do adore you and I respect your opinion. You've done an enormous amount of work here and it's generous of you to pay so much attention. I'm so proud of you right now. thank you for going the extra mile.

late night adoration,
bj

 

[Safe_Bet]

Input was yours. Mine was a summary.

Much more than from comments about your own texts you will gain from two other sources [...]
[...] (I don't know if and when I'll come back to this thread, or forum; you should concentrate on comments about poems by other authors anyway).[/size]

Regards,

Thank you all for your valuable insight. I appreciate the time and effort that you have given me and I value your gifts. I will take each of your gifts and carefully consider them.

Senna: In spite of, or possibly because of, your initial comments, I value your ‘input’ most of all. Perhaps this was your intent. A great many of your points are valid and I am going to consider them for quite some time. You gave me a lot of things to consider and a lot of excellent direction. I am going to study your comments for a few days, and then attempt to apply them to my work. Thank you, again.

I can now see why the others value your opinions so highly. You have tremendous knowledge and dedication to the craft. You are also an arrogant, egotistical, ass, but that doesn't detract from you skill, just your delivery.

 

[normal jean]

.................

 

[normal jean]

................

 

[Senna Jawa]

poepoepoetry

Marie/NJ, is it you? (or is someone impersonating you?)

Anyway, from what I've read on our forum, BJ has a full life outside Internet, and does not need our forum to play any esteem enhancing games. In particular, our unpredictable )) BJ was very helpful and knowledgeable about homelessness, she is actively helping people in need (I may write more about my own recent experience with the issue in the litblog; no I still live in my apt). On our forum, BJ is for poetry and for positive social values. She cares about the participants. I was not offended by BJ's initial reaction, not at all, it was sympathetic.

Marie, you were always very supportive and friendly toward me. I am just worried that you are recently less mellow, less forgiving (toward others--not me). I remember you being more along the lines of Angeline, Eve, Anna, BJ, ... who are invariably gentle on everybody.

Oooooph, a non-technical post from me.

Best regards,

Senna Jawa

 

[normal jean]

.....................

 

[the Snood]

Hmmm...

At first I thought this was a tidge too wordy, but now I'm not so sure.

While there's room to pare anything short of haiku, this is pretty darned tight - and anyway I favour free verse.

I'm rather reminded of Ravel's Bolero, in which there were many variants of a message, each differing both in content and delivery to produce a cohesive whole.

Your exploration of the permutations of could, do and can actually hone your message through successive approximation.

Or maybe I'm seeing a bunch of meaningless logical machinery where none actually exists... Either way, I believe it to be a fine piece of work.

On a totally different note, I'm an escapee from the Inland Empire and as such am somewhat soured on the Golden State, at least south of Santa Barbara or so.

That said, sometimes they do get it right. Congrats on what I hope will be a long and happy marriage!

Snood

 

[Anschul]

Input was yours. Mine was a summary.

Much more than from comments about your own texts you will gain from two other sources:

• from comments about the poems by other authors;
• from intensive thinking about great poems (this may be difficult, since some poems by recognized poets are considered to be great while they are not so--life's not simple).

I sincerely thank you too, SJ. I learned more from these lines than I did in a whole course in college. But then, you knew that, didn't you?

 

[the Snood]

The value of honest critique

SJ, this is the first time I've attended a lecture in here.

Now I'll need to scan everything that transpired before my time for other such treasures.

Such posts make better artists of all of us.

Thanks,

Snood