Okay, I'm going to post three poems here that I'd dearly love some feedback or reviews about. I've never really done groups of poems that are all linked before, but the idea for this group has come about so naturally it needs to be written. The original poem (The Silent Guardian) was written in Swansea Castle Gardens and (to me) says a lot about a person in that moment. The other peoms have built on that by teeling the story of this person. I intend to rewrite the first and last poems and possibly write others to create a series of poems called 'The Guardian'. Thanks for reading, and even more for trashing these pieces.

**************************************
A Guardian Rises

From the depths he comes,
Through barriers of hate,
Beyond the limits of despair,
He chooses to become the master of his fate.

From the darkness he comes,
Through the pain,
Through the danger,
Beyond those who made him shrink,
He chooses to make peace no stranger.

From the beating he received,
Through the gauntlet,
Past the scepticism,
Beyond the reach of solitude,
He chooses a façade of stoicism.

For he has travelled,
The long and rocky road.
Becoming the man HE chose to be,
The Guardian,
Silent and True.
**************************************

The Silent Guardian
A silent guardian stands,
Watching time pass,
Counting seconds away,
People mill below him,
Ceaseless chaos surrounds him.

People come, people go,
The guardian watches,
Seconds, Minutes, Hours,
Days, Weeks, Years,
Many things change.

The waterfall below,
The fountain ahead,
The buildings behind,
Unchanged since the first day they stood.

Even as one things changes,
Even as one thing stays the same,
The guardian watches,
Ever vigilant,
Time ticks on by,
The guardian leaves.

Years later he returns,
The chaos of the people,
The peaceful waterfall,
The noble buildings,
All things are slightly different,
They have yielded to time,
One thing is constant,
Time still ticks,
He still watches.

**************************************

The Lonely Guardian


He moved through this land,
A lonely ghost,
Never touching the ground,
Never making contact,
Too afraid to live in the real world.

The guardian,
Though transformed and strong,
Now as lonely as ever he was,
His path is one of solitude,
The path of the protector.

Stoic and indefatigable,
He watches and learns,
Overseeing those,
Those who would harm,
The ones who are like he once was.

This course,
Though true,
Is not one strengthened by another,
So he will stay,
The lonely Guardian.
**************************************

I think we write in very different styles, so I am not sure how useful you will find any feedback from me, but - I feel I need it to further my own understanding, development etc. - so I'm offering it on that same basis.
I read them through a couple of times and whilst thinking about them also found myself thinking about an album called 'Argus' by a 70's group - Wishbone Ash (which may also demonstrate not only very different styles but also very different ages! - or perhaps my use of the word 'album' gave that away). Long-winded way of saying - the two seemed to tie together -genre wise.
A Guardian Rises - tells enough of a story to have me reading further but leaves me with more questions than answers. Where's he risen from? What (& why) is he guarding? etc. There are four verses - I think you need to develop this one helluva lot further - think Mort d'Arthur or even Lady of Shalott - at the moment it's a bit more on the 'introduction to a computer game' length - it feels like a synopsis for an epic, chivalric poem.
There were lines I didn't understand - 'He chooses to make peace no stranger' - so he's a bit of a pacific epic warrior type? and what is 'Beyond the reach of solitude'?
The Silent Guardian - similar sort of comments really - what draft is this? In the second verse you have two lists - in performance there is something know as the rule of 3 - lists can quickly become tedious and applying the rule of 3 can make you think - well which should I keep & which are superfluous. Having said that - rules are meant to be broken - but only if you know how they work & why they're there in the first place! The waterfall below etc.. got myself a bit bogged down with trying to imagine the geography of this bit, is it possible to have a fountain on top of a waterfall? And so what? - is it moving your story forward? Then - he's gone & comes back again! Where to? Why? For how long? Ages? or for a quick cuppa tea? What IS he watching for?
The Lonely Guardian - again - underdeveloped. Epic story - abbreviated.
I feel you have an idea here which, clearly, inspires and excites you, and there is so much you can think about to develop this. Personally - I would just write my socks off on this - asking yourself questions all the time - why is he doing this? who is he? etc etc ... don't worry at this time about over-writing it - then put it in the drawer for a few weeks and leave it alone. When you go back to it with fresh eyes, you can start to weed out that which over explains, expand on that which needs it etc.
Hope that is of some help - and I hope you don't feel I, in any way, 'trashed' your work!
Cx

Okay, thanks for the comment, and as for your questions, I'm not gonna answer them...yet. I've written 3 other poems that are worked around these. However, these are the main bits that inform the others.

