Poetry critique

If that's what you want people to see just be more descriptive of the scene in a way that leads people to seeing it that way. As the other user said you should try to ground it in something we can picture, something concrete. Your metaphors when you gave me context aren't fully bad but I think you should have the context in the poem that helps lead to what you want people to envision. Extension of metaphor is also good sort of like what you did in the second stanza. I had no idea it was people destroying you and maybe you could include things that show how or why they do it. Maybe something visceral or disturbing maybe that shows your destruction or how you feel about it.

pertains to everyday, the life chosen but dominance
of it sexual with intercourse, but ill subscribed nonetheless
the azure day, prospective to the crimson dusk flay
orbs of being with succour by it chosen who may

the speech with movement by it come this way
to not decree but by might my degree stay
if else known known always.

(cont.)

to know by my image to you says dismay
but mine to assert self, said it this way
since your hold 15 years has come and gone
but never known twice over us, as of our stay
then twice more of the time in the latter,
what of you good might come away?

as you please, please let conquer which desires
the image I seek, shyness makes of us this
as your clearly in peace lay

Here's a poem for Butterfly (the cute poster on this board) I wrote

Blue lake underneath cotted cloud
Is where I wish to be with you
Butterfly.
Touching your soft pale skin, as the once blue sky grows dim,
Is where I am at peace.
The brown barked tree, where I will build us shelter, where we will be
Forever.

4 clovers,
I wish I could break this
Electric screen
Butterfly, wounded wing
I wish nothing was digital
So I could be with you eternal
Awake nocturnal,
Scrolling through your posts
A host, a ghost, I need you the most
Because I love you
The plane of what is and what is not to be,
Is where my thoughts of you are found.
Butterfly, you are the imaginary.
I desire nothing more than to pull you from this ethereal existence
and place you right beside me.
On the ground, where you, delicate, will be found.

Where are you? And where are you not?
These feelings are what I have fought
Since I first fell for you and your posts
I need you here and now.

My image of you is of a lotus flower,
as you grow louder and louder
The more you fade into my mind grows by the hour.
My delicate lotus
Will you please notice
My love for you?

>the azure day, prospective to the crimson dusk flay
I love this line user, keep it up

(OP)

I know the consonance of the first line was fun to create but I think it does well for amateur poets like ourselves to avoid blatantly beautiful literary words such as “iridescent” unless it is absolutely necessary. That goes for “incandescent”, “ethereal”, “serene”, and anything of the sort. Anyway, the poem is interesting, good job at that. Fire imagery should be run into the ground. Ur you’ve somehow made it decently engaging, particularly when distinguishing this fire as NOT being cleansing, that’s smart, not brilliant, but you’re clearly in the right direction. The first line of the second stanza feels awkward and the third is just boring. Avoid phrases if they aren’t going to be used in some abstract, unexpected way. Your use of the word “solace” follows the same rule as iridescent, it’s lazy writing, simply put, and the previous lines prove that you can do better so keep up that momentum. The setting sun refrain is O.K. I don’t know that it’s necessary but I don’t know that you can scrap it either. Overall, not bad, work harder.

I don’t believe theres anything inherently wrong with writing about writing, but you’ve made us think that there is by making the majority of your poem very tepid. Note, I say majority because everything after “think” shows clearly that you can be a competent writer, you’re just lazy. Don’t say cliche shit like “my heart roars” and “build entire worlds”, give us more “a flattened bed of grasses windswept by the sea”. Not that that line is particularly creative, but it gives us more to engage with than the slop you started with. Get to the essence of what writing is for you, tell it to us viscerally, not in this hallmark way you’ve dribbled out. More imagery, more figurative, innovative language, less cheap exposition.

Interesting subject, terrible execution, to be frank. There’s no consideration for musicality of language or vibrant imagery. I suggest reading more and saving your more philosophical ideas for when you have the chops to do them justice. Practice with smaller concepts. Write about your feelings, the poplars, the rejection text, whatever. Then go for more.

My poem is pic related

Attached: 5E62B3CB-E160-4A31-BF3B-16B3937DEB55.jpg (1536x1518, 233K)

I think you have a strong command of vocabulary. Form is a mess. O pink bumble marinade is not an appealing line. Flowery language seems to substitute for substance. What is the goal or Idea of this poem? I can't tell and I feel it meanders from images that don't have a payoff

I’ll put you to sleep
And full you up
I want to see you
And full you up
I want to feed you
And full you up
I want to hold you
And full you up
I’ll show you the morning
And full you up
I’ll put you on your back
And full you up
I’ll show you the afternoon
And full you up
I’ll put you on your stomach
And full you up
I’ll show you dusk
And full you up
I’ll open your mouth
And full you up
I’ll show you the night
And full you up
I’ll wake you up
And full you up
I want to drain you
Just to fill you up again

I enjoyed all of these thank you friends and loved one

Horse or a knight
a delicious fork of plight
such maneuvers that even a master will miss
the deathly move that assaults many
will surely result in a hiss
the horseman is a ferocious foe
but woe is me, alone with his brethren he can't do piss.
Unless the last pawn is not amiss...Checkmate

