Poetic Drive

NaPoMo Entry 2

 

Going hard every day is all I know;

Chasing my dreams for the good and bad.

Peacefulness out where the prairie winds blow,

Full moon over badlands for which I’m glad.

 

Blistering hot sun and those frigid nights

Working away to add to my wealth,

My wife worries for my poetic writes,

I’ve not yet begun to defile myself.

 

Owning the poetic beast that I am,

Burning prosaic candles at both ends.

Standing so tall without giving a damn,

Life is too short for having fake assed friends.

 

So I will work my lines without regret,

While abusing coffee and cigarettes.

 

04/02/2024

Reviews

[JayG]

• Full moon over badlands for which I’m glad.

So, the stanza's opening was about working hard and seeking to make dreams come true. But then you switch to a weather report. But if all the speaker knows is hard work, why are they outside checking the breeze and looking at the moon? It doesn't track, and seems more to be placed there because you need a rhyme than as part of the stanza's thought being expressed.

• My wife worries for my poetic writes,

You're forcing the line to the needs of the rhyme and it shows. But again, it seems like a series of random statements that aremeaningful only to the author. What is it about the poems that worries her, and why does the reader care, given that you've given no context, and know not the smallest thing about either person?

• I’ve not yet begun to defile myself.

So, it's your plan to dirty yourself, but you haven't begun? Interesting but unneeded personal information. What does that have to do with the wife worrying about the poetry, or there being a moon out? Perhaps you know, but for the reader, who lacks context, it's a "Huh?"

• While abusing coffee and cigarettes.

Okay, I give up. How in the pluperfect hells can you "abuse" a coffee? Beat it in the blender? verbally belittle it? 😆

You're paying close attention to the number of feet per line, which is good, but prosody-wise, when reading, it seems to fall less than trippingly on the tongue, probably because you're making what appears to be unconnected statements about yourself, someone unknown to the reader, rather than involving them emotionally.

Those who read poetry come to it expecting to be entertained, not learn how the day went for someone they know nothing about. So, who cares how the poet feels today? It's how you make THEM feel via your choice and placement of words that matters to the reader. So, invite them in. Use the poet's superpower to make them react, and enjoy. Talking TO the reader is a nonfiction approach, fact-based and author-centric. But to work best, poetry should be emotion based.

Two useful resources:

Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook: https://dokumen.pub/a-poetry-handbook-0156724006.html

The excerpt from Stephen Fry's, The Ode Less Traveled, on Amazon.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain