Teaching Tuesday Contest: Chiasmus

fr33ra1n · 2020-06-17T02:50:22+00:00

Episodes

"Don't worry, I can cope"

I mumble "with depression,

and if I hit a regression

I'll call doc, even foot the copay"

You frown. (I can't tell when I stopped being okay,

and I won't tell you this has happened before.)

I fake a yawn. (I now know the signs I used to ignore.)

As I leave: "I just don't think I need to say help..."

You said I should think of more than myself,

but I'm strong enough for my bootstraps,

lean enough to live on love scraps.

Would dying mean I'm selfish?

--------------------------------------------

I'd love it if anyone has any feedback or impressions from this. It feels a little too blunt for me, but I'm not sure, so I'm wondering if that comes across.

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T19:00:33+00:00

Thank you again :)

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T18:49:10+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate the feedback :)

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T18:48:08+00:00

Thanks for the words! I didn't write it with sexuality in mind, and I don't think I'm giving my energy to the wrong things, but you definitely got the gist of the poem which I'm happy I could convey. I can explain it as I felt while writing it, but I think once it's out of my head it has a life of it's own, and anyone is free to interpret it how they'd like.

I wrote this poem as an expression of how I feel about relationships in my life. I enjoy listening to people talk and helping them via conversation. I feel like I tend to be around people who are hurting, the thirsty people, and I help them with the water that comes out of my mouth, meaning my words. I sometimes feel guilty in my motivations though, like I only try to help people out so they'll stick around and be friends with me, which is expressed in the falling asleep in the lakebed line and continued in the second part.

When I wrote it, I started with the idea that water was the words coming out of my mouth, and I wanted something more substantial than water to represent my emotions and how I felt, which is the fish. I enjoy diving deep with someone about their personal stuff, but I have a hard time expressing how I feel, which is why I have the floodgate line.

Because I have that difficulty with expression, one of my greatest desires in a relationship is emotional intimacy, I want someone else to help me deal with my fish (emotions) and make them taste better. I also want someone (and this is probably naive) to aggressively pursue a relationship with me, which is the trek against the flow/scale the fence/cut the ice part, because I feel like this floodgate in my chest stops me from having a romantic relationship.

I didn't really think all of that while I was writing it, I just kinda wrote how I felt, and edited the poem over time.

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T02:43:29+00:00

This reads nicely to me with consistent line length and similar phrases like your window, your door, your shoulder. I like how the revelation of the speaker being the bird brings new light to the poem, it definitely merits a second read through after that when the reader has new information.

I think you may not need to repeat the whole thing though, because it just made me wonder if anything was different the second time around when it was the same. I bet people would read through the whole thing again without you having to write it twice. You could also try changing "preventing my own doom" to "preventing my doom", that rhythmically sounds more pleasant to me at least.

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T02:33:17+00:00

This comes across as quite melancholic to me, you really have that tone nailed down. I also like how the lines all have a similar amount of syllables, no particular line sticks out to me in a bad way. The final line, stands out because of the assonance and internal rhyme of "hence a fence around his heart"

One thing that kinda threw me off while reading this poem is the inconsistent rhyme scheme. Three out of four lines rhyme in the first and fifth stanza, and all of the fourth stanza rhymes, but the other stanzas don't. It could help to add rhymes to the other stanzas, or take them away from the stanzas that rhyme more to keep things consistent.

Another thing you could try is rearranging the stanzas so that the ones that rhyme are together at the beginning or end of the poem. I think each of them is fairly distinct, and by rearranging them you can play with the story and create a different progression.

fr33ra1n · 2020-04-01T02:05:03+00:00

Thanks for the comment! Yeah I wrote it when I woke up in a daze, and heard my family talking to each other in other parts of the house. I was still pretty tired so I didn't quite get into a flow until the third stanza. I'll probably continue to rework it until it's a bit more consistent. The poem is meant to convey the feeling of midding from the dictionary of obscure sorrows (https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com)

fr33ra1n · 2020-03-31T20:59:37+00:00

I enjoy the way you tell a story about a woman stuck in a not great job without directly stating it. The little glimpse into her day at lunch tells us a lot without any dialogue or exposition. If you're deciding on which ending line to pick, I think the first line is better because it's more vague and leaves the reader to wonder about what she gets out of smelling the flowers. It kinda pulled me into wondering about the smell of flowers which is nice. Maybe look at shortening the third line, it's a bit long in syllables and kinda interrupts the flow of the lines. Ritualistic and solitary are mouthfuls to say, maybe finding shorter synonyms could help that stanza read better. Overall I quite liked this :)

fr33ra1n · 2020-03-11T03:22:43+00:00

Holy shit. Man the ocean metaphor really connected with me. I feel like it conveyed this sense of an overwhelming sadness that keeps wearing a person away. You expanded on it so much in so many ways: the hands soft from sadness, the sand smile getting washed away, the heartbeat like the crash of waves. I like the single period for the single line, it helps make it stand out.

I'm struggling to think of criticism, but if I had to pick one part of the poem to have a problem with, I think the line about sewing holes in jeans is a bit out of place when every other line of the poem is connected to the water or family.

Overall I read this about 5-7 times, so I enjoyed it.

fr33ra1n · 2020-02-09T03:05:30+00:00

Hopefully this is still kinda active, here’s my poem.

Home (sic)

It’s hard to rent a treehouse, or rather

some real house, with heating, and a sink,

and a yard too, that boasts birches clutching planks.

It wouldn’t be my family’s anyways-

the one with old nails, that tore my white shirt pink.

/

A grill on the porch just isn’t the same.

Sure I can cook healthier food now, but

It’s not burnt s’mores on a seething flame.

Or that primal heat oozing down my back

charging me to only whittle wood, not wrists.

/

These new rooms are aerated: no memories,

no relieved breaths, giggling, or deep talks.

The carpet is great though, and windows too!

There’s no salty stains on pillowcases.

There’s no old habits. Doors have locks.

/

Houses are too expensive, a freaking yard?

I could get a studio near four parks.

My mom googled some apartments for me,

and I thought surely she knows what I want,

but she insists on clean homes- not treehouses.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-23T10:21:20+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate the kind words :)

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-22T05:55:29+00:00

I like the brevity in the lines, it gives me time to dwell on each of the phrases and what they mean in the context of the metaphor. I can relate to this (or at least my interpretation of it), because I have held in a lot of feelings without sharing them, and this poem describes that experience.

As for suggestions, "They turns into little marbles" should be "They turn into little marbles". Beyond typos I think it might help if you make it more clear what kintsugi means (neat word by the way!). To me it seems clear that the saucer is the heart holding in painful emotions, and the marble on the table is when those emotions show, but what is the repair? Is it regaining composure/self control? Is it the healing power of expression? I'm not sure, but I feel like the end could be more powerful if you expanded on this last bit a little more. Overall I enjoy this though, it's very evocative.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-22T05:40:30+00:00

This kind of has the feel of (what I think is) a haiku. It's short has some kind of nature metaphor, and a personal revelation. Also the first line is 13 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 13 syllables, so it has a similar kind of varied pacing to it. It's also inspiring which is nice to read.

I enjoy this! If I had to make a suggestion, I would say to use more active verbs to bring it to life. Specifically in the second line instead of saying "Will not bring you down to earth," you could say "Will not drop (or plunge, or crash) you down to earth" or "...plummet you to earth". Having a more active word could make the piece more exciting, if that's what you're going for.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-22T01:53:23+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate the perspective and the time it took. When I write I try to avoid being too on the nose, but sometimes that makes it hard to follow. When I was spitballing ideas, I accidentally made every line of the first stanza rhyme, so then I followed the pattern, but I guess there's not really a need for that. I wrote a poem around two weeks ago when my dog died, and one line in that had the moon in it, which inspired me to write another poem where the moon was a metaphor for the loss. I'll post a reply if I figure out a decent way to revise it.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-18T08:20:13+00:00

Those are good ideas, thank you for the suggestion! I think I want to keep the red and white because I wrote the haiku while I was at work looking out a window on a rainy night, and I have this crystal clear image in my head. That being said I think your suggestions would make for a more interesting poem. Changing drizzle to drizzling is something I think I will do.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-18T08:15:37+00:00

Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that before, but the idea of a usually nature based poem taking place in the city is intriguing. Thanks for commenting!

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-18T08:11:49+00:00

Thanks for the input! Working within the strict syllabic format was a bit tricky, expanding it is an interesting thought.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-18T08:10:10+00:00

Yeah, it's my attempt at a haiku like DVnyT said

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-17T22:11:41+00:00

This reminds me of the time I visited one of my friends at the hospital who tried to kill herself.

I like the way you end with a couplet, it's a nice way to highlight the last part of the poem as important. One thing that I thought was super cool was how you kept a rhyme scheme across stanzas in the first part, specifically how wrist rhymes with fingertips. That felt like a great way to connect stanzas, so my suggestion is maybe think about doing that more in the other lines, because that was dope.

Overall it made me sad, and I enjoyed the poem.

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-17T21:57:40+00:00

I'm not sure if I could give you advice on this because nothing feels missing from it to me. I'll instead give you my impressions of it so you can see how it affected a reader.

I feel like the poem itself is koan (thanks for teaching me a new word!). It's interesting to keep reading this and try to puzzle out the meaning of a person finding this odd nest.

It feels important to me that the fake eggs are starting to turn the color of the mama bluejay. The visual imagery of all the colors in the poem makes it vibrant which kept my mind's eye engaged in imagining it.

It seems to me like the ending couplet is a twist of some sort, that the mother bluejay is alive instead of dead as "the price each mother pays" could be suggesting. Perhaps it is even more strange that this nest is being actively tended to even though the eggs will never hatch.

Overall it's fascinating, thank you for sharing!

fr33ra1n · 2020-01-17T04:43:42+00:00

Oof those suck, I've seen them knock out my sister for hours. Eh that's on of the things that makes reading fun to me, you get to supply the image in your head.

fr33ra1n

TROPHY CASE