The Starry Night

[Am I A Poet?]

The title and poem are inspired by a Van Gogh painting of the same name.

Mesmerised by the infinite spirals of humanity:
Marching forward
Yet remaining constant,
Or regressing.
The hallucination of Progress.

[Erthona]

Mesmerised by infinite spirals of humanity:
Marching forward (marching seems incongruent with spirals)
remaining constant,
Or regressing. ("or" small "o")
The hallucination of Progress. (The delusion of progress)

I don't see much connection with the title. I assume it is suppose to allude to Van Gogh's "Starry, Starry, Night", which in fact does have spiral shapes, but I think Doré's "The Lustful" from his illustrations of Dante's "Divine Comedy" would be more apropos.

Dale

[Magpie]

Mesmerised by the infinite spirals of humanity:
Marching forward
Yet remaining constant,
Or regressing.
The hallucination of Progress.

Hi 'Am I A Poet?', I can see the point that you are trying to put across in your piece here and there is a good short poem waiting to be found.
Firstly I would ask about the title and the relevance that it has to the poem, I don't seem to be able to make the connection. I am a bit bemused by the first line which doesn't really seem to make any sense, what are "the infinite spirals of humanity"? You could actually just have this line as Humanity(?). The next three lines are fine and straight forward.
In the last line "hallucination" doesn't work for me, you can't hallucinate progress, the word "illusion" would work better or perhaps even just the word Progress with a question mark.
I do think that you can make a good short poem out of this, although I do think it would be better to post it in the short poetry forum.
I hope that some of my comments may be of some use to you. Thanks for the read.
Mark

[Am I A Poet?]

Just for clarity's sake, Dale has very astutely alluded to Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" which was the painting I based this off and thus inspired the title. (Starry, Starry, Night are lyrics from a Don McLean tribute song Vincent about Van Gogh). I was unaware of the short poetry forum, I'll put my next one in there.
Thanks for your feedback.

[crow]

I'd actually repost this one there, after revision.

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--this first comment is an aside. There tend not to be author's notes here, as they come across as timid. Here, directing us to the Van Gogh seems odd, only because it's arguably the second-most-famous painting after Mona Lisa. You'll notice the other commenters took it as the poem's subject matter. They were justly thrown off, I think, by the author's note
--Correcting a former poster, something I do all the time, is a bad practice. I shouldn't do it, and it feels merely distracting here. So! On to what would've otherwise been the whole response.

The Starry Night
--the title alludes to Van Gogh. I'm anticipating either a straightforward recital of that painting or else a metaphoric jumping off.

Mesmerised by the infinite spirals of humanity:
--mesmerization implies movement, most classically a pendulum, but the painting is static. Tf, the poem is a jumping off.
Marching forward
Yet remaining constant,
Or regressing.
--ah. So the poem describes the way in which seeming progress can be illusory.
The hallucination of Progress.
--yeah. To me, this is redundant, and I'd take greater issue of it were in Serious, but since it isn't . . .

MACRO. The thing about starry night is that it doesn't feature in the poem overtly. I think he title is a miscue, and that you'd be better served with a more straightforward ref to the actual important image, which is spiraling.

Title aside, the poem draws a fancy, likeable chalk line around the bare-assed futility of trying to progress spiritually as a species. I think he last line should be written upside-down and backwards at the bottom of the page, as the punch line that kinda spoils the intrigue, but the rest is solidly structured and moves forward quite competently. Good work.

[danofthesea]

Yes you are a poet

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Why is it soooooooo hard to post a god dam poem?

[Todd]

Yes you are a poet

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Why is it soooooooo hard to post a god dam poem?

Hi, this is a critique forum. Please provide critique on the poem itself. Do not simply answer the question asked by the user name. Thanks. /admin