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Corridor
A mind like mine's a precious prize
that holds some fine ideas inside
a blinding shine that reached this size
through loads of time at decent pace
that's kind, benign, tenacious - tries
to flow in line with life's wild ride,
to grow from flaws and each surprise,
the lowest blows to analyze,
although malign, with smiles embrace
them all, they're walls I drape in pride
- not joy, not yet, I've still to find
the goal I seek with will and mind.
that holds some fine ideas inside
a blinding shine that reached this size
through loads of time at decent pace
that's kind, benign, tenacious - tries
to flow in line with life's wild ride,
to grow from flaws and each surprise,
the lowest blows to analyze,
although malign, with smiles embrace
them all, they're walls I drape in pride
- not joy, not yet, I've still to find
the goal I seek with will and mind.
Good stable meter here. Perhaps too stable, though -- the entire long first stanza becomes a small wall of text with identical rhythms, similar rhyme sounds in most of them, and not even a full stop along the way for the reader to breathe and take stock of where we've been and which way we're going. There isn't much help from the rhyme scheme to break the sentence into natural smaller units either.
It reminds me of John Updike's Cosmic Gall, where a similar steamroller of lines in haphazard alternation between just two rhyme endings conveys a feeling of exasperation, almost out of breath.
Somehow it doesn't work as well for me here. I'm left out of breath all right, but also without a clear impression in my head of what the first stanza was actually trying to tell me. That makes it very hard for the final couplet to provide a clear contrast.
(Even reading it very slowly for this review, I'm finding it difficult to unravel the sentence structure. The relative clause "that's kind, benign, tenacious" comes after a deeply nested stack of noun phrases -- but which of them is it that has those qualities? The decent pace? The loads of time? The blinding shine? Neither of the possibilities really scream "this is it" to me.)
It reminds me of John Updike's Cosmic Gall, where a similar steamroller of lines in haphazard alternation between just two rhyme endings conveys a feeling of exasperation, almost out of breath.
Somehow it doesn't work as well for me here. I'm left out of breath all right, but also without a clear impression in my head of what the first stanza was actually trying to tell me. That makes it very hard for the final couplet to provide a clear contrast.
(Even reading it very slowly for this review, I'm finding it difficult to unravel the sentence structure. The relative clause "that's kind, benign, tenacious" comes after a deeply nested stack of noun phrases -- but which of them is it that has those qualities? The decent pace? The loads of time? The blinding shine? Neither of the possibilities really scream "this is it" to me.)
Maybe this is a real form I'm unfamiliar with, but it seems an odd rhyme scheme: ABACABAACB DD. It had me thinking at first the A lines are the only intended rhymes, but then they ended up not being regularly placed toward the end. Meter is good.
I like when poetry doesn't feel obligated to end lines at natural pauses in the speech, and this is more a personal taste issue, but I prefer when they still do more often than not. Here, it often does end lines at natural pauses, but not really at the ends of complete thoughts, so it still feels disjoint across line boundaries most of the time. Nothing technically wrong with that, but it can make a poem harder to digest.
To wit, the overall message seems muddled, though were I to hazard a guess, it's along the lines of "my life has had its share of tough times, but they've led me to where I am today, and I like the end result, so I wouldn't change anything."
I like when poetry doesn't feel obligated to end lines at natural pauses in the speech, and this is more a personal taste issue, but I prefer when they still do more often than not. Here, it often does end lines at natural pauses, but not really at the ends of complete thoughts, so it still feels disjoint across line boundaries most of the time. Nothing technically wrong with that, but it can make a poem harder to digest.
To wit, the overall message seems muddled, though were I to hazard a guess, it's along the lines of "my life has had its share of tough times, but they've led me to where I am today, and I like the end result, so I wouldn't change anything."
I gaze around with blazing eyes,
How nice to see the theme is tied
In tricky knots that all comprise
A panoply of verse, supplied
In time to meet a fine deadline.
This interest, a hopeful sign!
