PIPS - Discussion (August Edition)

Not a meal.

A pi poem? Very interesting. I wonder what's the precedent, or whether this is a fresh experiment. Most of the wordings are awkward, however. For example, "it causes fears and exhibits drizzling". The structure of the sentence suggests "it" is the afternoon, instead of, say, objects exposed to it, yet can times of day exhibit drizzling? Not to mention "exhibit drizzling", rather than the far more regular "drizzle".
Of course, the awkwardness may serve a purpose, making the speaker's wilderness more alien. But this alien nature doesn't quite suggest a struggle, as it ends up reaching into ridiculousness. "musty afternoons" cause fear? "To see the absolute alms hiding my travel" -- to see your gifts to the poor "hide", an intransitive verb, your travel? "arboreous"? And from that ridiculousness, there's very little character, with no brilliant images to grab my attention, or at the very least subtle flourishes that indicate the speaker is a character other than insane. As far as I can tell, the closest the piece has to a developed image is "beamlike fir of jungles, arboreous brush", but all of the words in there already show us wood, trees, jungle -- again, nothing brilliant, nothing character-building.
In all, it's a failure, I think, but a very interesting one. I suggest, for improvement, that the author give his or her wordings much more time and effort, and perhaps the poem itself needs to be lengthened, in order to develop its speaker's point of view.

*dabs furiously*

Also arbitrary number/arbitrary number, that was a great poem, @Peregrine.

The Struggles of Writing a Tanka.

I'm a little annoyed this doesn't have an image -- I'm even more annoyed that this does, and it's the poem itself, and it's quite genius. That said, two nits. First, you need five syllables, not words, but this is a joke on my part. The second is that I feel like the final section of the work is a bit of a missed opportunity. The game, I feel, should have been given away at the fourth line, in order to make the turn a little smoother; and the final line is a bit of a missed opportunity, referring to the same image the first two lines already refer to, rather than to something different, and perhaps something more emotive -- say, "For me to write you this verse". But again, real nice work overall.

@Pahnini You spelled my name wrong when you tried to tag my poem, but I forgive you. It's not like you could have looked me up or anything...

But all in all I'm impressed by the entries I've seen so far and by the number of them! I'll do more in depth reviews later, but turns out even my Sundays aren't free for me. :)

Free verse gets on my nerves, but Little Lily has a handful of grammatical errors that contribute to the already-messy paragraph format, something that rarely works well in poetry.

@Ananfal I enjoyed your poem and the rhythm and flow of the words as well as the message of it. Thank you for sharing it with us!

@Greenie It took me a minute to figure out what was going on and then wham..last line! Nice one!

@Iwazuma There were a few times when your syllables got me off the limerick pattern rhythmically, but sooo entertaining. Still smiling....always a plus!!

@Shakaai It was difficult to read in this form, and I think maybe because of that I lost the thread of your message.

@RiverNotch I feel dense, but I don't get it. I saw the title and am trying to find the connection to the poem and I am lost. Perhaps my mind is having trouble getting out of the box?

@Měsíc Difficult verse form, bravo! Hard message but well done.

@Asinis This one hurts my heart a little, since I grew up with an alcoholic father. It is indeed a lesson learned, for either good or bad. I chose to shun drink altogether for fear I would be weak to the addiction as he was, but my brother followed hard after and still battles it. So...you have achieved the goal of good poetry...to inspire thoughtful reflection in the reader.

@MeadowLark4 This is another one that I am having trouble understanding the underlying meaning. Maybe there is none, and in that case I am struggling in vain.

@Peregrine THAT is precisely why I did NOT chose that form!! *Chuckling*

@Uncle Legens Legentis Having lived through a fair share of tornadoes and storms, this had me grinning. When I lived in Florida there was a saying about hurricanes, less than five I will not drive. Those people just yell at the hurricane and dare it to come. This reminded me of my brother.

@Queen_Nobody I like the verse form you used for this. it is stark and bare, like the images you are portraying. Nicely done.

