Martin Luther King

[DestWrites]

Call me colour-blind, all I see is black and white.
A humanity based on a colourless sight.
White man inferior, strong and free,
black man subjacent, lesser, minority.
White men whip black men right into shape,
no equal rights, cannot escape.
God said love one another, it says in the bible,
yet white man still stomps, never quite liable.
Mississippi Georgia, a couple states filled with hate.
Why can’t white and black man follow the hands of fate?
God intended us to be one, to love each other equally,
yet we are segregated based on our pigment more often than frequently.
You see I walk during the day when the sun is shining bright,
and the looks I get from white man screams something is not right.
Is it because I am dirty, or because I am not clean?
My skin is just dark, or have you not seen...
Now I am not asking for much I am just stating the facts,
That my fellow Negros just so happen to be blacks.
We all want the same thing, to be happy and live a good life,
but to do that we need to stop stabbing one another with a knife.
We are all humans; we need acceptance and love,
I know we can achieve that, we can rise above.
My name is Martin Luther King and I am a Negro man,
My dream is equality, to be egalitarian.

[Erthona]

This line puzzles me:

"White man inferior, strong and free, black man subjacent, lesser, minority."

It seems that if a black man is subjacent to an inferior white man, that would also make him inferior.
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"Why can’t white and black man follow the hands of fate?"

Fate could just as easily be that they self-annihilate.
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"That my fellow Negros just so happen to be blacks."

Using the time context from which this is said, "Negro" and "black" would be a synonym.

So to me such lines as:

"Now I am not asking for much I am just stating the facts,
That my fellow Negros just so happen to be blacks."

seem more about making it rhyme than making any sense.
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You are trying to speak as, or for, Martin Luther King, yet there is nothing here that speaks to his style, or his perceptive intellect. It is sometimes instructive to speak for, or as a historical figure, usually it is better to select a person who is not a cultural icon.

Dale

[Todd]

Hello Dest,

I get into this problem that I see in your poem sometimes as well. When you choose the speaker of the poem to be someone famous, you carry the baggage of that speaker, and even if perfectly executed the poem will often fall short. You have a worst problem in that you chose one of the great communicators of his age. Your poem will be compared with this "I have a dream" speech and always found wanting.

Even if you clean up some of the issues, I think you've set too high a bar with this speaker and your current execution.

Just my thoughts.

Best,

Todd

[tectak]

Call me colour-blind, all I see is black and white. With whatever respect you endow yourself, I do not think you are saying what you think. If all you see is black and white you are a self-confessed racist. What you mean to say is that you do not see colour, including black and white, but just humanity.Be careful who you exclude..China is on the rise
A humanity based on a colourless sight. Exactly. Now compare to what you intimated in L1.
White man inferior, strong and free, This is nonsensense linguistically and factually. Have you heard that the poor whites remain on the caboose of the train? Sticking to the poetic crit, you have not created a stand-alone sentence here or in the previous line. Both are written as though aide memoirs or as answers to as yet unasked questions. It is gratingly lacking in technique especially if you are assuming the personna of one of the great orators of our recent history.
black man subjacent, lesser, minority. See...now you have equalised by accident with inferior and subjacent. Again, you are failing to say what you mean. Inferior means subjacent.
White men whip black men right into shape,
no equal rights, cannot escape.
God said love one another, it says in the bible,
yet white man still stomps, never quite liable. As a pointed observation of a world inescapably bad, you make a cameo comment but do it badly. There is not enough strength in the words to summon up biblical rage. You have an opportunity here to let rip...instead we have a race admonished for stomping and getting away with it. Oh, the wickedness of stomping....what can you do?
Mississippi Georgia, a couple states filled with hate. If you cannot make your line fit the meter, leave out words until it does. Where is the of? This Mississippi Georgia, is this another Georgia, deep south, that I didn't know about? Mississippi and Georgia, surely?
Why can’t white and black man follow the hands of fate? They do...that's the problem Again, not concise or thought through. Just words...no real meaning. God intended us to be one, to love each other equally, Preachy screechy. Whose god? This would be statemental outside your remit as mlk, but I do not recall god making the black and white arguement...mind you, if he did he was probably right. Not that it matters poetically, considering the next line
yet we are segregated based on our pigment more often than frequently. Great Scott! A horrendous forced rhyme.You almost commited lexicide to kill this line. Dreadful and you know it. Here's the thing. You want to write in rhyme? OK. You are in charge of the words, not vice versa. If you cannot get a benevolent ryhme for "equally", change equally.
" God created us as one; you my sister, you my brother.
Still we hold our coloured skin to segregate one from the other." Your poem.