How nice to see the theme is tied
In tricky knots that all comprise
A panoply of verse, supplied
In time to meet a fine deadline.
This interest, a hopeful sign!
This started as playful impro and turned self-exploratory. I love dense rhyme schemes, so I collected a bunch of phrases and impressions with loads of internal rhymes, looked for a common thread, expanded on it, and tried to stitch everything together into one interwoven mess.
The plan was to build a window into a mind that tries to know and mold itself, where understanding is a best-effort-kinda deal, and the "right" interpretation a matter of choice. In my head, I pictured a journey through a dark corridor towards the light at the end. A journey of growth, that's almost complete.
Sounds like the vibe somewhat came through, and details didn't. I'll take it.
I had a good time and learned a lot - thank you so much for your feedback and comments!
>>Troposphere
I'm glad to read you found it difficult to make out how the pieces fit together - I think at some point I even removed a bit of punctuation to put more combinations on a more equal footing - but I see I hadn't even considered that there's really no reason for the reader to pick an interpretation and roll with it. Nothing else would make more or a different kind of sense if they did. The number one thing I could've done better is spend more effort on making everything make sense to others. I knew this was an issue since I usually write for myself, if at all, but I wasn't aware of just how much I'd expected others to think like me.
>>Pascoite
When I first put my poem into the submission form I had it as ABACABABAC DD. Stared at it for a good while and thought about cutting it down to 2xABAC DD or swapping sections around to have an alternating rhyme in the first half of each line as well. But I didn't find an arrangement I liked, and also couldn't think of any benefit of keeping to any consistent rhyme scheme (not that I'd know any.)
The plan was to build a window into a mind that tries to know and mold itself, where understanding is a best-effort-kinda deal, and the "right" interpretation a matter of choice. In my head, I pictured a journey through a dark corridor towards the light at the end. A journey of growth, that's almost complete.
Sounds like the vibe somewhat came through, and details didn't. I'll take it.
I had a good time and learned a lot - thank you so much for your feedback and comments!
>>Troposphere
I'm glad to read you found it difficult to make out how the pieces fit together - I think at some point I even removed a bit of punctuation to put more combinations on a more equal footing - but I see I hadn't even considered that there's really no reason for the reader to pick an interpretation and roll with it. Nothing else would make more or a different kind of sense if they did. The number one thing I could've done better is spend more effort on making everything make sense to others. I knew this was an issue since I usually write for myself, if at all, but I wasn't aware of just how much I'd expected others to think like me.
>>Pascoite
When I first put my poem into the submission form I had it as ABACABABAC DD. Stared at it for a good while and thought about cutting it down to 2xABAC DD or swapping sections around to have an alternating rhyme in the first half of each line as well. But I didn't find an arrangement I liked, and also couldn't think of any benefit of keeping to any consistent rhyme scheme (not that I'd know any.)
>>Corinna
Ah, with that explanation I think I can see what you were going for.
What prevented it from causing anything but irritation for me, I think, was that the overall grammatical shape of the poem is that of a whole, integral thought, so I assumed the speaker intended to say something clearly.
Perhaps it would have been more effective if you had chosen a sequence of sentence fragments. With full stops between them. Implicitly inviting the reader to start guessing at their relation. Syntax that doesn't pretend there is one correct solution.
That could be argued to be a bit of a conventional solution -- but with a single poem of this length you don't really have time to negotiate a completely fresh contract with the reader from scratch. You need to rely on conventions to establish expectations.
Ah, with that explanation I think I can see what you were going for.
What prevented it from causing anything but irritation for me, I think, was that the overall grammatical shape of the poem is that of a whole, integral thought, so I assumed the speaker intended to say something clearly.
Perhaps it would have been more effective if you had chosen a sequence of sentence fragments. With full stops between them. Implicitly inviting the reader to start guessing at their relation. Syntax that doesn't pretend there is one correct solution.
That could be argued to be a bit of a conventional solution -- but with a single poem of this length you don't really have time to negotiate a completely fresh contract with the reader from scratch. You need to rely on conventions to establish expectations.