Senorita

Go the short poems.



There was a hole.
A grand, big hole, dug in the land.
She fell in.
Screaming, crying, helpless.
Nobody heard her calls. Not one.
No matter how she screamed, the people just walked by, oblivious.
Every day grew older and every day grew colder.
Until at last, the screams stopped and she lay down on the ground.
And was swallowed by the dirt.
Gone. Nobody knew.
Nobody cared.
It just was.

This is prose. Flat out. I'll be the first one to admit - randomly formatted sentences do not a poem make.

It also vaguely rankles of the story that the protagonist in In My Father's Den writes.

Poetry... you want to challenge what is poetry and what is not? When something changes from prose to poetry... Hmmm...

Who has the right to decide what is and what isn't? What makes a poem different from a list of sentences? What makes a poem different from a list of words?

I don't know.

They invent new art every day. New paintings, new dance forms, new ways of telling a story, new ways of putting words together. Can you make a box and say "this is poetry" and nothing else is? The world would never progress if you did that. Perhaps the Elizabethans wouldn't call anything on this forum poetry, but we would. Being open to new ideas leads us further into the future and allows us to see things that have not yet been seen. Okay, you can sit here and say "that's not poetry". I don't mind, that's fine with me, I don't care what you call it, I think it's vaguely interesting anyway. What if I wrote a children's poem and stuck it up? About carnivals and candyfloss? Well, they call it poetry at the Primary School, why can't it be? What if my 8 year old cousin wrote a poem? Sure, it may not be poetry to you, but it means something to her and she sees it as poetry, and so do her classmates.

So I'm going off an a bit of a tangent... Time to stop.

I never got that story. Wasn't it something about horses?

wretchedkisses wrote:

It also vaguely rankles of the story that the protagonist in In My Father's Den writes.

Are you referring to 'Hope' or the one used in the VO? I don't really get the similarity, unless perhaps it was spoken by the same actress.

The Day The Tide Went Away
by Celia Steimer

One day, in a town at the edge of the world, the tide went out and never returned. The sea just left without warning. At first, people were little more than puzzled. They continued to gossip and fight over the same old things. But soon a silence began to permeate the township. A desert of unbelievable magnitude was forming before their very eyes. Weeks passed and there was still no sign of the ocean. The people grew worried. It was decided to send a small group to search for it, in the hope of bringing it back.

As the days went on, more and more people went looking. The people searched far and wide, but the ocean had vanished without a trace. The quiet land, once bountiful, had become hard and unyielding. And then a shape appeared on the horizon. Through a blaze of heat, the people saw what looked like tumbling water rolling towards them. A wave of excitement passed through the town as they anxiously watched the ocean return. But as it grew closer, the shape began to alter and mutate. What looked like tumbling water was in fact wild horses. Everywhere they turned, they saw horses drawing closer and closer. Their excitement turned to fear, and their fear became panic, for it seemed that nothing could stop their advance — which, as the ocean’s disappearance, had come without warning. But then no one, not even for a moment, had stopped to question why the ocean had left in the first place.

The people had no choice but to trust that the horses would lead them to their ocean. Without reins or saddles, they rode the horses across the barren land. But the ocean had disappeared for good. And the people, together alone, had no choice but to face each other in their loss. They made a home for themselves in a new environment, although one that had changed forever. They learned to live in the space the ocean had left — although it lingered in their dreams.

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It's about Celia disappearing and how the people reacted and how people had to learn to live without her. The horses are symbolic of something but I forget what.

perhaps more imagery would make it more 'poem like' but I think it is a poem because of structure and other factors. The distancing of the reader from the character is more poetic I think.

The language could be a little more interesting perhaps?

xAnastasiax wrote:

Poetry... you want to challenge what is poetry and what is not? When something changes from prose to poetry... Hmmm...

Who has the right to decide what is and what isn't? What makes a poem different from a list of sentences? What makes a poem different from a list of words?

I don't know.

They invent new art every day. New paintings, new dance forms, new ways of telling a story, new ways of putting words together. Can you make a box and say "this is poetry" and nothing else is? The world would never progress if you did that. Perhaps the Elizabethans wouldn't call anything on this forum poetry, but we would. Being open to new ideas leads us further into the future and allows us to see things that have not yet been seen. Okay, you can sit here and say "that's not poetry". I don't mind, that's fine with me, I don't care what you call it, I think it's vaguely interesting anyway. What if I wrote a children's poem and stuck it up? About carnivals and candyfloss? Well, they call it poetry at the Primary School, why can't it be? What if my 8 year old cousin wrote a poem? Sure, it may not be poetry to you, but it means something to her and she sees it as poetry, and so do her classmates.

So I'm going off an a bit of a tangent... Time to stop.

You're right, so perhaps I need to elaborate on my crit.

To me, poetry needs to have a flow, a continuation of sorts. With a poem, even if there was no 'new line', it would still read as a poem. If we put all the short sentences in your poem on the same line, it would read as a story. I guess in my interpretation of poetry, that is where the distinction is. Something that can still hold as a poem, no matter how its formatted.

though sometimes formatting is used as a technique, for example (dare I say it) the poem written by that doctor that we looked at in schol which was in the shape of a cross.

[quote="wretchedkisses"
To me, poetry needs to have a flow, a continuation of sorts. With a poem, even if there was no 'new line', it would still read as a poem. If we put all the short sentences in your poem on the same line, it would read as a story. I guess in my interpretation of poetry, that is where the distinction is. Something that can still hold as a poem, no matter how its formatted.[/quote]

Hmmm, interesting... I like that, though a lot of poems often rely on the way they are formatted on the page to give the actual message across, and if not for the way it looks on the page, it would just be a jumble of words that make no sense.

You're right that this just tells a story, but I guess that's my personal fault because basically, everything I draw, write, paint or choreograph is made to tell a story. I tend to put a beginning, middle and end to everything, but that's just me I guess.

But yes, in many ways, it is just prose.

Thanks for the critique! :-)

TimTam wrote:

It's about Celia disappearing and how the people reacted and how people had to learn to live without her. The horses are symbolic of something but I forget what.

I can't remember what it is either but I like the song they use! Lol.

I feel like watching that film again now...