Menial

[Essuie]

All the resources of modern life at hand

Infinite choices, possibilities
Why choose something so simple, so clearly meaningless 
As to spend time with menial tasks, attempting nothing to better your life
The lives of others 
The world. 
How can I be so ignorant? 
How can you?

The universe is waiting 
Feel the pull, the awe
Of the unimaginable complexity that sits dormant 
Waiting for a discovery
A daring realization 
That to hide behind the false sense of pride, 
Of satisfaction with mediocrity 
Is to further dismantle the ever evolving movement of ideas 

Don't hide behind the sensational, embrace it
Incorporate the idea of infinity into your perspective 
Encapsulate possibilities into thoughts 
Into ideas 
Into reality 
Into a differentiated section of consciousness 
A well of meaning no longer waiting to be tapped 
Ready to destroy pointlessness with the tip of a thought 


   

[Erthona]

Essuie,
Ah yes. From a purely personal perspective, I have to disagree with your thesis, as you dismiss menial tasks as "clearly worthless". Where would we be if no one picked up and disposed of the garbage? Grew and cultivated food, or transported food to market? Made the clothes you are living in right now. I can nearly guarantee you, that if not for someone doing a menial job, you would be naked and so on. I'm not trying to be mean, I just think it is a bad idea to rest your thesis on an obviously flawed premiss. On the whole this seems less poetic, as it uses few poetic tropes outside of anthropomorphizing the universe, and more as an exhortation in terms of speechifying. There can certainly be common ground between the two but seems closer to the rhetoric side. In terms of style and ease of reading, the idea of capping the first letter of every line was put to bed in the 1950's. It certainly makes a poem easier to read, as would using correct punctuation. Unless there is an extremely compelling rationale for deviating from it, poetry should follow the same principle of grammar, punctuation,and typology that any writing would.
On the positive side I see there are no spelling errors, and you generally write with clarity. Stylistically it reminds me of stuff I was writing when I first started college, sitting in the pizza parlor, writing, drinking Sangria, and chain smoking cigarets. Meaning it was slightly over the top, drama-wise

Welcome to the site,

Almost forgot, this site is based on give and take, which means the expectation is that you give more critiques than you take, the mods are pretty quick to jump on you if you just post poems. A kind of minimal ratio is something like 3:1. For every 3 critiques you can post one poem. That is the general idea for most people who have been on this site for awhile, plus if you don't meet you critique requirements they will remove your poems.


Dale

[Liz11]

All the resources of modern life at hand

Infinite choices, possibilities
Why choose something so simple, so clearly meaningless 
As to spend time with menial tasks, attempting nothing to better your life
The lives of others 
The world. 
How can I be so ignorant? 
How can you?

The universe is waiting 
Feel the pull, the awe
Of the unimaginable complexity that sits dormant 
Waiting for a discovery
A daring realization 
That to hide behind the false sense of pride, 
Of satisfaction with mediocrity 
Is to further dismantle the ever evolving movement of ideas 

Don't hide behind the sensational, embrace it
Incorporate the idea of infinity into your perspective 
Encapsulate possibilities into thoughts 
Into ideas 
Into reality 
Into a differentiated section of consciousness 
A well of meaning no longer waiting to be tapped 
Ready to destroy pointlessness with the tip of a thought 


   

Hi Essuie,

I personally disagree with the comment below really enjoyed the theme of this poem. I can definitely empathize with your frustration of how meaningless daily life can seem. One suggestion I have is some further work on the structure in the first few lines. When I read this out loud, I had some difficulty making the first three lines flow. I feel that the second two lines may be a little too long compared to the line that proceeds them and those following. Maybe try to cut these down a bit or break them up somehow because I couldn't really get the rhythm to flow well at the start. Just something to consider

[azure]

All the resources of modern life at hand Why the spacing below? I think it's distracting .

Infinite choices, possibilities
Why choose something so simple, so clearly meaningless  Here we go, the poem is setting up to become a lecture...
As to spend time with menial tasks, attempting nothing to better your life  I think the holier-than-thou overtone of this line (and poem) will quickly disinterest readers. You do have clear, concise language which is good.
The lives of others 
The world. 
How can I be so ignorant?  An attempt to place your self in the shoes of the sinners?  It failed.
How can you?

