Sub Rosa

Beneath the rose nothing
is repeated. Mouths and eyes and ears are stitched
shut surgically and what has been
mounted on the doorway never wilts, never droops;
needles, like diamonds, last forever
and their stitches are like steel.

What is said here,
stays here. Beneath the rose everything
is silent. Marble halls lined with framed
charters see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil.
Conveniently silenced. Irony is the water
for the rose.

Powdered wigs and
dusty quills are useless now.
Beneath the rose, people are struck out with black markers
and red stamps.

Big Brother
has nothing on us.

This was really pretty. I am most certainly not an expert on poetry (I dabble at the most) so I can't give you a critique, but I can say that I really liked this. My favorite part was the last two lines.

But as much as I liked it, I didn't really understand it. Could you explain it to me? *feels clueless*

Great job.

~GryphonFledgling

The Latin phrase sub rosa means "under the rose" and is used in English to connote secrecy or confidentiality.

The poem was a statement of the stifling of free speech.

Thanks for critting, Gryph!


-Kylan

A note about the title: It's interesting, but not significant. It would be especially effective if it worked two ways, not just one. (PM me if you don't know what I mean). With that said, I can't think of what you could do about it so...

The poem was solid, a fine example. The ending lines were great, thats what I remember most about the poem. The imagery wasn't lacking however, the "stiching the mouth shut" portion, as well as the "red stamps" part were powerful. It did a fine job of creating the dystopian, orwellian enviroment.

My only complaint was the spacing. In some areas, it felt just a bit contrived, a bit too artsy. I think this poem works better raw, stripped down to bare bones. Perhaps you can clearly read it one way, but I had difficulty with some of it.
For example, consider:

is silent. Marble halls
lined with framed charters (characters?)
see no evil

Also, I think a comma after "stiched" doesn't change the meaning and makes it read better. Comma ater 'surgically" too.

I like this quite a bit. I didn't know you wrote poetry...

I liked more of the beginning than the end, because it started taking on the "big brother" thing, where as I preferred the beauty and creepy "inside the rose" idea previously shown.

What is said here,
stays here. Beneath the rose everything
is silent. Marble halls lined with framed
charters see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil.

In the first sentence, I am not so sure about the comma. "What is said here, stays here." It's more of a spoken comma, rather than a grammatical one, if you understand what I am saying. "What is said here says here." Of course I am not completely sure of it, so if you doubt me and think I am wrong, go for it, and leave the comma in. ^_^

Then it bothered me that in "Marble...Characters see no evil hear no evil speak no evil" you used no commas! It makes me a little sick to think that you would properly punctuate everything but that; and maybe you had a purpose by it, but I couldn't pick it up...

Beneath the rose, people are struck out with black markers
and red stamps.

This line is kind of long. You can leave it as is, but perhaps a line break would help? This isn't a complete complaint, haha, it reads well. but perhaps it would look better:

Beneath the rose, people are struck out
with black markers and red stamps.

I like it that way because "struck out" sounds so...deadly. and then you get the rest of the sentence.


On another note: I understand the poem a lot more having read your brief explanation. I like it a lot. I liked it before, but I see more of it now. You're a beautiful poet, and the imagery is great here.

I do have a problem with it though.

The Latin phrase sub rosa means "under the rose" and is used in English to connote secrecy or confidentiality.

I could guess on the Latin; sub is often used to mean "under" or "beneath" and the poem helps to confirm that thought. I did not know, however, that it meant secrecy in English. Perhaps you should some how incorporate that into your title, to help tip off your unknowing readers? It would be a nice "slight of hand" and give more to the poem. You wouldn't have to explain yourself, then. (Of course, looking up Latin terms, Sub Rose literally means "under the rose", but essentially mean "in secret". Perhaps my Latin is too rust [nonexistent?] to have caught on.) I am not sure anymore, haha. Do with it what you want.

Thank you both for your positive critiques. I'm glad you liked it.

"Marble...Characters see no evil hear no evil speak no evil"

It was supposed to be charters. As in documents. As in the Constitution. And sorry about that puncuation . I'll fix that.

Perhaps you should some how incorporate that into your title, to help tip off your unknowing readers?

What's a good way to do this, you think? Any suggestions?

Again, thank you both for your help.

-Kylan

This was good. It really gave off an almost eerie, deathly metal mood, very cold and indistinctly criticizing.

The beginning is interesting: "Beneath the rose" sort of puzzled me a little, but then I remembered from the Da Vinci Code "sub rosa" and I understood it, though I think it was a tad kitsch. Actually having the latin there instead of the English translation would be much clearer, in my opinion.

From there, everything went well, though not a lot made sense until you finally think about it--mainly your main idea, that _____ takes away _____'s freedom of speech just left a lot of blanks for me. It really gave the poem intrigue.

Technically? This poem doesn't flow. Maybe it's the lack of commas, maybe it's the line breaks--this poem practically attacked my tongue, with such good (almost prose-like), metaphorical words that could not roll off--it really depresses.

An example:

Beneath the rose nothing
is repeated. Mouths and eyes and ears are stitched
shut surgically and what has been
mounted on the doorway never wilts, never droops;

It would be much better as:

Beneath the rose, nothing is repeated:
Mouths and eyes and ears
are stitched, shut surgically,
and what has been mounted on the doorway
never wilts, never droops;

Do you see the parallalism of "are stitched, shut surgically" and "never wilts, never droops;" make the words flow? Now I don't think you should get extremely metaphorical with this and say that you've done your job by making it hard for the reader to read just like the poem's meaning--if it's hard for us to read, we won't read it.

Finally, the Big Brother image (from 1984) made it kind of...well... amature, like a boy who's just finished reading it, getting all excited, writing a crap-poem about it and sending it to everyone they know. Just my opinion.

I really liked this, overall.

PM me if you don't understand something (or anything) from this critique. Hope I helped!

This poem has some serious flow problems - it's really stilted, and doesn't lend itself to being read aloud at all. I think you should do as gadi suggests to make it read better and I also think you should scrap the final two lines. They completely change the tone of the poem and that ruins it - so get rid of them.
Bkwrm

I love this poem, I said I came to YWS improve and it's pieces like this that really help. I don't do much poetry anymore (Trying to catch up on reading, in my development I forgot, well more like made the mistake and chose not to, incorporate reading and English into my studies). So, excuse me if my crit is not in depth enough.

I couldn't understand it completely the first time round; as with most poems. It is true, I am undifferentiated from the learned writers above me, in the sense that you should incorporate the Latin meaning into the title. You need not take intricate thought in the matter (although if you must it's not necessarily a bad thing), however you could quite literally do it like this:

Sub Rosa - In secrecy

OR something along those lines, I don't speak Latin (have always wanted to) so you could probably come up with a better version of those than myself

Other than the face that I thought the imagery was beautiful, I thought the final two lines were a double-edged sword; I liked the idea, the satire, but I felt they were out of place.

What is said here,
stays here. Beneath the rose everything
is silent. Marble halls lined with framed
charters see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil.

In the first sentence, I am not so sure about the comma. "What is said here, stays here." It's more of a spoken comma, rather than a grammatical one, if you understand what I am saying. "What is said here says here." Of course I am not completely sure of it, so if you doubt me and think I am wrong, go for it, and leave the comma in. ^_^

I agree with the above statement.

It's not really my kind of poem...I enjoyed the voice and the sound very much, and you definitely have a talent for that. I just dislike poetry that's about an abstract or broad concept.

The first stanza was excellent. Loved it. The poem got progressively worse, and I hated the last line about Big Brother. It's a pop culture reference I think is overused and there was really no need to bring it up here.

-Colleen