New poet, me, so here's a poem

Lyaiera

So I got quite sick a few weeks ago. I had to leave my course and I was stuck for what to do during the days apart from doctor's visits. I also had a huge amount to deal with mentally and emotionally. I poured myself into photography, and it really helped. For the first time I felt I was really expressing myself with it, and I guess I got hooked on expression because in the past week or two I've tried my hand at both drawing and poetry. It's really become a means to let what's boiling away inside me out.

So with all that being said, here's one of the first poems I wrote the other day. I'd love to know what you think.



New Woman asking Old Feminists

teachers, poets and machine coffee crema
a two euro field trip, me a stranger in their home

a cheap price to pay for confusion, art and smells
and stark vision without vibrance
or lack of affect

I feared these people
Women bringing me Emily Dickinson
Whose sense was breaking through
A beating drum at every plunge.

Sonorous faded to a final world's murmur.

Where I was a stranger is now my home
One steady rhythm, a new familiar fear
Am I still a stranger?

Lyaiera

This is awful. Woe is me.

I'll keep tying though.

Insect Overlord

Lyaiera wrote: »

This is awful. Woe is me.

I'll keep tying though.

It's not awful at all. I've read (and written :pac: ) far worse!

I think the last line would be more effective if it was separate to the rest of the stanza.

Should the word at the end of line 5 be "effect" rather than "affect"?

You should leave education more often. I enjoyed re-reading this and trying to figure it out. BUT lets start with criticism.

teachers, poets and machine coffee crema
a two euro field trip, me a stranger in their home

As an openoing, I personally felt it was a slow starter. This seems indecisive. Distant. Blasé. Conversational. But maybe that's because I have a weakness for opening lines that begin with ejaculations. Outbursts, rather.

Being a stranger in someone else's home is a beguiling experience. Given where you go with the rest of the poem, I am sure you can write something that grips with a tighter fist. But maybe you don't want to; this is your poem, after all.

Sonorous faded to a final world's murmur.

I liked this line, even though I'm ambiguous about whether or not it should have a subject. What is sonorous, and what is fading? Well, the drum, we assume, but I think the sound of the drum needs a new introduction. I would have said something like "[each] sonorous [blow] faded..."

And secondly, if a murmur is final, isn't it axiomatic that the world the murmerer is inhabiting has also ended, thus making redundant a reference to the world? To barbarously impose myself on your writing, I would have finished the line as:

[Each] sonorous blow faded to a [final] murmur.

This has the benefit of maintaining the rhythm of the plunge and the beating drum in the preceding stanza. Now I usually DETEST when people suggest replacing lines for their own hideous words,so please understand it is only the rhythm I am hoping could be maintained, I would not be so bold as to suggest you adopt this line.

My final criticism is I don't feel as though the final stanza adds anything to the poem, from my reading of it. The final tapering of the line regarding the sonorous fading, the final murmur, is the perfect opportunity to put down the pen, step back, and admire what you have written.

Because this is a really good poem and potentially a great poem.

I loved the line about Dickonson's sense...

breaking through
A beating drum at every plunge.

Firstly, that is a bloody fantastic metaphor, loaded with solemnity and tragedy. A broken drum is a ruined thing, of course, which has known one, great, terrible burst of passion, or music, or fury... who knows?

One thing is sure. Nobody could possibly have written such a line in their first poem, so you must have more material lying around, and please do post it

Lyaiera

An File wrote: »

It's not awful at all. I've read (and written ) far worse!

Thanks!

Should the word at the end of line 5 be "effect" rather than "affect"?

It's a reference to mental illness. With some illnesses there's something known as "blunted affect" also referred to as "flat affect." It's a lack of outward emotional response to situations or prompts. "flat affect" was part of the cheap price I paid for sitting with those women.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

As an openoing, I personally felt it was a slow starter. This seems indecisive. Distant. Blasé. Conversational. But maybe that's because I have a weakness for opening lines that begin with ejaculations. Outbursts, rather.

I didn't think of it at the time, but it's an old memory that's been brought up by thinking of returning to this place, and these women. That's really the reason for why it's kind of separated from any impact.

Sonorous faded to a final world's murmur.

I liked this line, even though I'm ambiguous about whether or not it should have a subject. What is sonorous, and what is fading? Well, the drum, we assume, but I think the sound of the drum needs a new introduction. I would have said something like "[each] sonorous [blow] faded..."

And secondly, if a murmur is final, isn't it axiomatic that the world the murmerer is inhabiting has also ended, thus making redundant a reference to the world?

The beating drum is the alienating feeling felt at each world that was plummeted through, how each stage of my life until now was not-so-real but had me distanced from the world. Dickinson refers to a bell tolling her death, and the "sonorous" is a reference to that, how at each world I passed through I heard that "beating" of a bell/drum and how it signaled how I wasn't quite real yet. The murmur is how this bell has faded away at this final world, to something not so important anymore.

My final criticism is I don't feel as though the final stanza adds anything to the poem, from my reading of it. The final tapering of the line regarding the sonorous fading, the final murmur, is the perfect opportunity to put down the pen, step back, and admire what you have written.

The final stanza is really the culmination of it all, and the realisation that I'm no longer alien in this world, or at least I don't feel so. It has become my world where I'll stay. But I'm wondering if I'm still considered a stranger by these people?

breaking through
A beating drum at every plunge.

Firstly, that is a bloody fantastic metaphor, loaded with solemnity and tragedy. A broken drum is a ruined thing, of course, which has known one, great, terrible burst of passion, or music, or fury... who knows?

Thanks! But really all credit goes to Emily Dickinson. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174975

The whole poem is heavily taken from that. Because it was a poem I fell in love with when I was in secondary school, and meeting these women. And how I felt alienated because I couldn't fit in with them and their ideas. But now that certain things are resolved in my life I'd like to return and thank them but I don't know if despite the resolution in my life whether they'd still me as someone "alien."

One thing is sure. Nobody could possibly have written such a line in their first poem, so you must have more material lying around, and please do post it

I'd love to post more stuff, so I will. This is a lighter poem...

Red Nosed Fat Fcuk

I thought I'd buy a bottle
of wine
to sit
away from here
in my room or the grey
mottled sunken chair
I painted with gold light despair
A bottle of
red
in that tense walled trap
calls me to drink
with abandon beneath
feet and piss
and commerce carved chapel's steps
but
I'm a good girl
so I'll sit in this bar
with my putrid red
and putrid red
nosed fat fcuk
asking me
"How are ye, boy,,,"
looking at me like
he's not an underwear
wrapped
shit

Red Nosed Fat Fcuk - Addendum

there's a taste to life
and a pace to drinking
that sobriety demands to
match the two
so when ten or eight
have called a Murphy's
and I drink Beamish
I'm left to wonder
what's with the decor
do I fit in
Am I so alien?
the putrid fcuk
of course drinks a lager

Lyaiera

2am sleeping through life awake

sweet sugar coated
downy
downward rushing blood
and thoughts withdrawn
drain drained minds
and force thick lungs
of syrup cut
blue harsh acerbic
energy inhaled
deep sharp drawn breathe
and arch my neck
picked up a smoke
against time now gone
in energy beats
that pace a mood
when keystrokes dance
but slowly, rythmic
to an eyes closed
haze stretched
cracked
muscles, bones
alive and feeling
deadened
nerve endings
flare
and hair on end
like pinpricks scare
and dare contrast
2am to I am
to I wish
do I see through
softened air
a life of eased
smoothed living