# Familiar Feeling



## Smith (Feb 21, 2020)

I've got a feeling
that I'll be the first
of my friends to die.

In many ways
I'm already gone.

Voices...
trying to get through to me.
But I'm sleep-walking
through nightmarish daydreams.

Peel back my skin—
thinner than it seems.

I'm still a child, deep within.

It's Russian dolls
all
the way
down.


----------



## Tirralirra (Feb 21, 2020)

Yes, there is definitely a poem in here, and you have begun to dig it out.
Very strong opening - but those first three lines are perhaps a little cluttered. Would cutting it down to:

I think I’ll be the first to die

sound better? Is the rhythm stronger? Does it convey the meaning you want? Perhaps not - but do you think it could be tightened in another way?

Look at other lines in the same way - have you really picked the best words...

You have a couple of strong images which could be developed more: the peeling of the skin is one, and the Russian dolls the other. To my mind these are usable images.

However Lines 8 and 9 - sleepwalking through nightmarish dreams - these are phrases which have been over-used, cliches if you like. Can you express the voices and nightmares in a fresher way perhaps. Or, more radically, are they needed at all to convey your message?

In your mind be clear on the different ideas and emotions that you are dealing with.

Thus, N (your poem’s narrator) begins by describing what is happening, from the outside, as it were:
a) they will be the first to die of a friendship group
b) is already dead in a way
b) hears voices, has nightmares

At that point you swing the spotlight round to focus on the internal process:
the thin-skinned sensitive inner child fearful that there is an inner emptiness - the dolls.

That turnaround is excellent, and the idea of the turn is central to a large body of poetry.
But I do think that Lines 11 and 12 also need a little tightening.

If my comments don’t resonate, that’s fine, just ignore them. It is your tale, to shape as only you can choose.


----------



## Smith (Feb 21, 2020)

Tirralirra said:


> Yes, there is definitely a poem in here, and you have begun to dig it out.
> Very strong opening - but those first three lines are perhaps a little cluttered. Would cutting it down to:
> 
> I think I’ll be the first to die
> ...



Yeah, I'm experimenting with more deliberate use of line breaks, and I don't think it's for me. Mainly because I can hear the rhythm and overall sound way better in a more prose-like arrangement. Whereas a line break seems amorphous, I find that commas and periods and other forms of punctuation are not.



> You have a couple of strong images which could be developed more: the peeling of the skin is one, and the Russian dolls the other. To my mind these are usable images.



I totally agree with this. The piece would benefit from stronger imagery. As it stands, it's currently a very cerebral experience (or very much an internal process, to borrow your phrase).



> However Lines 8 and 9 - sleepwalking through nightmarish dreams - these are phrases which have been over-used, cliches if you like. Can you express the voices and nightmares in a fresher way perhaps. Or, more radically, are they needed at all to convey your message?



I feel like I used the components of what are otherwise cliches in a new arrangement, and in a new context. That could just be me though.

I agree that I could at least expand upon them in the ensuing lines, though!



> In your mind be clear on the different ideas and emotions that you are dealing with.
> 
> Thus, N (your poem’s narrator) begins by describing what is happening, from the outside, as it were:
> a) they will be the first to die of a friendship group
> ...



I think your comments are on target! My response should not be taken as an argument; I just like discussing feedback, because I've found that it can lead to even greater understanding. 

(I've also found that most people are more appreciative than "Hey, thanks dude." when they spent 15-20 minutes of their time, reading your work and providing critique lol.)

Glad you noticed the gradual movement from external to internal. In human experience they overlap a lot, so it's often important to show that connection in my opinion.

Thanks for your comments Tirra!


----------



## escorial (Feb 21, 2020)

3rd line ... be the first to die...of my friends kinda means you


----------



## Smith (Feb 21, 2020)

escorial said:


> 3rd line ... be the first to die...of my friends kinda means you



As Tirra said, the first three lines can be rephrased better.

Something like, "I think I'll be the first of my friends to die."

I could also try "go" instead of "die", if I wanted a more open-ended interpretation.


----------



## escorial (Feb 21, 2020)

check out poetry has guts....the want to better it says so much about you


----------



## Smith (Feb 21, 2020)

escorial said:


> check out poetry has guts....the want to better it says so much about you



Is that a book or podcast?


