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AugustusMcCrae's profile
AGE:
55
LOC: Durant, OK
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: May 05
LOC: Durant, OK
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: May 05
I’m 54 years old and hold a Master’s Degree in English Education. I teach H.S.English in a little town in Oklahoma right on the Texas line where I’ve been for 30 years now. In college and right after graduation, I had several poems published in some college literary journals and magazines but just sort of wandered away from it. Recently I started back and won a few contests, small time things Poems of the Month and like things. I got my first collection of poetry published in March, 2006, “Native Son – American Poems from the Heart of Oklahoma” It’s been doing pretty well about to go into a fourth printing. You can find it on www.freewebs.com/scotshawk if the notion strikes you.
In an update, “Native Son” made it as a finalist in the O…
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Driving southbound I see October rising, a broken sun to light hay bales gathered across eastern pastures like buffalo awakening as morning breaks the grey. Summer is leaving green on both sides of the highway, and wild flowers have rooted the season to this bit of Oklahoma. The round bales steam in the cool of morning as if they were mythic beasts breathing vapors of the past into the dawn. I want those dark round humps to sprout sturdy legs and the short curved horns of bison, to snort and ...
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12 Reviews
2 Comments
Shadow Stallion Black as November night, a plastic stallion paws the light within the room, rears above a speaker on my stereo; while Waylon Jennings paints that air around the hooves raised by a horse without motion, and I am transfixed in a state somewhere near meditation and Texas by a shadow stallion and soft, haunting outlaw lyrics. Amazing how a child’s mind works; forty some-odd years ago I bought that horse for my mother’s birthday. Why… because I liked it; I had found symmetry in it...
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34 Reviews
14 Comments
Beneath a Renegade Moon Under a scattering of ice white fires burning a summer sky, I sit beneath the yellow lights of my deck with cold beer and warm air visiting photographs, that given the power, I would bring to life, make living flesh from fading paper. I listen to minstrel crickets and cicadas singing in the night where a renegade moon is falling like confetti strips, unfurling through June elms and summer oaks spread before me on the hillside. Here among the aging pictures I find Mama...
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The raw talent is there. You have a strong grasp of language and a nice use of word choice. The style of all caps beginning lines and the lack of rhythmic cadence at times gives a jolt to your work. Work on smoother transition from point to point. You have a potential for real writing. Read Jeffers, Bukowski, Dickey and Kooser. Immulate their patterns and phrasings with your own voice.
There are some quotable highlights and the approach is unique and original. I'm not a hundred percent sold on the form, and I think this might actually work as a poem. Regardless the wit and mixture of line legths leads the reader through the piece without any trouble. I think if it remains non-fiction, you may need to expand the length of the piece.
You have a unique voice and use excellent word choicees for a writer of your age. You need to work on enjambment of some lines. Trim some verb phrases into verbs and avoid telling the reader; show him. For example: the last five lines aren't needed and don't really enhance the poem. You've done a pretty solid job of showing so don't close by telling. Below are a list of minor almost cosmetic suggestions which you can find on your own with more reading aloud and more experience. You have the m...
You have chosen a powerful topic and displayed a good tone in your work, but you tell too much and don't show enough. Work on crisper more vivid images. Move your reader to care and empatize with the sorrow you represent with falling tears. "Tears falling like thuds in mud huts" could be wroked into a very powerful line. Keep working with this poem; it has promise. Try to use concrete adjectives - something like {dress of blue} for "colorful" and you generally need more vivid specific images....
You're a young writer and this is full of youthful mistakes. It seems disjointed often and the inconsistant rhyme just doesn't work for me. You have a really nice approach to the language and some strong word choice. Like a baseball player hitting off a tee, you will improve with more work. There are many positives in your writing. "more often {than} not", repetition of "reoccurring too closely; these are rookie errors that will disappear with practice. Read Robinson Jeffers, Charles Bukowski...
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