Masks

[nb]

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset,
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us.

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

To hide? Without, perhaps.
But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.

Nu?

nb

[ellajam]

Hi, nb, there's a lot to like here. There are some interesting rhymes, particularly force it / corset and glimpse/ crimps. Force it/ corset is just perfect to me. I like the routine/ routinely and mask/ unmask. I think you could tighten this up into a consistent meter, though unfortunately, I can't be the one to help you with that. Here are some notes.

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset,
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us.
I'm not a fan of nary, and you need some punctuation after fuss, but a great opening.

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.
Maybe a ; after devised? I suck at punctuation, but I know there's something off there. Hike seems there just for the rhyme, not up to the rest of the poem.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance This line seems too long.
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

To hide? Without, perhaps. Huh? This makes no sense to me.
But inside something deeper taps. Love this line, and the 2 below.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.

Nu?

nb

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed the read.

[Kaldwin]

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset,
Quite a lovely bit of visual imagery. Nice start to the poem.
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us. - this doesn't entirely make sense to me.


No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.
Another comment on the pressure to conform, and the weight of society on our backs. This is not quite as poetic as the first two lines, and I wonder if it is perhaps redundant.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance - a bit lengthy.
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

To hide? Without, perhaps.
But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you. - I had to think about this line for a while. I think I get the general feelings of the poem, but I feel you could've phrased it a bit better.

Nu?

nb

All in all, quite a nice piece.

[nb]

Hi!

Thanks for the comments, ellajam & Kaldwin. A revision is in the works.

nb

[LaughGiraffe]

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset, Absolutely love the rhyme of force it and corset
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us.
I really like these opening lines. Right I away I get a sense of self expression being suppressed or covered forcefully. When you say "nary a fuss" it kind of contradicts, in my opinion, the aggressive tone of the first 2 lines with the "twisting, contorting, force, stuff".

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.
Again the first 2 lines here are very simple yet powerful. I do feel like "hike" is a little out of place though.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

To hide? Without, perhaps.
But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.
I like how you talk about this idea of using masks and costumes to show who you really are. And I loooove "routine routinely crimps"
Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.

Nu?

nb

Overall I think you did a great job and the concept of being unmasked by masks is really interesting.

[milo]

Hello. I have read this poem a few times. I believe it is the common theme of showing who you truly are underneath the mask hung around the frame of the purim festival. I wish you had done something completely different with the mask-true you meme, something to surprise the reader as this kind of reminds me of the billy joel song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E57pY8PnCPQ.

Also, I think the poem is a little too serious for rhyming couplets which, today, tend to come of campy, especially as they seem to lack the framework of meter.

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset,
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us.

twisting, contorting, leading, supporting playing - the overabundance of participles weakens your language. You need strong nouns and verbs, especially in the beginning of a poem. You could switch these into active verbs and trim them a little -

We twist and contort as we try to force it -
to stuff our lives into a corset.

Which also brings up the problem of "it" - you have a pronoun that lacks an antecedent. You never reveal just what "it" is, as if it is some deep, dark secret.

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.

here, you are twisting your language a bit to achieve your rhymes and it ends up reading awkward. The sentence is rather long and it might help to split it. I don't get the relevance of not "hiking" - what is the importance of the "hike"

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

you can definitely trim "ourselves". "fleeting glance" is cliche. What is the "task" your narrator might dare to take up?

To hide? Without, perhaps.

This reads strange. Do you normally hide with perhaps?

But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.

what is the difference between "yet a glimpse" and a "glimpse"?

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.

Nu?

nb

I think the purim festival is fascination, I wrote my own purim poem for last year's NaPM. Unfortunately, you are letting your form and purpose drive the poem too much making an awkward and bloated read. Try stripping it down a little and possibly switching away from couplets or adding meter.

Hope this helps.

Good luck with it.

---

just realized this was in novice so i probably commented more than I should have. Take what you can get from it and leave the rest.

[StandingAlone]

I enjoy this poem alot because i can feel your feelings, although its about a mask which hides things. Very interesting paradox

Please try to give more detailed critique in the workshops. thanks/mod

[LorettaYoung]

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it
and stuff ourselves in life's corset,
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss
leading, supporting, but never us.

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task?

To hide? Without, perhaps.
But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps.

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.

Nu?

nb

---

Hi, very much enjoyed the rhyme scheme; V3 L2 I think too long, the world does include ourselves; In V4; are you referring being outside the structure or practice? Otherwise, hard to understand. Enjoyable reading nonetheless. Loretta

[JMSelden]

I really enjoyed this. I read this as the mask being a literary form or desired self.

After some rereading, the mask could stand for bias, our illusional self, perspective or the metaphorical splinter in ones eye.

I may have spotted a grammatical error in the second to last line. I'm not going to correct it (I am unsure), maybe someone can corroborate.

[kindofahippy]

Hi!

I wrote this for Purim 2013. More spiritual angst.

Twisting, contorting as we try to force it "contorting" means the same thing as "twisting", and it reads as repetition for the sake of the meter. Consider "turning" instead"
and stuff ourselves in life's corset, "into" would work better for meter
playing a thousand roles with nary a fuss "never" would work as well as archaic "nary"
leading, supporting, but never us. It may be possible to be less verbose with this stanza. The essence of it is that we never play the role of ourselves, with the rest of the material being filler to enforce that

No more maddening scheme could be devised,
on display, in the open, yet disguised,
as we slog along, not dance, not hike
being who we must, not who we'd like.This stanza is excellent in that it provides metaphor without abstractions. You use concrete items to support your idea, but where it fails is the meter. The change from iambic to trochaic in the last two lines makes this read very poorly out loud.

But comes Purim and the briefest chance unesecesary inversion forces this rhyme
to offer the world, and ourselves, a fleeting glance "and ourselves" makes the line an awkward pentameter amongst tetrameter.
of who we are, in garb and mask.
Dare we now take up the task? another inversion that isn't strictly needed, since "Do we dare to take the task?" would work equally well, and consider doing away with the question mark on this line

To hide? Without, perhaps.
But inside something deeper taps.
The mask offers yet a glimpse
of what routine routinely crimps."something" and "routine", as abstractions with a plethora of meanings to different readers, may muddle this stanza

Under cloak of a Purimspiel
take a dare, be brave, be real!
Choose a mask but if you do,
know that the mask might unmask you.The play on ambiguity here enforces the sense of how the harder we try to hide who we are, the more obvious it becomes.

Nu?

nb

Interesting poem, I haven't had the chance to read anything quite like it. It brings to mind Shakespeare's masquerade in Romeo and Juliet, though that was a prose piece.

I found the metrical quirks tolerable while reading the poem out loud several times; however, because it does rhyme, it needs a more rigid structure, either iambic or trochaic but not both randomly.

The sonics could also use an improvement. Too many of the stanzas begin and end on conjunctions, such as "to", "but", "the", and "of". These weak linking words don't carry any imagery or cultural context on them the way a good solid concrete noun does.

[nb]

I thank everyone for their comments. I am getting slammed at work right now. I will get to a revision eventually.