Began the Going Under

It is perhaps an inexplicable passion for self-improvement... that we possess.
So give me your revolutionary writers with their lives cut too short
Who serve to excite the immovable
And lead a future multitude
Of martyrs - whom the tyrants will try in vain to avoid -
Dying slowly beneath a burden given them so that others may stand up and live.


Perhaps an undeniable desire for refinement and beauty?
Ja, give me your starving artists in the Seine-side lofts
Who somehow manage to inspire the prosaic -
The sacred and highly revered mosaic -
Of the higher mind, that sees what we miss in everyday life,
Dying slowly beneath a burden of a world that demands a very specific perfection.


Nein; An unhealthy enthusiasm for will and power.
And give me your European philosophers with their eloquent madness
Who posthumously serve to seduce the excitable
And with elegant subtlety inflame the ignitable
Hearts, that see them suffering there with their heads in their hands,
Dying slowly beneath the burden that a complex world has placed on their shoulders.

Hey DD! (welcome back!)

The first stanza stands out as being much too wordy -- ending lines on "immovable" and "multitude" quickly destroyed the flow, which the poem itself generally lacked. You have a lot of interesting ideas and images here, but at the moment they are not structured well enough. I think you need to maintain a better rhythm/metre and create a flow so your language fits better together. You'll eventually find it more powerful that way.

This is quite stream of consciousness, though, so perhaps you were aiming for that sort of thing? In that case, while structure is less neccesarry, the way you have represented it here is quite haphazard. I'm no really sure why you've decided to line-break in certan places.

However, there are some great points where the rhyme works and the flow does too! You need to manipulate the rest of the poem to do the same.

e.g.

Nein; An unhealthy enthusiasm for will and power.
And give me your European philosophers with their eloquent madness
Who posthumously serve to seduce the excitable
And with elegant subtlety inflame the ignitable
Hearts, that see them suffering there with their heads in their hands,
Dying slowly beneath the burden that a complex world has placed on their shoulders.

The centre lines, "Who posthu..." to "the ignitable" are just great. This is what we want. Great flow, awesome rhyme = good poetry. The rhythm is perfect. However, it's almost let down by the surrounding lines. There's a smiliar example in the second stanza with the lines ending on "mosaic" and "prosaic".

So my advice is to retain the great flow and rhythm you have in those four lines and create a poem around that. I think it will sound better and speak to me better.

A note on the German too - it has quite a jarring effect right now, and I'm sure what purpose you want it to have. Maybe something else to think about.

Good work!

Thanks for the comments, Jack. ^_^

Yeah... I wrote this in about ten minutes at midnight after an entire day of reading Nietzsche (hence the random German)... so it's doubtless a little screwed up in places. I wasn't even going to post it, but I figured I might as well get something running, I haven't posted anything new for just about ever.

Heh, I was bored when I posted it... I'm not even sure I'm going to grace it with a rewrite, I might just let it stagnate in my drawer, we shall see. ^_^

Thanks again Jack!

It was good, but RHYME SCHEME! FOLLOW A BEAT!!! It is choppy without a beat to follow.

Lose the Ja and the nein. It doesn't work. Just use yes and no.

Other than that, it was very good. Keep writing poetry, you're very good at it.
remember, RHYME SCHEME and FOLLOW A BEAT.

Rhyme scheme, my good sir, is for weaker mortals. ^_~

But no, thank you for the comments, I shall certainly take them into consideration.

(Yes and no is similarly for weaker mortals.) Joking, joking, thanks for the crit. ^_^

Gotta make this a quick crit -

My teacher would say this was more prose than poetry, and I think I'd have to agree. It would be a really cool anthem for writers. I really like it, but I think because it's so wordy it would work better as a prose piece.

And don't listen to the comment about rhyme schemes.

*hugs* Thanks Crysi! ^_^

Oy, you're too sweet to me...

Hi Dream Deep,


My impression is that this is dreamscape new-age junk. Imagery is lacking; this reads as a bad transliteration.

The requests in S1 suddenly gives way to another mysterious request in S2. I can see no thread that connects S1, S2 and S3 in a serious way.

This is gibberish, despite your explanation.

For all of these things, your aim is laudable--certainly including literary allusions in your works is by far the most difficult task a writer can undertake. However, for any one to be able to render the allusions properly, they must first demostrate a mastery and ease of facilitation with language--something which this does not demonstrate to me at all.

You can do better than this.


All the best,
Brad

Ah. How mean. But no, thanks for the input. ^_~ Like I said, it was randomly posted out of boredom... sory if it wasn't of the caliber you were expecting.

Thanks for the crit, Brad.

I like it please write more

Patrick wrote:I like it please write more

Aww. How nice.

Ahhh... I can relate. Maybe a little too wordy to be a poem, or at least a proper poem, but it struck

Bjorn wrote:Ahhh... I can relate. Maybe a little too wordy to be a poem, or at least a proper poem, but it struck

Really? o.O Yeesh, I saw that you had commented and had to screw up my courage to come in and look at it, I was worried you were going to think it drivel.

Oy... yeah. The Queen of Verbosity, that's me, but I'm glad it at least made half an impression. ^_^

You people are too coherent for me. I don't really follow this or understand it but it looks like everyone else knows what your saying.
i prefered the 2nd paragraph/stanza to the first one though due to it being quite "wordy." I'm not saying this is a bad piece, I think it has great potential.
Great stuff,
Lexy x

Thanks for the input, Lexy. ^_~