What do you think of these ?

[Samuelx]

Hi, guys.

I am new here. What do you think of my stuff ? Follow da link.

http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/memberpage.php?uid=371839&page=submissions

 

[Angeline]

Hi, guys.

I am new here. What do you think of my stuff ? Follow da link.

http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/memberpage.php?uid=371839&page=submissions

Hi Samuel and welcome to the poetry forum. I read three of your poems, and I very much like the sentiment of them. I agree with you that we get way too caught up in materialistic bs and judge a person--too many of us--based on everything but the content of his (or her) character. People should be who they believe themselves to be, and I respect you for being brave and willing to make that point. Too many people are afraid to speak what's true.

Now your poems, I guess would be classified as prose poems because of the way they are constructed. Prose poetry is not my strong point at all, and it's just my opinion, but they seem more like essays to me. For me, a poem needs to show rather than tell--and do so with images and by using language in unexpected ways.

Here is an example of what I mean, taken from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself---

Houses and rooms are full or perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume it has no taste of the distillation,
it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever. I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hillsides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from
bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the
earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

This is of course, a great great poem--far better than anything I'll ever produce, that's for sure. But he is saying pretty much what you are--and yet he does it with images and feelings, so that you absorb what he's saying without so much thinking, but knowing anyway.

Think of images that express your thoughts. To me that makes for good--or great--poetry.


Angeline