zodiac
replying on No Sunday Clothes by wilco
6 Mar 2004, 9:27 AM
Yes I do.
Wow, those are good. Sure....give more if you like. You don't have to be so damn sarcastic, though ;)
PS- Thin and gaunt are practically the same word here. How about: "She was thin, almost dead," or "She was thin, I was drunk, it was love."
I think you should have paid the bill, walked out into the street, and been hit by a bus. Waking up in the hospital with two prosthetic legs would have actually been a less heavy-handed and predictable 'ironic' ending than the one you have here.
Really, I'd cut everything after beet slice, which is good, and (yes, seriously) add an ending where you walk out of the restaurant, NOT OBVIOUSLY THINKING OF ANYTHING - just description. At the very end the narrator a) passes under trees which reach up into the dark like hands, b) boards a subway/trolley/whatever where bored commuters loop their hands through those hand-loopy-thingies, or c) some less cheesy image of your own. DO NOT MORALIZE!!!1! DO NOT RECEIVE ANY OBVIOUS LIFE-CHANGING EPIPHANY ABOUT ANYTHING!! Just keep up the naturalistic description, and have a hand-image show up somewhere unexpected before the end. That's all and this poem will be great. If you understand, blink twice. Good.
So, yeah, that title is pretty clever, huh? I mean, I'm reading this thinking, like, what does all this have to do with Sunday clothes? and then, bang! right there at the end - there it is again! It's foreshadowing. A circular structure, even.
Or like saying, "Have you heard the one about the nun who says 'Well I'm really the bus driver!'" Somehow, despite that the bulk of this poem has almost nothing to do with the punch-line, I still saw it coming like a freight train, which is not good for poetry. Not to mention that ignoring an irrational traditional conception of Jehovah on His holy day is already handled much better in poems like this one here(http://www.bartleby.com/265/355.htm l) and here (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/disp lay/poem784.html - extra points to Eliot for using 'brown' as a verb!)
Do you want more?
This is not a haiku. UH.
you said "anything at all". Should I have thrown a pineapple at her perhaps? No you did not offend me a while back. I think you write well and I get jealous sometimes. often. thanks for your input though.
DUCKS WITH AIDS!!!!!!
"As I watched her, I looked down at my right
hand holding a forkfull of food.
My left hand was circling my cup of tea.
I looked back at her and wondered why."
These lines are awful. Just awful. The rest isn't half-bad; just change the end to anything - anything at all! - other than looking at your own hands and wondering why. PLEASE!!
I get that pudgy hip thing too.
i think your comment was very hurtful, cant we just be friends ok im sorry bout wat happnd in da past n sumtimes the pain is just too much ~*X-tReMe Is NoT a MoOd, It'S a LYFE-STYLE!!!!!!*~
Why is this not on the best list ????
I appreciate the feedback and, agree with you that there is far too little actual criticism on this site (aside from DarkAngel, who it seems, has a problem with anything that does not have the word "cock" in it's body). I welcome any feedback you may have on anything I have written or write in the future.
Yes, I'm aware that I probably sound like some giant elitist poezi to you, exactly the kind which that famous dream of being the embattled poet-of-the-age validated by time over the elitist poezi censure of his stuffy blind contemporaries would lead one to expect. And this may be true. If you're the next William Blake, all power to you. But I'm not really an elitist, just bitter today. Tomorrow I'm sure I'll be fine.
That said, I should point out that don't pretend to be able to write a great poem myself, I do know how to judge them. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I'm one of the very few people on this site who actually does talk and write about poetry for a living - and a pretty decent one - rather than as some kind of hobby, on his/her lunch-break from writing code or sculpting small wooden animals. And I'm heir to a dried-meat fortune which, as I have explained elsewhere (http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details. jsp?id=91826), makes me the closest thing America has to an aristocracy. Any questions so far? Good. We'll be in touch.
Please prepare yourself for my criticism by first reading every comment on the last ten posts by Ms. w-crystal lane swift-w and lydia evelyn, especially the ones concerning the use of unmetered AABB rhyme scheme; overused pairings like day/away, night/light, and dead/head; and the complete corruption of rhyme AND meter AND sense for such stupid (and cliche) non-rhymes as time/find, see/need, faith/rape, visage/image. Only when you have completed this task will you be ready for my real criticism. We'll be in touch.
i know what u mean... but i just write off the top of my head and thats how i write, so sry bout the apostrophes and shit but i write how i want
o yur my herO!!! i hate dark angel... she obviously knows nothin boutm poetry cuz she SUX ASS!!!
omg thats gr8
didnt quite understand that... buti liked it
I'm open, man...bring it....can't get better w/o criticism.