You see I walk during the day when the sun is shining bright, Yep...that's nailed it...that's when the sun shines alright. Patent cliche based on painstaking observation of solar prediction. Avoid stating the obvious because it invariably adds nothing to your poem or the weather forecast. Worse, it makes a serious poem seem flippant.
and the looks I get from white man screams something is not right. Looks scream, sounds blind, scents sing, touch looks. Say no more. Please.
Is it because I am dirty, or because I am not clean? Well, given these choices...er...mmm...errr...the second...no...the first...err. What DO you mean? Now looky up Martin, you is just not up to dis oratory ting. But HE was. I think you are asking too much of yourself. Said kindly
My skin is just dark, or have you not seen...
Now I am not asking for much I am just stating the facts,
That my fellow Negros just so happen to be blacks. Funny, that. I've noticed it, too. Coincidences..eh...never fail to astonish me
We all want the same thing, to be happy and live a good life,
but to do that we need to stop stabbing one another with a knife. ...A knife...one knife...that can seriously spread disease. This needs rephrasing. Over to you.
We are all humans; we need acceptance and love,
I know we can achieve that, we can rise above.
My name is Martin Luther King and I am a Negro man,
My dream is equality, to be egalitarian.

A good bad idea. You overstretched everywhere. Mind you, well done for trying. Have a go at being God next time. He didn't say much by all accounts....at least not on video where we can compare. You have a very strong point to make which theoretically cannot be diminished in its message by repetition or by the passage of time. If you feel that you have made some unique contribution to the discussion then fine, but I don't see it. What I do see is a desire to write poetry. Do not lose it.
Best,
tectak

[Laura Marx]

Hey Dest,

So, before I write a critique I want to say that I like a lot what the poem is about. These poems are really important - it takes me back to like, Négritude poetry, and it's a really important thing. I have comrades who are into this type of thing (my appreciation for it is somewhat lessened by my inability to understand it, being a white girl and all [snicker]) - but, no, I have seen a wonderful thing with these poems, reading and writing them, they rebuild the adytum of black consciousness which has been wounded by colonialism and that is very important. So, I immediately like the poem!

Onto the critique: the form is really poor. It doesn't have to be, but it is. And, I really think it would benefit from coupleting. Like so:

Call me colour-blind, all I see is black and white.
A humanity based on a colourless sight.

White man inferior, strong and free,
black man subjacent, lesser, minority.

White men whip black men right into shape,
no equal rights, cannot escape.

And it works so well because you're already writing in couplets, you're doing [predicate], [conclusion]. and it's couplets, but they have not been coupleted. So I am saying: take it to its formulaic conclusion. It emphasis the meaning, too, especially when you come to later lines that are more emotional, they would benefit from this kind of tying up of the lines.

Aside from that, aside from couplets, it's free verse, so there isn't much to be said for form. The rhythm is very sparse and all over the place, though, there isn't much rhythm to it at all. And that isn't a bad thing! In fact, I like it - its prosaic, yes, and it's a proclamation! Each couplet is a loud proclamation to a crowd on Harlem and it's great, so I do like this style, it is an aphoristic style. You aren't building an argument, you're proclaiming various facts. "Is it not so that... But yet..." In fact, you're preaching, actually - you do this very well, actually, you have linked yourself very closely with King, because you are writing it as though you are a preacher, and that's a very nice touch.

I get the feeling you haven't put much thought into the language. I get the feeling, even, that you are struggling. You are trying to say what you want to say and you don't have enough in you to be poetic about it, which is okay, but I feel like you would benefit from writing more concentrated, shorter poetry, and exploring language. Have you read much poetry? Langstone Hughes, Aimé Césaire, Richard Wright, etc., do this kind of poetry, not quite this but you know, this kind of thing, I think if you haven't read them yet it'd be well, well worth your while. If you have read them, pay attention to the language they use.

