/lit/ - Literature

>Devolutionary
I haven't even started reading it yet. But if this is yet one more shit poem spending more time making a point than being poetic, I will be thoroughly cruel without ever once actually insulting you specifically. Which I find is usually even worse for the writer than if I were to just call them a moron.

>>1058048

Take a swing, only if you're man enough.

This was actually not bad at all. There's a lot of great imagery and metaphor (a lifetime / of sand against sand / grinding, yet / understanding / only / the ebb of oceans" is a really, really great way to encapsulate both insignificance of identity and impatience with life, that is great), the wordplay you use is very elegant, tame in the right places, a little bit skewed and strange at others.
If you can explain the line spacing, because I'm not seeing much in the way of cohesion as far as that goes, I'd be more impressed. I think the major weakness is that it's so broken up and disjointed. There's also weak line breaks leaving off with "or"s and "but"s and things that make a very clumsy stop as I'm reading. I'm not of the mind that all poems like this are "prose you just randomly hit enter on," but this looks like it could be. There's points where it's obvious you're singling out ideas and words for effect,
but then sometimes it
looks
like you
just
did
it
to make it look
different.

I'm going to read it a couple more times. Considering the glances I normally give /lit/ poems, it's a compliment.

>>1058066

You have a really good point on the line break-ups. I was never really taught how to do so properly (and I understand "properly" is a very loose term :see E.E Cummings:). So, any help with that is much appreciated, and thank you for the comment.

>>1058076
Well, it's incorrect to cite E.E. Cummings there. What he and many others like William Carlos Williams did was use meter and verse in such a way as to either indicate meanings by putting stops and emphasis using syllable stresses. Sort of a subtle "See how the words stop here? It's important." E.E. Cummings is also famous for writing poems where it's actually difficult to distinguish whether it's formal verse that's been broken up, or actually blank verse. A famous work of his for this to look up is the last poem in one x one. Read it in your head, then read it aloud. Ask yourself if it's blank or formal. You will be confused, that's ok, Cummings was a genius at that, and some poems of his even mocked it, daring people to go for it and being a little crushed when they can't possibly do it.
The other point to think about is, if you're not going to tackle it in that style, you can also take the approach of poets like Robinson Jeffers and, I'll grudgingly include him, Bukowski, as well as some Beat poets, and use line breaks to emphasize meaning. Look at it in a sense of emphasis within meaning rather than the word structure itself, and break it up according to 1) ideas, 2) force, 3) the reader's interpretation. What poets like Jeffers wanted to do was not make you ooh and ahh over technicalities but _understand_ the sentiments and points they were trying to get across while doing so with literary devices and language that clearly would not be expressed as well as prose.

To take part of your poem and illustrate what I'm saying about poets like Jeffers, (who I think you will LOVE by the way if you haven't read him, I would suggest The Beginning and the End first, personally, but you could probably start anywhere) I'm just going to fiddle with these lines I liked a lot:

our fevered ears,
like seashells,
hearing
a lifetime
of sand against sand
grinding, yet
understanding
only
the ebb of oceans;
our vacant hands, yearning
most
the honest reach
of pursuit,
of love

and there is none.


Here's how it could be rendered, and I'll explain 1) ideas, 2) force, and 3) reader's interpretation in the next comment.

our fevered ears like seashells hearing a lifetime
of sand against sand grinding yet
understanding
only
the ebb
of oceans;
our vacant hands yearning most
the honest reach of pursuit, of love

and there is none.

>>1058100

You're right, I apologize.

I think I'll Jefferson this poem. Thank you for the insight!

>>1058113

I like the rendition. Alright, I'll give it a shot.

And thanks for referring me to a new writer. Never heard of him before.

Ideas: Keeping cohesion, these are six different ideas here.
1) Ears like seashells (beach simile)
2) sand against sand (beach metaphor)
3) ebb of oceans (connected to the beach, but separate)
4) ebb implies tide, ebb (separate now)
5) reaching for love
6) alone/loneliness, no love

Now they're all tied together, with a chain of lines connecting them. You could even bring the next to last two together. The last line standing apart is mostly arbitrary, I would think, but it adds a little maybe that it's sort of the "punchline" to the thoughts, it completes it but stands alone.
Force: Having them linked together in this way creates as a reader reads it the connections, and doesn't make them halt and scurry through all the commas and breaks. The commas were unnecessary, the breaks were just redundant. Also, notice that there is an ebb and flow to the words. Big ideas, small ideas, big again, stop with final line standing on its own.
Reader's interpretation: Well, it's accomplished by the way that the words have been put together, in this instance. It's adequately expressed, and what you have is something nobody would read and stumble over.

And I didn't bother to put it to the test myself, but something you might want to think about doing when somebody says what I did before about the line breaks is, just re-type it all as prose. Does it work as prose? Is it dull or lackluster as prose? Is it great as prose? Take a criticism like that at face value, and investigate it.

Is reading poetry the best way to learn how to write poetry?

>>1058278
NO, IT IS NOT.

Writing poetry is the best way to learn to write, but you have to read a lot of poetry as well. Read all the poetry you can. Stop only to write it.

>>1058280
I was just browsing /lit/ and I found your all caps hilarious.

>>1058300
WHAT'S HILARIOUS ABOUT CAPS??

:confused: :huh: