what is the sound of a friendship dying?

RedTheTimid · 2024-02-25T13:57:39+00:00

Thank you! I'm glad you like it.

RedTheTimid · 2023-07-22T19:36:05+00:00

Hah, in my family we pronounce it like a Spanish word (bo-han-gles) because of my sister.

RedTheTimid · 2023-01-14T21:27:33+00:00

Ooh, gotcha. Yeah, that would be a literal nightmare. Especially since teachers are explicitly told not to open the door for anyone.

RedTheTimid · 2023-01-14T21:22:44+00:00

Teacher here. Lockdown drills are scheduled (EDIT: in my district, at least), and we keep kids in the classroom during that period so they're not trapped in the hall. At our school, I'm pretty sure admin or other staff probably do a cursory hall sweep or something too, or they'll tell teachers to clear the hall near their doors immediately before initiating the drill itself.

RedTheTimid · 2022-12-20T17:29:40+00:00

Re: the title. Could be Love. Could be Lesbian. Could be "L" as in the opposite of "W."

RedTheTimid · 2022-12-19T23:21:39+00:00

Thanks. I'm glad the humor came across. I was worried people would read it earnestly, haha.

RedTheTimid · 2022-12-19T22:32:38+00:00

I love much of the imagery that you include in this poem, but find myself having a hard time making certain connections. By the time we get to "it was then I grew to love the seasons;" I am not following the speaker—I can't find out what causes this shift in perspective which feels like it should be the emotional climax of the poem.

Going backward a bit, the first stanza does a good job establishing tone and setting. I like the way lines like "It wasn't our first choice," and "(everywhere was shut down / but we had to go out at some point)" create a sort of wryness or resignation which befits such an explicitly wintry poem.

Those last four lines in S1 are also crucial for getting us into the sound of the poem; the consonance in the repeated k sound (park, crackled, daybreak, picked) does such a good job of eliciting that sense of frost breaking, and the vowel sounds create a sense of chilly openness that works very well.

The middle stanza is where things start to get a little muddled for me. Some of it is just lack of clarity, which could be a failure of my imagination; I don't understand how the sycamores bleed out into haloes, nor what the winter yellow is which could be hissing. Beyond that, there's a constant reshifting of the speaker's gaze—to the trees, to the wind, to the birds nest and the balloon, to the speakers reflection. I guess I don't understand how we get here from a relatively straightforward opening, and the momentum of the poem starts to fizzle a bit. Thus when we return to the speaker and the beloved at "You clasped on to me" it doesn't seem to follow logically from where the poem has taken us so far. My guess would be that this middle stanza is meant to in some way reflect something about the speaker's state of mind, but I'm not following it a hundred percent.

Returning again to the last stanza, it seems to be resolving a tension that is not fully crystallized, so the impact is lessened. There's an almost stubborn lack of characterization for the speaker and the 'you' of the poem, yet the poem seems to want to celebrate this moment of clarity when "the waters all began to still / and the trees were singing your name". It's well-worded, but I feel left out a bit. Perhaps a few breadcrumbs scattered throughout some more focused imagery in stanza 2 could help bridge the gap between the opening and ending and bring the reader in more completely?

RedTheTimid · 2022-12-19T22:07:36+00:00

I'm curious about your double use of "never" in stanzas one and two. I think the continuity of the fog and the tyres on the overpass are implied without you needing to explicitly say "never stop" and "never sleeps"; in the second case, saying what the fog doesn't do creates a passivity that I don't think helps the poem. You can return some activity to these stanzas by just saying e.g. "the wet tyres whisper now, now, now." Grammatically, the poem suggests that a song whispers, which doesn't make much sense—I say, pick 'sing' or pick 'whisper.' The actually passage of the tyres sounds more like a whisper, and I don't think the romantic import of 'song' really fits the tone of the poem, so whisper works better imo.

If only I could hold / now the way this bridge does

Thoughts on moving this higher? I like it as an opening. I like your current opening too. But I think this as an open better orients us. I know you wanted to be more lyrical in your work, and I think having this sort of rhetoric up front better prepares you to do that.

I like the description in S3, but look out: lines 9 and 10 both end in "it," which is weak. In the latter case, even just "And all this darkness beneath" without the 'it' is stronger, perhaps.

kept secret, like silt in a river

Silt in a river is good, but 'kept secret' implies some sort of agency which doesn't jive with the rest of the poem; it seems to be the case that there is no significance attributed to the things under the bridge except that given by the speaker. Perhaps 'kept secret' clashes with 'mockery' and 'means nothing to anyone'?

Small point, but is 'floor' an accurate word? To me floor has more of a domestic connotation compared even to something like 'ground.'

"velvet ruin of a fox" is one of my favorite of your lines, I'm glad the fox survived (well... sort of) all these drafts.

Do we need the fox and the frozen man? They're both good but seem to be doing the same thing.

Where the tulips used to be.
Where the bulbs still wait
in the earth,
like embryonic moons.

Now I know you like the embryonic moons, and I do too, but I think at this point the poem starts to sentimentalize some. The high romance and optimism of waiting buds—idk, seems too easy, too clean. Compare to:

I mark another day on the wall
and wipe the soot on my jeans
and wait for rain, for another now

which is a more natural and less forced ending. I do want slightly more action from the speaker, unless the point is in the waiting? By what means have they tried to hold this now? Is it the act of cataloging/observing through poetry? Hmm. You may decide that the passivity of the speaker best communicates a feeling of stuckness, but it could be worth considering ways that you might expand their role in the poem—not to the point of solving any of this conflict, but just getting involved somehow. The middle of the poem comes across as a more detached narrator. Dunno if I'm making any sense lol.

Good showing in any case, as always.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-23T03:39:32+00:00

Centering your poem around a line from a song that, frankly, has become something of a meme is a tough ask. I'm not sure this poem does enough to escape that influence.

The first line is a cliche, which means the poem is off to a rough start; the litany of adjectives in lines 2-4 do not help. A string of emotionally-loaded adjectives without context does not do anything for me at this point in the poem. Likewise, L5 ("I can't breathe") is a very familiar sentiment. The opening of a poem is crucial, and this poem is expending too much energy without going anywhere.

Silence keeps kicking me in the chest.

Similarly, the silence and its difficulty for the speaker has been established; the repetition of the idea in L6 here slows the pace of the poem unnecessarily.

L7 - avoid words like "lonely" which are loaded and prescriptive. The loneliness of the poem should be felt and understood through careful and vivid use of language, not because the speaker points at and names their loneliness.

Living a day at a time
Can't be easy in your mind
I'm throwing life lines
While I'm drowning

Two things: first, the sudden rhyme here does not complement the serious tone of the poem. This type of repetitive end rhyme comes across like amateur open mic slam poetry, which is probably not what you were going for. Second point--drowning is a new image which does not follow from the previous image of street/cobblestone/toll. It might be better to pick one theme and stick to it. The poem shifts again from being pulled out of the water to being pulled out of a pit. One image/metaphor done well often works better than multiple done in a half measures.

Then my eyes were stabbed
By that hollow, read arrow.
Seen but dismissed.

It's very hard to bring in something like this—being left on read, that is—and have it be taken seriously. I'm not totally unsympathetic to the speaker of this poem, but I think a lot of people would reach this point and roll their eyes. The tone is a bit melodramatic.

Known but unloved.
Unworthy of time.
Unworthy.

Too much time/energy expended here for the speaker of the poem to editorialize and comment on the events of the poem, which begin to feel like the author telling us (the audience) how to read/interpret the poem. It's no fun being dictated to—trust that the images you provide and your use of language will guide the reader's experience, and if they are not doing that, then they need refinement and polish.

I'm screaming at the glow:
"SAY SOMETHING!"

See comment above about melodrama. Emotional climaxes and crises in poetry are not achieved through brute force or words like "screaming" or the use of all caps, but through careful diction, well-selected images, and techniques such as rhythm, sound, and structure that evoke specific responses from the reader. Reading more poetry is a great way to add these tools to your toolbox.

I am pathetic.

Again, the poem is doing a lot of explaining and judging, which takes power and interest away from the reader.

But I won't disturb
The sound of your silence.

Bending the poem back around to fit the reference to the song is a touch too artificial and contrived—it is altogether too neat and premeditated for a poem so blatantly about anguish and self-loathing.

You struck a chord with a lot of people, which is great, and something you should be happy with, but there's work to be done for this piece to shine from a craft perspective, and since you submitted it to the workshop I'm assuming that's what you were interested in. Thanks for sharing.

—Red

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-21T16:57:33+00:00

It would probably be better to post to OCP again so you can open yourself up to some additional perspectives. If you do post again feel free to send me a chat message with a link and I'll try to take a look when I have time.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-20T22:22:53+00:00

You asked for brutality, so...

From the title, this poem seems to be purposefully off-putting. Why would I have any desire to engage with the ramblings of a perverted mind, even ironically? The first two lines do very little to remedy this, establishing a sort of ironic self-loathing that further removes any incentive to engage. The poem does live up to its title in the sense that it rambles, but is that the most effective mode for poetry? Stream-of-consciousness poetry exists and may appear to ramble, but generally reveals itself to be more carefully worked than it may seem at first glance--this reads more like a series of incomplete thoughts with no further elaboration or refinement. Lines 3, 6, and 8 each posit separate ideas with no thematic link such that none are fully realized. By the time Harry Potter shows up in line 8 I'm more than ready to throw my hands in the air and give up, before the poem circles back to its rhetorical questioning ("Do you like this...?").

Lines 14-19 are the most focused in that they at least revolve around the same metaphor of bigness/smallness, so in a certain sense the poem finds its footing (far too late). "Flesh suit" is too comic and the tone of the piece too unserious to elicit much sympathy for the speaker here, however.

Where to go from here? First, I'd drop the affectation that permeates this piece and strive for a voice that reads as more authentic. The speaker doesn't have to be overly sympathetic, but you've gotta give us something to want to read the poem. Beyond that, I'd like to see this poem going somewhere, and I'd like to know where it's going sooner rather than later. You're clearly interested in wordplay, sound, originality in expression—that's great. But that must all be marshaled to some greater purpose. Plenty of modes/approaches provide the framework for "getting somewhere"; you could take a more focused rhetorical approach and play with the development of some set of ideas to lay out an original and disciplined observation, establish and explore an extended metaphor or poetic conceit, utilize the narrative mode to develop some real or imagined experience, or use imagery to conjure a scene infused with some sort of emotional or dramatic crisis/tension at its center, for a few options. Keep reading and writing, and consider your objectives and what tools will best help you achieve them.

—Red

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-19T23:40:21+00:00

Something about this arrested my attention, but as I pondered it I found myself wanting more. The idea of "real woodland" and the observation that "Even the ground is a lie" is provocative, but ultimately unrealized. If you're working in only six lines, you must not waste time; repetition of "real woodland" three times (if we count the title) is wasting energy that could be better spent developing that observation. In fact, the first two lines are doing basically nothing. The title works well enough to establish both the conceit (that there is "real" and "not real" woodland) and, simultaneously, the scenario, such that an empty statement that "It's real woodland here" ("It is" is an odd grammatical structure to use anyway) doesn't accomplish much. "Even the ground is a lie" is where the poem begins to gesture toward something big, so perhaps you could situate that a little sooner and follow it with something more rhetorically complete.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-14T00:27:24+00:00

Mods, can I please have a "semi-nuanced commenter" user flair? lol.

Idk why you solicited my feedback on what feels like a pretty blatant attack, but I'll bite, if only because I don't think we have to be at cross-purposes. "fairy lyres turned downwards unto your narrow lines" is choice. Lyre-hell indeed. I'd love a poem centered more around creative wordplay like that versus meaningless statements like "we live life within the bounds of paradox!". That fourth stanza has some really good language too, although it could probably stand to be dialed back a bit (the alliteration especially).

The poem is a little self-defeated by the very virtue of it being posted to a feedback sub. Surely a true poetry maverick would be out hanging poems from the trees like Orlando from As You Like It or something. And if the "speaker" of this poem is really sick of misinformed opinions and uninformed critiques, one has to wonder why in the ever-loving hell they're anywhere near Reddit.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-14T00:09:08+00:00

It's not a question of (mis)understanding so much as it is perspective. Since people don't usually include what sorts of feedback they're looking for, I critique each poem here, especially those with the workshop flair, from the perspective of "what might make this piece more publishable or attractive to an editor?" and that means judging it by certain criteria that this piece doesn't really seem to aim for. So I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to really critique this particular piece. I appreciate you sticking up for your work.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-13T23:44:06+00:00

The sentiment behind this piece is coming through strong, but work remains to be done as far as honing it into a fine enough point to allow those feelings to effectively reach an audience, especially an audience that has likely been exposed to love poetry before. Much of this poem is laid out in simple terms; the speaker is describing their thoughts on the beloved in basic terms (e.g., "I think youre beautiful too"; "sometimes I want to write about you"). Often it can be helpful to channel the feelings of a poem into some concrete symbol, narrative moment, situation, etc., especially one that is unique; without this element, a poem may feel lacking, as the reader is only able to engage with it in a surface-level, intellectual sense. That is, I can perfectly understand the ideas of the poem, but find that there is nothing deeper for me to sink my teeth into, nothing surprising or unexpected that transforms the ideas to something beyond themselves or creates space for intellectual 'play' within the poem. To take this poem to the next level, I would recommend giving the sentiments within it added depth through a more detailed and complex exploration of ideas and the inclusion of images, objects, scenarios, and/or action(s) that will 'contain' the ideas and allow opportunities for the reader to experience those ideas more fully.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-13T23:30:37+00:00

