04-02-2017, 01:45 PM
CarrieChristo,
Starting each line with a cap does a disservice to your reader as it makes the poem more difficult to read. The same is true about lack of punctuation and grammar. Some of the modernist poets, or imagist if you will thought they were rebelling, but that is long past and it makes little sense to rebel by degrading your communication. One would assume that the entire point of writing is to convey something, which takes into consideration one writes in such a way that one's readers have the best chance of understanding. Purposely obscuring by not writing as clearly as one can, which means using the tools that have evolved over hundreds of year, seems counter to the intent of writing.
It seems a number of the lines are forced and are only there because of the rhyme, such as:
"Ignoring dust may clog our lungs"
This line does not appear to connect to what comes before or follows after. This seems to have no part in the story that is being told. Thus it is disruptive to the reading of the poem.
One thing about this site is that if a person doesn't understand a poem they will say so, unlike other sites where people think they are just to dumb to understand and so they write something about how nice the poem is. So if the comments are a lot about not understanding the poem, that means the writer has failed to be clear. For exampled I got what was happening with the boots after re-reading it, however this should not imply it was in any way clear, as someone else had no idea. Written as sentences:
I swear you said, “Come in,” from the cobwebs of your closet.
You ducked and plucked your boots (out) and put them on my feet, then tied the laces neat.
It still needs to say from where they plucked their boots. It needs to say where the person ducked.
They ducked back into his closet and plucked their boots then...
Most lines or groups of lines are like these. With correct punctuation and grammar they can be made more clear. Usually this is part of the "I know what it means so you should also" syndrome. As the writer we forget that the reader is not privy to what we know, so when the writer reads it it makes perfect sense, because the brain fills in the blanks, but the readers brain cannot do this. Usually the best way to start getting by this, is to let the poem set for awhile (in the beginning several months, unless one has a real good memory, then longer). Another way to work on this is to write everything out in sentence form first, as it is a lot easier to see problems that way.
Best,
dale
Starting each line with a cap does a disservice to your reader as it makes the poem more difficult to read. The same is true about lack of punctuation and grammar. Some of the modernist poets, or imagist if you will thought they were rebelling, but that is long past and it makes little sense to rebel by degrading your communication. One would assume that the entire point of writing is to convey something, which takes into consideration one writes in such a way that one's readers have the best chance of understanding. Purposely obscuring by not writing as clearly as one can, which means using the tools that have evolved over hundreds of year, seems counter to the intent of writing.
It seems a number of the lines are forced and are only there because of the rhyme, such as:
"Ignoring dust may clog our lungs"
This line does not appear to connect to what comes before or follows after. This seems to have no part in the story that is being told. Thus it is disruptive to the reading of the poem.
One thing about this site is that if a person doesn't understand a poem they will say so, unlike other sites where people think they are just to dumb to understand and so they write something about how nice the poem is. So if the comments are a lot about not understanding the poem, that means the writer has failed to be clear. For exampled I got what was happening with the boots after re-reading it, however this should not imply it was in any way clear, as someone else had no idea. Written as sentences:
I swear you said, “Come in,” from the cobwebs of your closet.
You ducked and plucked your boots (out) and put them on my feet, then tied the laces neat.
It still needs to say from where they plucked their boots. It needs to say where the person ducked.
They ducked back into his closet and plucked their boots then...
Most lines or groups of lines are like these. With correct punctuation and grammar they can be made more clear. Usually this is part of the "I know what it means so you should also" syndrome. As the writer we forget that the reader is not privy to what we know, so when the writer reads it it makes perfect sense, because the brain fills in the blanks, but the readers brain cannot do this. Usually the best way to start getting by this, is to let the poem set for awhile (in the beginning several months, unless one has a real good memory, then longer). Another way to work on this is to write everything out in sentence form first, as it is a lot easier to see problems that way.
Best,
dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.