>flowery language seems to substitute for substance

I think people on this board often assume that opaqueness in a poem is equivalent to superficiality. I never write without a goal in mind, i can’t imagine anyone does, but one of my philosophies of poetry is that of the “language poets”, where, the “meaning” of the poem is not so important for the audience as what the language, the images alone communicate. If it communicates something abstract and hard to pin then I have succeeded. Yes, it was written with a clear direction and meaning, but I don’t expect people to understand it immediately and I think it’d be boring if they did, I’m not always interested in that. Hart Crane explains this more thoroughly in his letter to Harriet Monroe with his “logic of metaphor” concept. Anyway, thank you for the critique and I will take everything into consideration. Feel free to direct me to your work for feedback.

My justification for the first line of stanza 2 is that the fire is blinding both me and the men I engage with. And I thought the use of solace was a clever addition bc of the "Sol" part referencing the sun. But thank you for your input. I'm not sure how to change the first line. I'm trying to evoke light imagery and this sort of wholesome binding of two people that turns to brimstone later

I'm having a hard time coming up with something that ties into the setting sun and fire imagery/theme I'm working with. Not sure how to tie it to something concrete without kinda compromising my aesthetic

I kinda have the same sentiment. A poem doesn't have to, and shouldn't, convey the message immediately. It's like a little puzzle that needs to be solved. And it's good to have something that can have several interpretations. It's interesting to write something and see what people might draw from it

Oh I'm so sorry! I didn't mean the second stanza i was actually referring to the third stanza, "luck never shone on us" and the third line "fought for our lives" no no no the first line of stanza two is fine. I meant to say "fought for our lives" is a dry "phrase" to use and should be substituted for something more clever. And that the first line of that stanza feels clunky to me. Sorry for the confusion.

Certainly! Coincidentally I had a poetry professor once say "people say the Waste Land is like a puzzle..it's not..just read it intuitively and make what you want, you can do all the annotations if you're interested in that sort of thing but I don't think Eliot expexted anyone to truly 'get it'" and I've had a Joyce professor express a similar sentiment regarding Ulysses. So really its just a matter of taste. I generally read poetry intuitively, not in a post-structuralist sense where the meaning is what I make it, but I let the images and atmosphere sit with me and whatever is communicated through that is satisfying enough. I do believe the detective method can be enriching too, for example, it does enhahce the Waste Land to know a line like "I did not know death had undone so many" is a reference to Dante, or the Oddyssey paralleles throughout Ulysses. But should all poetry be treated with that intention? Who knows. I like to call a lot of what i write "mood poetry" where my desired experience for the reader is simply to be immersed in the "mood" of the poem, less so the meaning. I like for poetry to speak to the unconscious, like Hilma Af Klimt or René Char. I try to do that with my work, but i am trying to learn to synthesize the material world with the abstract eye, sort of like Pynchon or DeLillo. The early post-modernists tapped into something brilliant I believe.

with Fate's glow
like a Greek tragedy
waxen wings in flux
with a quick decent
grounded and scalded
as our sun sets at noon

Would this be better? I'm not sure how to fix that stanza

*and a quick decent

First part sounds generic and sterile. Second part is good. But I think you could have better explored that feeling of "incompleteness" left after the interrupted fuck. It's quite interesting by itself. No need to tie it to writing in my opinion.

I like the hypnotic potential of repeating the same line several times. I also like the almost mechanically simplistic expressions like "I'll open your mouth/drain you/fill you up again."
But some of the other lines seem really out of place and I'd prefer a bit more variation in melody.

Mine is garbage, but here goes:

16-year-old little princess
20 years of war
20 years of blood and rapes in the dirt
20 years of coughing and genital warts
The bullet holes ceased being holes
The courts filled
We had to cut back on paper expenses
The tanks rest, the men eat
Lie on your back
All for naught? Don’t think that
Their shrieks, like those of a rookie cop about to get shot
It saddens me for a while
And then it doesn’t
And after you will come the next
And it will be better
I hope
For the day it stops being better
Is the day I might just decide to collapse an empire
Maybe I’ll change my mind
In two weeks, in two days, in two seconds
I’m hard
I haven’t jerked off in years
Your pink socks match the bedsheets
I take them off with my teeth
I’m beautiful, the standard, the icon of perfection
The surgeons did their work well
You don’t have a choice but to fall for me
And your cheeks give you away
Put the stamp under your tongue and swallow the white powder
Now wait
Your eyes will turn to saucers
Place one foot on my breast and the other on my lips
I’ll kiss your toes one by one
I’ll run my tongue up and down the arch
Breathe heavy
And look at me

Read Part I of Nim's Western Wind.

Nah. "like a Greek tragedy" is incredibly lazy and the capitalization of Fate is anachronistic. Just take more time to think it out and avoid cliches, anachronisms, and abstractions. You'll figure it out.

