September

This afternoon I watched a silent film
in which a woman was feeding doves
in the yard of her little house. And I felt
pretty goddamn pretentious.

I think I'll ask for forgiveness before I start this. Forgiveness?

I think the last line sums things up nicely - you look pretty darn pretentious as well. No, I did not like this. Perhaps I'm just incredebly blind/stupid, but I see nothing behind the lines, and for that matter nothing in the lines. What is this, what are you trying to say, and why are you telling me? Maybe I'm just a too firm believer in poetry having purpose and meaning, but the more you become abstract and avant guarde, the less I like your poetry.

Er - I can't really end this with a "good luck" can I? Sorry if I was wretched, but I felt like I needed to be honest.

The evening, I read a poem
about something or another
it ended in four lines and I felt
thoroughly cheated of substance

Agreement with Suzanne, whatever there was behind the thought of this poem is erased by the disbelief of the reader, and the cynicism of the last line. It feels like you're fed up with poetry (which is completely understandable, come write fiction!... or theater!!!) and this seems like a final "screw you" to the reader. I mean, I'm sure it's not, but if I read this without any context - say for my schools literary magazine - I'd laugh and throw it aside. It just isn't serious.

So make this longer, or scrap it, but with what you've said, you haven't said enough.

Forgiveness too, eh?

EDIT: You know, Icaruss brings up a good point. As is, I can see this at the end of a collection. Not the best of ends, but there's an air of finality.

This was funny. It's the kind of thing I expect to see somewhere in a poetry book, accompanied by other longer poems. There, I'd be like: "Whoa, baby." But alone, like this, it seems pretty pointless.

Okay, I'm not a knowledgeable poetry fiend (hence the reason why this is my first poetry post), but I felt the need to express that I did enjoy this poem. Perhaps it is pointless and pretentious, but I felt I understood it and received a bit of amusement in reading it.

I think Icaruss may have made the best point - alone, this leaves us a little "eh", but I imagine with the feel of other poetry around it, people would be more tolerant. I know I've stumbled upon short poems amidst windy poem books and enjoyed them.

Anyway, I did like it.

I read this over a few times, Cade, because I wasn't sure how to take it. I stared at it for a while. I read it again. I read it aloud, slowly, and after a few more minutes of this sort of behavior ended up deeming it lovely. It's a subtle sort of lovely - a dash of imagery, a little bit of anger or frustration running in a vein beneath the simplicity. It feels like poetry, true and simple, and this is more than can be said for much which passes as the medium nowadays. The result is what seems like a purified version of perhaps a longer tableau, stripped down and honed into something fragile, small and precious.

I will have to whole-heartedly disagree with the dearest Suz and smorgishborg.

I love it. I do not find the length a problem, because this brevity forces the reader to read it slowly, and this is a poem over which one should linger.

It's funny because it's true. And it seems to be attempting to be funny. It succeeds at being funny.

So... yes. Success!

Pork

um darling I don't mean to be rude but what the hell?

I don't care if it means absolutely nothing, this just sounds right.

With a poem like this, you gotta shove technique and deeper, existential meaning aside and just listen to the sound of it.

Groovy.

-Kylan

Cade,


The first line of your poem can be absorbed into the title: e.g. A silent film in September.

Small poems tend not to resonate with audiences for a lot of different reasons; some of them include: the direct limitations brevity puts on poetic technique (the soul of which is metaphor and metonymy, both of which are absent here), the "feel" of the poem is closer to aphorism than poetry proper, and the absence of any rhythm that usually carries a reader.

Some people can pull off the small poem, but most of the time, like this, it feels like an image excised from a larger work. This primarily explains the negative responses you've received: we are standing too close to a painting, looking at a blot, and it's ugly, but if we step back, see the larger work, it could be beautiful. It's your task to decide whether you want us that close or further away--a decision you've already made, implicitly or otherwise, by posting this.

If you want to keep on, you need to post more than one blot at a time. That is, at least in my own experience, the best way to evoke the feelings you want your readers to feel.

To the actual poem itself...

There are many ways to expand this, but you need to figure out which one works for you. My eyes (and ears) would point me towards the image of the doves; I can imagine the woman feeding them outside her little, brittle bric-a-brac cottage, and I can imagine them hovering around her bread crumbs, some nestled on the old roof. I see one soar up into the air -- crumb in beak, of course -- to let out what should be a triumphant squall but is nothing, and the whole scene becomes a mimed performance, something bordering on the absurd, and then, all of us, and how we are infinitely burdened by the weightlessness of sound.

I, of course, have no idea what the actual silent film showed, and it's not all that important, for that matter. Ekphrasis is just as much about responding to works of art at it is to creating them. You need to ensure that what you're doing isn't a mimed performance of someone else's work.


Take care,
Brad