so.. where are you now with this whole poetry lark

Alright then, the craic is this, compose a poem, use any subject you like, make it concise, use everything you've learned elsewhere or on this site about technique, fluidity, punctuation or lack there of, voice, language, etc.  

I'm looking for that extra mile, some thought, feeling, even some showing off.

I'll put up a book for the winner, choice between four.

The Trinity - by Leon Uris  (totally recommend reading it)

A Midsumer night's dream     - Shakespear

A Brief history of time      -  Stephen Hawking (cheers Jon)

Seek the Fair Land           -   Walter Macken




the contest will be anonymous, so send your poem to me and I'll post it. The winner will be picked by one or two independent judges who I'll name as soon as I have their commitment  



Do your best, best o luck to you all.

Great competition idea, Craic.  Thumbs up from me... quite a challenge you have set, too.

Alright folks, just to clarify for those not familiar with the anon contest.  

1 you pm your poem to me

2  I post it here under my name

3 your poem gets judged on its content and technique

4  simples  

Judges  are Mr Jack Heslop and Mr Hemi Head

because the winner will recieve a book,  I'm going to give the trophy to the best critique of an entry.  Meaning:

Once an enrty is posted,  someone may critique it (one per poem)  giving the auther of the poem the chance to change aspects before the final day.  One  change per poem .

I hope that's all clear enough, if  in doubt ..ask

withdrawn

Gardel sings better every day.


Chafing laundry across an old stilted block
Berthe Gardes spilled midsummer lyrics
and arrangements into the crisp evening      (2)
ambience, birds stopped in their journey
to relish the splendour of her lone voice

Stimulating a bastard phenomenon in the
biosphere whose baritone cylinders would
later implode an  aeroplane, a curious
defeat of voyage. Ending an epoch of
musical virtuosity propelling an accurate
indulgence of lust filled appetite

In smoke stained bars the world mourned
to the sounds of orgasmic cadence
which continues to drench open legs of
Latin pirouetting worldwide

Idée fixe

I lit his eyes with kindling that winter,
skin smouldered with charred remnants
of everything you were
and everything we could have been.

Locked-jaw confessions seethed
under buds that once tasted air,
your breath of mourning
scratched scarlet cracks in a skyline      (3)

and your dry eyes, the needle points
gave birth to barren throats,  
the choking fullness of your life
blessed the silence of your death-

there were blind-spots
where reflex once reigned among us
with an iron fist, your locks of hair;
the teeth I kept in glass jars.

lepperochan said:Masquerade  
 
The Carnival of Venice
 
Everyone robed for the ball
 
Although I am a woman
 
I now dress as a man
 
This is not permitted
 
I will enjoy myself                               (1)
 
As long as I can
 
 
Ah there I see a veiled lady
 
With her rosy lips
 
Her exciting cleavage
 
The gleam in her eyes
 
Oh how I would love to
 
Seduce the lady in blue
 
 
There is music in the air
 
Laughter and gaiety
 
I approach the lady fair
 
Ask her to dance with me
 
 
She says yes and I lower my voice
 
Tell her she is lovely
 
Kiss her on her neck
 
Tell her I am the Marquis of So and So
 
A prominent and handsome man
 
 
What a match I would make
 
For that lady fair
 
Now is my chance
 
Romance is in the air
 
 
Couples are a courting
 
In the moonlight
 
I take her to a courtyard
 
When we kiss passionately
 
My hands wander
 
Over her bosom
 
She has let me
 
 
Now comes the tricky part
 
She must remain a virgin
 
So I am very cautious
 
As I find her mound of venus
 
And what lies below it
 
Careful fingers feel the rush
 
Of sweet fluids and the buckling
 
Of her knees, one more time
 
And her hymen is gone with ease
 
 
The night becomes dawn
 
She has to go home
 
I have to run
 
Cannot be caught
 
Impersonating a man
 
Only once a year
 
Can I come out of the closet
 
I go home to my husband
 
Children and my bourgeoisie.








Ok, number (1), I'll start off the critiques.

I think the content is sound enough, I think that the lines are very abrupt, meaning there's a lot of stop/start going on rather than a fluid read.

