He is the child of the once-talented,
of the pretty, fat rich folk that count
glinting gold coins and plaster
their phony hair to their heads.
Frolicking among the old-rich,
(playing at their funerals)
(dancing with their daughters)
his shoulders grow rigid steel
and his thin, lofty head
grazes the big-toe of God.
As a solitary man,
his rigid structure would not
bring harm to the incessant pink ants
that hobble about and around him.
…But he is a frat boy, a Havard man,
his friends always snicker beside him,
blocking the sun
and making the pale paler.
…His grandparents are crumbling,
brick by brick,
in Brooklyn.
Author notes
I went to New York this christmas with my family and holy god--! That was frightening. I saw a women peeing randomly on the street and felt horrible for her. I still wish I could go to college there.
This is about a skyscraper, not George Bush. Although...
Please eat my shorts
Comments
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I didn't find any superfluous use of adjectives here - in fact I thought you did a great job of morphing some adverbs and adjectives into nouns ( once-talented, old-rich ). Probably agree with the action verbs suggestion ( e.g. 'bringing no harm', 'snickering' ), disagree with the comment about using 'sky' and 'scrape', but these are just thoughts, not criticisms. I know that the previous reviewer was trying to be genuinely helpful, but I also know that sinking feeling when you create something, are pretty pleased with it ( and yourself! ), and are then told how you *should* have done it.
I thought this was a really good piece of personalisation, giving the building a face, a social status and a family history.
The problem I guess is that it's hard to get what you really want in the way of constructive criticism. As you say, it's either 'great write' or a ( well-intentioned ) dismantling of your poem, dissecting each phrase beyond it's meaning and without reference to the poem's context.
Your other point holds true too, most poems here fall into one of the two categories (a) love and angst (
'real' poetry by those stalwarts who have studied the Art but have a tendency to treat it as if it were math, everything following a pre-ordained structure.
I had a comment on a contest entry which complimented the write, but said effectively that it was discounted because I had used four dots in an ellipse.... ( shit, I've just done it again.... aw shittt! ) I was actually anal enough to look up ellipse on dictionary.com, apparently there are two versions, one with 3 dots, one with 4.... I notice you're on his side... A few times I have realised too late, that a contest rule says 'No end line rhyme'. Poor Will Shakespeare wouldnt've stood a chance here.
My ( very rambling ) point being that there are also a bunch of people who like to forge word-images, either from the fires of their soul or from a Contest theme trigger, but either thru lack of formal training, or a spirit of rebellion against the strictures of poetic etiquette , produce poetry which has depth and meaning, conveys emotion, cracks a smile - but seems to somehow cause offence to a small, if well-educated minority.
I have always enjoyed your work, it is always real, always contains a piece of you or a slice of your life and often leaves me with a broad grin.
Your shorts were, well quite palatable, but perhaps a little overdone. Perhaps if you removed the pockets, which give them a rather tough texture, and maybe extend them below the knee, for added depth.....
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Thanks so much for entering this piece. I like it a lot, but I think it could be tightened up quite a bit. If all the superfulus words were taken out, the imagery would be much stronger, let me show you:
Child of once-talented,
pretty, fat-rich folk
that count glinting coins
and plaster phony hair to their heads.
I also thought that the word tarnished may work better than glinting in the second line, but maybe you were trying to make reference to sun glinting off the windows of a sky scraper.
One other thing I noticed is that you rely a lot on adjectives. Remember that an adjective's job is to show, but an adjective's job is to tell. I see how you are using them to support your metaphor, which works here, but always try to say it with an image first. The last stanza does not use any adjective's, and it is your strongest stanza all the way around.
The only other thing I would suggest is that you be aware that action verbs are stronger than present participles, for example:
playing vs plays
dancing vs dances
blocking vs block
making vs make
crumbling vs crumble
And, in a poem about a sky scraper, you may want to use words like "sky" and "scrape" and you may want to make an allusion to Manhattan.
Thanks again for entering. -
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Eeek-- I didn't realize it was that droopy and crapped. Now that i'm not hastily writing things at midnight, I can see a couple of words that could defintely be extracted and than burned. I agree mostly with what you're saying, however I just can't take out some of the words you thought were fluff.
First off, let me tell you how unbelievably thrilled I am that someone took the time out to actually look at my poem and critique it. I’d rather have someone decimate my poem than to have another ‘good write’ any day. For some reason, everywhere I look on this site, all the poetry looks the same. Maybe I’m being over-critical, but I am finding there to be several common formulas people utilize. There’s this childish, sloppy prose where it’s just basically a rant about their or someone else’s pain and suffering, there’s this ‘let’s “try” to be literary!’ tone where people go to town with the adjectives and so you’re not even sure what the hell is going on (as is exemplified in mine) some poets even go as far as to add words they hardly understand (once again, as exemplified in mine XD) , and than there’s this impersonal, cold tone that offers glimpses of images, but no satisfaction because it just---feels so devoid of anything.
I agree verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry much with you that I do use too many adjectives, but I don’t exactly agree to take out the ‘he’ at the begining. It just seems so cold, and I wasn’t trying to describe the sky-craper’s actual physical aspects so much as personify it as a person. I live in an itty bitty town and I’ve never been more than 5 floors up in a building before—when I went to New York, I was absolutely overwhelmed. These huge ass buildings were towering over me like my cliché idea of a rich, young academic scholar (havard ass-holes) and here I was with my shitty SAT score and poor crap family.
Also, I only stayed in Manhattan, so when I got a small glimpse of Brooklyn, it looked like it was dying. It kind of reminded me of the ‘rich getting richer’ idea. And it reminded me of how terribly unfair/cruel/justplainsucking this world can be sometimes (though usually it's grand), how life picks its winners and kicks the losers in the ass. I got other feelings from there that I used in this poem. I didn’t use sky-scraper because well—God, it just seems so cliché to admit that these big, fat towers are scraping the sky…Once again, it was more about the feeling, not the physical appearance. And my allusions to Manhattan were obviously the riches that the personified sky-tower man—ah forget it, I got to go eat Chinese food.
I don’t mean to sound like some child who can’t handle critism. I just feel like maybe you got the wrong Idea of the poem, which is entirely my fault if you did, but I just wanted to let you know I did have a thought going through me when I wrote this—I didn’t just sputter crap (purposely). I swear—I would normally take your advice blindly because I respect you, but of all days, I graduate Saturday and I feel like a total moron/loser/all-around-side-kick-material-definitely-not-the-protagonist because of my wonderful ability to never achieve anything (mostly because of my own slackard-ness)…I need to defend myself on something--or make somebody understand what I meant.
Sorry this is so long—I swear It was only meant to be a paragraph. I'll pull this if you want me too.
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I did not mean to make you feel like the whole poem is bad. In fact, I like it a lot. My suggestions are only that. Take what works for you and ignore the rest. I usually post that as a disclaimer when I critique poetry, but I forgot to this time.
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