An Ode to People

[tectak]

It's 3 AM, which means another day, another poem.
Hi ganman,
I know you like to give a preamble to your work but it is not necessarily a good thing. Some newbie crits are sensitive to the motives of the poster and may be put off by lofty reasons for posting...should that ever occur, of course. I am not so sensitive
I'd like to post another one of my submissions, something I'm turning in for a class today. Whatever feedback you have is appreciated.

Anyway, an Ode to People:Titles are a bitch. Immediately, I am wary. "Odes to" tend to wander of into eulogies and philosophical inexactitudes....and often forget they are odes. Even the oraculous (serge, where you?) Wikidef suggests the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode are a minimum. We shall see.

I know there are possibilities
beneath the trees
and under the brimming seas
that satellites haven’t seen,A whistful start, almost weary...nothing wrong with that. I hope we shall be enlightened. What form is this to be? I cannot get a grip on anything that shouts (or whispers) poetry. It is only the first strophe...hang on! There're more than there should be. Are we really ODe'ing? (pun). Beneath the seas and trees is still entrancing...what can there be?

thoughts never processed and assimilated,Ooops! Gestalts unattended can lead to breakdown. Not sure we need to know this. In fact, it is telling us you know you don't know either. Bit of a let down really.
ideas never registered,

not because my brain dreams them –
mine is weary and growing lackluster,No to this. Your character is getting moribund....we want an ode! We want and ode! When do we want it? We want it now! We shall see. Flat few lines that sends me to sleep.

because I must believe humanity
is not near stagnating,
decomposing

with the onset of nuclear war
or the coming of some dreary tide,

because at every time, the second because was because the first because was because your character was wearied....see, that's what happens in odes...even when it isn't one You are line breaking to no real effect and accordingly you are thinking in bits. There is, as yet, nothing new...which is a foil against philosophising but it still needs some texture, roughage.
we sat where we do now, with a thoughtThe cat sat on the mat, sat on her tuffet, sat on a wall. Sat is doing nothing. It is a doing nothing word and it is doing nothing. A thought on our tongues is a thought shared. One thought, many tongues....and it is screamingly close to a cliche. I think that this whole piece is stretched past Young's modulus. It will snap unless you let go soon....but it will never go back to to its original length. Amen to that. Yes. Cut out the adipose. It is slowing you down. I cannot see an easy route through these islands of intellect. The philosophising will begin soon...I just know it.
on our tongues,
lacking language to effect itself,
because a notion of beauty and progress as transitory,
disposable in a larger scheme,
is well and good in a hypothetical setting,
but not in my world, not for the wonderful people..and did I mention the long sentences? This is a lifer....and no time off for good behaviour. It just goes on and on and on. Sadly, I confess I am no longer looking at the words but I am consoled by the thought that I have read them all before. I will force myself as I am a good egg. Punctuate PLEASE, I need to breathe.

who make this land shine everywhere,
in our extolling and in our hubris,
in the ravages and banishments
which tear our cores asunder. This is a good stanza, but in this Correction Centre it is in solitary confinement. A little ranty, and know-it-all, but why the hell not? It's your poem. I have given up on the ode thingy.

I’ll choose to believe against the statistics –
single, married, male, female, black, white –
poor, wealthy, son, daughter, damned –
which daily limit us,

because I won’t be a cynic on my porch,
elderly with frail and rotting bones,
rocking, condemning the passing youth
with green faces like buried saplings,Good. It stands out

because we’ve transcended the skies
and lifted the lid of Heaven,
where God itself sat as a general pacing,Pick a god...any god. Its a good one
gone to war with the certainties

we daily propagate,
the forces which move particles
and ruin nations,

accomplishments, some terrifying,
grisly, macabre, but some flourishing,
synthetically picturesque,
like sculptures of long-dead guardians,

who thought and educated the masses,
who fought and remained steadfast against battalions,
who sought and motivated withering husks.Stone me! That was the longest sentence I have ever not read! I must say that you are killing me. I think I have had enough. It is all getting just too much. Is your character writing The Constitution now? He, too, has given up Ode-ing. This is for me a mish-mash. It needs at least two coats of looking at.

I deny that we will decline and expire,
that we are predictable,
our fates inescapable,
because I am human,Pretentious and raving. Look at me , ma! Top of the World! Boom.

and I don’t believe
we should die forgotten,
consumed by the oblivions
which elicited our existences
among the constellations....but that we should go where no man has gone before. Yikes.

There is too much nothing in this. I think you think that thinking is all there is to this poetry lark. No. That's not an acceptable crit...I WANT to say that your character implies this. You use the "I" word too often, too pretentiously, too dogmatically and too PERSONALLY. So its your own fault. You pointed out in another place that lines could get too long and I listened. I suggest that you re-write this, as I often suggest, as free text prose...cut out all the whistful, whimpish, weak perambulations and muscle it up; then punctuate the thing to clarity. It should be easy as you are unlikely to have more than twelve lines of good blank verse. For me, you could easily remove the majority of the "I" centred stuff. What do you want the piece to do? Talk about you(r character) OR people. What the hell happened to the people?
Best,
tectak[b]