The market has fallen
The world's come to an end
People are jumping out windows
Berlin is calling
Its' head in a spin
And wondering who's been painting rainbows
The souplines are stretching
Right down the street
Filled with skeletal faces
Staring down at their feet
The government's closed up shop
As it does almost at will
The banks are in a quandary
With more time to kill
While the farmers keep ploughing
And running the mill in the chaos
Children are starving
And the men out of work
A nation is moving
Heaven and earth
While the souplines grow longer
And times become even worse
Still the movies are filled to the rafters
It's there up on the screen
Another new life
Clark Gable is smiling
Into the eyes of his wife
Garbo is pining
Even while the world is in strife
It's Hollywood heaven...
The market has fallen
The world's come to an end
People are jumping out windows
Berlin is calling
Its' head in a spin
And wondering who's been painting rainbows...
Author notes
Based around the events of the market crash of 1929 preceding the Great Depression
AP name: m y r i a d - d a r k
A contest entry
- Advante Garde, found and Free by W B Burkholder.
600 points, ended August 15, 2007, 14 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Pre-write Party 3 by DancingRed.
300 points, ended September 26, 2007, 14 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - I'm really having a BLOCK going on, Please Help Inspire ME! by Sgt B.
300 points, ended October 1, 2007, 20 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Rhyme Time by Danna Hobart.
375 points, ended October 12, 2007, 32 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Prewrite only by kitty23.
470 points, ended June 6, 2008, 68 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - 5 OPTION -- Prewrites allowed by Florida Sunshine.
525 points, ended July 29, 2008, 28 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Hard Times by Deprived-of-Reason.
700 points, ended August 8, 32 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Depression/Recession/Out of work/Broke by grammabuff.
1400 points, ended August 22, 11 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 11 of 11
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What images will we give our children and grandchildren of the hard times we are going through right now? Well painted. Thanks for entering.
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This was well written and told an emotional view on a time that i was fortunate enough to not have to experience, although i do believe that history repeats itself and we are doing nothing to change the future.
I thought this poems created excellent imagery. and i loved how you used souplines repetitivly, i could picture them growing as you wrote.
Thank you so much for your entry and best of luck in the contest.
-kay
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Oh, nice job on the write... You know why the movies was full... cause it was air conditioned and an escape from the day to day. Between the movie theaters and the bars... business for them was booming.
They say we've hit levels lower than the crash of 1929. ~ Though I wasn't around, but am familar with the history behind it.
I like how you repeated the last stanza. ~ I could almost picture in my mind, someone like John Lennon making this into a song. ~
It was a pleasure reading your work. Thanks for entering the "options" contest ~
Best of luck to you,
Florida Sunshine
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its short and lightly touches on the events of that time but does so with a powerful punch. this grips the history as well the passions of the time. thank you for sharing this. you are quite talented. keep writing! God bless you always
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Great Write
ok very good
its unique and got a special thing to it
nicely done
i like the stanzas
i love it very much so and its what i was looking for
lol all i was really looking for was a prewrite lol
but anyways thank you for entering and sharing
keep up the great work
kitty23
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Nice, but maybe you'd want to read the rules again Thank you
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Not what I had in mind ...
but it's got a unique slant to it. I'd have rather seen something a bit less dark, since it is the holiday season. Danna prefers show, not tell, whereas I am fine with either one. Don't know "The Bear", but he / she has some interesting comments on this. It's not a bad poem, as this kind of poem goes, but it doesn't really seem to me to fit the contest.
Thanks for entering, nonetheless, and Happy Holidays.
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Because I got so many entries, I am going to judge this a little different than I normally do. On the contest page the challenge was to write a rhyming poem that shows instead of tells, with imagery and metaphor galore. In addition to those things, I am going to take the meter and rhythm into account along with originality. So I am going to award points for each of those things and then sort of tally them at the end to decide on the winners.
Show vs. Tell: 50/100
The poem tells much more than it shows.
Concrete Imagery: 70/100
Metaphor/symbol/Allusion 75/100
Originality: 80/100
Meter: 40/100 -
The great Depression
Reading about it just depresses me
( Sorry couldn't help myself ) My grandmother would tell me of this time when I was young and later as I got older I asked her to elaborate on a few things. I pray it never happens now because as greddy as our citizens are now there won't be people helpping each other out as a country. only looting and killing. Sad thought isn't it? Well thank you for your entry & good luck.
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Sorry, as I was after poems of twenty lines or less, this poem probably won't win. Best of luck in future contests.
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Thank you very much for bringing your song lyrics to this little gathering.
One must view lyrics in a completely different way than other forms of poetry , I think, and the more I look at this, the more I see just exactly what you have done here.
When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold, and due to the excessive reparations demanded by the allies after WW1, the Weimar Republic never stood a chance, even with the Dawes plan. When the people of America suffered so terribly from the depression, of course the foreign aid had to stop.
The line 'Berlin is calling' in the first and repeated last verse reminded me of the Clash and 'London's Calling,' thus suggesting to me a continuation of a Zeitgeist we perhaps wish was dead and buried in the 1930s and subsequently led to WW2, where 'Germany Calling' is also echoed.
Also, the piece shows the celebrity culture of the time- Clark Gable was responsible for American men ceasing to wear vests, I understand. and of course Garbo is iconic of this period, the contrasts of all these images coming together definitely. You were not tempted to go to the Cabaret. You showed me without , which I admire here.
Thank you again.
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