'The Silent Guardian' I consider a 'final draft' if such a thing is ever possible in poetry. That is because it says what it needs to. As for the rule of three that you mention I assume you're talking about the line: 'Seconds, Minutes, Hours,
Days, Weeks, Years'. I originally included this because I was talking about both a person and a clock...odd I know, but the 'Guardian' wasn't meant to be obviously about a person at the time. Is there something else you would suggest?

As for trashing, don't worry, I'd rather someone be brutally honest. Veiled or half truths don't benefit me. Harsh truths do.

I wasn't trying to be in any way harsh .... I was trying to be constructively helpful - apologies if that didn't coma across as intended.
The questions were asked as guidelines. I, the reader, have no idea what internal processes you have employed to arrive at what you have on the paper (ok, ok - screen) .... I only have what is before me. And you asked for people to share with you, their impressions. That you disagree with or don't like what I thought doesn't make the poems any better, or worse. Neither would the reverse be true.
You say you consider 'The Silent Guardian' a final draft - if it works for you - fine. I'm saying it didn't work for me.
Rule of three is not my rule - merely pointed it out because it jarred, I'm not suggesting any replacement - you're the author.
Your comment about veiled and harsh truths suggest to me that you feel I've been overly harsh; again I would say I'm sorry that you had that impression, I was genuinely trying to be helpful.
Cx

No, no, I didn't mean you'd been harsh....oh dear. I was being self depricating. I was also trying to point out that I don't care IF someone did trash my work. I didn't mean You had trashed it, your comment are quite interesting and valid, obviously.

I asked your opinion about the 'Minutes, Hours, Days' line because I thought it'd be interesting to find out what you would have done.

On the seconds ....years - I think I'd have kept it at 3 and maybe gone for 'seconds, minutes, aeons' - big jump from a minute to an aeon but, personally, I think using 2 very small precise measurements of time followed by an indeterminately long one might be effective. Though of course - it does lose you a line!
Cx

A bunch of cliches tied up with string does not a poem make. What, specifically, do you mean by "barriers of fate", "master of his fate"?

Generalised mush, mostly.

Away and read Ezra pound's A Few Dont's

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0313/comment_335.html

That would be barriers of hate, not fate.

The first poem this collection (second in the overall collection, which totals five so far) A Guardian Rises, is telling the story of a person whom I know well. They were physically and metally abused (I never use the term bullying because my own experience leads me to believe that children who physically bully should be treated and charged with no less than Assault under the law) as he told the story, he ended up with six broken ribs after fighting back. He is now someone who mentors kids, sort of a big brother scheme. The whole collection of 'Guardian' poems will tell the story of someone like this person (I don't intend it to be this person exactly).

As for master of his fate, yes it is a very old and mushy phrase but in this case it is apt and exactly how the person upon whom this is based describes it. He described it as waking up to a world of possibilties, neither his parents nor teachers would believe that he had been assaulted so badly by another student. His experience was that he had to wake up to the fact that he was on his own and had to take control and force his way through life.

Now whilst the poem (Rises) doesn't convey all this I purposely chose to make it second and have the first be something that informs this poem. The unfortunate thing is that poem 1 in the collection hasn't been written yet, it is so far just an idea of what it must be. Even so I believe that you may not have read the poems well, to be suggesting the link you did. Never-the-less I thank you for your comment.

"A bunch of cliches tied up with string "

Sounds like a description of 'The All-Purpose Stars'.

Thanks for that link, Steven. I had A Few Don'ts given to me in paper form in the first year of uni but some bastard stole my bag (from a production of Henry V at the Royal Exchange, of all places) at the start of the second year and I lost that and all my lecture notes.
Pound is great on poetics. I wouldn't listen to him on racial matters, though. Not with my heritage.

"The first poem this collection (second in the overall collection, which totals five so far) A Guardian Rises, is telling the story of a person whom I know well. They were physically and metally abused (I never use the term bullying because my own experience leads me to believe that children who physically bully should be treated and charged with no less than Assault under the law) as he told the story, he ended up with six broken ribs after fighting back. He is now someone who mentors kids, sort of a big brother scheme. The whole collection of 'Guardian' poems will tell the story of someone like this person (I don't intend it to be this person exactly)."