So, the form is fine, it'd be better if you coupleted it properly - the aphoristic style is great and that's the poems main strength, but the language is strained and quite dry and I don't think that's something you can really improve in this poem but just work on in your general poetry - get comfortable with English, if you are to write in English. [And, there were some wonderful poems a while back I read, proper post-colonial poems, by a couple of colonised women (Indian I think), talking about how their mother tongue was stolen from them (which they dramatised, beautifully, as their 'tongues [being] cut out') and being made to speak English, but finding, English resonated them not as a forced language but as their own language, feeling that they had taken back English as their own language, and they could express this through poetry, and that's a really beautiful thing. Mastery of English as individual reclaimation! So, maybe, go at it with that spirit, if you want.]

What I like about this poem is it has nothing we usually think of about poetry. There are not metaphors, no techniques, nothing. That's a strength, here - like I said before, it's not like a poem, it's like a speech, or like preaching, and that's really fitting for the subject matter.

There is some symbolism, though - God and the bible come into it at some point. And they go straight out, unfortunately. I would have liked more of God in this, more invocation of God. Or else, there is no use in mentioning him. If you are deferring to the supreme authority, you have to treat it like such. It is strange, to say, 'Well, God says blah blah... - but you listen to me!' I'd structure it as: SPEAKER, GOD, DENOUEMENT. The denouement being the triumphant last couplet, which I want to address later. The other symbol, though - the contrast between White Oppressor and Black Oppressed, Coloniser and Colonised, etc., is really good. It matches up with the 'The world has become colour blind' thing. You start off with - THE WORLD IS ONLY BLACK AND WHITE, and you discuss how that is, and that's really good.

As for the topic: I addressed it earlier, it's a négritude poem, a blackness poem, a post-colonial poem. It is an African-American reclaiming his - I'm assuming - identity, and loudly chronologing his oppression, in poetry, and that's really good. These kinds of poems are important. And I hope you continue to write on these themes, because not enough poetry has been written about it.

I was concerned, when I first started reading it, though, I admit - when I saw the title I was a little worried because you know how often MLK is co-opted by white liberals who are secretly racist - the 'white moderate' as King called them, himself - and then I saw the first line and it talks about being colour blind which is like, augh... Oh god. Because that is a term so many white liberals use, to say 'Oh, I'm not racist - I don't see race, I'm colourblind!' and I was worried. And then we got to the line, and I was still a little confused, and you say 'White man inferior' and I thought - oh god! Now we're talking about oppressed whitey! But, luckily I was corrected by the rest of the poem. So, it's a new spin on colour blind rhetoric, I'll give it that. And I'm sure it was a mistake where you say the white man is inferior. (Unless you mean morally inferior or whatever - in which case, it didn't come across.)

The poem does fail at presenting the matter for much of the poem, though. I must say this - yes, I know exactly what it is about, I know what you are saying. But if I was unaware of the black struggle, if I was unaware of racism, if I was unaware of colonialism, and so on, I wouldn't really know what you were talking about. 'What's all this?' I'd say. And, really, that's a problem for you - it really is a 101 type poem, it's a very simple poem, in its meaning. You are saying, 'There is racism.' But in order for me to really get anything out of this poem, I have to know that there is racism already. Basically: anyone who is going to have any connection to the poem doesn't need to read the poem. Which is unfortunate.

This goes back to your problem with language, in my view. You've struggled to express it. And I think it's good for where you are as a poet, and more experience with poetry will make you a better poet, obviously. And it's a good place to start, with this poem. But it is not great at doing what it hopes to do.

The last couplet though; oh! Wow! What a beautiful couplet! I love this sort of climactic 'I AM MARTIN LUTHER KING, I AM A NEGRO.' You are not writing as him, I do not think, or at least you're doing it tongue-in-cheek. You're aware it's you writing it. But you identify yourself with him triumphantly - and actually, after the climax. 'We ARE this, we CAN do this', kind of like, 'WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!' And then finally, in the sigh afterwards, 'I am King, I am a negro.' It's glorious. And the relationship between the climax and the assumption of King - WE can do this, I am this. That's really important. You cement yourself firmly inside the black struggle, and it's beautiful.