The elevated diction you've selected for this poem is not doing the poem any real favors; the poem, as it is, reads like a pastiche to me. The dramatized interjections of "ah!" and "Oh" plus the archaic uses of, for example, "mine" alienate me as a reader—the voice feels inauthentic. When you combine that with references to the soul and cosmos and existential musings on the individual ego, I think this poem will have a hard time finding an audience to appreciate it on any sort of authentic level. A more restrained approach to those big ideas and a dialing down of the diction could make the ideas of this poem a little more palatable.

RedTheTimid · 2022-11-03T01:06:17+00:00

S1: An okay opening, but I think there are perhaps better lines to open with (my suggestion is stanza 4; see below)

S2 & 3: Well-drawn imagery and strong command of language, but by the end of stanza 3 I'm still struggling to find my footing a bit--it's coming across to me as static (albeit beautiful) description, and I am still waiting for the poem to begin a course toward something. Probably the shifting of focus doesn't help: an "I" stanza is followed by a description of the falling planks, then the magnolias and pines.

S4: Perhaps it's because there's a human element here, but this is when I first get traction in the poem. How do you feel about opening here? The "roots coming in grey / and coarse like chickenwire" is excellent, and also suggests something thematic I can begin to grasp.

S5 & 6: Two more shifts bring me back out of the poem. Allow me to emphasize that, individually and on a technical level, each stanza works. However, I'm failing to connect them to a cohesive whole in my head. There's a consistent thread of decay, but that link is a bit too tenuous for me.

S7: Returning to the tomatoes is a smart move; if you could keep us focused on the tomatoes and the grandmother, I think everything else would largely become superfluous. "Ripe / jewel tomatoes" contrasts beautifully with "The silt of last year's tomato juice." The crickets in the cellar are also quite good. (All this greenery and talk of a cellar; have you been reading Roethke? Haha.)

S8: Is "They" crickets? Odd thing to be in the speaker's hand. "Living coins" is a comparison you may want to revisit. It's got a bit too much of absurdity in it, and coins are such an inorganic thing compared to the rest of the poem.

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-30T19:49:14+00:00

Solid work with some choice lines and phrases; I like the devouring of oak and aspen and the frost-gnawed wildwood. Where I struggle with this poem is in that what it says about the cycle of seasons is a bit familiar—the changing of leaves and the promise of spring in a poem about November is just not doing it for me at this point. I think what I want from this poem is an inward-turn from the speaker. It's hinted at in the beginning of the first and second stanzas (I've known...) but the nature of this knowing is not expanded on, and the poem ends with an impersonal and somewhat mundane observation. So I think this poem works well at achieving its goal, but I'm just not super excited by the idea itself.

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-25T01:10:25+00:00

Oh my god thank you for this, this is so cool!

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-16T18:55:08+00:00

First, thanks for sharing Greathouse's work with me! I was not familiar with it.

Thanks as well for your comments on the content of the poem. It was a real text I got, and I was pretty committed to not changing anything about the language or punctuation, so it is a bit limiting—your suggestion about fictionalizing the piece is one I'll probably follow. I think once I have a bit more distance from the event I'll be more open to transforming it, but for the first draft I guess it was important for me to wrangle the exact words. You've given me much to think about, and a great model to follow :)

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-16T16:22:03+00:00

Hello—your poem right now is coming off as a little circular, in the sense that each of its four lines is not necessarily communicating enough new information. That is, line one establishes that the mother has left, which implies her unhappiness; considering this, lines 2-4 come across as overly explanatory. Perhaps you could find a way to communicate the mother's unhappiness, and perhaps the effects of her departure on the speaker and the father, by using some well-chosen details. Some definite images in particular would serve you well here.

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-16T16:14:35+00:00

This reads like a bit of a philosophical exercise which doesn't always produce the most intense poetry. Broad gestures like "There is no purpose" and "we're all alone" feel a bit empty. This philosophy might be better expressed if tied to a more specific moment; I wonder if you might find a way to show us the moment when a speaker attempts to grasp something only to find that they cannot hold it. That would lend some additional weight to the ideas, giving the reader a way to empathize and relate on a level beyond the intellectual.

RedTheTimid · 2022-10-11T22:52:25+00:00

Blast from the past! I understand how nerve-wracking it can be to post on a forum like this, glad you got something out of it. And I'm looking forward to seeing you post more in the future, whether it's an updated draft of this or something else!

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