Breaking the Bough

[Mark101]

Hello Each,
This is my first post on this forum. I'm using the "Serious Critique" because although I have re-edited this piece a couple of times, there are still things I'm not quite happy with. I'm hoping that a bit of workshopping will help me sort it out. Thank you all in advance for anything you may say. Mark.



Strange, strange day.
What need could there be,
To tear out your soul for scrutiny?
Given free will but then given no choices,
The unified strains of a million voices
Ask, "reason or treason,
For which to let go,
The very last strand of the life that you know”?
Tied to the quay of my still beating heart,
My anchor stone of truth.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
What truth could be put upon show?
That for this truth, you would die and desist?
We did it for you love,
For you, they insist.
For you love, we just had to know.

No smiles for that camera,
No lies for that crowd.
No up, no down, no quiet nor loud,
And doing their deeds the foul demons avowed
“The only way back is undone”!

Undo they did,
As my mind detached,
Watching the scene as their vile plots hatched.
I open my mouth, but I don't have my lips.
I don't have my eyes or my fingertips.
I can't feel my feet
Nor my breath expand.
I wander untethered through featureless land.
Yet hidden, I keep in my still beating heart,
My fire stone of youth.

Suddenly, everything stops.
My all in a bubble that pops.
As I fall through the air,
The sky's ripping a tear
In my dreaming, and every limb flops.

Then

Awakened, in puddles of mucus and blood
I lay, as the newly born child.
Wondering why and half drowned in the mud,
But feeling the call of the wild.

Slowly and haze filled,
The turn of the world
Is recalling me, back from the edge.
Sun rising, air chilled,
The future unfurled
In my beating heart, making its pledge.

It's come, I can feel it,
The day of my birth.
The day of the ever long searching for worth.
The day of new stepping upon this green earth,
And of touching a heart with my hand.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
Well isn't it obvious now?
So that none in your world could deny you exist!
We did it for you love,
For you wished this tryst.
For you love are breaking the bough.

[tectak]

Hello Each,
This is my first post on this forum.  I'm using the "Serious Critique" because although I have re-edited this piece a couple of times, there are still things I'm not quite happy with.  I'm hoping that a bit of workshopping will help me sort it out.  Thank you all in advance for anything you may say.  Mark.
Hi mark,
there are a couple of things which would improve this work immediately. Unless you are still using a John Bull printing set stop capitalising every line. You may still see the odd diehard trying to look like a 19th Century romantic but it is now pseudo-poetic and only confuses whatever punctuation you can spare.
Next. You rhyme. You rhyme almost obsessively but well enough. The trouble is you sacrifice fluidity on the altar of altruism...you rhyme to your own disadvantage and it shows.
Apart from that, the rest may be small nits. There is purpose in this piece, I can feel it when reading it out loud, but not clarity...at least not to me; but, hell, it's my crit.
Best,
tectak


Strange, strange day. "Strange" is one if those adjectives that modifies itself paradoxically..as in "it's a mad, mad world". One cannot be sure whether the repetition modifies itself (the paradox) or  is simply there to add gravitas to the descriptor. For me, it is the latter and would therefore benefit from more depth. It is a musing, after all, and so does not pretend to be a sentence. Keep the musing, by all means, though it does  not pin me to the page, but say something else about the day...at least more than it was strangely strange.
What need could there be,
To tear out your soul for scrutiny? This is difficult. You see, NEED is a reason.You want to say "What REASON could there be...?" but that would you trip your meter.  Find another way
Given free will but then given no choices,
The unified strains of a million voices
Ask, "reason or treason,
For which to let go,
The very last strand of the life that you know”? I have tried, but I can make no sense out of this line. It forms an imperfect question which confounds logic. Boolean. Ask" x or treason for which way to let go...?"  Huh? Drop the quotes and you get nearer but anthropomorphising Reason and Treason is still a metaphor too far. Nope. I don't get it...but it rhymes.
Tied to the quay of my still beating heart, Metaphors are like oysters...they only make sense if you swallow them whole. I don't swallow a quay and heart, less still a beating quay. I mean, this is your one chance per stanza NOT to rhyme, surely you are not going to mix  metaphors instead? Is it a quay? Is it an anchor? Is it a stone? Is it the truth? No? You'll never guess..it's a beating heart!
My anchor stone of truth.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
What truth could be put upon show?
That for this truth, you would die and desist?If you cannot make an unforced rhyme with insist, change insist. If you cannot make an unforced rhyme with desist, change desist. Resist, exist, enlist, persist, consist, scotch bloody  mist.... or just change both. Anything to avoid a Pythonic parrot sketch.Your poem.
We did it for you love, Aw, pet...how nice. Or should it be  "your"?
For you, they insist.
For you love, we just had to know. If not, it is too out-of-context vernacular and needs commas. Honestly, Love.