If you take the first seven lines, I'll try show you what I mean.
I think that lines read more fluid depending on how you finish the line before and start the line after etc, so if you take that into consideration and apply it to these lines, you might feel the difference while reading;

 
The Carnival of Venice
 
Everyone robed for the ball
 
Although I am a woman
 
I now dress as a man
 
This is not permitted
 
I will enjoy myself                              
 
As long as I can

---------------------------------------------------------------
At the Carnival of Venice
 
with everyone robed for the ball

and I'm a woman dressed as a man

even though it's not permitted

(I'll enjoy myself as long as I can )



I've just added in a word here and there to try and increase the fluidity (or my perception of it). the line at the end I've put in brackets because I'm not sure you need it at all.

It sometimes feels like you're trying too hard to set a plot, almost spoon feeding it, which results in you not setting the actual scene as good as you can. If you take the actual scene that you have set, the carnival, people robed up and stuff, you could try get that scene and images of what's around you in a little more vividly. I think you should have more faith in the average reader that he/ she'll get it.


Just in the context of punctuation, these lines;

"I go home to my husband
 
Children and my bourgeoisie."

see, if you're going down the route of zero punctuation , I think you have to make up for that in your line breaks. though I honestly can't see how you'll get away with not using a comma

I go home to my husband, children
and my bourgeoisie.  

is how I'd do it.

okay, please don't go taking the above too literally, it is after all only my opinion.  

Main Act  

Dark passages, the pathways of me
Clogged by the grime of years
life's debris
Internal equilibrium -off kilter -a remnant
entombed by a corpse
who only wants to forget it

Hemispheres paved like superhighways         (4)
lined with sewage
Sparking on every cylinder
that allows it
Exits hang receptive
suggesting landing lights
and endings

breathing happens, life pending
or not

Side show acts replace the star
headline performances, memorized
and dark

No turnaround
full throttle
A good day to die
or keep on getting on
another last time

Withdrawn.

Not to throw a monkey wrench into the machine, but it seems to me that if you are the first person to publish a poem on line, ownership of that poem, plus proof of authorship become yours by the very nature of the anonymous origin of the poem. Something about that doesn't sit well with me. But that's just my opinion on the mechanism being used. It is an interesting concept for a contest though.
JJ

That's fair enough JJ, though if anyone had that much mis-trust in them they could always keep a record of the PM right?   either way man, your poetry is safe enough with me feel free to offer some critique for an entry if you'd like a no risk shot at the trophy on offer.

Main Act

The pathways of me
These dark passages
Clogged by the grime of years
life's debris

My Internal equilibrium off kilter
a remnant
entombed by a corpse
who only wants to forget it

Hemispheres paved like superhighways  
lined with sewage (this image doesn’t work, doesn’t form a picture in the readers mind. Are you clear on the meaning of the word hemisphere?)
Sparking on every cylinder
that allows it
Exits hang receptive (this verse, right up to here, leaves the reader with nothing. Work on forming an image in the readers mind)
suggesting landing lights
and endings (good...like those two lines a lot. Having said that, this central verse is the weakest part of the piece)

breathing happens;
life pending
or not (the comma didn’t work...the semi-colon works better)

Side show acts replace the star
headline performances, memorized
and dark (in this verse you seem to step away from the idea of forming images, and step into the idea of forming emotional responses, which is fine, except that the start and end of the verse actually work against each other...the start seems to say that the main event is no longer the focus, then you put the headline act back in the centre at the end...consistency of idea must be applied in a verse...that is the idea of a verse)

No turnaround
full throttle
A good day to die
or keep on getting on
another last time (the poem could have been just this)

I would also like to see more of the writer in the work...give us a clue of the human behind the writing, give us something to connect with.

This is not a bad work, with a ‘fairly’ consistent tone and idea, good use of breaks to show where you want to stop/think/change gear, and a final point that ties the piece together. I would like to see the writer improve their understanding of scene-setting. Do you see that the re-write of the first verse makes the initial scene setting more coherent, in the way it leads the reader’s eye through the scene?
Finally, take away this idea. Generic is easy, to speak outside of the human experience, to guard yourself...all easy to do. Most people here are looking to connect with common experience, and to do that you have to give a little of yourself, give us why, give us when, give us meat to grind. All it requires is courage. I do not say that you have to write like you are publishing pages from your diary, but you do have to get as honest as that, in a way, for it to lift of the page and become art.

