Welcome to Gaia! ::

This thread is specifically for interaction between Astaire and her victi... er... mentees.

So. I'm Astaire. I'm an 18 year old poet/critic who has been writing poetry for about 10 years and critiquing for about 6. All I can say is that both require a lot of practice, learning and patience, but hard work is almost always paid off in both areas. It is with this knowledge that I hope to help the poets of this guild improve their poetry and guide them through their struggles. I've always taken the "I'm here to help" philosophy as a critic, so I figured I'd take the next step and become a mentor.

Generally, I write freeverse, but I have had some experience in form poetry. I have taken a few classes in high school and college (I'm a sophomore in college at the time of this post) but a lot of what I've learned is self-taught, with the help of other poets and critics.

I write, study and critique poetry because I love it. It's a passion of mine, and it's something I don't think I could live without. The art has defined a major portion of my life, and despite the love-hate relationship I often have with my work, it's amazing how much it defines me. I care a lot about the craft and the beauty of poetry, and I'm hoping (as mentees) that you do, as well.

Mentor's note: I have no dreaded Poetess Ego, but I have been known to be irredeemably blunt. It's something you'll have to get used to. heart

My biggest problem with writing is to keep all the images flowing smoothly throughout the poem. Well, you have a good start in that you kept the bottle and cap strongly as a subject throughout the entire piece without diverting. Strong sense of subject will ultimately help you control your imagery. I heard somewhere that if you have an image of wood (let's say) in the first stanza or two, you should make sure to incorporate that wood image in the following stanza(s). Generally, though you could expand outward... Perhaps in this instance, you could go into some more general imagery about carpentry, forests, or lumberjacks. I'M A LUMBERJACK AND I'M OKAY, I SLEEP ALL NIGHT AND I WORK ALL DAAAAAAY xp I sometimes have trouble doing that, because I always seem to run out of things to say--besides the obvious. sweatdrop A lot of poets have that problem. Believe it or not, I tend to do research when I face this dilemma; the internet is a wonderful tool for writers' block in more ways than you'd expect. Let's say I was writing a poem about... well, let's stick with wood. Being a scientist, I may decide to research some properties of wood that I could incorperate into poetry. You could try wikipedia, some sort of carpentry website, slang dictionaries (morning wood, anyone?) or any source you can think of for inspiration on the subject.
I'm sure I have other problems, but I won't be able to spot them until I write more and more. 3nodding You're actually doing all right for yourself. I just pointed out the places I thought could use some editing.

Ah! Sorry for making that assumption, dear. I always figure it's easiest to call people by the gender of their avatars and then just get corrected later. emotion_sweatdrop

Will critique the revision when I'm feeling less tired. Most likely in the morning. heart

Okay, with the help of this critique and Oxxi's critique, I made my third edit. You know, editing this poem is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.



If I changed the "waiting for humans" the single "throat" wouldn't make sense; "their throats" subtley pulls away from the flow, I feel. sweatdrop

oh s**t! I forgot the "with." xd
"I" is this bottle. I thought that was obvious. confused

Thank you.

New poem! xp
Okay, everyone always says to read poetry to pick up on the different techniques you like, don't like, et cetera. Well, I got out my E.E. Cummings book of poetry. What I noticed about his style was (no, not the obvious) that he usually delivered his poems with a simplistic tone, rarely using similes (at least in the poems I read). So I wanted to try and put a bit of his style into my style of poetry; don't worry, it won't be one of those E.E. Cummings wanna-be type poems. wink

Well, here's how I got to writing the poem: I wanted to try and write a poem with the title of only a letter. I chose X. Usually, when I think of an X (outside of the alphabet xp ), I think of crossing out, death, et cetera. I then realized "Hey! X is 10 in Roman numerals. I could make it 10 lines." Well, I wasn't able to make it 10 lines, so I changed the title to XI. I made the poem eleven lines, read it, and decided to change the title once again. I chose "Ex Eye of Perfection" because (to me) the poem is kind of talking about perfection being lost, in a sense. Also, Ex Eye=XI=11...lines in the poem. I think the poem is mainly talking about how humans are both devilish and Earthly at the same time.
By the way, the only E.E. Cummings thing I used was the third line, really.

I hope that made sense. gonk

"It" is the southern wind. I wanted to try and create a subtle metaphor with that (the confusing wind being Hell) part. 3nodding

As a southern wind confuses Father into thinking It is Earth.

Originally, it was Hell(ike volcanoes), but someone commented that the parentheses seemed awkward. I read it again and agreed, so I changed it. 3nodding