#my first poem (looking for critique)

17 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

warped elbow
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bronze bobcat
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Is this autobiographical, can I have a bot of context as to where this is going?

warped elbow
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Not autobiographical - to provide some context

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I’m a musician doing instrumental/experimental music - and I’m adding in spoken word poetry being read over instrumental music in a gruff older man’s voice - the song is just supposed to vaguely tell a story about a forgotten life of a man living in the Midwest wrestling with spirituality and his ethics

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Not a super consistent story - as if it’s being told by different people about one guy

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This sort of enigmatic figure if you will

vale portal
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I love your poem because it seems like it comes from deep emotion. I think you have done a really great job of showing instead of telling as well. I do have one critique, which is not my own and actually comes from Billy Collins, one of the most popular American poets. He said something along the lines that he ‘always starts his poems in a familiar environment, because not all poems start on mountaintops’ and that he ‘moves into the more abstract part’ once he established a normal part, so that the reader understands how he got to the esoteric part, instead of going straight there.

Basically, begin somewhere familiar so your reader has some context, and move into the fun metaphor parts next.

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And don’t get me wrong, I think your poem is very well crafted for being your first poem. I’m impressed.

warped elbow
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I’ve considered sandwiching these lines between another two stanzas - one which would be more familiar the other would expand upon the ideas in the lines I’ve provided

vale portal
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I think that’s a great idea, and I’d love to see either/both stanzas if you decide to make that change

warped elbow
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Thank you, I’ll be sure to put them in here

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The current stanzas exist as a sort of sister piece to a poem written by somebody I know - and each one exist in the musical context I’ve put them in as continuations of eachother

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If you’d be interested I can send the other poem

vale portal
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It sounds like an interesting concept. And yeah, I’d love to read the other poem, but I’ll read it in the morning cuz it’s getting late where I am

warped elbow
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Alrighty - sounds good

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Thank you for the input