No smiles for that camera,
No lies for that crowd.
No up, no down, no quiet nor loud,
And doing their deeds the foul demons avowed
“The only way back is undone”! This is  by far the weakest stanza. That, that and their makes no movement in the piece and the forced rhyme is almost Shakesperian...or at least mock Tudor. Ayeee! I am undone! No to this.

Undo they did,
As my mind detached,
Watching the scene as their vile plots hatched.
I open my mouth, but I don't have my lips.
I don't have my eyes or my fingertips.
I can't feel my feet
Nor my breath expand. Lungs, surely, but the poem is now not so much ending as decaying so it is of little consequence. We have both forgotten where we are and if you thought I knew, well, I thought you knew. So we are lost.
I wander untethered through featureless land. Thought so, knew so. Always a good closing scene. If this is death then just remember that a few moments (hours, days, centuries, millenia) ago, you were watching with a detached mind through translocated eyes the hubble bubble, toil and trouble of vile plots hatching. You should have got outta here sooner.
Yet hidden, I keep in my still beating heart,
My fire stone of youth.

Suddenly, everything stops. Nursery verse. All of a sudden...and what follows continues in the same vein. Awful but only because you wrote better earlier...now see what you did. The reader has expectations. This is almost a regression...it isn't, is it? Yes, it is.
My all in a bubble that pops.
As I fall through the air,
The sky's ripping a tear
In my dreaming, and every limb flops. Oh, come along, now. This rhyming thing will be the death of us both. Unworthy.

Then No. It must sequentially be then....er, which is now...but then again. See next verse. We are now lost in time as well as space. Do you have the time, or did you. This needs looking at because tense shifts are irritating even when softened by progressive narrative. You do not have your eyes, will be I DID not have my eyes. OK, I DO get where this is going but you keep looping. We may have to induce.

Awakened, in puddles of mucus and blood
I lay, as the newly born child.
Wondering why and half drowned in the mud,
But feeling the call of the wild.

Slowly and haze filled,
The turn of the world
Is recalling me, back from the edge.
Sun rising, air chilled,
The future unfurled
In my beating heart, making its pledge.

It's come, I can feel it,
The day of my birth.
The day of the ever long searching for worth.
The day of new stepping upon this green earth,
And of touching a heart with my hand.

Why shake me? why break me? You have lots of spare capitals. Use them Whysely.
Why take me apart?
Well isn't it obvious now?
So that none in your world could deny you exist!
We did it for you love, I now hate this chummy familiarity with the opposite sex and expect others do, too. Pet.
For you wished this tryst.
For you love are breaking the bough.

The last Iine so damned predictable that I struggle to find another word to rhyme with "now". Maybe there is only one so bough it is.

[Todd]

Hi Mark,

I've appreciated all of your critiquing on the site so far. Let me take a pass at your poem.

Let's start with the title: Breaking the Bough. This makes me think of the old Rock-a-bye baby nursery rhyme. Possibly something to do with a loss of security in childhood, some sort of upheaval. This is what I'm bringing to the poem.