----------



## escorial (Feb 21, 2020)

no man its sub -con stuff coming out in words.....emotions,feelings...real words about honesty...for me..if you can write with such passion you gotta keep it going no matter what..keep writing


----------



## Tirralirra (Feb 21, 2020)

Thanks for your detailed attention to my comments. I feel I must return to two of the matters in your discussion:

1) Line breaks. You expressed a very strong preference for relying on classic prose punctuation and line breaks. You called an unpunctuated ‘poetic’ line break - amorphous - formless. I find that to be odd. A poem, almost by definition, is a very controlled piece of writing in which both the auditory patterning (the rhythms, beats, assonances and rhymes) and the visual patterning (the layout on the page, line breaks, punctuation marks, overall shape of the print area) have been carefully shaped and FORMED to achieve the writer’s intent. The basic unit of a poem is not the sentence, as in prose. It is the line. Perhaps your unease with the line would dissipate with more practice. You have had lots of practice at reading the stuff - maybe you just need to write more of it, emphasising the line breaks!

2) If it catches the eye, barks like a dog or juts out like a sore thumb - then it’s a cliche, and no amount of a jeweller’s time trying to mount it in a special setting is going to alter that. They are subtle opponents, cliches. They creep up behind you, catch you unawares, dog your footsteps and stick to you like mud. User beware!

Thanks for having the patience to stick with me - and, as always - your text, your decision.


----------



## Smith (Feb 21, 2020)

Tirralirra said:


> Thanks for your detailed attention to my comments. I feel I must return to two of the matters in your discussion:
> 
> 1) Line breaks. You expressed a very strong preference for relying on classic prose punctuation and line breaks. You called an unpunctuated ‘poetic’ line break - amorphous - formless. I find that to be odd. A poem, almost by definition, is a very controlled piece of writing in which both the auditory patterning (the rhythms, beats, assonances and rhymes) and the visual patterning (the layout on the page, line breaks, punctuation marks, overall shape of the print area) have been carefully shaped and FORMED to achieve the writer’s intent. The basic unit of a poem is not the sentence, as in prose. It is the line. Perhaps your unease with the line would dissipate with more practice. You have had lots of practice at reading the stuff - maybe you just need to write more of it, emphasising the line breaks!



Hmm, allow me to try an example and you can respond with your thoughts if you like.

"I'm still a child, deep within." vs.

"I'm still a child
deep within"

Since the first is a continuous sentence, I can understand the proper and necessary *inflection* of voice that is required, and how it is paced thanks to the comma. Of course, there might be a few common ways of putting inflection on that sentence, which is why context is so helpful by narrowing the possibilities down.

The latter seems like it is far more open to interpretation, and it undermines my confidence in being able to lead the reader through the lines as intended. For all I know, the first line "I'm still a child" and the second line "deep within" could be completely unrelated (as in, the former could be made to relate to whatever line came before it, and similarly the latter line could be made to relate to the line after it, so that they are actually exclusive of one another. There's no way of disproving this because there is no punctuation to indicate it is a complete connected thought unto itself.)

Here's an example from Ezra Pound.

And the days are
not full enough
And the
nights are not full enough
And
life slips by like
a field mouse
Not
shaking the grass

Feels like I'm trying to simulate "breaking up" over the cell phone. Or I can almost imagine a soldier yelling that over the radio in a World War II film (although maybe something like "And the reinforcements-- not enough! The reinforcements are not-- The enemy is slipping by-- cannot hold our ground!") Here is how I rewrote it.

The days...
they are not full enough.
And the nights...
they are not full enough.
Life,
it slips by,
like a field mouse not shaking the grass.

I have the audacity to say that, at least to me, my version sounds better. The original has bizarre line breaks that just make no sense to me. No matter how I try to read it, they do not sound good in my head. There occurs, to me, to be music in "not shaking the grass", which is not the case if you single-out "Not" and make that its own line. No way would I ever stress "Not", unless I was five years old saying "Is _NOT_!"

But people say, "That's not allowed. It's got to be consistent. So: *like* a *field* mouse *not* sha*king* the *grass*." And that, of course, sounds like nails on a chalk board to me. Unnatural. How do you even put stress on the second-half of shaking?

Just saying the word "shaking" aloud to myself, and I can only put the stress on the first half of the word.

I don't know, the more I try to pay attention to baDUMbaDUM, the more I sound monotone or robotic. I lose the ability to naturally inflect, and natural inflection is where the beauty of language comes from, for me.

Let's look at one more, a line from Jeff Goldblum.

"Life— uh... _finds a way_."

