Untitled - short poem (feedback sought)

liquiddark

Feedback sought:

I bang words together
Like a toddler with two tin pans,
drumming erratically to create cacophony,
blissfully unaware of music,
of the possibility
of art in the activity

tectonic

This poem doesn't make sense to me. The "I" is unaware that he might be making art, yet is able to make that statement? I'd change it to something to the effect of "where's the art in this?" or switch to past tense or switch to 3rd person.

If you're talking about cacophony, do it on the page. Use colons, semicolons, dashes, double dashes, breaks, hard consonants, overuse of commas, fragmented sentences.

Here's my edit that i did quickly, its just to give you an example of what I'm talking about:

He bangs --
words together; like
a toddler with two tin pans
drumming
erratically
to create cacophony - blissfully
unaware of ... music of the possibility of
art
in the activity.

liquiddark

Hmmm. I see what you're saying. I don't agree with your edit, but I see exactly what you're saying. Thanks!

liquiddark

Revision 1:

Untitled

I bang TIN PANS words together
TODDLER WITH Like a DRUM
erratically to DRUM create cacophony
DRUM cacophony,
DRUM
blissfully unaware
DRUM
of music,
DRUM
of the possibility
DRUM
of art in the activity
DRUM
DRUM DRUM

CausticWit

Your edit is much worse. I get that you are trying to show the sound as it were, but its too loud. The caps and the repetition overwhelm the other lines so that the reader can't even really take in what is being said. Take Tectonic's advice and use punctuation to create the rhythm. It's not only more subtle but it keeps the piece readable. The way yours is currently written I don't as a reader, wish to read the poem at all. As a result any message you wish to convey is lost in your own caps lock induced cacophony.

liquiddark

CausticWit wrote: »

Take Tectonic's advice and use punctuation to create the rhythm.

Appreciate the feedback. As a technical point, however, you can't create cacophony with rhythm. Cacophony is noise made from organized sounds. You can create staccato, maybe. But not cacophony. Anyways, I'll take another stab at it sometime soon.

As an aside, have you tried reading my edit out loud? As I said in another thread, I believe strongly in poetry written to be spoken rather than read.

ElJeffe

Spoken aloud, it's even harder to follow than it is when read.

Honestly, I'm not sure you really need to beat the shit out of the player with the cacophony. It strikes me as more gimmicky than anything.

liquiddark

I think maybe I'm glad it's hard to follow. It's a poem about not being able to write poetry, after all.

liquiddark

I honestly do appreciate the feedback, but the more I read it, the happier I am with the revised version. No accounting for tastes, i guess.

liquiddark

Revision 2(.5):

My Inner Child Sucks At Poetry


I bang TIN PANS words together
TODDLER Like a DWUM
erratically to DWUM create cacophony
DWUM cacophony,
DWUM
blissfully unaware
DWUM
of music,
DWUM
of the possibility
DWUM
of art in the activity
DWUM
DWUM DWUM

CausticWit

Allright, the use of DWUM for Drum really isn't necessary. You establish the inner child bit in the title so this little nuance doesn't do anything but annoy the reader with the constant reminder that the speaker is in fact an infant. It's the closest I've ever seen to someone literally beating a dead horse on the written page.

There are more creative ways to play with the idea of cacophony as ElJeffe said. You could go for heavy internal rhymes, lots of alliteration, more varied onomotopoeia, and so on all while maintaining a readable format that doesn't alienate the reader.

In it's current iteration it isn't even intelligible unless the reader skips all the capitalized words which is what will happen for most people who read your work.

Your title is too self aware and spoils an otherwise interesting concept by tipping your creative hand too soon. LIke the rest of the poem it lacks any real subtlety.

You'll probobly say that the point of the poem isn't to be subtle. That's fine, but when you have a poem that lacks nuance, isn't intelligible, and doesn't do anything particularly new then I would say you'd be better off going back to the drawing board on this one.

liquiddark

Does it help if I tell you that the piece is meant to be funny as written/read? Imagine the speaker is being interrupted by the capitalized words. Imagine he is growing progressively more annoyed, and finally gives up.

Sarcastro

liquiddark wrote: »

Feedback sought:

I bang words together
Like a toddler with two tin pans,
drumming erratically to create cacophony,
blissfully unaware of music,
of the possibility
of art in the activity

Not bad, really. I liked the image here - the joy of 'making music', finding that which is pleasing to the mind of that time, regardless of how others feel about it.

Which is undermined by your willingness to edit the shit out of it, but whatever. Idealism unrefined seldom makes for good reading. Which is again probably part of your point with this piece. Ooh! It's all oniony and stuff...

K. So before you got on the capitalization and adding toddler speak BS, this was a pretty good bit.

My suggestions for editing would be:

I bang words together
A toddler with two tin pans,
drumming erratically
creating cacophony,
music in the possibility
art in the activity
blissfully unaware

----

You don't need 'like', a metaphor is stronger here because it reflects the nature of the bit as a whole.

The toddler is not 'unaware' of making music, he is enthralled with the making of music in his own way, so stating otherwise is contrary to the purposes of the bit.

I switched up the 'drumming' and 'creating' lines a bit to help out with the meter, which should be consistant in parts, but not in the whole, as toddlers tend to do.

The last line is just sort of hanging out there now, but I couldn't really complete it- that your job. But again, the point of the bit is not that the toddler is unaware of music, he is blissfully un self-concious in his enthusiasm to create art and music, and also unaware of what others may think of his 'art'. With it just hanging, the reader is forced to ask himself 'unaware of what?' and those answers are going to change per reader and ask them to think about the relationship between your image and writing as whole, which is again sort of the point. So its not bad to leave it that way, but I dunno if thats going to be soothing to you as an artist, we all like to complete our own works and finish them in our own way.

Nicely done, very promising.

Oh, and work on that title. Needs more cowbell.

liquiddark

That's a lovely edit, but it's about something totally different than the original piece, which was about not being able to write poetry. Yours is (or at least, seems to be) about enjoying writing poetry.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree about toddlers and music. Since I lived with one for 9 months this year, I'm pretty firm in my opinion.

I'm not sure what to say about that, except, as always, thank you for your feedback.

Sarcastro

Ah, I see what you're saying there, and why you chose to edit it up the way you did. Frustration I think, with the absence of art in the action, just making noise instead of creating something meaningful. I suppose it goes both ways, depending on one's point of view regarding the intent of the toddler.