Strange, strange day.--As first lines go, this feels a bit flat. So, I'm being told that the day has an element of strangeness to it. What I would expect to see after this opening is possibly some imagery that would explode into something weird. The following lines feel a bit tame for the opening.
What need could there be,
To tear out your soul for scrutiny?--The soul can often be an overused phrase. There's a part of me that feels this could be developed into an interesting image but is at this point a bit of a shorthand question. I'm not going to pay much attention to rhyme in my illustration because I'm not really suggesting substitutions just trying to illustrate what I'm getting at. Example: What need could there be/to place fishhooks in our soul
Given free will but then given no choices,--Again this might be stronger as a specific choice and not a philosophical proposition. Though the contrast your going for seems sound.
The unified strains of a million voices--So, maybe preexistence of the soul?
Ask, "reason or treason,--So to act with reason is to be treasonous? Science vs faith perhaps
For which to let go,
The very last strand of the life that you know”?--This makes me think of an umbilical cord prior to birth
Tied to the quay of my still beating heart,--Quay is a nice word.
My anchor stone of truth.--These of constructions happen and sometimes they work, but it tends to work better by drawing the imagery out more precisely. the of truth type things tend to be a shorthand. We all use them from time to time, there's just probably something better.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
What truth could be put upon show?
That for this truth, you would die and desist?--Consecutive questions are less powerful than statements. Just something to think about. Again also there are a lot abstract ideas you are touching on truth here love in the next line. Find a way to ground this with more concrete imagery. A proposition or a question will lack the emotive power you need for connection with the reader.
We did it for you love,
For you, they insist.
For you love, we just had to know.--What they need to know is interesting but without the imagery it feels a bit cryptic on my read.

No smiles for that camera,
No lies for that crowd.
No up, no down, no quiet nor loud,
And doing their deeds the foul demons avowed
“The only way back is undone”!--The foul demons sort of came out of nowhere here. I didn't make the connection. Not saying there isn't one.

Undo they did,--The syntax feels a bit strained here.
As my mind detached,
Watching the scene as their vile plots hatched.--This is just telling me things. Vile plots feels like a type of shorthand.
I open my mouth, but I don't have my lips.
I don't have my eyes or my fingertips.
I can't feel my feet
Nor my breath expand.
I wander untethered through featureless land.--I sort of like the language of feel of these last five lines.
Yet hidden, I keep in my still beating heart,
My fire stone of youth.--again "of youth" There is a better way look for it.

Suddenly, everything stops.--Again just stating a fact.
My all in a bubble that pops.--The phrasing seems a bit awkward.
As I fall through the air,
The sky's ripping a tear
In my dreaming, and every limb flops.

Then--Not a fan of this one word stanza transition. I don't think it's needed.

Awakened, in puddles of mucus and blood
I lay, as the newly born child.--as suggests a simile
Wondering why and half drowned in the mud,
But feeling the call of the wild.--call of the wild is cliche. There should be better choices you can find.

Slowly and haze filled,--Try to incorporate these ideas into the next line. Two modifiers can probably be pared down or captured in the image.
The turn of the world
Is recalling me, back from the edge.
Sun rising, air chilled,
The future unfurled
In my beating heart, making its pledge.--Making its pledge is nice given that the future unfurls  like a flag.

It's come, I can feel it,
The day of my birth.
The day of the ever long searching for worth.
The day of new stepping upon this green earth,--This triple rhyme is giving this a sing-song read to me. 
And of touching a heart with my hand.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
Well isn't it obvious now?
So that none in your world could deny you exist!
We did it for you love,
For you wished this tryst.
For you love are breaking the bough.--This reads awkwardly.

There's a lot here, and I probably didn't address enough of it yet, but I hope my first pass gives you things to consider and helps in some way.

Best,

Todd

[Erthona]

Mark,

You may better served by bypassing this reviewed as I found nothing in the way of the positive to say and I know that you felt pretty good about the poem, so I would not want to destroy your enthusiasm for it. At the same time this is in serious and I have to say what I perceive to be true and objective. Just as I believe no one on this site does, I do not try to hurt the writer, I try to offer valid critique, which can still be perceived as painful. OK, on to the critique.


Strange, strange day.   (Not a sentence)

What need could there be,
To tear out your soul for scrutiny? (Capitalizing went out in the fifties when it was no longer needed for typesetting, and it was found that by not capping each line, it made it easier to read, that is to say, less confusing. This is a common problem for people coming out of macadamia academia where in anthologies the original typesetting is followed, and most of what is used for instruction still uses this form. However to choose to not cap each line is not an arbitrary choice, but a rational one)
Given free will but then given no choices, (The parallel of "will" would be "choice", yet choices is forced here in order for it to match with "voices", I think this would generally be considered a forced rhyme)
The unified strains of a million voices
Ask, "reason or treason, (where is the end of this quotation? Oh, yes...found it. It is also by this point I am beginning to find the singsong of the rhyming couplets beginning to be irritating.)  
For which to let go,
The very last strand of the life that you know”?
Tied to the quay of my still beating heart, ("my still beating heart" That's about as trite as one can get. In fact that seems to be a common theme. "The unified strains of a million voices" for another.)
My anchor stone of truth.

Why shake me? why break me? (cliche, there are too many to note each one)
Why take me apart?
What truth could be put upon show? (This line makes no sense)
That for this truth, you would die and desist?
We did it for you love, (changing one and adding one additional word to "What I did it for love" hardly changes anything. For my taste, using the word love is trite as it has been so overused)
For you, they insist.
For you love, we just had to know. (repetitive)

No smiles for that camera,
No lies for that crowd.
No up, no down, no quiet nor loud,
And doing their deeds the foul demons avowed (what demons?)
“The only way back is undone”!

Undo they did,
As my mind detached,
Watching the scene as their vile plots hatched.
I open my mouth, but I don't have my lips.
I don't have my eyes or my fingertips.
I can't feel my feet
Nor my breath expand.
I wander untethered through featureless land.
Yet hidden, I keep in my still beating heart,
My fire stone of youth.  (What?)

Suddenly, everything stops. (define everything)
My all in a bubble that pops. (no)
As I fall through the air, (what else would one fall through?)
The sky's ripping a tear (NO! The sky is tearing, or The sky is ripping, but not both. The sky is not capable of ripping a tear, or of tearing a rip.)
In my dreaming, and every limb flops. (If you had said, "every limbo flops" you might have been on to something )

Then

Awakened, in puddles of mucus and blood
I lay, as the newly born child. (Extra trite)
Wondering why and half drowned in the mud,
But feeling the call of the wild. (That's a direct quote and should be noted as such, otherwise it is plagiarism.)

Slowly and haze filled,
The turn of the world
Is recalling me, back from the edge. (recalling, no!)
Sun rising, air chilled, (these two do not go together)
The future unfurled ("The future unfurls" probably a direct quote, certainly a cliche)
In my beating heart, making its pledge. ("beating heart" please!)

It's come, I can feel it,  ("I can feel it," yeah, so could the twitches, not that it hadn't already been overused a thousand times before that.")
The day of my birth. (Not a sentence)
The day of the ever long searching for worth. (syntax)
The day of new stepping upon this green earth, (syntax)
And of touching a heart with my hand.

Why shake me? why break me?
Why take me apart?
Well isn't it obvious now?
So that none in your world could deny you exist!
We did it for you love,  (ever seen "A-Chorus line"?)
For you wished this tryst.
For you love are breaking the bough.
[/quote]

____________________________________________________________________________________

Sorry Mark,

I would choose not to be so hard on you your first time out, but there hardly seems to be an original line in the whole poem and a number of your rhymes seem suspicious if not right out forced. Then there are these weird lines sprinkled about that make little sense such as "Given free will but then given no choices". Can you see how contradictory that is?  Another line,

"Tied to the quay of my still beating heart
my anchor stone of truth."

Do you mean that your anchor stone of truth (whatever that is) is tied to, not your still beating (why one needs to know it is still beating, one would assume that is implied)heart, but to the quay, or dock of your heart (whatever that means. So you have created two images that in a practical sense convey no actual information at all, just words that may sound good, but do not say anything.
By the second stanza it seems that at least two if not three people are talking, yet there is no clue as to who they are or who they are talking about. Obviously a story is trying to be told, but it is difficult to make sense of it, if it is told in a void, sans setting, back story, and defined characters (at least to a necessary extent).

I probably also agree with what tectak said in his critique as I usually do, although I have yet to read it so as not to prejudice mine.

welcome to the site,

Dale

[Mark101]

Yes, well, welcome indeed LOL.

Thank you Tectak, Todd and Dale.

I was quite proud of this piece, and now it seems there is little if nothing about it that anyone else likes. If I were to implement everything that has been pointed out, then there would be nothing left. (All the better for that I hear you cry).

I did say that I wanted a serious crit, and I definitely got it LOL.

