Young Writers Society

A bit of prose poetry I wrote. First submission. Tell me, should it be kept in prose form, or should I opt for a more traditional stanza format? Tell me what you think, yeah? :3

**EDIT: Rewrote it into a more standard frame of poetry. Cut out some stuff. Thanks for the suggestions, more are always welcome.

ENTER THE MENAGERIE:

Music; perhaps obscene in those hectic cadences,
Plays against the frenetic wails that escape the menagerie.
It does not drown them out.
Elephant sounds rising above the music.
It is a battering ram that splinters and loosens against the orchestra’s steely chords,
I feel the atoms of sound dissolve in my open palms.
An interlude of coarse dullness; reds and whites
Assault my eyes in the form of canvas flaps,
Doors to a stale vapidity that preys on the sound of your screams,
A distant and ill-tuned chromatic scale.

I chase sparks.

Ultraviolet heat condenses between my shoulder blades
I am forced forward, from the thick red canopy of the menagerie
Into a carnal openness that fills my lungs with sawdust.
Curled fingers against mine, with the promise of lemonade,
Force the samples into my unyielding palms
Lend me to the viscous passion of carnival soft drinks.

Only a breath separates us. A metal breath,
Chain-linked with cruel prods of rusted iron.
The soft sadness in your gaze folds into me like lace,
Smooth and weightless in the way it pulls me down and drowns me.
I tremble and slide from myself like an oily coating of wax,

Revealing, melting,

Chipping away at the core until all that’s left is you and me.
Entities, as you are so much larger than I.

Hello there
Err, well, I think in this case the good ol' traditional stanza format would have done the job. I will be honest but I don't like this whole arrangement too well. It is very difficult to read through this whole paragraph because it is too much, you know. But I like the contents though, but it's too 'chunky', if you get what I mean. I just wish I would decompress it myself.
But then again, that's just me. Maybe the whole arrangement could a poetic gesture. Keep writing.

Hey tanja! It's me.
I just wanted to say, good job for finally getting something up. And I enjoyed reading it, though I hate carnivals and I cant see your current fixation on them.
So, I loved the writing. As always.
But the format...
Honestly, I think this format is kind of a cop-out for you. It doesn't have the restriction of the poem, because its partly prose, but it doesn't have to have real characters or a plot or dialogue, because its poetry. But when you have both in this way, you're avoiding both.
Here's my advice. No, my challenge. Turn this into a poem; the short kind. And maybe even add some repetition, make it rhyme. Well, not if you don't want to but give yourself some discipline. See if you can give me this emotion with less words. That's the beauty of poetry and that's what you're missing here.
You just told me the focus was elephants, which I felt in the first line and in the last bit but that got lost in the center. So maybe focus on just the elephants, without all of the extra- the twelve lines on how their screams are a chromatic scale or how you hate that viscous lemonade.
Tell me about what you see in their wide eyes and playful lips and timeless wrinkles, that make even the calves look older than our sun baked years stuffed with arrogance, while they've been living patiently at our expense, larger than life and still maintaining that simple grace that defines them.
Hope this inspired you and OF COURSE keep writing,
Meagan *****

Hello radiate, Lily here as requested! *dances on your face* teehee!
I see you took up Empress on the challenge.

And I have to say, that as a poem, this is wonderful and it paints a very bold picture of the carnival. I guess I didn’t get a chance to read this as it was originally so I have nothing to compare it to as far as the improvements go. But I’m sure you’ve done a great job editing.

My only issue with this is the focus of the poem. You start off talking about this bold vibrant carnival environment but then it turns into this poem about this separation between two people. I think this would have been way more amazing if you brought all of it around, going carnival, to people, and back to carnival. It would give this a lot of added depth.

Good luck and happy writing, Radiate!

~lilymoore

Hello Radiate! Here as requested. I'm glad you altered this to be more straightforward poetry than prose poetry, because honestly I have very little idea how to critique the latter and wouldn't have been much help.

The first thing I'm going to say: capitalization. You rarely want to capitalize each and every line in a poem; if you do, it starts to read less like a naturally flowing sentence, and. More. Like. A. Bunch. Of. Sudden. Starts. And. Stops. Which totally kills your rhythm and chops a lot of otherwise smooth images in half.

Music; perhaps obscene in those hectic cadences,

Perhaps obscene? Careful with muddy in-between words like 'perhaps'. You, as the poet, want to paint a clear picture and establish a scene that we can fully visualize (and in this case, listen to). You don't want half-way descriptions of things that may or may not be something or other. It's your call-- is the music obscene or not?

Elephant sounds rising above the music

"The music" feels repetitive, especially after saying it outright as the first word and using it as your subject for the past couple of lines. See if you can say the same thing without reusing a word.

I feel the atoms of sound dissolve in my open palms.

This line is out of place. "Atoms" and "dissolve", especially when used together, hint towards something scientific, and all of the connotations that go with science (sterile white rooms, the clean scent of antiseptic, calmness and serenity) but that goes against everything this poem is about. Amidst the description of all this chaos and unruly noise and the vibrant imagery of a circus, "atoms" is too precise and scientific. Stick with your theme.

An interlude of coarse dullness
Assault my eyes in the form of canvas flaps,

Firstly, "interlude" made me think of sound, not sight, as you mention in the second line. Also, "course dullness" is an odd pairing of words. I'm trying to imagine that, but nothing comes to mind. I'm not sure what that's supposed to look or feel like.

Lastly, avoid clunky, empty phrases. "In the form of" is one of those phrases. It's a lot of words just to connect two more important thoughts; consider, instead, just replacing them with the word "like" and make it a simile. It's cleaner and the meaning stays the same. And it makes the image of canvas flaps even more vivid, which is good, because that's a nice, strong image and you want to play it up.

Force the samples into my unyielding palms
Lend me to the viscous passion of carnival soft drinks.

Samples of what? And "viscous" is an odd choice of adjective here. Are you sure you didn't mean "vicious"? Although that wouldn't make much sense either. I'm trying to imagine what viscous passion of carnival drinks is like, and not having much luck.

Smooth and weightless in the way it pulls me down and drowns me.
I tremble and slide from myself like an oily coating of wax,

Too many words and too much focus here to describe something not very important. Drowning and trembling are clichés, and I think you could use these lines to find imagery that connects back to the carnival. You've lost your focus here.

Overall

I really did enjoy this. You're on the right track-- you're using the right sort of imagery, experimenting with interesting words and pictures, trying to create something unique and vivid here. And I commend you for that! Besides the point on capitalization (which I think is really important you do away with) my only other issue with your images themselves are that sometimes they're not images at all. With things like "course dullness" and "doors to a stale vapidity", you weaken the overall picture. Everything you say needs to add to the scene, and so everything you say needs to be visual, touchable, tangible. Those lines don't conjure anything real enough for our sense to latch on to, so they sort of slip away. Make sure your images are focused and make sense!

Speaking of focus: Lily is right. Your focus wander towards the end of the poem, and there's where you sort of lost me. I can't figure out if this "you" the narrator is talking to is the carnival itself, or actual another person. Either way, it's such a sudden shift that it leaves the readers wondering what happened to the cacophony of the previous stanzas! Figure out a way to integrate the feel of the carnival, that bright imagery and bustling scene, into whatever more personal relationship you're trying to portray towards the end. Cohesiveness is AWESOME.

Good job, best of luck, and PM me for anything.

~Evi