Like psalms telling of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains.
Blues make me weep for this brutal world
way before the twelfth bar.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on my revival day:
I met a feller
who had no feet.





(Inspiration from the Rose Garden of Sa'di)

I don't know if this was meant to be funny but i laughed my ass off. I enjoyed it.

on my revival day:
I met a feller
who had no feet.

i don't understand the ":" being there.

otherwise good read

It's all right. We get the postmodern blues, these days. It sucks everything up with it. And makes everything out of style, in a perpetual forced stylishness.

Though without the familiar rhythms, this does have the ring of an old fashioned blues poem. It's up to you if it satisfies you. But I think it's fine as it is. It has enough to stand on its own.

Arriedo and Rowens, I'm grateful for your reponses.
Don't be concerned about laughing A. t's meant to be amusing tho I hope there's a message in here too. The colon is there to enforce a stop after "revival day" and focus attention on the last statement which I originally wanted to place on one line, but used a line break for aesthetic reasons (which I now realise is not the best excuse.)
R. I'm not sure I'get' your comment about postmodern blues, but if you consider it redolent of an old fashioned blues poem, I have to some extent succeeded.
Thanks again both.

Hello Pete Ak. Just a few random comments, only my first crit…

It might be a personal preference, but I’d take the first person out of this. I can appreciate a little poem that jives on the blues, so for that reason I liked S2 better than S1. That stanza also sounds better to me if you nix the fourth and fifth lines and go straight from “Nowhere street” to the feller without feet.

In S1, you need a comma in line two instead of the period. Also the two sentences don’t completely work for me; the first is ultimately redemptive, but the second is just negative, if you catch my drift. Also “brutal world” sounds like a cliché, but I like the idea of a psalms intro…

Anywhoo, hope this helps a bit, thanks for the read

Thanks for commenting P&P, I may try another perspective and definitely do not need 'brutal' - thankyou for your observations.

(01-10-2013, 11:00 PM)Pete Ak Wrote:  Like psalms telling of hardship and pain,What psalms do you have in mind? If you are going to express a metaphorical similitude you are hoping to liken something to something else which will, hopefully, serve to clarify. I do not know many psalms, so I am not helped, but those I do know tend to be glorifications of the god of choice and apart from the genre known as "lament" are not about hardship, pain, forbearance or strife. You then complete the sentence without reference to what this clarifying (not) image should be compared to. The last line of this stanza is thus presented as a stark, disassociated fact. The metaphor, or more aptly, the simile, loses its purpose.
forbearance and strength from bearing chains.
Blues make me weep for this brutal world
way before the twelfth bar.This is a good line and stands up well as an opener. I am really not sure that the injection of any religiosity helps. I don't mean this theologically, I mean in a strictly poetic sense.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on my revival day:
I met a feller
who had no feet.Well, maybe this should be reposted in fun I think you should just drop the intro-stanza and go with this. I cannot scan it into a blues form, and I tried, but I still want to end with:
deedally, deedally, deedally dum.
Best,
tectak




(Inspiration from the Rose Garden of Sa'di)

Thanks Tectak, I'm surprised that the breadth of your knowledge doesn't span the bible in enough depth to be aware of what the psalms have to say. However yours is a useful criticism in that if you didn't realise the psalms include comment on hardship, pain, forbearance (mercy) and the strength (usually faith) to overcome then there may be a need to clarify that. There's an error in the punctuation of the 1st stanza (for which I squirm first and apologise second). As suggested by Poetry&Physics above, if the full stop is edited to a comma it is one sentence likening (the) blues to psalms in the respects mentioned. In so doing an implicit suggestion is being made of the 'credibility' of blues, but only if the bible is a credible source for the reader. For those for whom it isn't, blues suffers much the same fate as psalms do to atheists, ie. they're merely old folk songs, which in themselves carry at least, an air of authenticity which is rarely denied blues music even if much else is! You're probably aware that the most famously used blues structure is the "12 Bar" format. I deliberately cut the meter(?) off short in the last line of S1 to mirror the words.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on the revival day,
I met a feller
who had no feet.

(01-23-2013, 06:23 AM)Pete Ak Wrote:  Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
^-- When I think of hardship in the Bible, I think of Job.
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on the revival day,
^-- Confused me a bit. I think of a revival as an event. So maybe something like:

but they melted and went
out the revival tent

I met a feller
who had no feet.

(01-23-2013, 06:23 AM)Pete Ak Wrote:  Thanks Tectak, I'm surprised that the breadth of your knowledge doesn't span the bible in enough depth to be aware of what the psalms have to say. However yours is a useful criticism in that if you didn't realise the psalms include comment on hardship, pain, forbearance (mercy) and the strength (usually faith) to overcome then there may be a need to clarify that. There's an error in the punctuation of the 1st stanza (for which I squirm first and apologise second). As suggested by Poetry&Physics above, if the full stop is edited to a comma it is one sentence likening (the) blues to psalms in the respects mentioned. In so doing an implicit suggestion is being made of the 'credibility' of blues, but only if the bible is a credible source for the reader. For those for whom it isn't, blues suffers much the same fate as psalms do to atheists, ie. they're merely old folk songs, which in themselves carry at least, an air of authenticity which is rarely denied blues music even if much else is! You're probably aware that the most famously used blues structure is the "12 Bar" format. I deliberately cut the meter(?) off short in the last line of S1 to mirror the words.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on the revival day,
I met a feller
who had no feet.

Hi pete,
Yep, I have forgotten my choir boy days when we had to chant three bloody psalms a week. They never did much for me and I have noticed that the dirge-ridden element of "church" seems to have empied the pews......you can't get a choir boy for sex or manna these day....well, maybe sex if you believe the Irish Times.
But Blues....now you're on my patch. I spend a lot more time than I used to on guitar, so 12 bar is easy-peasy. The shift away from black gospel based "Glory be" to the more contemporary jazz root-stock blues is almost complete in commercial music...thank god or Jimmy McGriff, so I look back over 50 years of change and still feel the music in me.
Good luck with this one...I can feel The No Feet Blues cummin' on.
Best,
tectak