Instead of vague generalisations, why don't you give us some of this kind of detail in your poem? You can change the detail if you want to protect the person, but this is already 10x more interesting than what you've written, because it's got physical concrete detail in it and makes me immediately interested in the story of this man (as an ex-victim of bullying myself.) The "poem" you wrote has none of this; it just generalises and, what's more, it turns the real person into a kind of moral cipher, a kind of blank slate for you to write your "message" on.

For instance, take these lines:

From the beating he received,

(only concrete image in the verse, but with no context in the rest of the poem: who is giving the beating? Why? Etc...)

Through the gauntlet,

(what and who is wearing the iron gloves? Gauntlet is an image from the middle ages, and I know you mean "running the gauntlet" but again this is a cliche and needs to be molre specific)

Past the scepticism,

(whose scepticism? Society's? His own? Is there an image of this that can convey the ideal more concretely?)

Beyond the reach of solitude,

(whose solitude? Another essentially abstract noun - what's a concrete example of it?)

He chooses a façade of stoicism.

(again with the abstractions - what does a facade of scepticism actually look like, feel like, taste like? Use your five senses to convey it)

One or two abstract nouns in a poem are inevitable, but this poem is just littered with them. Don't try and put everything into one poem, but a few concrete images will help to draw the reader in and make them feel it themselves better than a thousand abstractions.

Away and read Ezra pound's A Few Dont's

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0313/comment_335.html


Steve Waling:

Thanks for this link, its very informative

Thanks Pete, for the Ezra Pound link - very interesting! Not read that one before.


I don't believe it is necessary to follow rules in order to produce good work, but I do think it helps to know the basics - that way if you break or bend them you're doing it with purpose rather than just stumbling about.

In any form of writing two I try to bear in mind are - enactment over exposition (show, don't tell); and prefer the anglo-saxon (words derived from the French can often give a pretentious feel).
Cx

Ezra Pound

Before discussing Pound's pose as Moses passing down his commandments, I would like to remind everyone that this man was a vile anti-semite who adored Mussolini. He was arrested by the USA for his pro-fascist broadcasts, but his trial was never completed because of his insanity. The fact that he was a disgusting man with revolting politics is not a reason to dismiss his poetry, the same problems apply to T S Eliot and many other artists.

Pound was a member of a branch of Modernism called Imagism and he described himself in typically pretentious fashion as an 'Imagiste' Do not confuse an 'Image', which you must pronounce in the French fashion with an image. Pound was an egotist too (so egotistical in fact that he soon fell out with the other Imagists), but many excellent poets were that. Something which I consider a far more serious issue is the presumption by Pound that you must have had a classical education and be able to speak several languages to be a poet.

As far as the 'don'ts' are concerned. I had not come across these before the link. Having read them it is clear that they are rules for Imagists not for poets in general. Flint had already really done that in three concise statements, but Pound couldn't resist rambling on at length to put his own stamp on it. Since the Imagists died as a movement in about 1917 there is not much reason to take account of them now.

Pound wrote some challenging and interesting poetry and some shit as well. It is worth reading his work and there are a few useful points in his 'don'ts', but 100 year old rules from a prize arsehole should not put you off being a poet or writing in your own way.

You do like to mouth off, don't you?

Kipling was an imperialist & racist who sent his own son to die at the front in the first world war. Hilaire Belloc was a right-wing Catholic. Larkin was a racist with a fascist for a father and a spanking fetishist. Eliot was an antisemite. I'm sure we could find skeletons in the cupboard of every single poet in the country.

As for pretentious, there's nothing more pretentious than the faux-working classness of an awful lot of performance poets, or the anti-intellectual emotionally retarded stance of the Movement.

Dismissing somebody's poetry because of their politics is ignorant. The fact is, that his A Few Dont's work. If you don't take them as comandments, that is, or Holy Writ.

You could always try reading things properly before you reply Steven.

You are repeating things I have said as if they are criticisms of me.

Pound does present his don'ts as Mosaic commandments. There are little bits of good sense in them, but Imagism was bullshit.

Pound For Pound I do believe Mal has the edge over Steven thus far in this debate

I'd be very surprised if you could find skeletons in my cupboard, I'm very good at preserving flesh.

Test your scales Gus. They could lead you into dodgy territory.

I wouldn't risk looking in there DG. All that bloody skin!

"but Imagism was bullshit"

No it wasn't. No movement which included William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and HD could be. And it was a way-station to so much more, from Objectivism to the Beats to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E to modern day experimentalism.

