Picture-(Original)

by Liminality

To be sitting alone

in a glass kaleidoscope:

what a horrible

dream-reflection.

Surface cool against my palm

brings the fresh taste of saltwater

on a distant shore I'm unsure

was ever there

outside of

this glass theatre.

If I have nothing but hard and brittle

samples of sand,

nothing but the palette,

no beige, hard-packed, or loose, and,

and even these dissolve,

beyond the walls,

beyond shut eyes,

then must I deceive myself,

must I conceive myself

standing alone at the shore?

- Locke confesses

A/N: This poem is about a philosophical theory by John Locke. Locke thinks that all of our ideas (a word he uses for 'anything we can think about', such as say, a chair or table, or a sandy beach ) originate in sights, sounds, smells, etc. that we receive by causal interaction with an external world. So when we think of a beach, we are not thinking of a beach, but rather our idea of a beach, which according to him inevitably looks, smells, sounds different than the actual thing -- though he maintains the beach really is there. So for poets who try to portray things as they 'are' kind of have a huge dead end here in Locke's view, because we cannot perceive external objects the way they really are. Everything is mediated by our senses. That's kind of what I tried to portray in my poem above, with the metaphor of a kaleidoscope that surrounds the speaker, entrapping them in what their sense organs can perceive.

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Points: 144000
Reviews: 1228

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Sun Sep 25, 2022 12:43 am

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alliyah wrote a review...

Hey Lim! Glad you posted this, it's really interesting and mind-engaging!

This is one of those poems where the poem itself becomes a sort of artifact in itself which is really awesome and mind-trippy in itself. Great use of the title to intrigue / engage / and create this whole extra layer. The title in itself could be a whole poem because it's a great point that if something is a "picture" it can hardly really be the "original" and yet we think of it as so @_@

I love the set-up idea of this being a "confessional poem" that Locke writes about his philosophy musings too.

So much good stuff in that second stanza -> let's take a look:

Surface cool against my palm
brings the fresh taste of saltwater
on a distant shore I'm unsure - love the contradiction of "fresh water / distant shore" and the little poetry word play with "shore" / "i'm unsure" creating this added layer of confusion / uncertainty in.

was ever there
outside of
this glass theatre. - I see some nice rhyming in this section again and love how the image is both drawing me out but also bringing me close where it feels like the problem really comes back to this conflict of perception / truth.

In the third stanza it feels like the speaker is becoming more frustrated or emotional in tone - the 2nd stanza they were observational, the 1st stanza they were reflective, and in the third one they're getting concerned or hyped up especially it feels like that with the double " and and" which I loved that aspect of voice in it!

then must I deceive myself,
must I conceive myself
standing alone at the shore?

Such a concise way to get at the core / clear way to get at the heart of the problem! I've read only a teensy bit on this theory of Locke; I like his social contract stuff much more!! but I feel like I would have enjoyed if this poem had been just wedged in as a break in my philosophy text book!

Some more positives:

I think it's hard to get in all the sensory language in a way that feels natural, but you did that really well. The light rhyme in some places was also very welcome and made this all the more fun to read.

Small critique:
I wonder if there is a synonym for glass that could be used to avoid using "glass" twice in such a short poem; maybe "refracting theater" rather than "glass theater"? The other repeated words I liked, but for some reason that one stood out to me.

Another small critique: I found the beginning of this line a tad hard to follow "Surface cool against my palm brings the fresh taste of saltwater" - I guess it was a little difficult to picture what exactly was happening. If the intent was to create a little moment of confusion, that might be okay though!

I think for a poem like this it can be a little hard to figure out how to present it so people get something out of it if they don't know the background material - it might be interesting for it to be placed in like a double column with your Locke essay piece on one side and the poem on the other like a comment on each other. But I think your explanation at the bottom is very helpful and probably needed too for this audience!

Overall this poem tickled my rusty philosophy knowledge leftover from my college philosophy minor still rattling around somewhere in my brain. And the imagery that you chose I think was really perfect for the message. The poem's sort of dread / question at the end was easy to relate to as well.

Nicely done! <3

alliyah

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Reviews: 22

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Thu Sep 08, 2022 2:10 am

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ImaginaryPoet wrote a review...

This is definitely thought-provoking! I can't say I've ever really read any philosophy poetry, so I'm not sure how much help this review will be, but I'll try my best.

I'm honestly a bit of a grammar police, so just a warning ahead of time.

"To be sitting alone

in a glass kaleidoscope:

what a horrible

dream-reflection."

This first stanza is really beautiful! I love the imagery of sitting in almost an enclosed space and just watching the world around you. My only edit would be to switch the ":" between lines 2 and 3 to either a ";" or a "-". Typically, a colon is used to begin a list or example. On the other hand, a semicolon or dash can combine two sentences or ideas more fluidly.

"Surface cool against my palm

brings the fresh taste of saltwater

on a distant shore I'm unsure

was ever there

outside of

this glass theatre."

