View From a Bus Window (a poem)

Insect Overlord

This is something I wrote back in March. I had originally intended to write something from a much more positive perspective, but despite the image of lights in the first verse I ended up going down a slightly darker route with this poem. Constructive criticism is welcome:


I have seen twenty different kinds
Of whites and yellow lights reflect
In the opaque water of the river
When night has fallen on this city.

I have stepped around the broken green
And clear glass pieces on the ground,
The flattened blue and gold beer cans
And smouldering ends of cigarettes.

I have heard the roar of engines pass,
The screech of tyres as they brake,
The snares and beats of stereos
That blare from cars stopped at corners.

The smell of damp from alley-ways,
From exhaust fumes and scattered chips
Half-drowned in salt and vinegar
Assault the air on nights like this.

I have felt the breeze pass through the streets
Between the buildings, damp and cool
With bits of dust and dirt and rain
From scaffold cages on new hotels.

I have turned my back and walked away,
Looked down on the river from the bridge,
Seen formless ripple-shivers there
And preferred them to the "real" city.

Black Swan

Wow! This poem is truly grand! You should publish it. Perhaps enter a contest that also offers publication to winners?

Flattery

For what it is, I think this is good. There are some neat observations and some of the word-choices are imaginative ("the snares and beats of stereos", for example). The structuring is quite good, too, with the last verse returning to the first and the last line appropriately delivering the judgment.

Having said that, I think it is a little bit unambitious. It's a decent theme and the payoff is good; the reflection being preferable to the rather less impressive reality. I think the whole thing can be tightened significantly with a couple more re-writes; it seems to me to be crying out for a regular rhyming scheme or regular syllabic rhythm, and from this point of view, the fourth verse is pretty strong (the one beginning “The smell of damp from alley-ways).

I think it is a good first attempt and a good theme and you show much in the way of potential, but I would spend some time with it and tweak it a little more. Would really like to read a second draft.

Insect Overlord

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Wow! This poem is truly grand! You should publish it. Perhaps enter a contest that also offers publication to winners?

Thanks Blue for your continuing support of my work!
I'm planning to start entering competitions and looking for publication during the summer, and especially when I start in college in September.

Insect Overlord

Flattery wrote:

I think the whole thing can be tightened significantly with a couple more re-writes; it seems to me to be crying out for a regular rhyming scheme or regular syllabic rhythm, and from this point of view, the fourth verse is pretty strong (the one beginning “The smell of damp from alley-ways).

I think it is a good first attempt and a good theme and you show much in the way of potential, but I would spend some time with it and tweak it a little more. Would really like to read a second draft.

Thanks Flattery, those are some pretty good suggestions. I'll be busy with the Leaving Cert for the next few weeks :eek: but I'll let you know as soon as I've edited the piece to my own satisfaction.

Flattery

Jesus Leaving Cert; mighty glad that's long behind me. Best of luck with it.

Karlusss

I really like this. It reminds me a little of "Acquainted With The Night" by Robert Frost, just in the way you're telling the poem. I saved it anyway.

Peyton Manning

Very descriptive and well-written poem. Reminds me of a poem I wrote before Christmas called 'The Window Seat'. Ill try root it up and post it here

Insect Overlord

Karlusss wrote:

I really like this. It reminds me a little of "Acquainted With The Night" by Robert Frost, just in the way you're telling the poem. I saved it anyway.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to say that!

Insect Overlord

Archimedes wrote:

Very descriptive and well-written poem. Reminds me of a poem I wrote before Christmas called 'The Window Seat'. Ill try root it up and post it here

Thanks Archimedes, glad you liked it.

I'm without internet access til at least next Wednesday, might have some new ones to post up then. Watch this space people!

bob200

Wonderful stuff

Johnny Meagher

Some very nice stuff here An Fhile. Bet you're a fan of TS Elliot! For me this reads very staccato like some Eliot poems. I mean it is quite rhythmic. I'd suggest that you scan the poem yourself and investigate its metre and see if you can't regularise a bit more. The metre of the first two lines for example is very strong but you lose it a bit in the next two, most of the lines in the poem end on a beat for example. Rhythm doesn't have to be DaDAH DaDAH etc but if you read a TS Eliot poem you will see nonetheless that you couldn't put in one syllable without destroying it somehow. You have probably analysed poetry in school for rhythm, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter etc you should do the same for your own work.
I'm sorry but I just don't like any kind of diacritical marks is a poem! Italics, bold, etc and/or quotation marks :P, I mean when they have meaning as your scare-quotes do. For me it takes away from your poem. If you feel you have to explain yourself then you haven't expressed yourself (pax TS Eliot and his bleedin' Notes to the Wasteland!!!). It is like you are saying I don't want people to misunderstand and think I mean the word "real" as in real butter but I mean real as in what other people think or say is real as opposed to the real real that I have just described. I think thou dost underestimate your poem! And besides releasing the word from it quotation mark cage lets its fullness of meaning flow and play, just like the lights on the river
Oh, I like the poem by the way!!! keep it up!

Matt Holck

on the first run I thought the you flattened the beer cans and crushed the cigarettes out yourself

I can't find the rhythm in this lines

That blare from cars stopped at corners.

The guy

You should DEFINITELY write more.

Matt Holck

true

Insect Overlord

Well, I didn't expect this one to get as much attention as it has been getting! Thanks to Matt Holck, The guy, Bob200 and Johnny Meagher for your comments.

The guy, I've got written about 75 poems and there's a fair few of them on this Board if you'd like to check the history.

MH, I was thinking of changing that line, "That blare from cars stopped at corners." In my first draft it was phrased differently but at the time I preferred to put it as it is now.

JM, I was reading Elliot at the time I wrote this, but only bits and pieces! Ten of his poems were on the LC English course this year. My teacher didn't cover Elliot's work in class so I only read it for my own enjoyment. For that reason I wasn't influenced as much in terms of style by Elliot as I was, for example, by Plath or Kavanagh. I also agree with you about the inverted comments on the word "real". My main reason for including them was probably down to arrogance on my part. I just assumed, because it was lads at school who usually saw my poems before anyone else, that the level of understanding would not be sufficiently high to understand the irony in the word real without the punctuation. Like I said, I'm arrogant sometimes!