Re: a comment on Cupid Missed Two Junkies (slightly clearer, rambling draft) by Ranger	13-May-06/4:23 AM
Neat links. I intended that this be a little surreal (it's about drugs, after all) whilst retaining a fairly clear story to follow. On the surface it's about someone getting paranoid and overdosing; the second, less complete layer relates to the 'Cupid' part of the title. I don't know how much people can see into this though; so far I've written what I wanted to say but I'm not sure where to go next with it, or how to make it clearer. It's pretty frustrating, really. Temporally is partly a play on temporarily, but also because the tenses in here are all over the place. It starts in the present, finishes in the past, and has an odd conditional junction in the middle. The leap from conditional to past really doesn't scan, but there again: I don't quite know what to do with it. How are the rhymes sounding in this one?
Re: a comment on My Prayer by dana071287	12-May-06/12:36 PM
I wouldn't worry too much about the syllable count, to be honest. It's more important that you get the rhythm right by working out syllable stress - the easy way to figure this out is to see if a reading of your poem requires you to pronounce a word differently to normal. Also, I wasn't sure whether or not to say earlier, but don't force the words into the rhythm. 'I want a heart that is new' feels like the sentence has been strung out to fit the rhythm. The best way to get round this is to enjamb the lines. Good luck with your writing - this site is an excellent place for learning to both read and write poetry. Actually, that's the other thing I should say - developing skills at reading poetry is vital for writing. Poemranker offers the chance to do both.
Re: a comment on A Snap Shot by amanda_dcosta	12-May-06/12:15 PM
If you're conveying mood in this, do it with solid images - maybe the curve of the porpoises being like a smile, or something similar. The beauty of this piece is that it's one of those 'show' poems, rather than a 'tell' poem, and that always earns bonus points. R.E. using 'the' - specificity works well here, it's just when reading aloud the repetition is very noticeable and so draws attention away from the rest of the piece. You can replace 'the' with, maybe, and adjective and still retain the directness in my view. However, it'd be worth seeing how other people read this; they might say the complete opposite to me.
Re: a comment on Cupid Missed Two Junkies (slightly clearer, rambling draft) by Ranger	12-May-06/12:03 PM
It's a pretty awkward draft at the moment...the language and tense structure is awful but I'm curious as to what people think of it in this form. The title gives it away, or at least is supposed to.
Re: A Snap Shot by amanda_dcosta	12-May-06/11:59 AM
Nice - fewer uses of 'the' would have been nice, it makes it seem a little disjointed at the moment. Also...I'd love a bit more in the way of description of the porpoises; I'm on the verge of actually seeing this snapshot, but it's just agonisingly out of my grasp... Easily 8, probably 9 with an edit.
Re: The Man with the Fiberglass Head by MacFrantic	12-May-06/11:49 AM
Ever heard that Kinks song, 'Plastic Man'? This put me in mind of it. Great poem.
Re: a comment on You can go no further. by Dovina	12-May-06/5:39 AM
Well, as I say, I haven't read even half of your stuff on here. Even so, this is one of the best of those which I have read. I understand about the masterpieces being unrecognised though...my turncoat poem was supposed to be my seminal work, which I will never better, but it didn't meet with the same attitude. But then, that's what public reading is for.
Re: When God is Needed No More by ALChemy	12-May-06/5:34 AM
This is fantastic; a great way of bringing a message across, and the message itself is well thought-out. The only problem I found is the rhyme of 'hearth' and 'earth' - I don't know how you pronounce it, but for me 'hearth' sounds like 'harth'. Not enough to diminish my enthusiasm for the poem though.
Re: a comment on Are life after death by freakything	12-May-06/5:24 AM
Token vote to get the comments showing on the counter.
Re: Are life after death by freakything	12-May-06/5:20 AM
'Our life after death', unless you're attempting a pun there, which even if you are is pretty tortured grammatically. Be more inventive with your rhymes. If you look through any amount of poetry on the internet you will find every single rhyme in here used approximately a million times. Doing what's been done that much before is an instant turn-off for the reader. Check a rhyming dictionary if you're struggling for ideas. General tip for anyone posting 4 poems in one go: leave some comments on other peoples' works, or you'll find very few people commenting on yours.
