Poems and Peers

   I discovered something I hate this week.  In my creative writing class, we were put into groups of four to critique one another's poems.  I was put with one of my friends--that was perfectly fine--and two girls.  Now, I have nothing against peer evaluation, except that... Okay I do.  Don't get me wrong, I love when people help me with organization, grammar, punctuation, word order and things like that on the essays I've written, but when it comes to poems, it's a little different.
   See, I happened to have a completely different writing style than the people in my group (one girl in particular).  If we were spices, I'd be something like chili powder and she'd be something like.... well, some bland spice (I do know that is an oxymoron, yes).  As a person, she's completely fine.  But as a critic, I dislike her minor close mindedness problem.  And she says age-ed instead of aged.  Who does that?
   What I'm basically trying to say is I didn't like when she tried to change my poem to make it her style.  That's all.
   I wrote this poem during the summer of '09 and I've been tweaking it ever since.  I'm very pleased with it.  It was inspired by Anis Mojgani, as usual.

Lost

Listening to my ears hear the crackling barely noise of this old radio,

it talks about neighbors and Jesus and lightbulbs.

It shows my ears the landscape of the noise light.

We talk together, my radio and I, about buildings and growing and batteries.

It takes my feelings and spits them back out into my dry, frozen hands,

changing them into un-butterflies and crushed sugar cubes.

The girl across the street has grown up so fast,

but maybe it’s just us.

Everything in the world is changing,

the wheat heads are severed, we eat it through our animals.

The shudders of the world are ridden by man like a carnival-

they cause this.

And my radio and I,

we sit, we listen to our ears hear the crackling barely noise of death.

We listen to our ears hear the wet of their eyes after,

we listen to our ears hear the cheerless song of the lost. 

A paradelle for you.

While procrastinating writing a sonnet for my creative writing class, I started looking at some of the poems I wrote my senior year for a class. I came across a paradelle I wrote. Basically, a paradelle is a type of poem format some guy came up with to mock other strict formats such as a villanelle. As you may have guessed, the format is quite grueling. You'll get what I mean after reading my poem.

And now, for your enjoyment, my paradelle.

Paradelle for Fox

The trees are a blur of forest.

The trees are a blur of forest.

Their branches hit the window like angry fingers.

Their branches hit the window like angry fingers.

The forest fingers blur the angry window,

Their trees are like branches of a hit.

Under a bridge the water surges onward.

Under a bridge the water surges onward.

Blue plays with the sun at its depths.

Blue plays with the sun at its depths.

A bridge under the blue sun plays the water

at depths onward with its surges.

The fox comes from his shadowed lair.

The fox comes from his shadowed lair.

Hearing hastening wind it rushes to its young.

Hearing hastening wind it rushes to its young.

His shadowed hearing rushes from the wind fox,

It comes to its hastening young lair.

Its branches under a shadowed bridge

are hearing young forest fox.

Their blur plays with the hastening at a wind.

His sun comes to the fingers of the angry depths.

Onward it surges like the blue lair,

Its water rushes from the hit window trees.

My 80% poem

This semester I'm taking a creative writing class. Fun, right? Maybe. My teacher seems nice enough, and although I feel like I'm in way over my head, the class seems like it's going to be somewhat enjoyable.

Recently we had our first assignment--write a nostalgia poem. As I thought and thought over my childhood and all the dorky things I did, I finally decided to write about my first kiss. That would be the one behind the bushes when I was about five. I didn't stress much about making the poem a perfect masterpiece, but I did put a reasonable amount of time into writing it. She said the poem was just supposed to be a rough draft, so I didn't stress about making it final draft quality. Today, when I got the poem back, I was appalled to see I had gotten an eight out of ten. HOW is the possible??? It's just a rough draft! Apparently my rough draft was a little too rough for her. I don't know how I can please her.

Hopefully I'll find the key to pleasing her pickiness someday, but for now, I'll just have to settle with an 8/10.

And now, for your enjoyment, here's my poem that's only 80% good.

Kiss.

I remember that time we went

behind the bushes you could hear growing

and waited for the roller-skaters to pass by.

We got closer,

and closer,

and closer.

And then we did what the grown-ups did--we kissed.

It was wet and slimy, and not at all enjoyable.

And we didn't know what it meant,

but we followed by example.

I'm glad we didn't know about sex.

We were so naive.

One more thing. If you enjoy poetry, try looking up Anis Mojgani. He's an utter GENIUS. Here's one of my favorites. This made me fall in love with him and his greatness.