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Gift Wrapping
While sitting alone
I watch green fields turning white
With volcanic ash.
It's not nuclear winter
Just a super volcano.
Winter will be cold
From the atmospheric ash
That blocks the sunlight.
Not prepared for years-long snow
I reflect upon my life.
Excavating me,
What will they wish I had saved
For discovery?
Drove in ash to office stores,
I took archival paper.
Back at home I print
The things I'd wish to learn of
With my power wall.
The battery will not last
So I must print it quickly.
My print job is done.
Inside the safe I'll place it,
And seal it airtight.
Poetry and languages—
Gifts I'll send to our future.
The ash is rising.
It is getting hard to breathe.
Coughing much, I lay my head.
I watch green fields turning white
With volcanic ash.
It's not nuclear winter
Just a super volcano.
Winter will be cold
From the atmospheric ash
That blocks the sunlight.
Not prepared for years-long snow
I reflect upon my life.
Excavating me,
What will they wish I had saved
For discovery?
Drove in ash to office stores,
I took archival paper.
Back at home I print
The things I'd wish to learn of
With my power wall.
The battery will not last
So I must print it quickly.
My print job is done.
Inside the safe I'll place it,
And seal it airtight.
Poetry and languages—
Gifts I'll send to our future.
The ash is rising.
It is getting hard to breathe.
Coughing much, I lay my head.
Genre: Pompeii
This poem is very straightforward with little prose porn. That can elevate a poem, but could also bring it down. In this case I feel it brings it down but just a teeny tiny smidgeon. This poem doesn’t rhyme, and people usually make up for it with fragments and more poeticness. When it doesn’t have either of those, it sometimes feels like you’re just breaking up sentences.
Overall this is a very solid entry. I personally loved the angle it took on the world dying and the way this man reacts to it. It’s kind of funny/intriguing of how calm he is towards his own demise. And very poetic on how he thinks of what people in the future would want to know about, what encapsulated the entire human race.
Best line(s): “Back at home I print/The things I'd wish to learn of”
This poem is very straightforward with little prose porn. That can elevate a poem, but could also bring it down. In this case I feel it brings it down but just a teeny tiny smidgeon. This poem doesn’t rhyme, and people usually make up for it with fragments and more poeticness. When it doesn’t have either of those, it sometimes feels like you’re just breaking up sentences.
Overall this is a very solid entry. I personally loved the angle it took on the world dying and the way this man reacts to it. It’s kind of funny/intriguing of how calm he is towards his own demise. And very poetic on how he thinks of what people in the future would want to know about, what encapsulated the entire human race.
Best line(s): “Back at home I print/The things I'd wish to learn of”
Structure-wise, I don't have a lot to say. Haiku with 14-syllable couplets in between, and the final stanza ends on a 7-syllable line instead of 5. The last one in particular I don't understand. It's not going to detract from the whole for me, but it doesn't add anything either, since I don't think there's a message hidden in that decision. I'd guess it's different just to be different? Given the theme, I think it'll just confuse the people he hopes find his printouts...
And to that theme: I like this idea that he's trying to preserve things he thinks are important when faced with a doomsday scenario, but my problem with it is the disconnect that he obviously treats it as important, but he doesn't sound passionate about it. He feels something needs to survive, but why he picked literature in particular doesn't get more than a superficial justification. Something like science or medicine might be more useful to a future person finding it. Not that he necessarily has a lot of that on hand, but he attaches a lot of value to literature, yet I never get his mindset of why it's the one thing he's chosen to save. If you want the reader to care about it, get the character to care about it, and give me a thorough discussion of why.
From language use alone, this will rank pretty well on my ballot.
And to that theme: I like this idea that he's trying to preserve things he thinks are important when faced with a doomsday scenario, but my problem with it is the disconnect that he obviously treats it as important, but he doesn't sound passionate about it. He feels something needs to survive, but why he picked literature in particular doesn't get more than a superficial justification. Something like science or medicine might be more useful to a future person finding it. Not that he necessarily has a lot of that on hand, but he attaches a lot of value to literature, yet I never get his mindset of why it's the one thing he's chosen to save. If you want the reader to care about it, get the character to care about it, and give me a thorough discussion of why.