There is music in the way he says that line in Jurassic Park. Now:

Life
finds a way

I cannot find the same music there, unless perhaps I arbitrarily read it the same way. But there's no reason for me to read it that way; there's nothing really guiding me to read it a certain way.

I approach writing as I approach music, and in a lot of ways poetry just doesn't seem to have room for that. People demand perfect obedience to trochees and all these other words which I have no concept of, nor have ever been taught in school.

Time and time again (is that "*Time* and *time* a*gain*" or "*Time* and *time* again"? As in, does that inflect up, or inflect down?) something sounds good in my head, and then somebody starts picking apart stresses and these other things that, for me, aren't there to begin with.

And so it becomes apparent that what they are hearing, I am not hearing. We are reading the same thing and "hearing" completely different things. So you understand my frustration.

The only poetry I ever felt that I really understood was haiku or senryu, primarily because it has very little to do with traditional western ideas about poetry. I'm not a master at it, and any haiku I've written pale in comparison, but I get what the form is trying to accomplish and I know what the rules are.

(Allow me to point out that I deliberate phrased for the word "do" for loose [strike]consonance[/strike] assonance. I understand how to take poetic license in prose form. If you didn't notice, then I succeeded, because the idea is that it's subtle continuity.)



> 2) If it catches the eye, barks like a dog or juts out like a sore thumb - then it’s a cliche, and no amount of a jeweller’s time trying to mount it in a special setting is going to alter that. They are subtle opponents, cliches. They creep up behind you, catch you unawares, dog your footsteps and stick to you like mud. User beware!



No doubt, but life is full of cliches, and if something becoming a cliche made it obsolete and abandoned then I think language and concepts would disappear pretty fast. Writers of prose have this very discussion as it pertains to tropes.

(Let me just point out that "obsolete" and "abandoned" both have three syllables, and "language" and "concepts" both have two syllables, and I have structured the sentence so that the words are being used in sets. I could've said "obsolete and ditched", but then that would ruin the subtle scheme. However, the entire paragraph does not have to follow this scheme, which is less restricting.)

At some point, you're going to need a barking dog.

Cliche necessarily has value, or else we wouldn't bother with it. At minimum it possesses familiarity.



> Thanks for having the patience to stick with me - and, as always - your text, your decision.



The pleasure's all mine. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. I find your feedback and insights to be exceptionally valuable. 

I'd love to actually learn rhyme, meter, patterns, and the dozen other things that I am blind to, but I cannot learn how something is supposed to sound by reading soundless instructions. That's akin to taste testing things you have no concept of without even being able to smell them, let alone lick them. (note the alliteration)

Will probably need to watch a thousand Ted Talks.

For the record, I am occasionally graced with enough genius to understand how a poem is supposed to sound. Take Lord Byron's "When We Two Parted", for instance. One of my favorites. It took no more than a few seconds to figure out what was going on there, it sounds good, and does not interfere with inflection. In fact, it is easy to enhance with natural sounding inflection of delivery.


----------



## Tirralirra (Feb 21, 2020)

Ok, a little puzzlement at this end.
Line 6 of Familiar Feeling - a single word, 'Voices', sits on a line by itself. Breaks the prose grammar - and so it should - that gives the necessary emphasis followed by a pause. You did not hesitate here!

Take Stanza 3 of your Moving On, in which, wittingly or not you have used a haiku technique in that the fragment 'Just one last time' sits on its own and can be understood to refer to both the previous sentence and the following fragment. In both of these examples the visual isolation emphasises both the beat of the line and the pause hanging on completion.

You clearly have an instinctual feel for these harmonics - demonstrated also by your 'obsolete and abandoned 'and 'language and concepts' example.

So I am puzzled at your puzzlement over how to read line based verse. You choose an example which sits at the foundation of modern English-language poetry - one of Ezra's most famous Imagist pieces. There is disagreement as to the layout of these lines, and most examples in fact lengthen the line: 'And the days are not full enough...'
Be that as it may. Your comment was that you felt you had no clear direction from this type of layout as to how or where to put the stresses. Yes, there are some alternate choices, but none of them call for you to actually distort a stress. The natural way is for that first line to have a heavy stress on 'days' and 'full'. Most people would feel a soft break or caesura between 'days' and 'are'. The layout you quote shifts that pause and to me that also shifts the meaning slightly. Your emendations of adding the two 'theys' removes two pauses. But those pauses are important, they let a meaning hang a moment as it were.