And - actually - I suspect even Edward Thomas's refreshingly unrhetorical verse owed more to Pound than he was prepared to admit (actually - until Bottomley and the rest of the Georgians bullied him out of it - he even praised Pound.) Even Larkin lives in Pound's shadow, because Pound cleared out all the kiss-me-I'm-poetical junk of the late 19th Century and early 2oth Century from English & American verse and it's not been back since. For that, much thanks.

Yes, he does come across as imperious; and his politics were frankly stupid, at best, and monstrous at worst. Most geniuses in one field are ignoramuses in another; even he admited that in the end. In the Canto's he bit off more than he could chew (though that's preferable, frankly, to the distinct lack of ambition of most English poets) and couldn't make it cohere. But he still remains the inspiration behind the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

One poem by Pound (especially from Cathey, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, and the first book of 30 Cantos) is worth a hundred by Kipling.

Okay, I've re-read Pound's list of don'ts To start off, I should say that I could choose, based upon said list, to be rather discourteous and obtuse especially toward you stephen, in the light of the following don't from Pound: 'Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.'

Of course I wholely disagree with this; poetry is wide ranging and there is not enough room at the top for people representing all styles of poetry to have written something of note.

Moving on to : 'Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.' Without context this 'rule' is completely useless, picking four words from the ether, or even someone else's poem does not make for a good example.

At this point I am going to choose not to air the rest of the points which I consider to be too many to go into on these boards. In short I will say that Pound has either broken many of these rules himself or has created rules that do not always work. As Mal has observed there are a few nuggets of advice in there, but I certainly wouldn't expect someone new to writing poetry to understand them. Finally, if you are going to 'hitch your wagon' to these rules then consider the first part of this comment. Just because not all of us here that comment can be seen to have 'writing of note' does not mean that we haven't already come across a good number of pitfalls and problems in our own writing. That said thanks for the link, it was interesting extracting the few lumps of gold in there.

Pound neglected to say: "If you are not having fun - don't bother". He wants it all done precisely; if Nature did that there would be no life. As for Pound's concern that we should please the experts, I say: "Let the experts please themselves". Even pretentious poems may have worth if written TO BE pretentious. The only TRULY improper stuff, surely, is written to 'look like' poetry without a clue as to why that line break, or that word use, etc?

Well said, and thank you for reminding us. When I read your post I must admit I did kinda realise how big a part having fun is when writing.

'Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.'

And just how many books have you published, dear?

That's depend on the entrance fee charged!
Cx

I am the first to admit that my work may not be of note, but then I'd argue that neither is yours. I have had both short stories and poetry published in compilations and have won a three (small) competitions. Just having had a book published means nothing in this age. Even more so when writers can be offered deals and then have them taken away because of economics. Having published a book makes you lucky....not talented.

That said, my point was simply that 'work of note' could be interpreted many ways. I would say that poetry that is recognised as having something of great value to offer the genre is noteworthy, rather than just having published a book, which as I have already pointed out can be done with luck and money...talent and skill are no longer a necessity.

To Publish a book you need only luck and Money.....tell that to Wayne Rooney!

Not quite sure what the point was there, care to elaborate?

G’Evening Martin
The remark was facetious…and humorous and maybe just a touch shrill... and acted out in my best Scouse impersonation, Wayne Rooney is a footballer extraordinaire… Right? Paid in excess of £110,000.PW...Is Lucky… and rich…very rich.
He is, it goes without saying, skillful, yet somewhat intimidated by the inability to chew gum and walk at the same time… yet despite this he has overcome, and has successfully published a book. Not that it is remotely possible…but had his Wagette Mrs Rooney been reading this thread she might well have objected in a similar manner to myself.
I thought it was funny.
Got to go
Off to C the match
Regards
Gus

Thanks for the reply....sorry, don't care for premiership football(ers). Bunch of untalented, overpaid, morons. The real action is in lower leagues where they are actually playing for something.

Anyhooo....I've wrote the 'first' poem in the collection today. I'm just typing it up and then will post it here so that judgement can be passed on that too.

"I would say that poetry that is recognised as having something of great value to offer the genre is noteworthy"

So would I, dear; now, what, apart from a bunch of cliches tied up with string, have you contributed?

I have enough people whose opinion I respect who seem to think I am at least a reasonable poet who's attempting to stretch himself. I am published by poetry presses with solid reputations (Smith/Doorstop & Salt) who like what I write. (You have little knowledge of the poetry publishing world if you think the only thing you need is luck - poetry publishers know as much about their subject as the people they publish and are only interested in publishing books they consider to be good.) I don't need to be patted on the back and congratulated for the amazing fact that I can pick up a pen and string a sentence together.