Comments on: Friday poem and Friday criticism

By: VS

VS — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:43:02 +0000

I find the beginning of the poem “weak.”

By the end I was thinking of Frost’s poem, “The Hill Wife” and thinking about the two different type of responses to life’s situations.

And yes, many times life is easier just a tranquil darker.

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By: Serious George

Serious George — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:28:41 +0000

Thanks, HSK. I enjoyed that very much. It takes me four or five readings to slow down enough to hear it right. The audio helps.

I’ll bet this poem, like many good poems, didn’t grow up around an idea, but rather the first line (or first two lines) got laid down as an as-of-yet unexplored riff. There are places where it stumbles (to my ear) — eye charts slowing coming into view? — but following it through is satisfying. And a good way to end the work week.

Regards,

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By: llama

llama — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:49:31 +0000

Now you have a god complex HSK or at least an anti American bent toward limiting free speech. Are you creating some new WMB rules of conduct to protect your thoughts or beliefs from criticism or from humor in this case? So we now have to believe and think like Slate or just like you or both?

You need to re-think your egomaniac fear and pride, possibly take a vacation or time out but you can go ahead and delete my comments if it makes you feel better, more powerful or godlike. Otherwise they stay – you decide.

Kyle, I will agree that it is not good prose because half the periods are missing and there are way too many commas. Can’t let folks change and dumd down the meanings of words or they will soon have no meaning worth having. Like gays would wish for marriage others would do the same for poetry. Let them call it something else more fitting and descriptive like ‘poetic prose’

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By: Harrison Scott Key

Harrison Scott Key — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:27:25 +0000

LLAMA,

I will delete all further posts from you which get sidetracked into your prose/poem blackhole of non-thought.

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By: Kyle A

Kyle A — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:48:04 +0000

Llama, it’s not prose–at least not straightforward prose. Would you at least concede that it is poetic prose?

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By: llama

llama — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:35:35 +0000

I’m feeling a tranquil darker myself right now but Cabo should cure what this poem ailed me.

Kyle,

The poem was from Slate the left wing site where elitist whack jobs, the official critics of prose posing as poems, reside. Lefty sites and the critiques you find there will always be harsh and usually profane. But, in this case, prose should never be critiqued as poems in the first place.

It wasn’t such bad prose but those easily fooled critics will think it’s poetry quotient fair suspect at best, but they are never satisfied

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By: kimberly

kimberly — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:24:13 +0000

For the record, I loathed Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: I felt it had little structure or goal, like being let inside a rough draft which the author has not bothered to turn back.

This poem seems better: a musing on who God is and how He deals which each of us in the humdrum of life.

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By: Kyle A

Kyle A — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:50:17 +0000

I thought that many of the critiques were harsh and elitist. I wonder if those who condemned the poem for its length, its supposedly overworked conceit(s), or its “sweetness” can write poetry themselves.

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By: Kyle A

Kyle A — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:41:23 +0000

I like the poem very much. The poets use of the metaphors reminds me of the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” by Walt Whitman and “On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou.

He squeezes a lot of meaning out of a few words, which is the essence of poetry.

I appreciate that this poet recognizes the goodness of God and the (possible, at least) validity of believing in God. The allusions to Wordsworth, and even the equating of him with God, is intriguing.

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