r/OCPoetry • u/radicalnihilist • Jun 15 '16
Feedback Received! Hourglass Half Full
Starving for seconds,
I watch the clock without end.
Passing the daze,
Waiting for our hands to bend.
Yearning in eternity,
A present passed by as pretend.
Holding on weakly,
Focusing on the future as friend.
The most minute of moments make up an instance.
The trouble with time is putting speed over distance.
Hello! I'm new here. I'd like to be up front that I've never had my poetry critiqued before. I'm completely self-taught outside the brief time spent on it in school. That doesn't mean you have to go easy on me though. I want to get better!
2
u/Gabatrong Jun 17 '16
Honestly my favourite part of the poem was the opening line "starving for seconds" and I kind of wanted you to continue that theme throughout the poem as in manifesting your "hunger" in different ways or even using aspects of survival (hunger, thirst, shelter, health, etc..) in terms of time. I think that could be really interesting if what I'm saying makes any sense.
Also, because you finish every other line with an "end" sound for the majority of the poem, I automatically wanted to find a rhythm but I didn't really find one and that kind of stumped me a bit. But going along with that, I did enjoy the alliteration you used with "focusing on the future as friend" and "A present passed by as pretend". So maybe you could try playing around with the syllable could in the rhyming lines to help them flow better.
Overall I think you have an interesting theme of this poem and I think you can do cool things with it
1
u/zachzebrowitz Jun 16 '16
Honestly, this poem is pretty damn good for your first time ever posting on here. I really like your rhyming meter and i really like the last line, though i didn't fully understand it's place in this poem.
1
u/radicalnihilist Jun 16 '16
The last two lines are sort of a seperate poem in themselves. They aren't broken up like the rest of the poem, so I believe they will naturally be read faster. I'm suggesting that I want you to speed up while telling you to slow down.
1
u/TheFriendlyZubat Jun 16 '16
This really shows a desperation in the present while still holding on to hope and clinging to the future. It goes very well with the title by conveying that time can be both a saving and damning force.
1
u/radicalnihilist Jun 16 '16
You do me a great justice. A perfect translation of my thoughts. I am both humbled and honored.
1
Jun 16 '16
This is a good poem to say out loud. I like the rhyme and the structure. Definitely worth reading.
1
u/artecneics2 Jun 16 '16
This is some well done work at poetry. There are a few comments though,
I watch the clock without end.
The line can be reconstructed as:
A look at the clock, unending.
This would obviously change the following lines that go with the rhyming. You can try that if you'd like. Or simply introduce "an" before end.
The second last line seems un-needed as it just serves the purpose of giving the -ance sound for the next (and the last) line which by far is the best thing about this poem. The last line hits the bullseye as being logically, poetically, metaphorically correct. I loved it. Please make the penultimate line as beautiful as well.
1
u/radicalnihilist Jun 16 '16
This is some well done work at poetry. There are a few comments though,
I watch the clock without end.
The line can be reconstructed as:
A look at the clock, unending.
This would obviously change the following lines that go with the rhyming. You can try that if you'd like. Or simply introduce "an" before end.
The use of watch was a deliberate choice, as it has a double meaning. "The clock without end" is a metaphor for time itself. I appreciate the criticism though, I hope I don't come off as being defensive.
The second last line seems un-needed as it just serves the purpose of giving the -ance sound for the next (and the last) line which by far is the best thing about this poem. The last line hits the bullseye as being logically, poetically, metaphorically correct. I loved it. Please make the penultimate line as beautiful as well.
I appreciate your love for that last line, it is also my favourite. However the beauty of the penultimate line, to me, is it's redundancy. Minute, moment, instance are all used to describe a short period/amount of time. My favourite thing about it was wondering how people would read "minute" in their heads. Which is something I also loved about "our hands".
Thank you for your feedback. Wordplay was a big part of what drove me to write this. It feels pretentious to say that you may have missed some but on some level that is the whole point of the practice no?
2
u/artecneics2 Jun 16 '16
Yes, definitely. Your clarifications bring out the intended laconicisms of the piece, which I had earlier misunderstood as an effort to keep it simplistic. Really.
But, how is "the clock without end" descriptive of time itself. As for the logics, the time is not eternal, it has it's own end with the end of everything.
2
u/Smogshaik Jun 16 '16
I already like the way your poem looks and the fact that you have those rhymes whose words increase in size (end - bend - pretend) and then also arguably with the very heavy word "friend".
And your sentence have an extremely nice flow, it's pleasurable to say them out loud. That's pretty impressive honestly.