I would say that I am British and that I didn't realise at first that this was a predominantly American website. I don't know if that makes any difference to some of the comments about syntax because, at the points where it is mentioned, I don't see anything wrong with the syntax. Considering that we are trying to write poetry, it seems that I've been left very little licence to alter the flow of natural speech, to a more "poetic" way of saying something.

I must admit that capitalising every line, is a habit of mine that I should probably break. Although I was not trying to be a 19th century romantic, I could not in any way describe myself as a contemporary writer (indeed, not a writer at of any description, looking at the comments), I was never trying to be ultra modern in my approach. I am nearly 50, and so the poems and styles that influence me the most, tend to be more classical in nature. It seems also that my rhyming is a problem. I do think that if you are going to rhyme, then it should be a theme that runs through the whole piece and not just here and there, which to me, looks almost like an afterthought, like someone thought, considering that it's a poem, I'd better shove a rhyme of two in somewhere. Yes, perhaps not every line, but a common theme which ties the piece together.

There is just too much for me to be able to defend it all, so I don't think I will even try. It's pretty clear that this was not well received and that's that, to the scrap heap.

Thanks again at least for taking the time to read it.

Best regards

Mark

[billy]

good poetry is good poetry be it usa or british. i own the site and i am british, we have aussies, yanks philippinos and many other poets. altering flow is fine, unnatural speech however is unnatural speech. it's usually also bad syntax. language moved on since the classics. the licence poets have is vast, here's the rub, what you said [ Considering that we are trying to write poetry] is correct, the main word at play there is [trying] once we get the basics, we try and write better or good poetry. here's the other rub; we're often proud of a poem we write when we're starting out or haven't yet read good poetry. we have nothing or little to compare it to apart from xmas cards etc. rhyme is good, good rhyme is very good and bad rhyme not so much. it's like the word game where i say a word and you say the next word that comes into your head often when we do it, it's noticable, it's expected, what we want to read is an unexpected rhyme now and again. a theme need not be a rhyme, in fact rhymes can be opposites. not all poetry has to be rhyming poetry. in general a theme is what connect lines, stanza, or verse. poems of the sea will have lots of words related to the sea, poem's of love will have words related to such horror, the countryside will hold clouds, grass, plants, soil, crops and country life. a theme runs through a poem.  this post is just in question to what you say about your poem, in general i reiterate what's already been said. this is where you start to write better poetry >< >< >< ><

Yes, well, welcome indeed LOL.

Thank you Tectak, Todd and Dale.

I was quite proud of this piece, and now it seems there is little if nothing about it that anyone else likes.  If I were to implement everything that has been pointed out, then there would be nothing left.  (All the better for that I hear you cry).

I did say that I wanted a serious crit, and I definitely got it LOL.

I would say that I am British and that I didn't realise at first that this was a predominantly American website.  I don't know if that makes any difference to some of the comments about syntax because, at the points where it is mentioned, I don't see anything wrong with the syntax.  Considering that we are trying to write poetry, it seems that I've been left very little licence to alter the flow of natural speech, to a more "poetic" way of saying something.

I must admit that capitalising every line, is a habit of mine that I should probably break.  Although I was not trying to be a 19th century romantic, I could not in any way describe myself as a contemporary writer (indeed, not a writer at of any description, looking at the comments), I was never trying to be ultra modern in my approach.  I am nearly 50, and so the poems and styles that influence me the most, tend to be more classical in nature.   It seems also that my rhyming is a problem.  I do think that if you are going to rhyme, then it should be a theme that runs through the whole piece and not just here and there, which to me, looks almost like an afterthought, like someone thought, considering that it's a poem, I'd better shove a rhyme of two in somewhere.  Yes, perhaps not every line, but a common theme which ties the piece together.

There is just too much for me to be able to defend it all, so I don't think I will even try.  It's pretty clear that this was not well received and that's that, to the scrap heap.

Thanks again at least for taking the time to read it.

Best regards

Mark

[Mark101]

Post deleted.
thread locked.
apologies to all members that wasted their time commenting. 

[milo]

Thread locked.

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Multiple posts deleted.
The serious critique forum is not the place for general discussion (that would be the general discussion forum)