Understand Me

Pre-script: In my eyes, poetry is the words your mind best forms of what your heart is trying to say. I don't believe your heart really has much
punctuation for it has no need, nor want, to take a breath. It is an ever-flowing story of emotion and depth. This poem is rather raw and from
what others have said you need to have good comprehension and depth. The point of this poem is for you too understand me so, the first time
you read it do not read for a review or for ways to correct or fix or improve it. When you read, place your heart infront of you and "absorb"
what my heart is trying to tell you. If you look too deep, it will elude you. Just throw out your mind and its earthly intellect and use your heart.
You'll find you understand it more than you thought possible. wow, that was long, ok.


Understand me.
I am your fleece in the winter,
The pain from a splinter,
So much yet unseen
So much inside me
Yae sealed and locked
Cry out my heart,
Understand me
Unlock my doors,

Open the windows
Of my soul
Blow winds from the sea
Let the salt sting my lungs
As stale air be broken,
Find me nigh too far
From the unknown
Like the unseen bone within,
Will ye I plee
Understand me?

The fire in your flurry of ice
A book that ye open to find yourself
An ear to hear with no finger to judge
A voice to be heard and to heal your heart,
The hands to hold
Yet chained in dark are they,
Arms to protect and bossom to love
To run to and yet locked and nie in care,

Understand me,
I flight to you
Even if it be only a bad dream
You confide in me and I adhear
Yae though you shrug while my soul break
I submit to it

I'm good at being air
My true self unseen
So I plee to thee
Understand me,

Find me and the world will be yours,
The mind be conquered
And wisdom be like water to the ocean
Yae find me and gold will be as dust
Silver turn to rust, money as to the moth,

So find me please try
Though your own might have to die
For I am as death
Or one so who is dead
Broken and unfindable

Quickly come,
Understand me
Err I am gone.

Juncboks- I don't really quite know what to say about this piece. Firstly, on YWS we usually steer clear from trying to explain poetry beforehand as a famous poet once said (I think it was either Wilde or Frost) 'Good poetry should explain itself...'.

Secondly you also say at the start that you don't want anyone to review it:

The point of this poem is for you too understand me so, the first time
you read it do not read for a review or for ways to correct or fix or improve it.

So I feel a little confused. The purpose of this forum is for you to post your work in the hope that others may have valuable opinions and points to add. You are defeating the purpose by simply asking us to 'absorb it'.

Help? Anyone?

Eimear wrote:Juncboks- I don't really quite know what to say about this piece. Firstly, on YWS we usually steer clear from trying to explain poetry beforehand as a famous poet once said (I think it was either Wilde or Frost) 'Good poetry should explain itself...'.

Secondly you also say at the start that you don't want anyone to review it:

The point of this poem is for you too understand me so, the first time
you read it do not read for a review or for ways to correct or fix or improve it.

So I feel a little confused. The purpose of this forum is for you to post your work in the hope that others may have valuable opinions and points to add. You are defeating the purpose by simply asking us to 'absorb it'.

Help? Anyone?

Maybe he/she just wants people to tell what they think of the poem, not make corrections. That's what I'm getting out of the pre-script. I think that he/she is saying that poetry is about the mood and feeling and expressing themselves, and they believe that it shouldn't be judge by grammar, punctuation and other mistakes like that. If I'm wrong, correct me.

Yeah, I didn't mean don't review it at all though. I just want you to understand me before you examine me. I wasn't really trying to explain my poem I was trying to explain the actions that should be taken to be able to read the poem. Justin got what I was trying to say.

I just want you to understand me before you examine me.

Being that you are not your poetry, I am not understanding nor examining you. I'm critiquing your poetry. There is a fine difference that you may be missing.

For the post part, your poem lacks imagery and I think your choice to not use punctuation is a naive one that, often, people think they can get away with. The best part was "And wisdom be like water to the ocean / Yae find me and gold will be as dust / Silver turn to rust, money as to the moth," Otherwise, I did not like it.