Ok, I admit that this is subjective stuff, and that individual readings may well vary - but I think a base rule is that no feasible reading should distort or misplace a normal accent. Line spacings can be seen as a hierarchy of pauses depending on their size - to which your valid response could be 'what's wrong with the hierarchy of comma, semicolon, colon and period?'

On cliche I think we disagree.


----------



## Tirralirra (Feb 21, 2020)

PS - a last word on this lines, layout, formats thing. Take a moment to look at the poem and discussion on Darren White's  Boy Taken in the NaPoWriMo workshop.


----------



## Smith (Feb 22, 2020)

Tirralirra said:


> Ok, a little puzzlement at this end.
> Line 6 of Familiar Feeling - a single word, 'Voices', sits on a line by itself. Breaks the prose grammar - and so it should - that gives the necessary emphasis followed by a pause. You did not hesitate here!



I see your confusion.

It's not so much that I don't see the value in breaking from traditional grammar and providing emphasis. Like you said, poetry is all about this exploration. I guess for some reason, how I used it with 'Voices' made sense to me, but how Pound uses it with 'Not' does not. And I see that that's on me, because Pound knew what he was doing lol, and I don't yet. As you say later, this is entirely a subjective judgment on my part.



> Take Stanza 3 of your Moving On, in which, wittingly or not you have used a haiku technique in that the fragment 'Just one last time' sits on its own and can be understood to refer to both the previous sentence and the following fragment. In both of these examples the visual isolation emphasises both the beat of the line and the pause hanging on completion.



I blushed that you would read some of my other work. <3

You are right. Utilizing a fragment that can be applied to both the prior and following line is a tried and true technique of the greatest songwriters and poets. So it would appear that the sheer fact this is possible is not the problem, as I'd initially thought; it's up to the author to know when and how to use it for good effect.



> You clearly have an instinctual feel for these harmonics - demonstrated also by your 'obsolete and abandoned 'and 'language and concepts' example.
> 
> So I am puzzled at your puzzlement over how to read line based verse. You choose an example which sits at the foundation of modern English-language poetry - one of Ezra's most famous Imagist pieces. There is disagreement as to the layout of these lines, and most examples in fact lengthen the line: 'And the days are not full enough...'
> Be that as it may. Your comment was that you felt you had no clear direction from this type of layout as to how or where to put the stresses. Yes, there are some alternate choices, but none of them call for you to actually distort a stress. The natural way is for that first line to have a heavy stress on 'days' and 'full'. Most people would feel a soft break or caesura between 'days' and 'are'.



Exactly! But I feel that natural soft break is not at all indicated in the layout that I quoted. (I was not aware that "there is disagreement as to the layout of these lines"; that's good to know.)

But as you probably noticed, that soft break *is* literally indicated in my re-write.



> The layout you quote shifts that pause and to me that also shifts the meaning slightly. Your emendations of adding the two 'theys' removes two pauses. But those pauses are important, they let a meaning hang a moment as it were.



I see your point. I wanted to preserve the pause between "days" and "are". In actuality it should have been:

The days...
are (etc.)
And the nights...
are (etc.)

That was my intention. But you rightly point out that including the theys defeated my own purpose.



> Ok, I admit that this is subjective stuff, and that individual readings may well vary - but I think a base rule is that no feasible reading should distort or misplace a normal accent. Line spacings can be seen as a hierarchy of pauses depending on their size - to which your valid response could be 'what's wrong with the hierarchy of comma, semicolon, colon and period?'
> 
> On cliche I think we disagree.



It may be subjective, but I hear you; what you're saying makes a lot more sense. I agree that any reasonable reading of any given piece should not require distorted or misplaced accents, unless those can some how be successfully indicated.

What did you mean though by the size of line breaks? I didn't even know there was such a thing (unless I accidentally do but I'm unaware of it). I just thought a line break is a line break. Showing my noobyness here.

And on cliche, we agree more than you think. I might defend the value of cliche, but I'll be the first to also say that there's tremendous value to be found by unpacking any given cliche; finding a new way of presenting it, or expanding upon it with vivid imagery. Those are things I have failed to do with the cliche in my own piece here, as you rightfully pointed out. :tennis:

And as such, that's going to be one of the first places I address in my poem here should I decide to revise.

You've given me confidence Lirra, thank-you. I think I should try to continue sprinkling punctuation where I think my future poems call for them, to see if I can utilize the punctuation to achieve a given desired effect. In addition to continuing trying to understand the core elements of writing poetry, like line breaks.

It's all...
a journey.

Isn't it?