Re: My Prayer by dana071287	12-May-06/5:13 AM
Devotional poems are difficult to write. They're like love poems except that they won't get someone into bed with you. Therefore, if they're for public reading, they have to be superb. A good start would be making it not your prayer. If it's for public reading, the reader is going to want to be able to include theirself in the reading. Usually that means following the golden rule of poetry: 'Show, don't tell'. It also means following the second golden rule of poetry: 'Never rhyme "love/above/dove" in anything'. Seriously. You will not find a more overused rhyme in the English language, and readers want innovation, not more of the same. Using the 'love/above' rhyme twice in one poem is bordering on being a criminal offence. General points over, now to the poem itself. Well firstly it's fairly obvious that this is something you're pretty passionate about: that is a good start. However, the content doesn't live up to this. For one thing, you use 'I' 8 times, 'me' 5 times, and 'my' 5 times in 20 lines (that's assuming I counted right; not a certainty). That isn't conducive to letting the reader give it their own 'personal' reading. Cut down on pronoun usage in poetry as much as possible, otherwise not only does it limit the reader, but it also gets repetitive. I have to admit that I didn't work out the rhyme scheme at first (rhymes aren't my strong point) but on a second reading I saw the reversal and symmetry; that was good, although it would have been better with more variety in the middle - 'new' and 'renew' suggests you were struggling a little. Also, 'I want a heart that is new' doesn't really sound very poetic. To make it more interesting you could go along the lines of 'I seek a heart [do you really want a new heart though?] renewed' (I know you've already used 'renew', but I don't want to tell you which words to write). Umm...I can't really think of much at the moment so I'll leave it there rather than risk getting something spectacularly wrong and making an arse of myself. Welcome to poemranker, and I hope these suggestions are useful.
Re: Invasion by Roisin	11-May-06/1:49 PM
It works better with the edit, but 'irritation' still jars...
Re: a comment on Invasion by Roisin	11-May-06/1:46 PM
And maybe a vote and comment too? :-p
Re: The Observatory by Roisin	11-May-06/1:44 PM
This is good, thoughtful and plenty of alliteration.
Re: Last Night by Roisin	11-May-06/1:31 PM
The last two stanzas are more effective than the first two. They put a solid picture down rather than more abstract pain and anger. I'd get rid of 'pent up anger', it's somewhat trite. If it were my poem, I'd put 'she sat/With something rising angrily through crimson slits', although even that's somewhat cliched. Similarly with the first line of stanza 2 - I get what you're saying (that physical pain is a more bearable distraction from emotional, I think) and it's phrased well. But I just don't really take anything from it. I do, however, think you should keep 'an evaporation...condenses on her body'. That line is excellent and says everything you want. Does that make any sense?
Re: a comment on Invasion by Roisin	11-May-06/7:03 AM
P.S. - about the philosophy degree: snap!
Re: a comment on Invasion by Roisin	11-May-06/7:02 AM
It's so often the case that the 'easy' passages are the most difficult to interpret. I know I've found it to work that way recently. I look forward to the revision of this!
Re: a comment on Sun (Pantoum) by Sunny	11-May-06/6:58 AM
Any time! Being able to give relevant crits to other peoples' works is important to me - I've been learning by seeing what comments ALChemy gives to poems here; he is particularly good at spotting meanings in poetry. Same applies to ecargo. It's funny how poemranker is just as good at improving reading of poetry as it is at improving writing. Personally I love puns and other wordplay - it's often the case that puns get included unintentionally, but are vital to the reading of a text. I wish that more people would comment on your poems though...it'd be interesting to compare readings of them. Always glad to be of some use :-D
Re: Drowning by Enkidu	10-May-06/2:01 PM
Well rhymed, the only problem I had with this was 'amorphous' - I'd never imagine such words to spring to mind while drowning. Of course, if you're really drowning I doubt you'd be speaking at all, let alone in poetic verse.
Re: You can go no further. by Dovina	10-May-06/1:58 PM
Great! This is probably one of your best (although I can't claim to have read even half of the poems you've posted on here...most done while I was away and there's a lot for me to catch up on...) and I can't really think of anything intelligent to suggest. My brain's been fried by essays. Although, having spent some time dealing with Xeno's paradoxes I had this strange longing for some arrow imagery in here; it would fit with the angle and also with the idea of distance.