Good Times

[Caleb Murdock]

Good Times

“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
In just five words I wiped away my future.

Not that the young Caleb actually knew,
but he did:  he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.

This was not like the monk who comprehends
that the vessel is already broken, no;
my foresight gathered in my thunder clouds
and changed my life forever for the worse.

And now I struggle against the youthful curse
and wonder if my life can become more kind.
I am writing again, and that is good —
if not in my life, then joy in my words?

We’ll see.  It is late to build a legacy.
In this strange universe, we are compelled
to make a life without knowing where we’re from,
to carve great accomplishments out of sand.

I was always overwhelmed, and still am.

It wasn't my intention to post on this forum any more, but since my account hasn't been cancelled, and since I haven't found a new forum yet, I might as well.

I badly wanted to rhyme this poem but couldn't make it work, so I threw in what rhymes I could.

The rhythm wavers back and forth from pentameter to tetrameter, so this should be regarded as rhythmic free verse.

[nibbed]

Hi Caleb. It's never too late.
I like the 4th stanza best.
Maybe because I can relate.
Why is youthfulness a curse?

I searched for the five words.

I liked the last line, too.

I get on rabbit trails from other people's words, sometimes.
When you said your account hasn't been canceled
I thought of Johnny Cash singing
The Old Account, and went and listened to him on youtube.
He was a fine poet, too.
I could never figure out why he always wore black, though.

I clicked the link to your forum.
It looks very nice.
Your graphics look very nice, too.
I think you will do very well!
Please limit posts in the workshops to discussion of the poem. We have a PM system for chat about other topics. Thanks, ella/admin

Thank you for teaching me
& showing me an example of rhythmic free verse.
I hope I learn more about pentameter and tetrameter,
but I must be willing to fast in order to learn
and I just ate half a spaghetti squash, so not today.

I hope you find plenty of joy and sunshine!

[Caleb Murdock]

Thank you for your comments, nibbed. "These are the good times" are the five words referenced in the poem, and they are also the "youthful curse".

I have no members in my forum, but that will change, given that it is associated with my online anthology, which gets a fair amount of traffic.

[Powder]

Hey Caleb, I really enjoyed the poem. This is my first critique (on this forum) so bear with me please

“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
In just five words I wiped away my future.

I feel like the first 4 lines in this poem are a bit disorganized. It starts with an exclamation (which isn't bad at all) followed by a rather unusual grammatical structure. Then comes a question followed by a line which seems to ignore said question (which poses a rather important question that the entire following stanza is dedicated to) and instead refers back to the first two lines.
Now I do love the last line of the stanza a LOT so I understand why you want to emphasize this line by putting it last so I personally would keep it there. Seems to me the best course would be to take the question out entirely or make it part of the second stanza. let me give it a shot:

"These are the good times" - I thought to myself
thirty years ago, while visiting friends(.)
(and) In just five words I('d?) wiped away my future.

I tried to rewrite the lines so that they read a little easier and I thought the use of a reflexive verb was appropriate for such an introspective poem. If you are bothered by it becoming 3 instead of 4 lines you could try and add line in there somewhere. I'm personally not a big fan of quatrains though so chalk this up to bias if you want to
Now we need to find a way to plant the question in the readers mind somewhere.(How did I know the good times wouldn't last) But let's put it aside for the moment as I don't see a clear way to add it to this Stanza without detracting from it's clarity.

Now let's look at the second stanza.

Not that the young Caleb actually knew,
but he did:  he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.

I think the contradiction between the first and second line hints at an interesting notion of youthful naivety but this construction kind of attacks that angle in a roundabout way. Ideally I personally would like to get rid of the 'but he did' and make the contradiction implied as I think those three words detract from the flow of the piece. I'd try to find a way to communicate with the audience that Young Caleb was 'seeing' something (in his mind) that he didn't have the maturity to fully integrate into his vision of the world and his notion of who he is (in the first line!) and then keep everything after 'he looked' as that is in my opinion good as is! Maybe you could do that in a way that the need for the question in the first stanza also disappears but then you probably would have to rewrite the stanza.

