Buildings ........ Double Blind poems

[Magnetron]

Ohhhhh! Umm well lol I suppose it depends where your mind is coming from, I never even thought of THAT sort of lashed!

My mind comes straight outta da gutter.

 

[Lyricalli]

Belmont

I have to agree with Mags and Annie on this one. I found my mind wandering about a third of the way through, and I had a difficult time with the way it's written. Each line seems to be set up to read as one or more complete sentences, so it's jarring when they're not complete sentences.

A large holding of Merino sheep.— why does this have a full stop at the end?

Too many full stops, and a bit of variety in punctuation might be helpful, but at the end of sentence fragments like the above, it's particularly noticeable and takes me completely out of the poem.

I understand, or think I do, that I'm meant to be sad that this house met its demise, but I never got a feeling of affection for it. A family lived in it, but I have no feeling for them either.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Now you've had a dabble, I better give you a list of the participants
In no particular order.

UnderYourSpell
Magnetron
greenmountaineer
AlwaysHungry
rawsilk
GuiltyPleasure

 

[greenmountaineer]

With "Belmont" I Googled "prose poetry" to review some of its characteristics. The following excerpt from Wikipedia, I think, is pretty good:

"Technically a prose poem appears as prose, reads as poetry, yet lacks line breaks associated with poetry but uses the latter's fragmentation, compression, repetition and rhyme.[3] and in common with poetry symbols, metaphor, and figures of speech.[4]

Prose poetry should be considered as neither primarily poetry nor prose but is essentially a hybrid or fusion of the two, and accounted a separate genre altogether. On the other hand, the argument for prose poetry belonging to the genre of poetry emphasizes its heightened attention to language and prominent use of metaphor. Yet prose poetry often can be identified as prose for its reliance on prose's association with narrative and on the expectation of an objective presentation of truth.[citation needed]."

To be honest, I didn't see much evidence of poetic devices. I thought the 3rd stanza had some promise with a confluence of sounds, suggesting music, but the language wasn't very musical IMO.

There were too many lines with end stops.

I think if the author reviewed each word and deleted it as an exercise, he or she might find the intended meaning of a line wouldn't be lost and perhaps be enhanced. I think the prose cut in half suggesting some images, rather than describing so much would engage the reader's imagination and interest more.

 

[Magnetron]

Interior

It must have been impressive,
luxurious, before smoke and age
reduced it to its present state of
gloomy melancholia,

only at night by the light from
the bar, filtered through regiments
of amber bottles, does the memory revive.

Fresh smoke covers the stale
and ample bottoms cover the battered stools.
The center of attraction is solid mahogany,
burnished to a glow by a generation of
barkeepers’ cloths, eager elbows and
the occasional drink-flushed face.

The floor, seldom seen, is carpeted,
a pattern long gone and the weave
worn thin beneath the stools.
There’s a raised area, hardly a stage
but now, with live music a memory,
the only slow-dancers are tables and chairs.

This feels incomplete; the ending does little justice.

And aside from what Annie pointed out,
never use bottom and stools in the same sentence.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Now you've had a dabble, I better give you a list of the participants
In no particular order.

UnderYourSpell
Magnetron
greenmountaineer
AlwaysHungry
rawsilk
GuiltyPleasure

Never mind.

 

[Magnetron]

Six writers for eight poems.



Guess I can't claim I wrote seven of them.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Never mind.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

We've had a late entry and as I've already put up a lost of participants you'll have to fly blind on this one.


A Hall To Call Home

Odin, the Old One, hear this ode
to our hall, our home and hearth.

Lumber built and long with vaulted loft,
tightly thatched that kings and thanes
might meet, talk and moot.
We boast and brag, drink mulled brews,
and feast and fete by warming fires.
While outside, winds whistle,
snow swirls and warmth is scarce.
Inside there is; mead, meat, companions merry,
pulses, parsnips, various pies,
howling hounds, lyres and harps,
trestle tables between posts of timber,
shields, skins, tapestries sewn,
benches, beds, ovens for bread,
useful utensils and you.
Snug, safe and secure.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

We've had a late entry and as I've already put up a lost of participants you'll have to fly blind on this one.


A Hall To Call Home

Odin, the Old One, hear this ode
to our hall, our home and hearth.