Good luck to you.

hh


(citiique given as example only...no entry into competition implied :-)

I can count him on one hand


i don't like to call it love, just
because the little hand jacks it to the other side of the clock
way faster than normal
when we only have two hours before 'real' bedtime
this time
and
just because
we pick the same bloody songs at random                (6)
doesn't mean we're on the same wavelength
[even though that was an obscure fucking song to lift
out of the whole collection, and the other eight,
those could have been coincidence.]

and it could have been grand, the idea of us
if i believed i was all that different from the other
three hundred and forty-six girls he's shagged on a whim
but
really, now.
i've only had one guy.

and if i added up the thirty-two times i've watched him tell me a half-truth
under the impression that i believe everything
that floats off his bi-lingual, talented lips
plus
his six core rules
only three of which have been revealed
plus
the two times i've seen jealousy think very hard
about sending a man out of my pub by the throat
plus the forty-nine nights
he usurped the conversation
with stories of blitzes, bitches, babes and sea
(approximately, five stories times two)
plus
one lost love-of-his-life-bff
who wants to meet me
probably to make sure i'm good enough

i would still have a man who held his heart to my chest
and meant it.

Idée fixe

I lit his eyes with kindling that winter,
skin smoldered with charred remnants
of everything you were
and everything we could have been.

Locked-jaw confessions seethed
under buds that once tasted air,
your breath of mourning
scratched scarlet cracks in a skyline      

and your dry eyes, the needle points
gave birth to barren throats,  
the choking fullness of your life
blessed the silence of your death-

there were blind-spots
where reflex once reigned among us
with an iron fist, your locks of hair;
the teeth I kept in glass jars.


Review –

My overall impression of this piece leaves me with a sense of pain, and yet confusion. The vagueness of the images gives little specific definition of that pain. Is the writer referring to a lover, friend, family member? There is little indication as to which. This method of writing is efficient for allowing the reader to impose their selves upon the poem, making the subject anyone they want them to be. I can only assume this is the writer’s intention, because no other suggestion is given to counteract this thought, save one, which I will discuss further down.

Whatever relationship this is, it is a dark one with such implications of painful images, experiences juxtapositioned against body parts. While some of these images are pleasing in a startling way, they also lack a concrete image to better grasp onto.  

Ie- “your breath of mourning
scratched scarlet cracks in a skyline      

and your dry eyes, the needle points
gave birth to barren throats,”

Another example of being left with a lack of certainty specifically pertains to the first stanza.

Ie- “I lit his eyes with kindling that winter,
skin smoldered with charred remnants
of everything you were
and everything we could have been.”

Here the subject matter is referenced with the words “his”, and “you”. This switches the narrator from observer to participant. (“We” also suggesting participant as well) The “participant” factor takes away from the reader’s ability to “participate” in the poem themselves, as mentioned before. If the writer wishes to allow the reader to step in, so to speak, then the narrator needs to observe, as opposed to participating, and the vagueness can be maintained. But if the narrator is also part of the story? Then more exactness needs to be implemented so the reader can follow the story clearly which allows him/her to “participate”, only in the role of the“observer”.

I would also like to address the punctuation of the second and third stanzas. It lends little to any openness of image as well

Ie- “Locked-jaw confessions seethed
under buds that once tasted air,
your breath of mourning
scratched scarlet cracks in a skyline      

and your dry eyes, the needle points
gave birth to barren throats,  
the choking fullness of your life
blessed the silence of your death-“  

The images run together partly due to the punctuation chosen. As a reader I would find less issue with this if it created a concise overall picture. However it does not in my opinion. I found myself trying to piece the puzzle together, so to speak. The “work” involved in doing this could very well be a pleasing aspect to some readers. But there is others like me who simply find it work.

In the final stanza, I was also left trying to “connect” the last two images to the very well written previous lines.

Ie- “there were blind-spots
where reflex once reigned among us
with an iron fist, your locks of hair;
the teeth I kept in glass jars.”

While the images are clear, concise, and graspable, they also seem to have little to do what the writer wrote before. This also brings into question the semicolon. What do the “teeth” have to do with the “hair” other than they belong to the same person?

Even with these issues, I enjoyed the piece. As an experienced reader (and yes… There is such a thing. lol) I could easily resolve some of these problems. But in terms of an overall audience walking away with any specific clarity, they might be an issue.

With critique being one hundred percent someone's opinion and utterly subjective, how do you determine a best?