Poetry / Mistake

I am loving the simple language you’ve chosen here.  Your short sentences made of easy words has really created the “simple-minded” effect that you speak of.  It makes me think “childlike”...

However, you continue to starve me of the details I crave.  As long as you speak of “things”, as in line 4, and not things, as in “trees”, “vampires”, “charcoal”, your poetry will continue to be a private activity, shared with the world, for which you yourself will only ever truly know the meaning.  

What could be so horridly bitter as to require post after post of vague sadness?  Perhaps try writing those thoughts down, in explicit detail.  Use names, but not the real ones, change the gender of a couple characters, you know, just a light masking, and then never voluntarily share it with anybody.  Then, once you’ve gotten that out of your system, and I understand that it might take a while, I want you to write a poem about something that makes you happy, something easy like a hobby of yours or a sport, fill it with lots of details about weather and colors and noises, and then share that with the community.  It’ll be a big leap, but i think it’ll teach you more things about poetry than you ever thought to imagine.

I hope you feel I’m helping you.  That’s my intent.

Butterat Zool.

This poem was short, sweet, and straight to the point. I imagine not many people even try to step into another’s shoes, so I commend you on trying to open your perspective on life by doing that. On the whole, I appreciate you illuminating a subject that not much light is shed on.

At first, this poem may seem simple and almost too cliched; however I immediatley found myself drawn to it.  After I read it a second or third time, it began to remind me of an article by literary/movie theorist Andre Bazin called Death Every Afternoon, which I did not truly understand until my film teacher claimed Bazin basically argues that it is what we DON’T get to see, on-screen and otherwise, that is of utmost importance and should be taken into account most.  The experience of the other, of someone outside ourselves, is one that we cannot adopt-unless perhaps we are willing to lose a part of ourselves, the experience and thought of ourselves, in doing so.  Perhaps this loss of the self is the unpleasantness of taking another person’s place to which you allude, but do not name?  Regardless, I like how the ‘unpleasantness’ remains nameless and open to interpretation.  Still, as publishing seems to be a primary goal regarding this piece for you, I’m not sure how a publisher might respond to this unspecified person and his/her place and the unpleasantness of becoming involved in it; I fear it may be seen as too vague for many.