Something like:

How could young Caleb foresee
that he would find the end
by looking down
a bright and sunny road
and hasten its approach?

Now obviously, the way I wrote this stanza is rather ugly, I hope you can look beyond that and understand what I'm trying to convey. This way you communicate both the question you tried to pose in the first stanza and absorb the response into it as well, concentrate another 'thought' into a single stanza rather than dispersing it across multiple. This in my opinion would enhance the clarity of the poem.

Again, this is just my first critique. I hope it's useful and please, don't hesitate to tear my critique apart, I'd only be better of for it.

Overall I really like ideas and the subject matter of this poem and honestly, keep at it man.

[Caleb Murdock]

Powder, I find your comments quite interesting.  You are showing me a point of view that's quite different from mine.

I am going to answer your remarks, since I feel that you are missing some things.

“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.

I thought about writing those lines this way:

"These are the good times" -- I had that thought
thirty years ago while visiting friends.

But I find that construction less interesting than breaking it up a bit.  Really, there's nothing so unusual about the construction that I use, especially if you remove the commas.

How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?

This is a rhetorical question, the purpose of which is to convey that I understand, today, that my 30-year-old thought created a psychological boundary.

In just five words I wiped away my future.

This must come after the question because it rests on the understanding that a boundary was created.

Not that the young Caleb actually knew [that he was creating a boundary for himself],
but he did:

I like "but he did" because it sets up an interesting contradiction:  The young Caleb didn't know on the surface, but understood at an unconscious level what he was doing.

he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.

I don't see anything wrong with those lines; they are fairly direct.  The "it" in the final line refers to the "end" in the line above. Your rewrite of the lines puts the speaker in explanatory mode, which is not as lyrical as the way I've written it. The speaker in a poem should never take the tone of a teacher or an explainer.

Human thoughts can be chaotic and will jump from one aspect of an issue to another, and I am trying to capture the unfurling of thoughts in those stanzas.  Perhaps if you read the poem a little more, you'll begin to understand what I'm trying to do.

I'll agree with you in one respect:  the language has a somewhat clunky quality to it.  I'm trying to fix that.

Thanks again.

[Powder]

But I find that construction less interesting than breaking it up a bit.  Really, there's nothing so unusual about the construction that I use, especially if you remove the commas.

That's just a matter of taste then I suppose.

How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?

This is a rhetorical question, the purpose of which is to convey that I understand, today, that my 30-year-old thought created a psychological boundary.

In just five words I wiped away my future.

This must come after the question because it rests on the understanding that a boundary was created.

If you used it rhetorically then shouldn't it be more along the lines of 'How could I have known that the good times wouldn't last?'

Because how did I know implies that you already knew back then that you knew. It doesn't show that you are looking back from now. Which is why I took it in a different way (I did consider whether it was rhetorical). If that is the case you can disregard my comment regarding the question breaking up the first stanza but I'd still rewrite it in this way to more explicitly state the tense of the sentence.

Not that the young Caleb actually knew [that he was creating a boundary for himself],

but he did:

Here is where the poem lost me then. I feel like the implied aspect of the first line (the part between brackets) isn't really conveyed by the poem as is. Which is why the first and second line of the second stanza seem to become needlessly vague. Because the poem, to me, seems to state that he didn't know whether the good times would last, rather than whether he created a boundary.

Oh and by the way

he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.

I thought were good as is as well, I said so in my original comment, the rewriting was just an attempt to include the question as I originally interpreted it into the stanza. Which can, now that I see the meaning that you were going for, obviously be disregarded.

Thanks for your response.

Kind regards,

Powder.

[ellajam]

Perhaps if you read the poem a little more, you'll begin to understand what I'm trying to do.

Suggesting that a critic did not do his due diligence simply because you don't agree with the issues they raised about the poem is a way of attacking the critic, which we all know is against the rules.