My fingers touch
the golden chain around your neck.
Your hair is a mess on Sunday.
I hear words:
“hold - don’t hold”.
Strangers walk outside the window.

Let me tell you something.
I knew you at the synagogue.
I had the last strawberry pastry.
I stole the lemon tinge
beneath your tongue.
My hands were scrolls
in an ancient language,
ruins of a city
built by the people of God.

The last bus came late.
We were set on a cab.
The street smelled of money -
Versace, a word from your other life.
Your car was warm
and I let you talk past Kennedy
to buy 15 minutes along the shore.
Do you remember the skyline?
The city was naked like a mistress.
Planes fly there once a year
and rattle the glass.

I used to chain-smoke
on the cruise ship
that circles the islands.
Coffee reminds me of those nights.
I remember your skirt
and your tongue and
your pink top and your eyes
gazing at list after list.
You are seen by the world.
I learned something 
from the old professor at the cafe.
“Listen,” he said,
“you are rich in a way
science can't understand.
Your heart is made of flesh,
it holds the sorrow
of your generation.”

I like your title, it makes me want to experience what you're trying to get across, but a few places lose me

(09-30-2016, 10:53 AM)esh12 Wrote:  My fingers touch           bland first line, lots of ways to make this more inviting, intriguing
the golden chain around your neck.
Your hair is a mess on Sunday.     
I hear words:
“hold - don’t hold”.   This first stanza seems really disjointed, time and otherwise but maybe it will make more sense by the end
Strangers walk outside the window.   

Let me tell you something.   if you need this line for character, I think it should go at the beginning, you have already been telling 'us'something
I knew you at the synagogue.
I had the last strawberry pastry.
I stole the lemon tinge        lemon? tart? at the synogogue
beneath your tongue.         cause of the strawberry pastry?
My hands were scrolls       
in an ancient language,
ruins of a city
built by the people of God.  Nice sentence, because of 'my fingers' at the beginning, 'my hands' can separate a stanza

The last bus came late.   am i back at the intro stanza?
We were set on a cab.
The street smelled of money -
Versace, a word from your other life.  still wears the gold from the other life?
Your car was warm    bus, cab, car I'm getting lost
and I let you talk past Kennedy
to buy 15 minutes along the shore. I really like this, stalling for time
Do you remember the skyline?
The city was naked like a mistress.
Planes fly there once a year
and rattle the glass.      planes entering the city and rattling the glass seems like a subtle sexual innuendo

I used to chain-smoke   here's another jump
on the cruise ship
that circles the islands.    
Coffee reminds me of those nights.   coffee and cigarettes, i like the connection of memory to it
I remember your skirt
and your tongue and
your pink top and your eyes
gazing at list after list.  I actually like this run on but it doesn't seem to fit, what lists? travel times because every couple lines takes us somewhere else?
You are seen by the world.   unnecessary line, unless you are the world to yourself IMO
I learned something 
from the old professor at the cafe.  now we're in a cafe
“Listen,” he said,
“you are rich in a way
science can't understand. is he talking about you, and you're relating his words to the'you' in the skrt and pink top?
Your heart is made of flesh,
it holds the sorrow
of your generation.”  the old man's words are the best part, but the impact was lost on me on the path to reach it.

This is a nice, atmospheric poem that is spoiled by needless vagueness

(09-30-2016, 10:53 AM)esh12 Wrote:  My fingers touch
the golden chain around your neck.
Your hair is a mess on Sunday. ...At this stage I am getting the foreboding that the rest of the poem is going to be a bunch of disjointed thoughts
I hear words:
“hold - don’t hold”. 
Strangers walk outside the window. ...The last 3 lines have been cryptic statements. I don't know what you're getting at, but I'm holding out for S2

Let me tell you something.
I knew you at the synagogue.
I had the last strawberry pastry. ...unless strawberry pastries have some Jewish cultural significance, this line appears to be unrelated to the above.
I stole the lemon tinge ...did you have a lemon meringue or a strawberry pastry?
beneath your tongue.
My hands were scrolls
in an ancient language, ...beautiful
ruins of a city
built by the people of God. ...beautiful by itself, but unconnected to the metaphor above. 

