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Poetry


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The Quiet Poet

By JD

14 April 2006

Hi,
for a long time i have kept my work for just me and it has helped me through the bad times, as we all have from time to time!
for some reason i have suddenly decided that i would like to know what other's thoughts are
i wrote this in response to somebody that kept telling me to stand and speak with it, at the time as you can tell once you have read the poem, it was not the correct time! ha ha
JD

The quiet poet!

I modestly create to write, not to be listened to

Only to be absorbed instead

Not to stand, narrate and cry to all our life’s

people widespread

I purely do not conduct in all conscience I engage

Within a planet of words for fun

In hope of delivering a scant of tuition

Wonder

Maybe just to enlighten this days hope of sun

Therefore a poet is an individual and if no force to

Stand and speak

It shall not mould the man of letters inferior nor shape

Him less complete

The master of visionary thee poet, entertains imagination

Allowing contrast to thought of word and style

Only among solitary may they foresee their lyrical minds

Hotfooting incredibly wild

To I as the creator of my humanities that I opt to show

Are solely for the select

To escape to enter a kingdom within my word

“alas” my tongue may lack expression

“thus” clearly within mans mind

at least there without voice, my Witter shall be heard!

Reviews

Written by amboline (183 comments posted) 18th April 2006

I'm not entirely sure how to respond to this. On the one hand, you acknowledge that it's an early poem and that your material hasn't ever seen the light of day before - so you deserve congratulations (and encouragement) for having the guts to put your writing out here for the world to see! On the other hand there are aspects of this poem I don't really like. To criticise too much would be unfair to you at this stage in your poetic career - and I certainly wouldn't want you to stop writing and exhibiting your work!

As you did ask for feedback, though, here are a few initial responses, which I hope will be helpful if you want to revise this work, or for developing new material:

(1) The tone of the piece is very apologetic. You don't NEED to provide us with excuses for being a poet - just do it, and be proud that you're doing it! For that reason, your last line - "my Witter shall be heard" - was probably my favourite in the piece. It has a defiance which is really satisfying; after all, poetry is a fairly counter-cultural activity, and you could probably celebrate this a bit more in your earlier verses, rather than apologising for it.

(2) Was there a particular reason why you chose to make each line rhyme? The lines of this piece really flow as if they are free verse, and forcing a rhyme into the end of every sentence in my opinion weakens the poem. It also forces you to take some dreadful liberties with your word order, so that you can shoe-horn in the rhymes:

"Therefore a poet is an individual and if no force to
Stand and speak
It shall not mould the man of letters inferior nor shape
Him less complete"

sounds very contrived - it may (approximately) rhyme but only at the expense of the meaning of the sentence being lost. I almost want to print out your words onto a piece of paper, cut out each word and rearrange them all to try and work out the message behind what you're saying here.

(3) The other thing I wasn't really comfortable with was that you've used some really old-fashioned sounding expressions. "Alas", "thus", "a scant of tuition". They don't really fit with the more modern phrases elsewhere ("witter", "hotfooting"). I wonder if this might be an accident of who your poetic influences are - if you tend to read mostly 18th/19th century poetry then it will probably show up in your language use, and I'd encourage you to look at the work of some contemporary poets, to see how they craft poems in 21st century language.

Having said all that, well done again for putting a first poem up on this site. Remember that if you DO revise any of your material as a result of other readers' reviews, you can always post up the new version too, so we can see how the poem evolves. Most good poems are a process of continual evolution and fine tuning; very few arrive in the world 100% perfect!

The Quiet Poet
Written by paulgpaul (37 comments posted) 6th May 2006

This poem seems steeped in metaphysics: by that I mean that both the tone and syntax are from a bygone age and, as such, no longer resonate. There are plenty of ideas in there, but you need to tease them into a contemporary form. I would go further than Amboline and say that the archaic appearance, if were polished, would do any beginning poet credit despite the mixing of idiom and pedantry. However, as it stands, the poem shows promise: stick with it, rewriting line by line if necessary, and you'll be surprised what comes out!

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