So, there are elements of shining power in this poetry, and there are good mechanics, but it has its weaknesses, is what I'm saying.

[DestWrites]

Call me colour-blind, all I see is black and white. With whatever respect you endow yourself, I do not think you are saying what you think. If all you see is black and white you are a self-confessed racist. What you mean to say is that you do not see colour, including black and white, but just humanity.Be careful who you exclude..China is on the rise
A humanity based on a colourless sight. Exactly. Now compare to what you intimated in L1.
White man inferior, strong and free, This is nonsensense linguistically and factually. Have you heard that the poor whites remain on the caboose of the train? Sticking to the poetic crit, you have not created a stand-alone sentence here or in the previous line. Both are written as though aide memoirs or as answers to as yet unasked questions. It is gratingly lacking in technique especially if you are assuming the personna of one of the great orators of our recent history.
black man subjacent, lesser, minority. See...now you have equalised by accident with inferior and subjacent. Again, you are failing to say what you mean. Inferior means subjacent.
White men whip black men right into shape,
no equal rights, cannot escape.
God said love one another, it says in the bible,
yet white man still stomps, never quite liable. As a pointed observation of a world inescapably bad, you make a cameo comment but do it badly. There is not enough strength in the words to summon up biblical rage. You have an opportunity here to let rip...instead we have a race admonished for stomping and getting away with it. Oh, the wickedness of stomping....what can you do?
Mississippi Georgia, a couple states filled with hate. If you cannot make your line fit the meter, leave out words until it does. Where is the of? This Mississippi Georgia, is this another Georgia, deep south, that I didn't know about? Mississippi and Georgia, surely?
Why can’t white and black man follow the hands of fate? They do...that's the problem Again, not concise or thought through. Just words...no real meaning. God intended us to be one, to love each other equally, Preachy screechy. Whose god? This would be statemental outside your remit as mlk, but I do not recall god making the black and white arguement...mind you, if he did he was probably right. Not that it matters poetically, considering the next line
yet we are segregated based on our pigment more often than frequently. Great Scott! A horrendous forced rhyme.You almost commited lexicide to kill this line. Dreadful and you know it. Here's the thing. You want to write in rhyme? OK. You are in charge of the words, not vice versa. If you cannot get a benevolent ryhme for "equally", change equally.
" God created us as one; you my sister, you my brother.
Still we hold our coloured skin to segregate one from the other." Your poem.

You see I walk during the day when the sun is shining bright, Yep...that's nailed it...that's when the sun shines alright. Patent cliche based on painstaking observation of solar prediction. Avoid stating the obvious because it invariably adds nothing to your poem or the weather forecast. Worse, it makes a serious poem seem flippant.
and the looks I get from white man screams something is not right. Looks scream, sounds blind, scents sing, touch looks. Say no more. Please.
Is it because I am dirty, or because I am not clean? Well, given these choices...er...mmm...errr...the second...no...the first...err. What DO you mean? Now looky up Martin, you is just not up to dis oratory ting. But HE was. I think you are asking too much of yourself. Said kindly
My skin is just dark, or have you not seen...
Now I am not asking for much I am just stating the facts,
That my fellow Negros just so happen to be blacks. Funny, that. I've noticed it, too. Coincidences..eh...never fail to astonish me
We all want the same thing, to be happy and live a good life,
but to do that we need to stop stabbing one another with a knife. ...A knife...one knife...that can seriously spread disease. This needs rephrasing. Over to you.
We are all humans; we need acceptance and love,
I know we can achieve that, we can rise above.
My name is Martin Luther King and I am a Negro man,
My dream is equality, to be egalitarian.