@FrictionFrog Ah you chose one of my favorite things, butterflies. Humble caterpillars inching along until they are free to become the butterfly and be what they were truly meant to be. Glorious. And you have taken a different perspective, one I had not considered, to be honest. What DOES happen when you have become what you were meant to be, and then it is ripped from you by life's brutalities? Once again....make me think. Always good.

To the anonymous poets:

The pipoem was a bit difficult to read, and a little abstract for me.

The Wil'o'wisp poem is another I am struggling for underlying meaning. Maybe I am trying too hard?

THANKS everyone who wrote! I very much enjoyed reading these!!!!! Can't wait till next time!

Pahnini said:

Gaaaah I noticed that when I tested the entries in spoilers in another thread and I fixed it Dx not sure why it didn't copy over properly. I'll fix it when I get on a computer XD my apologies

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Nah you're fine. :P Not like my name is important or anything.

PoetLore said:

@Ananfal I enjoyed your poem and the rhythm and flow of the words as well as the message of it. Thank you for sharing it with us!

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Thanks so much! Poetry isn't exactly my forte, so I'm glad it's worked for you. (It was originally meant to be a song, but I don't think I'll have the guts to actually sing it...)

Ananfal said:

Thanks so much! Poetry isn't exactly my forte, so I'm glad it's worked for you. (It was originally meant to be a song, but I don't think I'll have the guts to actually sing it...)

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I can see that actually...it has a very lyrical flow and rhythm ...maybe someone else will sing it one day!

I won't lie, it's been a very long time since I tried to do poetry (eight years?), so I'm not surprised my verse was a little rhytmically off. I think I went a really different route than most of the other poems I see here. I wanted something campier, something to brighten a day. Limericks are always fun to read, so I decided to just throw wordbombs at the page and see where I went from there. I'm glad you enjoyed it, Poet!

A quick drive-by here... I'm not in a situation where I have ample time on the computer this month to analyze and type reviews for all, so I'll just say that the poems that had the biggest hook for me were the relationship ones (as I think of them), with the poem by @RiverNotch being my favorite. My Mind Is Not Yours, The Wife's Revenge and Winter Will o Wisp -- which seemed to have themes of surviving (one way or the other) damaging family relationships, whether it be parental, spouse or other -- had the biggest hook for me.

However, there were many other fine poems and I recognize their value. I'm in a dark (not defeated) space at present, so take it for what it's worth! (And now, my time for the month is used up!) Cheers!

Tales of Old Man Struthers.

Stressed is "S", unstressed is "u". How limericks usually go:

(u)uSuuSuuS(u)
(u)uSuuSuuS(u)
(u)uSuuS(u)
(u)uSuuS(u)
(u)uSuuSuuS(u)

Those in parentheses are optional: some resources claim the limerick is traditionally in anapests, and sometimes having an unstressed ending is unavoidable. Notice, however, that the stresses are consistent -- I find that, if one is going to deviate from the form one has chosen, keeping the stress count consistent is most important, since the emphasis on the stresses make extra or missing ones stand out. Now let's examine your first three stanzas.

uSuuSuuS
SuuSuuSuuS
SuSuSS
SuSuSS
uuSuuSuuS

uuSuSuSuS
uuSuuSuuS
uSuSuSu
uSuSuSu
uuSuuSuuS

uSuSuSuuSu
uuSuuSuSuSu
uuSuuS
uSuuS
uuSuuSuuSu

It's a mess. In your first two stanzas, the third and fourth lines have completely gone off-rails, while in your third one, it's your first and second lines that buckle. This problem decreases as we go along, but still, having the first few stanzas be this unpolished drains a lot of the reader's confidence in your work. I think your chief problem is that your lines are too wordy, with the added words messing with the rhythm by adding unnecessary stresses.

[For those who don't get how all of this works, I suggest reading a few resources on poetry in general (I'll link to one below), as well as reading more published poetry, particularly the works of Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Yeats (I don't know if they're the best in using meter, but they are my favorites among those who use it). Understanding stresses is a pretty big deal in English poetry: they contribute to a poem's sense of rhythm, which is a sense even the wildest examples of free verse have to control.]

