Want to comment on an attempt at a poem?
I’m no poet, but I like to try to write things in my free time. I’ve seen people give and get contructive criticism here and was wondering if I could get some of the action…
I lie on my back and trace with my fingers
The swollen remnants of a sculpted memory
Where once I felt form, now come slow moving waves
Giving in to the motions my hand commands
There’s now that once-known delay when I jump
The jolt gravity delivers once more given twice
…I had been free.
I had been, I lost it
Now trapped I’m swimming in all I’ve reacquired
I’m searching, searching, reaching for shore
Or for air
A break in the surface
A shallowing of the deep
I had it, I felt it
But now buried
It only hides
Please feel free to attack it! : ) I never get critiques so I have no idea how anything I attempt comes off on anyone.
I welcome anything you want to say.
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3 Answers
Strikes me as very sad. I liked it.
I didn’t particularly care for it from the get-go, and partly that’s because I grew up on the poetry of Frost, Tennyson, Kipling and others, including Shakespeare, too, of course, who used meter, rhythm, rhyme… and comprehensible images. Even e.e. cummings and his free verse used a more flowing rhythm and simple, short words that led to more universal images.
”... trace with my fingers
The swollen remnants of a sculpted memory”
means, what, exactly? I could see this being the start of an erotic image… lying on one’s back and tracing a swollen… oh yeah, I see where this is going!… memory? Say what?
If it’s trying to re-acquire a dream fragment, then I don’t understand what fingers have to do with it. If it’s erotic, then what is a ‘sculpted memory’?
A once-known delay when I jump? The jolt gravity delivers once more given twice? These images mean nothing to me.
Don’t let mine be the last word; when it comes to free verse I’m an admitted Philistine.
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