A good bad idea. You overstretched everywhere. Mind you, well done for trying. Have a go at being God next time. He didn't say much by all accounts....at least not on video where we can compare. You have a very strong point to make which theoretically cannot be diminished in its message by repetition or by the passage of time. If you feel that you have made some unique contribution to the discussion then fine, but I don't see it. What I do see is a desire to write poetry. Do not lose it.
Best,
tectak

First off I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my piece and taking the time to give me constructive criticism, I do greatly appreciate it. I liked the thought that I had, trying to express the racism that was going on during MLK's time period. I was influenced by him, he being religious and someone who stands up for his people and his rights. I knew going into this poem that it would automatically be scrutinised based on the fact that MLK has one of the most well-known speeches in the world and he is such a significant historical figure that there is no way I could compete with that on any level. I read this poem now and I do see many places I went wrong in it, utterly missing. Just as you Tectak have pointed out in the opening line, I was not trying to be racist but just trying to distinguish the difference between black and whites when it came to the time period. I smirked when you said "Great Scott! A horrendous forced rhyme. You almost commited lexicide to kill this line. Dreadful and you know it." I did know it. In a way I wanted it to work just so I could get my thoughts down but in reality I should have taken the time to count syllables and make the overall poem flow and rhyme better. I've always loves reading your criticisms Tectak because I know how painstakingly right they are. They make me smile, a smack in the face (you love clichés). Thanks, and I will take these critics into account when I work on my future pieces.

---

Hey Dest,

So, before I write a critique I want to say that I like a lot what the poem is about. These poems are really important - it takes me back to like, Négritude poetry, and it's a really important thing. I have comrades who are into this type of thing (my appreciation for it is somewhat lessened by my inability to understand it, being a white girl and all [snicker]) - but, no, I have seen a wonderful thing with these poems, reading and writing them, they rebuild the adytum of black consciousness which has been wounded by colonialism and that is very important. So, I immediately like the poem!

Onto the critique: the form is really poor. It doesn't have to be, but it is. And, I really think it would benefit from coupleting. Like so:

Call me colour-blind, all I see is black and white.
A humanity based on a colourless sight.

White man inferior, strong and free,
black man subjacent, lesser, minority.

White men whip black men right into shape,
no equal rights, cannot escape.

And it works so well because you're already writing in couplets, you're doing [predicate], [conclusion]. and it's couplets, but they have not been coupleted. So I am saying: take it to its formulaic conclusion. It emphasis the meaning, too, especially when you come to later lines that are more emotional, they would benefit from this kind of tying up of the lines.

Aside from that, aside from couplets, it's free verse, so there isn't much to be said for form. The rhythm is very sparse and all over the place, though, there isn't much rhythm to it at all. And that isn't a bad thing! In fact, I like it - its prosaic, yes, and it's a proclamation! Each couplet is a loud proclamation to a crowd on Harlem and it's great, so I do like this style, it is an aphoristic style. You aren't building an argument, you're proclaiming various facts. "Is it not so that... But yet..." In fact, you're preaching, actually - you do this very well, actually, you have linked yourself very closely with King, because you are writing it as though you are a preacher, and that's a very nice touch.

I get the feeling you haven't put much thought into the language. I get the feeling, even, that you are struggling. You are trying to say what you want to say and you don't have enough in you to be poetic about it, which is okay, but I feel like you would benefit from writing more concentrated, shorter poetry, and exploring language. Have you read much poetry? Langstone Hughes, Aimé Césaire, Richard Wright, etc., do this kind of poetry, not quite this but you know, this kind of thing, I think if you haven't read them yet it'd be well, well worth your while. If you have read them, pay attention to the language they use.

So, the form is fine, it'd be better if you coupleted it properly - the aphoristic style is great and that's the poems main strength, but the language is strained and quite dry and I don't think that's something you can really improve in this poem but just work on in your general poetry - get comfortable with English, if you are to write in English. [And, there were some wonderful poems a while back I read, proper post-colonial poems, by a couple of colonised women (Indian I think), talking about how their mother tongue was stolen from them (which they dramatised, beautifully, as their 'tongues [being] cut out') and being made to speak English, but finding, English resonated them not as a forced language but as their own language, feeling that they had taken back English as their own language, and they could express this through poetry, and that's a really beautiful thing. Mastery of English as individual reclaimation! So, maybe, go at it with that spirit, if you want.]