Lumber built and long with vaulted loft,
tightly thatched that kings and thanes
might meet, talk and moot.
We boast and brag, drink mulled brews,
and feast and fete by warming fires.
While outside, winds whistle,
snow swirls and warmth is scarce.
Inside there is; mead, meat, companions merry,
pulses, parsnips, various pies,
howling hounds, lyres and harps,
trestle tables between posts of timber,
shields, skins, tapestries sewn,
benches, beds, ovens for bread,
useful utensils and you.
Snug, safe and secure.

Can't say I'm overly fond of grocery lists with not much else to hold it together although I can see where you're coming from.

 

[Piscator]

My fascias are peeling -UYS

Interesting how so many of thes poems are of structures past their best before date

 

[UnderYourSpell]

This feels incomplete; the ending does little justice.

And aside from what Annie pointed out,
never use bottom and stools in the same sentence.

Ooooerrr! I never got that far

 

[UnderYourSpell]

My fascias are peeling -UYS

Interesting how so many of thes poems are of structures past their best before dae

I thought you were being personal there for a moment
That's probably my fault with the original premise.

 

[Hard_Rom]

structures past their best before dae

Explain please.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Explain please.

It's a typo ........... Best before date.

 

[Hard_Rom]

It's a typo ........... Best before date.

I knew that. Didn't even notice it actually. Have an idea how it might apply to one poem but not the 'many' others.

 

[Lyricalli]

I knew that. Didn't even notice it actually. Have an idea how it might apply to one poem but not the 'many' others.

Six out of eight are about buildings that are gone, no longer in use, or in some state of disrepair.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I knew that. Didn't even notice it actually. Have an idea how it might apply to one poem but not the 'many' others.

Perhaps you should re-read them then if you're not seeing the obvious.

 

[Magnetron]

Can't say I'm overly fond of grocery lists with not much else to hold it together although I can see where you're coming from.

I agree. It works up until and after it becomes an inventory. The itemization dulls it down.

 

[greenmountaineer]

"Interior" felt like a snapshot with a nice little twist at the end that drove the point home. However, I thought "memory" was vague. I wish the poet would have made the memory more personal: https://youtu.be/y3KEhWTnWvE

I'm guessing Guilty Pleasure is the poet, maybe UYS.

 

[greenmountaineer]

In
Among the Living
I thought "in this house of death" and "damned for all eternity" over-reached as metaphors. When I deleted them and read the poem again, the satire I thought was more effective. "Lookie Lous" made me laugh at the end, a great finish.

This has Magnetron's signature.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Mobile Home is my kind of poem. I was confused at frst with pairing of the title and "Target." The "aha" came with the purple heart and the sidewalk. I began imagining a war veteran with PTSD pulling a little red wagon, perhaps so paranoid he couldn't bring himself to joining other homeless people living in tents.

The contrast between him and the woman in the Prius was very skillful.

Everything fit so well together in this poem. Deleting "a" before "science," I think, would have made the line more fluid, but that's the tiniest of quibbles.

Always Hungry?

 

[Piscator]

And then there is Deep Dark Woods' Charlie's Coming Down, an anthem to a soon to be destroyed Saskatoon bar, which amy be deprived from Danny O'keefe's Good Time Charlie's got the Blues

 

[greenmountaineer]

I usually don't like the use of pronouns in poems, in the case of "Exodus," "He," because they're non-descriptive and usually a missed opportunity to personify the him or her of the poem. In this case, however, I think it's effective at creating an impersonal tone that permeates the entire poem.

The building in the first stanza I took to be a wing in a mental hospital. The second stanza for me suggested life after discharge. "The prison of the mind" alluded to in the second stanza I thought was very effective.

I have mixed feelings about the use of "lost" in the first stanza because I'm not sure the flowers, described as they were in the previous line, would have been lost on the patients.

Nonetheless, this somber poem was a worthwhile read, getting me to think about things we usually don't think about.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Perhaps you should re-read them then if you're not seeing the obvious.

I thought the reference to structure was the poem itself.

As for the buildings themselves unless it is some wonder of avant-garde architecture, photographs, paintings and other arts are typically of past due date structures. That just seems normal to me. IMO most art forms when considering modern daily usage buildings are more likely to go on about urban sprawl and concrete jungles. Praise is left for the very oldest or the very newest.

At least it's that way for me. When I take my camera downtown, I'm always hunting around in the back alleys where you easily see the late 1800s construction of some of the buildings. From a techy POV I like modern buildings but not from an aesthetic one. Hard to wax poetic on skyscraper HVAC systems and building materials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Ks4ixsMOY