Critique my poetry: Kindergarten Baby Born in the Navy


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justme27 is offline justme27 Post #1  February 18,2010, 11:56am
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There I put up a darn avatar is everyone happy! T.S. Eliot very pretentious

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Assignment: Write a poem about a picture from your child hood.

Kindergarten Baby Born in the Navy

If your age could smell, it would smell like the musk
Emitted by a mare in the sun of August in the desert
Swatting flies with the limp whisker of its tail
Sitting on its legs too weary to stand.

“Get closer in the picture,” my father said.
And so I stood right in front of you
Ducking beneath that walker propping you up
Like a scarecrow limp on a stick dilapidated
By seasons wrought with them
Wet torrents of interspersed water
Your skin like wet potato sack meshed with hay
Crisped until brittle in the heat of August
The kind crows would perch on
Not confusing it for anything living.

At the age of four that walker to me
Was a symbol of the fragility of life
And you to me were a reminder of where
I would someday be.

That message to me was as
Incomprehensible and frightening as Cyrillic
To an average American during the Cold War
But I stood there in front of you because my parents
Told me so.

And maybe you knew how I felt and that made
You sing in response before the snapshot of the lens
Was shot,
“Kindergarten baby born in the navy.”

I was composed as I was trained to be
Cold as the sanded down wooden surface of a marionette
Still without direction to process the information
 
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littlebluemonkeymind is offline littlebluemonkeymind Post #2  February 20,2010, 5:43pm
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Working on it.
 
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littlebluemonkeymind is offline littlebluemonkeymind Post #3  February 20,2010, 7:20pm
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J, this is a lovely piece. Very evocative, tight and crisp. I love the way you describe her (your grandmother, perhaps?) smell and the picture of the young boy bound to her by duty more so than affection. It's a lovely image with just the right amount of dissonance. Nicely done!

As for critique, I'm going to preface with a couple of things. It's a brave and scary thing to put your writing out for not only display, but feedback. It requires a certain responsibility in response to honor the intent of both the writing and the gesture.

[COLOR=black]That said, I am a writer by trade and an editor by nature, but I am by no means the final authority on anything, so take what you can use of my comments and disregard the rest.
Last edited by littlebluemonkeymind; February 20,2010 at 7:30pm.
 
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justme27 is offline justme27 Post #4  February 20,2010, 7:40pm
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There I put up a darn avatar is everyone happy! T.S. Eliot very pretentious

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Littlebluemonkeymind, I wasn't aware you were a writer and editor! Thanks for the feedback! It's wonderful to hear any criticism good or bad regarding your work from someone who is a professional in the field. Thanks for reading it, I owe you one!
 
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littlebluemonkeymind is offline littlebluemonkeymind Post #5  February 20,2010, 9:12pm
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justme27 wrote :
Littlebluemonkeymind, I wasn't aware you were a writer and editor! Thanks for the feedback! It's wonderful to hear any criticism good or bad regarding your work from someone who is a professional in the field. Thanks for reading it, I owe you one!
Well, these days "in the field" means online help and technical documents, but I'm happy you're pleased. This is really a nice poem.

The other one I'll have to get to tomorrow or early in the week. I read through it and I like it. It's different in tone and flow and I want to spend a bit more time with it.

Also, I do occasionally sleep.
 
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