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| | (3 recommendations so far) | Message 1 of 21 in Discussion |
| From:  crispleaves (Original Message) | Sent: 10/31/2005 3:51 PM |
He yawns and sips his tea and feels
he has not slept. She leaves a slice
of toast, allows a peck on her cheek,
smiling she waves as the car drives away.
In his eyes she passes by, unwraps the quiet;
a scent, an echo in time. He loiters,
grass ankle deep. Tonight he sleeps
along a path to find, replay their time,
chasing beyond the knotted ground,
to stand upon a creaking bridge
and play with sticks a child’s game:
his floats towards a sandy bank,
slowly comes to rest ; hers skips a rocky crop,
glides to deeper water, slender wood
now sleek and dark as spiders spin
their webs beneath the shade of pine.
He sips his tepid tea and yawns. A slice
of toast, now hard and cold, he leaves.
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critique appreciated |
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like this a lot Clive covered a lot of emotional territory for me thanks, m,  |
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| | | From: Zydha | Sent: 11/3/2005 1:36 AM |
Just had another read of this fine poem, Pip and the replies, lol, you must explain to lb about free verse and syllable count!!! And Mikhail, this is Pip, not Clive, lol 'night, all, Zy |
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...lol...Zed...ok, back to basics....an even syllable count helps rhythm....without rhythm free verse mutates to prose...which is fine - but it's NOT poetry...I'm easy each way, I can enjoy both...and no one has to explain it to me....
: )lb |
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Thanks Zydha and lb
'not much crit to give without being ridiculously pedantic...you get the tone right...I could mention the syllable count which spoils the rhythm in places..but I'm basically a nice guy so I won't... : )....that one line...'tonight he sleeps'...needs a lead up or a follow on......it's stood there like a matchstalk...naked and with a bright red face...'
all help appreciated lb
cheers
Pip |
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| thanks for stopping by too m :0) |
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Hi Pip, I enjoyed this very much. I'll leave the crit to those who know what they're talking about and just say 'well done'. Brightened up a very dreary, dank, dark and rainy Irish evening just a little, thank you! Sinead |
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Thank you Sinead. I must admit I enjoy the rain: keeps the neighbour's kids off the streets, great for walking the dog in the forest (less folk about), something primaeval about the wood in the rain. Guess it's the Celt in me :0)
Pip |
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'an even syllable count helps rhythm....without rhythm free verse mutates to prose...which is fine - but it's NOT poetry'
hi lb
Originally this was essentially written in iambic tetrameter except for the water section. Perhaps I need to keep to four stresses per line to avoid the 'mutation'? I agree that a poem needs a 'rhythm' not to become prose. I find my poems become a bit 'bouncy' when I attempt metre in a more disciplined way, but perhaps that is my lack of skill/poor ear in using substitutions.
This thread is quite informative on the prose/poetry debate:
http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24896
cheers
Pip |
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| | | From: Zydha | Sent: 11/4/2005 12:08 PM |
Hy Pip, yes, your thread prompted me to question the difference between free verse and prose, so I began looking it up....I have always felt they fell into the same poetic ballpark, with prose giving way to an even more freely metered format, or even none at all, but there has to be a difference from simply writing a short story (perhaps in word use?) But...prose certainly can come under the umbrella of 'poetry', anyway, and I lifted this from a 'definition of Prose' to help emphasise this fact....... "straightforward' writing without recourse to the patterned regularity of metred verse. It can encompass speech or description or narrative. (Prose poetry has the ornateness and imagery of poetry but, like prose, has no discernible metre.) Bosola is the character for whom Webster most consistently employs prose. members.fortunecity.es/fabianvillegas/drama/glossary-p.htm" An interesting discussion, Zy |
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hi Zydha
The prose/poetry debate is a topic that comes up on many forums. Probably the nature of art is for the artist to work within or react against, or even create, an aesthetic framework. I thought this poster's 'distinction' between prose and verse was interesting, categorising poetry as a genre:
"I think I'll throw a curve ball to you all. Free verse is not different from prose. In fact, in most cases, it is prose. The problem is that as a short cut to understanding, people have reduced the field to two categories--prose and poetry. Unfortunately, that's an apples/oranges comparison.
Poetry is a genre of writing, no different in that respect than biography, personal essay, novel, etc. Prose, on the other hand, is a mode of writing. There are only two modes of writing, and the other one is verse. If you're not writing in verse, you're writing in prose. Any genre can be written in either mode. So, if a poem is not written in verse, it's written in prose.
The confusion occurs on two levels. First, far too many poems are referred to as "free verse." If the meter is highly irregular, or shifts throughout the poem, or the poem uses heavy enjambment or some other device to subdue the pattern, folks tend to call the work free verse. There is a quickly fading term, vers libere, that better describes these mis-named free verse poems. In such poems, either a true metrical pattern is begun and then strayed away from only to be returned to periodically, or a very loose variation of the metrical pattern is used throughout. That the meter is far more difficult to analyze (although the rhythm often still distinctly heard) often leads the poem to be categorized as free verse.
The other level is in how poets and poetry readers have come to use the word "prose." It is used more often than not to mean a piece of writing lacking the verbal tension and intensity one comes to expect from a poem. In that sense, it has little to nothing to do with verse or meter. Someone says of a weak non-metrical poem, "This is just prose with line breaks." The same person will say of a strong non-metrical poem, "The alliteration, internal rhymes, and syntactical parallelism really hold this poem together and make it a pleasure to read!" Both poems are written in prose but only one gets referred to as such.
To say, "this isn't poetry, it's prose," is no more or less correct than to say "this isn't poetry, it's verse." Both statements recognize the mode in which a piece is written and also make an assertion that neither rises to the level expected of poetry.
So, if the opposite of poetry isn't prose, what is it? Simply put, it's "not poetry." "This isn't poetry, it's crap with line breaks" works pretty well for me."
http://forums.poetryx.com/viewtopic.php?t=199&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
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Hi Pip...fancy a beer...?
: )lb |
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| | | From: Zydha | Sent: 11/4/2005 1:25 PM |
What a superbly informed answer, Pip, this thread would really sit nicely in Debatables, but I think we are of the same mind re. Prose versus Poetry, so much so that you will see I made a page a while ago for 'Prose plus', pour vers libre and any other writing without the restraint of ''rhyming verse' I certainly agree that 'Poetry' is an all eccompassing genre, and is more dependant on it's quality of writing for definition. Thanks, Pip, as I said, an interesting discussion, Zy |
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| ooops...I'm forgetting my manners...and a sparkling wine for the lady.... : )lb |
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