06-14-2016, 04:20 AM
Hi, in some ways I think you're very brave in writing a poem like this. I am always slightly suspicious of poems that come across as preachy and tell me the best way to be living. I wonder what qualifies the writer to be able to hand out advice in such a manner.
I know that I should not presume that the narrator of the poem is also the poet who wrote it, but with a poem like yours it is very hard not to think that. The fly scenario may not have happened but I still get the feeling that it's you giving me the advice. A poem that tells a story and implies certain bits of advice would be a whole lot easier to digest.
I'm not saying that your advice is rubbish, you may be Zen as fuck and have all the answers to lifes great mysteries but if you spout wisdom and it sounds preachy people will react and shut down, it is human nature to do so.
You could have went somewhere by using the fly in a story and it did appear as if that what was going to happen, but we lost the fly after the first stanza although he gets a brief mention in the last line.
After your first stanza there just seem to be a lot of statements, some which sound vaguely familiar and some of which are a bit bamboozling.
Time is a concept - is so familiar to almost everyone who has been anywhere near a buddhist or university or guardian newspaper.
"& alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade" - from Howl by Allen Ginsberg
I'm not trying to be a bastard here I'm just trying to say that there are other ways of being able to say what you are trying to say without almost ultimately saying,
"The past is forgotten, the future is unknown, today is a gift and that's why they call it the present" — Bang! Bang!
Tell me more about the fly. House flies live for only about a fortnight or so. A whole life in two weeks - there's got to be something in there somehow. I had pet rats once and they lived for three years, a whole life of crazy adolescence, 20's through to 40's, middle aged, old age and then gone all in three years, it was mind blowing to watch, it would be a possible scenario that I would use if I were wanting to tell people to live in the moment, it would be much more effective than just telling them to live in the moment.
Probably went on a bit too much here for novice but I wanted to make a point,
hope I wasn't too preachy
Mark
I know that I should not presume that the narrator of the poem is also the poet who wrote it, but with a poem like yours it is very hard not to think that. The fly scenario may not have happened but I still get the feeling that it's you giving me the advice. A poem that tells a story and implies certain bits of advice would be a whole lot easier to digest.
I'm not saying that your advice is rubbish, you may be Zen as fuck and have all the answers to lifes great mysteries but if you spout wisdom and it sounds preachy people will react and shut down, it is human nature to do so.
You could have went somewhere by using the fly in a story and it did appear as if that what was going to happen, but we lost the fly after the first stanza although he gets a brief mention in the last line.
After your first stanza there just seem to be a lot of statements, some which sound vaguely familiar and some of which are a bit bamboozling.
Time is a concept - is so familiar to almost everyone who has been anywhere near a buddhist or university or guardian newspaper.
"& alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade" - from Howl by Allen Ginsberg
I'm not trying to be a bastard here I'm just trying to say that there are other ways of being able to say what you are trying to say without almost ultimately saying,
"The past is forgotten, the future is unknown, today is a gift and that's why they call it the present" — Bang! Bang!
Tell me more about the fly. House flies live for only about a fortnight or so. A whole life in two weeks - there's got to be something in there somehow. I had pet rats once and they lived for three years, a whole life of crazy adolescence, 20's through to 40's, middle aged, old age and then gone all in three years, it was mind blowing to watch, it would be a possible scenario that I would use if I were wanting to tell people to live in the moment, it would be much more effective than just telling them to live in the moment.
Probably went on a bit too much here for novice but I wanted to make a point,
hope I wasn't too preachy
Mark
wae aye man ye radgie