The Park Bench

Hi,
Well this is a poem that I wrote one day last year in language arts class. We had free time and me and my friend had a contest to see who could write a better poem. We got a few more people in the class to judge and I won!
I honestly, hate it though. I don't think poems are my thing. I don't even know if this is in the right section, so if it's not just tell me and I'll move it. PLEASE REVIEW!



The Park Bench

As I sit on the park bench watching the clouds go by, I think and wonder about my life, his life, everyone's life without him.

The clouds remind me of the cotton candy I had at the fair with him so long ago...how it melted on my tongue as it sat in my mouth.

I think about the two year's gone past without him in it to comfort me. How many changes I made without his advice.

I talk to him sometimes, like now when I’m sitting on the park bench.

I glance towards the flowers and see the bee's buzzing about them, gathering pollen. He made the best tea with honey.

He use to read to me on this park bench, about princesses and far-away kingdoms.

As I sit on the park bench now, I watch the sunset go and see the stars appear.

Remembering the poem he taught me when he was alive and I was young...

Star light star bright, First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, Have the wish, I wish tonight.

And as I wish I fall into a sleep, on the park bench.

In loving memory of my late Father, Edward Hackett

Hi lakegirls--

My biggest and really only pet peeve of this is that it isn't poetry. It's kind of hinted on being prose poetry, but really what it sounds like is the ending page of a novel or a longish short story. It really doesn't sound very poemish. Know what I mean?

It's usually favorable to stick to line-by-line poetry rather than prose, mostly because the line between prose poetry and straight up prose is so blurred that everyone has a different view on it.

Good luck!

I agree, this is not poetry and cannot be based on such merits as meter and pattern.

Prose is such an usual piece of work to critique, but this doesn't seem to be prose when described as 'typical of speech'.

For a brief mention of what I am referring to take this piece from the wiki (with a cited source of its own)

"Poetry is considered to be artificially developed ("The best words in the best order"), whereas prose is thought to be less constructed and more reflective of ordinary speech. Pierre de Ronsard, the French poet, said that his training as a poet had proved to him that prose and poetry were mortal enemies. In Molière's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain asks something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master says to him, "Sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse". Jourdain replies, "By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that.""

This would be more fitting as well...a piece of a memoir.

Hi,
I honestly don't know waht it is, so could one of you please tell me how to move? Or if you want you can move it for me.

-lg*

Well I'm going to go ahead and leave it here or I may move it to "other", because right now it's isn't really poetry but it isn't really a story either. It could be a story, but there needs to be added information to the top of storyline...and this would be the ending.

Are you planning on editing it?

Hi,
I don't think so, I like it the way it is and I wouldn't know what to edit about it. I know it could be ten times better, I think i'm just going to leave it though.

-lg*