The universe is waiting 
Feel the pull, the awe
Of the unimaginable complexity that sits dormant  the word choice here is dull and has been used a million times to explain a fairly traversed concept.
Waiting for a discovery
A daring realization  'daring' doesn't fit right here and is somewhat comical.
That to hide behind the false sense of pride, 
Of satisfaction with mediocrity   Again, the preachy tone you are implementing here kills the poem's expression.
Is to further dismantle the ever evolving movement of ideas 

Don't hide behind the sensational, embrace it
Incorporate the idea of infinity into your perspective 
Encapsulate possibilities into thoughts 
Into ideas 
Into reality 
Into a differentiated section of consciousness 
A well of meaning no longer waiting to be tapped 
Ready to destroy pointlessness with the tip of a thought   this last stanza seems to lack a certain ingenuity of metaphor and
imagery that breathes new life and perspective into the subject matter itself.

This poem to me was very preachy in its tone and message. I understand that it was intended to be more of a rallying call, but it fell short of that. I have to agree with dale, menial tasks can be enlightening in their own right, and I think that their appreciation helps us to not take for granted the many mundane aspects of our existence. You do have a conciseness about your poem, and that is a very valuable thing to possess poetically. However, your word choice was boring, and the lack of potent imagery was troubling for me as a reader. Thanks

Azure

[calypist]

I feel like you've managed to reword a very generic theme here in a way that really captured me. In the beginning, your tone seemed suggestive, and innocent. Like an ordinary conversation. And in the second half, you sort of spiraled into some really powerful images and ideas, and then wrapped it all up nicely with a tone that sort of said, "I have given you the key, It's up to you to use it."

It was sort of like reading a brief essay on the glory of consciousness.

"All the resources of modern life at hand

Infinite choices, possibilities
Why choose something so simple, so clearly meaningless
As to spend time with menial tasks, attempting nothing to better your life
The lives of others
The world.
How can I be so ignorant?
How can you?

The universe is waiting
Feel the pull, the awe
Of the unimaginable complexity that sits dormant
Waiting for a discovery
A daring realization
That to hide behind the false sense of pride,
Of satisfaction with mediocrity
Is to further dismantle the ever evolving movement of ideas

Don't hide behind the sensational, embrace it
Incorporate the idea of infinity into your perspective
Encapsulate possibilities into thoughts
Into ideas
Into reality
Into a differentiated section of consciousness
A well of meaning no longer waiting to be tapped
Ready to destroy pointlessness with the tip of a thought"

The only problem I had was that you spend a lot of time talking about how much more incredible and inspiring our lives could be if we dissolved our menial tasks and turned our attention to this  "something much bigger and better than our day to day rituals" but never really seem to deliver us to that fantastic thing. It was like listen to an orate pontificate, and then walking away feeling inspired by his choice of words alone, and not the message itself, being that there was no true message. Because perception reigns all, some would rather spend their time on a couch in front of a television than skydiving out of an airplane. But in that way, the poem could be a voice for those who WOULD prefer to add more excitement and value to their lives, but lack the necessary motivation to do so.

So actually, to that effect, the poem is very moving.

[QDeathstar]

All the resources of modern life at hand

Infinite choices, possibilities
Why choose something so simple, so clearly meaningless 
As to spend time with menial tasks, attempting nothing to better your life
The lives of others 
The world. 
How can I be so ignorant? 
How can you?

The universe is waiting 
Feel the pull, the awe
Of the unimaginable complexity that sits dormant 
Waiting for a discovery
A daring realization 
That to hide behind the false sense of pride, 
Of satisfaction with mediocrity 
Is to further dismantle the ever evolving movement of ideas 

Don't hide behind the sensational, embrace it
Incorporate the idea of infinity into your perspective 
Encapsulate possibilities into thoughts 
Into ideas 
Into reality 
Into a differentiated section of consciousness 
A well of meaning no longer waiting to be tapped 
Ready to destroy pointlessness with the tip of a thought 


   

I don't think the poem is saying necessarily that menial task are meaningless, but that being satisfied with only trying them is meaningless. But, the poem is heavily cliche. Oh yeah, don't be satisfied with the every day, be super. But, we've heard all of that before.

I also find it Ironic that the poem is offering us infinite possibilities, but then immediately judging us for not accepting the choice the author views as obvious. Part of being able to reach out and achieve the greater things comes not out of choice or some higher level hippie thinking, but out of necessity to complete what the speaker has prejudged as menial tasks.

The speaker looks down upon the world, the poem is actually getting more irritating the more I think about it. The poem reminds me of "The Onion's" Ted Talk. But for the realsies.