Perhaps it is your style, I understand that. You want to throw away punctuation - I can tolerate that for now although I am a firm believer of punctuation only being thrown aside because the poem requires it, not because all poetry doesn't need punctuation, if you can understand that? But I think the largest problem with this poem is you went out of your way to write a poem about yourself. And what does that do? That completely locks out the reader. You do not want to write a poem to tell the reader about yourself. You want to write a poem so that the reader can share an idea, a feeling, a thought, a belief with you. You want to give the reader something, be it a piece of you, but you cannot do that through telling them about yourself, and especially in such a cryptic and blasé way, imho.

Of course, when I am saying "You do not want to write poetry..." I mean to say, that is not the kind of poetry that gets published. If I remember correctly, you read poetry? I think we discussed poetry a little in your welcome thread, perhaps I'm wrong. But, in any case, if you read poetry, you'll find that it is not about the writer, and if it is, it is in a way that the writer can share with the reader. Here you're trying to open yourself to me. In all honesty, why should I care to read a poem about you? I don't care what you are like. I want to read a poem so that I feel something, so that I am given an image. And that may sound selfish, but that is what poetry really is, or at least, what I believe it to be. Not that I should be given everything, but the reader should. Poetry is, at the heart, punctuation or no punctuation, for the reader. I suppose it could be a stylistic view, but the best poetry does give something to the reader.

I do not mean to stand on a soap box and shout, but I do hope this helps. Otherwise, I have nothing to say.

Au contraire, I liked it! My fave part was

Find me and the world will be yours,

The mind be conquered

And wisdom be like water to the ocean

Yae find me and gold will be as dust

Silver turn to rust, money as to the moth,

I liked that line because.... I really don't even know. I just liked it!!!

Thank you very much Suzanne I will dwell on it. And thank you too LilyReagan That is also a piece i liked as well.

Thanks for mailing me. I'm glad to read another one of your poems!

Now, first I must say, this compared to 'Scream' was.... plain (for lack of a better word). Where's the perfect word choice? Where's the voice that draws me in? Where's the imagery?

Also, I understand that before you wanted anyone to review, you really wanted them to absorb everything. So I tried, I really did. Re-read it a total of 8 times, I think. But, I didn't get anything out of it. I don't know if it's just me. This is very stiff in my opinion.

Oh and one part that I really liked was:

I'm good at being air
My true self unseen
So I plee to thee
Understand me,

There's the voice I'm looking for!

Juncboks


No.

This is a collection of tired platitudes about your heart, who are you, and so on. It's constructed with arbitrary short lines that are at odds with the introspective theme you're pursuing.

The use of archaic language—ye, yae, and so on—and diction—"Err I am gone" doesn't even make sense, and "Even if it be only a bad dream" makes me wonder why you feel the need to write like a pirate—seriously hinder this poem from rising to anything substantive.

As a side note, if you're not going to offer critique, you shouldn't post your own work. Workshops rely on reciprocity to function. To date, you've reviewed three times, and posted three poems. You need to review at least six more poems to be even.


Best,
Brad

I approve of both Suz's soapbox and Brad's critique.

I think you would do well to get rid of a lot of what Brad called "tired platitudes about your heart", and keep what you have that is good, and build off of it. I enjoyed some of your images; there's potential under the babble, I think. First you need some sort of direction...as far as I can tell, it's loosely addressed to some subject (the reader?), whose relationship with the speaker is not clear, and you jump from analogy to analogy without really giving an explanation beyond "Understand me. No, seriously. Please? Do you get it now? Should I repeat it? Understand me?"

So, here are some two bits I enjoyed, and I'll tell you why:

I am your fleece in the winter

I love the way this line sounds. Yeah, just the sound makes me read it over again. I almost feel that it belongs in a love poem, though it would be more like, "You are my fleece in winter," which is super-corny.

I'm good at being air

Again, I like the sound, and this has such a connotation of loneliness and cynicism about it that appeals to me, but it doesn't go with the rest of the poem.

Good luck!
-Colleen

I really like this poem. I had to read it many times to figure out why and i guess the main reason is that i can kind of relate to the speaker. Throughout the poem, i can feel the desperation and yearning of the speaker to be reached and understood due your constant use of analogies such as:

Blow winds from the sea
Let the salt sting my lungs
As stale air be broken,

A book that ye open to find yourself
An ear to hear with no finger to judge

I also really like,

I'm good at being air
My true self unseen

and I think those lines really sum up and clarifies the whole poem.

I think the use punctuation might make this piece better though.