----------



## Tirralirra (Feb 22, 2020)

Thanks for receiving my comments so willingly, and for sharing your thoughts. Just a couple of final points. You agreed with me on where the natural pause was in that line of Pound’s. What he was doing with the line break that you quoted, was shifting the pause. As to how one shows a shifted stress away from the natural, Gerard Manly Hopkins does it by actually having a stress mark printed above the accented syllable.

Line spaces - you can have a single, double, or even triple blank space on the page between lines of print. Why not? The pattern is both aural and visual...

And good night from Down Under.


----------



## TL Murphy (Feb 22, 2020)

Smith said:


> I've got a feeling
> 
> that I'll be the first
> 
> ...



The line is really what you make it.  For many poets, their mission in life is to do something new or interesting with the line.   One thing I would suggest is to play with the shape of the poem by altering the space between lines.  Bring some lines together and space some lines apart.  This gives the affect of grouping thoughts.  The space between thoughts affects the weight given to each full thought.  A monostich gives extra weight to a single line.   Allowing syntax to run through the end of a line and continue to the next line adds a kind of double meaning by imposing a pause where we might not expect one. A one-word line slows the reader down and pounds away at the fragments.  A long line allows to the thought to expand like stream of consciousness.  

There is a lot that can be done with a line. It’s limited only by the imagination.  If you look at some of Darren’s poetry he sometimes combines prose and poetry by mixing stanzas of each.  He might have a stanza with no line-breaks, just prose where lines fall wherever the margin is.  Then he follows this with a stanza of short, minimalist lines.  It’s very effective.


----------



## Smith (Feb 22, 2020)

@TL Murphy, @Tirra

Then in the spirit of [strike]science[/strike] poetry!

---

I've got a feeling
that I'll be the first
of my friends to die.

In many ways
I'm already gone.

Voices...
trying to get through to me.
But I'm sleep-walking
through nightmarish daydreams.

Peel back my skin—
thinner than I make it seem.

I'm still a child, deep within.

It's Russian dolls
all
the way
down.


----------



## TL Murphy (Feb 23, 2020)

Huge Improvement.  You can really feel the rhythm now.  For me, at least, the places to cut become almost obvious.  This has a lot to do with the cadence but also with the crispness of the line:



Smith said:


> @TL Murphy, @Tirra
> 
> Then in the spirit of [strike]science[/strike] poetry!
> 
> ...


----------



## Smith (Feb 23, 2020)

TL Murphy said:


> Huge Improvement.  You can really feel the rhythm now.  For me, at least, the places to cut become almost obvious.  This has a lot to do with the cadence but also with the crispness of the line:



Thanks Murphy. ^_^


----------



## Octopus (Mar 3, 2020)

Smith said:


> I've got a feeling
> that I'll be the first
> of my friends to die.
> 
> ...


I love it, the crispness of the lines and the fact that you added some imagery in here especially the peel back skin line, gorgeous writing, I can't see anything wrong with this piece.


----------



## Smith (Mar 4, 2020)

Octopus said:


> I love it, the crispness of the lines and the fact that you added some imagery in here especially the peel back skin line, gorgeous writing, I can't see anything wrong with this piece.



Thanks Octopus! Welcome to the forum; can't believe that name wasn't taken.

I owe it in part to the great feedback I've received here.


----------



## Chiefster (Mar 22, 2020)

The author has definitely heard the call of the void. An eery poem that conjures xenophobia, a feeling the protagonist accepts as inevitably unshakeable for him. I too would like the poem lengthened but I also believe this one is sound as is. Perhaps, then, a twin poem? 10.2/10.5

Elements of your poem, the way you invoke a lot through a little, the way you let the reader put two and two together, are great signs of a naturally talented screenwriter as well.


----------



## Smith (Mar 26, 2020)

Chiefster said:


> The author has definitely heard the call of the void. An eery poem that conjures xenophobia, a feeling the protagonist accepts as inevitably unshakeable for him. I too would like the poem lengthened but I also believe this one is sound as is. Perhaps, then, a twin poem? 10.2/10.5
> 
> Elements of your poem, the way you invoke a lot through a little, the way you let the reader put two and two together, are great signs of a naturally talented screenwriter as well.



I like your interpretation Chiefster. Honestly, one thing that makes me really happy is when somebody else treats my work so sincerely.

Thank-you for the compliment, and for reading. Welcome to the forum!


----------



## joshua0019 (Mar 28, 2020)

Freaky ending (in a good way). Russian dolls like voodoo dolls?


----------