To follow up, instead of saying things such as "like a Greek tragedy" why not describe the images of this tragedy in mind, or the essence of the drama, etc. Don't let allusions do the work for you unless they are extremely clever.

with a strong hairy grip
leaving bruises
on the nape of me neck
our beards caress
and he keeps me safe
with his affections

power overwhelming
he shares his love
every last inch
leaving me tattered and helpless
and I crave his effections

stretched thin
I can't bare this load
under his weight
needing his afflictions

I think I fixed the poem. What about this:

brilliant coalescence
led us to this blaze
engulfed and fully consumed
as the sun sets at noon

blinding and blinded
binding and bound to be repeated
brimstone rather than a cleansing fire
scorching the seed half sown
and reaping, reaping, reaping
as the sun sets at noon

we shatter and refract
refraining from piecing back together
the char stained stained glass
approaching the cutting edge
and unraveling
as our sun sets at noon

finally, bindings sliced
and a moment of solace
before dusk devours
and my sun sets at noon

>saving your more philosophical ideas
It's not about philosophy, it's about Super Men.

This is an improvement without doubt. “Char stained stained glass” is awkward though, I think “char stained glass” would suffice. Or “char ____ stained glass”, anything that avoids the repetition. I appreciate your willingness to refine, I’m sure it’ll make you a good poet in the long run. Pay more attention to fluidity and musicality of language also, you shouldn’t be making lines so obviously clunky like “engulfed and fully consumed”, it should be “engulfed and all consumed” or any monosyllabic word before consumed. Keep track of that sort of thing, good work and good luck!

Yes, a philosophical concept. Why are you denying that your poem has an intellectual edge to it? It’s not a bad thing, you just haven’t fully refined it.

If you think "iridescent coalescence" sound good you should stop writing portry.

traveling on the wagon
along rural france,
and my mind was pondering about pure ideas
of Kantian morality;
all of a sudden, to my ears,
ringing and joyful voices,
and more than Practical Reason
i was now contemplating the lunar thighs
of those newly boarded vestals

Gay

dust - i'll be
around.

Between each lip
Extinguished
Desire

A stale smoke
Lingers
With words

Tongues tarry
Squirm around
Each breath

Then retreat
For new forces
To conquer

Thanks for your response. I like your vets much too.

Nice

Just got a poem of mine published bros. Real paper print and the like, too. Y'all got me through the low times - keep writing and keep dreaming. We all gonna make it.

>We all gonna make it.
Not me bro. I'll just wither away like the third world.

I'm trying to help a friend, I got him to start doing rewrites and this is the first one he did that really showed improvement from that fact

If

We like to play in hypotheticals,
Daydreams that fondle our hearts,
Giving us the impression that we may do something,
Create some sort of change.

If only.

You told me that you’d do it.
And you took back your word.
Now look where that’s left me.
Writing poetry early in the morning,
Sacrificing the time that I could be spending,
Trying to go to sleep.

If only.

I tried it a second time,
To write it better,
Maybe convince you that the time was worth it.
Maybe then,
We both wouldn’t have taken our lives.

If only.

I had the courage to speak,
My mind to myself,
Instead of hiding in my own insecurities,
Using my apathy as an excuse,
For how badly I treated you.

You damn fool.

Thinking that anything would change,
If I went back and tried a second.
I made the wrong choice once,
So I’ll make it again,
And again,
As long as it means nothing will change.

Newbie here. Where can you send your poems to be published? I'm shit now but maybe in the future I'll improve so who knows

I like the concept but the rhythm is kind of clunky

Read the revised version

An enjoyable read although I think the 4th stanza sounds a bit generic
I like the revelation in "We both wouldn’t have taken our lives."

I don't usually write rhyming poetry but here goes:

The right win anthem:

I want pussy
I want pussy so bad
I wish I was a Chad
A Chad like my dad
A Chad swimming in pussy
His natural habitat
Oh, I want it
I want it so bad
But the blacks I hate
And the poor people in my town
Because the Jews did it all
Somehow

Submittable. It's where most poetry submission happens

Fear and Loathing
Nirvana touches your very being
not with an outstretched hand
but with an all enveloping strangle
taking you over into the sound
such a perfect being
such a transience
that you might just make your passing

Eyes of Grey

Dull they shone,
To now, to her,
Time simply slowed,
Upon her death.
She cries.

Fleas to calm the utter sign,
Now we go,
Now we grow,
To the plain part of the clouded sky,
Charged with air,
It churned all,
Gone to scare.

It clumped in air,
Grey and down,
Blue, to the bass,
Now her figure, sounds like a vase,
Into the sway of the blue, grey skies
Her eyes would make you cry.

To your smile, she frowned,
The strings were plucked,
And uttered a deathly shroud.
Clamour, and clamour,
She was surrounded by the crowd.
Every night she rested,
With pain,
In the grey of her eyes.

Now she simply glanced from the bottom,
Up to you, taking her
Hair behind the shroud,
She made you cry
With a smile to smile.
Her eyes rang out,
The bridge of supple modesty,
Her tugs of grey was a simple
Oddity.

Sounds like a slam poem. It is missing some sort of thematic thickness. The meat of the poem is just chopped off, I understand the desire for simplicity, but maybe tone it down.