What I like about this poem is it has nothing we usually think of about poetry. There are not metaphors, no techniques, nothing. That's a strength, here - like I said before, it's not like a poem, it's like a speech, or like preaching, and that's really fitting for the subject matter.

There is some symbolism, though - God and the bible come into it at some point. And they go straight out, unfortunately. I would have liked more of God in this, more invocation of God. Or else, there is no use in mentioning him. If you are deferring to the supreme authority, you have to treat it like such. It is strange, to say, 'Well, God says blah blah... - but you listen to me!' I'd structure it as: SPEAKER, GOD, DENOUEMENT. The denouement being the triumphant last couplet, which I want to address later. The other symbol, though - the contrast between White Oppressor and Black Oppressed, Coloniser and Colonised, etc., is really good. It matches up with the 'The world has become colour blind' thing. You start off with - THE WORLD IS ONLY BLACK AND WHITE, and you discuss how that is, and that's really good.

As for the topic: I addressed it earlier, it's a négritude poem, a blackness poem, a post-colonial poem. It is an African-American reclaiming his - I'm assuming - identity, and loudly chronologing his oppression, in poetry, and that's really good. These kinds of poems are important. And I hope you continue to write on these themes, because not enough poetry has been written about it.

I was concerned, when I first started reading it, though, I admit - when I saw the title I was a little worried because you know how often MLK is co-opted by white liberals who are secretly racist - the 'white moderate' as King called them, himself - and then I saw the first line and it talks about being colour blind which is like, augh... Oh god. Because that is a term so many white liberals use, to say 'Oh, I'm not racist - I don't see race, I'm colourblind!' and I was worried. And then we got to the line, and I was still a little confused, and you say 'White man inferior' and I thought - oh god! Now we're talking about oppressed whitey! But, luckily I was corrected by the rest of the poem. So, it's a new spin on colour blind rhetoric, I'll give it that. And I'm sure it was a mistake where you say the white man is inferior. (Unless you mean morally inferior or whatever - in which case, it didn't come across.)

The poem does fail at presenting the matter for much of the poem, though. I must say this - yes, I know exactly what it is about, I know what you are saying. But if I was unaware of the black struggle, if I was unaware of racism, if I was unaware of colonialism, and so on, I wouldn't really know what you were talking about. 'What's all this?' I'd say. And, really, that's a problem for you - it really is a 101 type poem, it's a very simple poem, in its meaning. You are saying, 'There is racism.' But in order for me to really get anything out of this poem, I have to know that there is racism already. Basically: anyone who is going to have any connection to the poem doesn't need to read the poem. Which is unfortunate.

This goes back to your problem with language, in my view. You've struggled to express it. And I think it's good for where you are as a poet, and more experience with poetry will make you a better poet, obviously. And it's a good place to start, with this poem. But it is not great at doing what it hopes to do.

The last couplet though; oh! Wow! What a beautiful couplet! I love this sort of climactic 'I AM MARTIN LUTHER KING, I AM A NEGRO.' You are not writing as him, I do not think, or at least you're doing it tongue-in-cheek. You're aware it's you writing it. But you identify yourself with him triumphantly - and actually, after the climax. 'We ARE this, we CAN do this', kind of like, 'WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!' And then finally, in the sigh afterwards, 'I am King, I am a negro.' It's glorious. And the relationship between the climax and the assumption of King - WE can do this, I am this. That's really important. You cement yourself firmly inside the black struggle, and it's beautiful.

So, there are elements of shining power in this poetry, and there are good mechanics, but it has its weaknesses, is what I'm saying.

Hello Laura Marx,
Thanks for taking the time to write a great critic for my piece I appreciate it. I am an avid poetry reader as well as novel reader I just lack when it comes to incorporating what I read into my own work, my stubbornness. I do realize I need to start doing that as I know it will make my work only better. Thanks for kicking me back on course. When it comes to rhyme I never really had a specific goal, as you said free verse more than anything. I tried my best to make it rhyme but as you pointed out my language was way off. I need to take time when it comes to my words which will help me greatly. Your compliments made me smile as well as your critics, thank you and I will apply them when it comes to my future pieces.
Keep writing,
Destinie