The last bus came late. ...aaand you've gladly abandoned all that you said before
We were set on a cab. ...why did you wait for the bus to come? Did you mean the last bus WAS late?
The street smelled of money - 
Versace, a word from your other life.
Your car was warm ...weren't you in a cab?
and I let you talk past Kennedy
to buy 15 minutes along the shore.
Do you remember the skyline?
The city was naked like a mistress. ...nice, but the only reason the simile should be there at all is if this woman is also your mistress, otherwise is't just a random simile. But I don't get that assurance from the rest of your poem.
Planes fly there once a year
and rattle the glass. ...clever play on 'once a year', evoking 9/1.. nice

I used to chain-smoke
on the cruise ship
that circles the islands. ...this is pure prose masquerading as poetry.
Coffee reminds me of those nights. 
I remember your skirt
and your tongue and
your pink top and your eyes
gazing at list after list. 
You are seen by the world.
I learned something 
from the old professor at the cafe. ...which cafe? one on the cruise ship? or have you jumped ship again
“Listen,” he said,
“you are rich in a way
science can't understand. 
Your heart is made of flesh,
it holds the sorrow
of your generation.” ... It might have been convincing if the rest of the poem was based on the theme of the voiced sentiment, rather than meandering stream of consciousness mutterings. the literal meaning of these lines are zero. Your heart is made of flesh....duh. Then the comma, implying that BECAUSE it is made of flesh it holds the sorrow, etc. Sorry, the sentence structure hasn't been thought through, just like the rest of the poem, and the old professor is mouthing pretentious bombast. And not in an ironic way. This for me is the nail in the coffin of this poem's credibility.

@Achebe and @CRNDLSM, thanks for your helpful comments. I realize I should have given some background to this poem. The poem is addressed to a woman, R., whom I met last Saturday. She and I spent a few hours together in a synagogue and later in her car. We met at the bus station while I was on the way to a late-night service, and I suggested that she accompany me. The plethora of details that make the poem incomprehensible to a third party are actually the shared experience of the two of us that night: there were strawberry and lemon pastries after the service, which involved several liturgical scrolls; we deliberated whether to wait for the bus or take a cab; after the cab there was a drive in her car; then several romantic hours gazing at the city skyline from the shore; Versace shoes, golden chain, heated seats, talk of money. The next day there was a coffee date. An old professor was reading a book at the cafe and editing a dissertation. He spoke to us for a while, though the message I put in his mouth is what I want to say to R. In other words, everything in the poem is true, only it's a truth that someone who wasn't there clearly has no way of knowing. It's not a poem for a universal audience. I should've mentioned that. My goal with this poem is to express this shared experience to the person who was there with me. The atmospheric, disjointed quality reflects the nature of our interaction that night. The experience as a whole was cryptic (neither of us being Jewish, for one). I have two questions.

1. Given that the addressee of the poem can relate to these minute details (unless she has forgotten over the course of the week), what would you say is the value of receiving such a poem? I would like to anticipate the impact of this poem on its intended audience. If you were the woman who was there with me, would you feel the mystery of that night augmented because of this text? Would you feel a sense of romance? How would you feel about seeing me again? In part, my goal for this particular poem is to get a second date with a businesswoman who apparently gets a hundred emails per day. I'm looking for a way to stand out from the endless stream of communication in her life. I was consciously trying for a kind of mystical austerity when writing this poem. This mood would fit with the image I projected that night and I think is one part of what attracted R. to me. I want to display a certain poetic agency and decisiveness to her. Does such a thing emerge in this text? 

2. Most of my poetry writing has the same subjective quality that's there in this poem. My writing is usually filled with idiosyncratic details that make no sense to a reader who didn't share the experience with me. What are some pointers for moving beyond this subjectivity of form and bringing content into my writing that would be accessible to any reader? I have difficulty going beyond my immediate experience to say something that people in general can understand. I realize that if my writing is to improve, I need to work on bringing a degree of universal meaning into it. How can I start going about this? Perhaps my problem is that I don't have much to say. What's to be done about that, short of giving up poetic writing altogether?

