Poetry Contests Online at The Poetic Link

This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-01-30 05:10:22 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

To Listen to Music While Reading this Poem, just Click Here!

Click Here To add this poem to your "Voting Possibilities" list!

Cockroach

After days of no consequence a cockroach turns up in its lozenge, legs pedaling the air next to its dead clone. An elephant sense of cemetery brings it all about, this species of walking bone, blackening out. These little lives, paranoid scurrying shadows that mistake a bathroom for a morgue, unfold a Rorschach epitaph, terrifying wings that fear to arise.

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-02-06 08:35:19
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.54545
Mark interesting picture yet the depth is felt within this piece. Fear to rise and face life we tend to just rollover and ignore. This is what I got from this piece. Taking something so simple yet bringing in a complex thought is always difficult and you have accomplished that here. Like the presentation for it makes it flow and the length is perfect in presenting a thought to ponder. Well done and enjoyable to read. Cockroach so dark and spooky...

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas Edward Wright On Date: 2006-01-31 20:27:22
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.75000
The game is all about observation and comparison. lozenge elephant morgue epitaph I am checking out of my bathroom. You've ruined the atmosphere. tew

This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-01-31 08:43:54
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.95455
It is deeply gratifying to me to see you perfect a poetic style to the extent you have here, Mark. This poem is not to be neglected for it observes one of the richest uses to which the genre can be applied. Imagery is not merely an enhancement of tone, theme, pictures in the mind, etc., it is away to help the reader experience "rediscovery" of perception, truth, emotion, sense...it IS to make renewel. You have always displayed this ability but, before, been far to haphazard with its use, more often than not bordering on abstraction. When you needn't. There are three things I look for a poem to achieve in order to accept it as being at this level of accomplishment: it has the tightness in structure and theme to be unified by its end, into meaning; it offers more to the reader than would prose, through imagery and mankind's collective desire for cadence; and it possesses an individuality on its own merit to be apart anything else thought like it. You are able to finally harness what brings about the wonderous fourth, to artfully juxtapose the dissimilar so that imagery you offer contains a depth expansive to mental workings you arouse. Your line, "An elephant/sense of cemetary/brings it all about,/this species of walking/bone, blackening out. As your reader copes with subliminal conjuring of elephant and cockroach placed into the same context, all in-between becomes the poet's playground. (Too bad you could not see me doing the same thing when I task a reader to find the ACTUAL difference between reckoning the end of time with a pile of rocks and trying to measure a lifetime's volume of piss...as astute observation on how skewed are our sublimations.) So, I'm not going to comment on what I see clicking in that last verse/stanza until you reread MY poem. I'll just say this, you got something from my modest little offering whether you realize it or not. Slightly perturbed, JCH

This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2006-01-30 15:19:30
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
MAH, Is it me? Probably. I often read a poem by you and think, "what the hell is he talking about." That could mean one of four things, it seems to me: a) I'm an idiot (or one of its gradations - I'm a little dense, and this poem is beyond me); b) this poem is nonsense (or one of its gradations - not much sense) trying to make itself look like sense, gussying itself up in some fine language; c) this is a great poem (or one of its gradations - at least a good and succesful poem), which may only need me to reread it a few times to digest it, since "a)" doesn't apply; or, d) this is an ok poem, not worth "remembering," using remembering in the sense of lasting. I have troubles with options a) or b). If I'm an idiot, there is no point in writing this critique. I am spinning wheels unecessarily here. I could be getting laid, or shooting hoops. If it is b), I start heading back to a), since I don't believe this is nonsense - I don't believe "nonsense" manipulates such language - and if it is nonsense, I'm an idiot. The likely ground, either c) or d), like life, makes more demands on me. Though there are times I am convinced of c) or d), without being demanded. Like I view Tom's "A Woman Combing" as c), and got that sense after a 30 second reading. And likewise many of the d) poems do not make much of a demand. This is one of those more difficult matters. So really there are two kinds of poems, two "grades" in my new system. The great poem and the not worth remembering poem. There are gradations in each, the longest stairway being of the "not worth remebering" poems. I'm sure most would quibble with my "system," as there are many "worthwhile" poems that may not be great. But - and this is just me - if it aint' great, it gets lumped with the "not worth remembering," since life would not be appreciably less without it. Is this one a c) or d)? Shit man, you're making me work, and I don't like to work. Having reread it again, i put in in the d) category. It just doesn't convince me enough. Now tell me the category that applies is a), and I'll go home. :) Or better yet, you could tell me to shut up. Or fucking shut up. :) MSS PS - I know, I know, you want me to tell you why. But I can't, really. Sorry. Damn, man, all I can tell you is you have it in you, and to keep plugging. The ability to articulate like this is a gift - which you have. Remember my demanding standards! I can make demands on you like you make on me. So there! At least I didn't tell you to universalize. I know from cockroaches. :)

Poetry Contests Online at The Poetic Link

Click HERE to return to ThePoeticLink.com Database Page!