I was a little confused about the whole idea of feeling something leading to taste until I read the blurb at the end of the poem, so thank you for including that. One thing I'd like to say is that I love how each stanza almost seems to give a nod to a different sense. Stanza 1 was heavy on imagery, and now Stanza 2 is heavy on touch and taste. A few grammatical things: I would recommend either putting a period between "shore" and "I'm" in the third line, or just making "I'm unsure" a new line altogether. I've never been a fan of having two sentences on one line, but if you're going to do that, I would definitely ask you to put some form of punctuation between the two, just so the reader can easily differentiate between the two sentences.

"If I have nothing but hard and brittle

samples of sand,

nothing but the palette,

no beige, hard-packed, or loose, and,

and even these dissolve,

beyond the walls,

beyond shut eyes,

then must I deceive myself,

must I conceive myself

standing alone at the shore?"

The first thing to stand out to me is the line "no beige, hard-packed, or loose, and, / and even these dissolve". The two "and"s are confusing to me, so I'm not sure if this is a typo or supposed to feel like you're stumbling over words. If the former, I'm hoping I was able to bring this to your attention. If the latter, I would try and either fit them onto the same line or add a dash between them to promote the idea of repeating your words. I'm not sure why, but the way "deceive" and "conceive" is added into this piece, not in the way they're used in the poem but just their closeness when reading it is very satisfying to me. It feels very lyrical and just different from the rest of the poem, which makes it stand out and adds a little more emphasis on what is a very important line, in my opinion.

Overall, beautiful job! Thank you for including that little blurb at the end about John Locke. It was really interesting, and also helped answer some questions I had about the poem. By the way, did you write the blurb? I love the way the words are set up, especially the last line "with the metaphor of a kaleidoscope that surrounds the speaker, entrapping them in what their sense organs can perceive."

Points: 22123
Reviews: 455

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Thu Sep 08, 2022 12:30 am

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Hijinks wrote a review...

Hi Lim! The concept behind this poem is so fascinating - I haven't read much, if any, philosophy-focused poetry on the site - so I absolutely had to drop by with a quick review.

To be sitting alone

in a glass kaleidoscope:

what a horrible

dream-reflection.

This stanza alone is so perfectly and vividly worded that, frankly, I think it could be a concise poem on its own. I've read it at least half a dozen times now and I can't get over how beautiful and striking it is. I think the combination of such a weird, absurd idea - of sitting? in a kaleidoscope? - with the very commonplace emotions of loneliness and being overwhelmed is what makes it so compelling. It's also a really effective opening in that it totally piques the reader's interest and makes them think, what in the world could this poem be about? Genuinely though, I think this is my favourite snippet of poetry I've read from the past year.

Surface cool against my palm

brings the fresh taste of saltwater

on a distant shore I'm unsure

was ever there

outside of

this glass theatre.

So in this stanza we have a totally new image introduced (a beach or body of water), but then you do tie it nicely back to the start with the reference to a "glass theatre". I'm also starting to notice that you're leaning slightly towards sentence fragments in the poem, rather than long or complex sentences. That, combined with the enjambment, makes it feel like the narrator is kind of stumbling their way through their thoughts. Like these are difficult thoughts, or they don't feel totally confident in what they're thinking, and so they're hesitant to put it fully into words. Considering the context for the poem, I think that effect suits it perfectly!

If I have nothing but hard and brittle

samples of sand,

nothing but the palette,

no beige, hard-packed, or loose, and,

and even these dissolve,

beyond the walls,

beyond shut eyes,

then must I deceive myself,

must I conceive myself

standing alone at the shore?

I feel like this final stanza verges on perhaps too rambly/too much of a run-on sentence, because by the end it gets a hard for me to keep track of how these images and ideas are connected to each other. Like the question itself is "If I have nothing but hard and brittle samples of sand, then must I deceive myself, must I conceive myself standing alone at the shore?"; but in between the start and end of the question there are 5 lines of descriptions and additional context. Perhaps you did that on purpose, to reflect the incomprehensible nature of the inquiry? In which case, fair enough! But if you're aiming for clarity here I'd probably suggest finding a way to make that question a bit more concise or more grammatically organized. ^-^

Something I like about this poem is that even if the reader doesn't have the philosophical context or doesn't clue in to that specific theme while they're reading, there are other universal emotions and feelings that they can relate to as well. The main ones that come across for me are isolation, feeling trapped, and self-doubt (respective to each stanza in that order, more or less). And honestly, having just emerged from a pandemic that lasted ~3 years, a lot of those emotions I can relate to very strongly, philosophy or not.

But, looking at it from the philosophy angle as well - I think your poem absolutely does what it set out to do. Going off of your description of John Locke's ideas, the poem encapsulates those ideas very effectively and succinctly, and, as an added bonus, is quite poetic while it goes about it! :3 It's definitely an interesting challenge to write a poem, with imagery, based on the assumption that there is absolutely no way for the imagery to be accurate or authentic to the things that actually exist.

This is a bit of a different review structure than I typically use, so I hope it's still coherent and useful for you - let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to touch on!

Cheerio,
Seirre

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