(10-03-2016, 12:22 PM)esh12 Wrote:  @Achebe and @CRNDLSM, thanks for your helpful comments. I realize I should have given some background to this poem. The poem is addressed to a woman, R., whom I met last Saturday. She and I spent a few hours together in a synagogue and later in her car. We met at the bus station while I was on the way to a late-night service, and I suggested that she accompany me. The plethora of details that make the poem incomprehensible to a third party are actually the shared experience of the two of us that night: there were strawberry and lemon pastries after the service, which involved several liturgical scrolls; we deliberated whether to wait for the bus or take a cab; after the cab there was a drive in her car; then several romantic hours gazing at the city skyline from the shore; Versace shoes, golden chain, heated seats, talk of money. The next day there was a coffee date. An old professor was reading a book at the cafe and editing a dissertation. He spoke to us for a while, though the message I put in his mouth is what I want to say to R. In other words, everything in the poem is true, only it's a truth that someone who wasn't there clearly has no way of knowing. It's not a poem for a universal audience. I should've mentioned that. My goal with this poem is to express this shared experience to the person who was there with me. The atmospheric, disjointed quality reflects the nature of our interaction that night. The experience as a whole was cryptic (neither of us being Jewish, for one). I have two questions.

1. Given that the addressee of the poem can relate to these minute details (unless she has forgotten over the course of the week), what would you say is the value of receiving such a poem? I would like to anticipate the impact of this poem on its intended audience. If you were the woman who was there with me, would you feel the mystery of that night augmented because of this text? Would you feel a sense of romance? How would you feel about seeing me again? In part, my goal for this particular poem is to get a second date with a businesswoman who apparently gets a hundred emails per day. I'm looking for a way to stand out from the endless stream of communication in her life. I was consciously trying for a kind of mystical austerity when writing this poem. This mood would fit with the image I projected that night and I think is one part of what attracted R. to me. I want to display a certain poetic agency and decisiveness to her. Does such a thing emerge in this text? 

2. Most of my poetry writing has the same subjective quality that's there in this poem. My writing is usually filled with idiosyncratic details that make no sense to a reader who didn't share the experience with me. What are some pointers for moving beyond this subjectivity of form and bringing content into my writing that would be accessible to any reader? I have difficulty going beyond my immediate experience to say something that people in general can understand. I realize that if my writing is to improve, I need to work on bringing a degree of universal meaning into it. How can I start going about this? Perhaps my problem is that I don't have much to say. What's to be done about that, short of giving up poetic writing altogether?

Your questions:-
1. Will she like the poem:
Ans: It depends on whether your targeted girlfriend appreciates poetry or not. If she doesn't, then what you've written should be good enough. If she does, then she'll be reading it critically, and she won't like it for the reasons you described.

2. How to bring about universality.
'Universality' is too broad. No one's asking you to write a poem for the ages, just something intelligible enough for say a friend, who wasn't there when it happened, understand what you're talking about. The only thing you need is coherence. If your poem consists of a series of impressions, then that's fine, but at least tell a story, don't just rattle off a whole bunch of unconnected observations.
Let's take a look at your poem. It should be possible to improve S1 by linking the lines together, example below. It's not the best, but it's one way. You will know better how to restructure it:

My fingers touch
the golden chain around your neck,
your hair, a mess on Sunday ....the comma rather than the full stop links the 'fingers touch' to the 'hair'
at the synagogue, 
your locks like scrolls ...'lock' retains the link to 'hair'

in a forgotten language,
which my hands decipher
in the ruins of a city
built by the people of God. ....I don't think the above two lines make a lot of sense other than repeating that you're still in the synagogue, but I'm trying to stick to your content.

Let me tell you something - 
I had the last strawberry pastry
stealing the acid tingle
from beneath your tongue. ....'acid tinge' in the original made no sense. If you had the last pastry, you stole the taste from her, in a way, which is what this is saying. But you can't just let this random vignette hang, otherwise it's a poem that anyone can write. The skill lies in linking this to the previous strophe, building up something whole. But S1 should provide some suggestions, for whatever they're worth.

"1. Given that the addressee of the poem can relate to these minute details (unless she has forgotten over the course of the week), what would you say is the value of receiving such a poem?"

The only clear and obvious value is in her never receiving the poem- and that clear value is a big old zero, no value at all.
So by this logic, there is nothing to lose in showing her your work if the alternate is nothing. She likes the poem or she doesn't, she likes you or she doesn't...
Be curious and push your boundaries.

post removed/ admin

post removed/ admin

Let's keep the focus on the poem. Please keep all relationship advice confined to PM and move any discussion on who should post in the forums into the Poetry discussion forum or the Pigs Arse. Thanks /admin