From language use alone, this will rank pretty well on my ballot.
I think too many lines were devoted to the mechanics of printing. I like Pascoite's suggestion of exploring the why.
The 5-7-5 7-7 form is apparently a tanka. It seems to be related to several other Japanese poetry conventions, but there's too much there for me to take in right now.
Content-wise, I enjoyed the start. The middle could use work as noted. For the end... is this supposed to be an unfinished poem by the character? If so, I point you to Monty Python.
The 5-7-5 7-7 form is apparently a tanka. It seems to be related to several other Japanese poetry conventions, but there's too much there for me to take in right now.
Content-wise, I enjoyed the start. The middle could use work as noted. For the end... is this supposed to be an unfinished poem by the character? If so, I point you to Monty Python.
"The Castle of Aaargh."
What is that?
He must have died while carving it.
-Come on!
-That's what it says.
Look, if he was dying,
he wouldn't bother to carve "Aaargh."
-He'd just say it.
-That's what's carved in the rock.
-Perhaps he was dictating it.
-Shut up!
This one has a really clear and strong message, which is always nice. I'm also intrigued by the format, so props to >>LoftyWithers for identifying it.
Now, I will have to say that I thought that the idea of keeping records for a natural disaster did come across as a little simple/straightforward to me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it frees up the reader's attention to take in the other details. However, this kinda leads me to my next point, which is that to me, there doesn't seem to be much going on other than the conveyance of the themes and ideas.
Personally, I don't get a lot of satisfaction from seeing a lot of lines following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count, in the same way as I'd receive satisfaction from well-crafted iambic pentameter or a clever rhyme scheme. So I'm not getting a lot of mileage out of the format of the story. As for the mood, it's kind of unemotional to me, with the narrator clearly laying out his talking points and descriptions. There's also not much imagery or a haiku's "cutting" insight.
So in the end, although the message comes across cleanly, I can't help but feel that the text of the story feels a little sterile. I personally think this piece struggles to lean on the strengths that poetry has over prose, and in the end it kinds of feels like a oddly-formatted thought experiment to me.
Now, I will have to say that I thought that the idea of keeping records for a natural disaster did come across as a little simple/straightforward to me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it frees up the reader's attention to take in the other details. However, this kinda leads me to my next point, which is that to me, there doesn't seem to be much going on other than the conveyance of the themes and ideas.
Personally, I don't get a lot of satisfaction from seeing a lot of lines following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count, in the same way as I'd receive satisfaction from well-crafted iambic pentameter or a clever rhyme scheme. So I'm not getting a lot of mileage out of the format of the story. As for the mood, it's kind of unemotional to me, with the narrator clearly laying out his talking points and descriptions. There's also not much imagery or a haiku's "cutting" insight.
So in the end, although the message comes across cleanly, I can't help but feel that the text of the story feels a little sterile. I personally think this piece struggles to lean on the strengths that poetry has over prose, and in the end it kinds of feels like a oddly-formatted thought experiment to me.
I largely agree:
With >>Bachiavellian here. This is all about the surface details with nothing coming to me of what's happening inside the narrator. I need more scope, I guess, both larger and smaller--what this super volcano's eruption means to the rest of the world and what it means to our narrator. Don't just tell me about printing stuff out: show me what stuff's getting printed and what stuff isn't. Seeing those choices will tell me a lot about who the narrator is, but I'm getting none of that right now...
Mike
With >>Bachiavellian here. This is all about the surface details with nothing coming to me of what's happening inside the narrator. I need more scope, I guess, both larger and smaller--what this super volcano's eruption means to the rest of the world and what it means to our narrator. Don't just tell me about printing stuff out: show me what stuff's getting printed and what stuff isn't. Seeing those choices will tell me a lot about who the narrator is, but I'm getting none of that right now...
Mike