As for the choice of form, I don't entirely support it. The limerick is most often used as a one-stanza thing, akin to an aphorism or, especially, a short joke, and its structure supports this. Two lines, rhyming and with the same meter, as introduction; two lines, rhyming and with the same meter, but not rhyming with and having the same meter as the first two, for development; and then the punchline, which rhymes with and has the same meter as the introduction, and in the olden days was even a mere copy of the first line. Now, I'm not saying a longer narrative can't be told through it, but I feel like if that is to be done, the form, as in all poetry, has to be used to its fullest: an absurdity per stanza, with the pacing akin to, say, a joke-a-day comic strip, or a call-and-response song. I think, aside from polishing the meter, a lot of the sections could be cut out: for example, the second stanza only makes explicit the theme without advancing the narrative or developing the reader's picture of the situation, and thus could be easily cannibalized by its neighbors.

But the story definitely works -- even if the execution of the form made me wince, finishing the read gave me a solid chuckle. I'm sure that if you follow the suggested refinements, the next time I read this, that chuckle'd turn into a laugh.

http://www.the-rathouse.com/files/prosody.pdf

My Mind Is Not Yours.

This served as my introduction to the pantoum. A very interesting form: looking it up, I learned about its origins as a Malaysian chant, and read as many English-language examples as I could get my hands on. The examples usually dealt with something rooted in the past, demonstrating the passage of time using the form's structure; as one review put it, "the reader takes four steps forward, then two back". Your poem succeeds in that, as well as in conveying the general gist of the speaker's emotions: she's moving on from an exhausting household.

Where it doesn't succeed is conveying enough of that process of moving on, or enough of the nature of that household, to engage the reader. There's very little specificity to the individual lines: even in pieces that sought to capture more general states of mind, each line presented a vivid image, or a distinct and well-considered thought. "Tired", "I need to keep going", "But I am stronger than that" -- those are all awfully generic. "I think about what you have done to me": what exactly has that "you" done to the speaker? why does it stick in the speaker's mind, and why should it stick to the reader's? This doesn't have to be a diary entry, but right now, there's too little of anything to make the poem's emotions truly burst out.

That's it for the pieces with their forms explicitly mentioned. I'll move on to the pieces with unstated forms other than free verse and prose poetry, such as "The Unbroken Butterfly" and "Winters Fugitive". I've already read all the pieces, but giving out reviews like this take time. I'm taking a bit of a workshopping approach to criticizing the poems, since that's how I learned how to read and write them; I hope you find these useful.

I've already responded to PoetLore's confusion regarding my poem via the chatbox. If anyone else has any questions, I'll respond via the chatbox or via pm -- explaining elements of it here might ruin it for some. Thanks to @Ravenfrost for the compliment, @Pahnini to the event, the authors for the pieces, and everyone else for the reads.

Uncle Legens Legentis said:

Free verse gets on my nerves, but Little Lily has a handful of grammatical errors that contribute to the already-messy paragraph format, something that rarely works well in poetry.

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I understand this.. my poems can get quite messy at times, and this one was much more well formed then a couple others I wrote. I have no clue what I write while writing these, not really, and it is only after that I can go back and read my poems to try to understand them.. not really even having my mind under my own reign when I write and make poems is something I have been trying to work on to try to avoid it being so messy. ^^;

Pahnini said:

Heya guys! :D

Tonight's the night!

Live reading on Discord starting at 6 PM Central time (GMT -6).

All poems will be read, as no one mentioned they didn't want theirs read out loud.


I will be recording the reading and will upload it on Youtube for all of you to enjoy.


I would only ask that if you are joining in on the reading to listen, that you are set on Push-to-talk only -- or I will shamelessly mute you 8D We don't want random noises of people typing while I'm reading ^__^ As far as I know, I will be the only one reading tonight as well, unless someone wants to read out their own poem (which is totally fine!)

I look forward to seeing you all!

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I actually made a recording of me reading my own poem, because I don't think I'll be able to make the reading myself and it's sort of a singy songy type... idk. MY point is, should I send that to you? Or just let you read it as you would otherwise?