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OK, so apparently (as I found out just today) I am subbing for someone at a speech and debate tournament taking place this coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This guy was doing an event called Original Poetry. It's pretty self-explanatory, but it involves the competitor writing a poem at least 70 lines long, memorizing it and then performing/reciting it. It's pretty much judged on how much of an impact it has, whether its humorous or dramatic. This means I get to write a poem! Now, I pretty much never write poems, so it's pretty shaky ground for me. That's why I'm posting what I wrote here for suggestions!

I wrote this poem in the viewpoint of an Aztec child (now grown up) who survived the Spanish Acquisition of the Aztec empire in the early 16th century.

It's pretty free verse, in that the rhyming/parametric/stanza structure varies with the tone. I have no problem performing this poem dramatically (I've done Dramatic Interpretation several times before), but I was just wondering if I could anything to improve this poem.

Also, if you by any chance like this poem, please let me know! Kthx.


For All Time


And as the winds slowly die
The gaping wound remains
For our heartland’s pride
Shall never be the same

A desolate earth
A cold land torn asunder
Is but a burial ground
For those slain to the thunder

And I remember the men
And their inscrutable features;
They rode with long wooden sticks
On vast four legged creatures.

Such an alien sight!
What a remarkable day!
Sadly, we knew not
Of the lives they would slay.

We offered them treasures
Precious gifts from our fathers;
The accepted with avarice
But went on with the slaughter.

We believed we made peace
With the strange, pale folk
But once we lay down to dream
Some of us never awoke

And the flashes were loud
And the ground shook violently!
Our barren temples crumbled!
And lay shattered silently.

And those not yet slain
Ran frantically about!
Praying for a salvation
They would long be without.

And the noise was deafening!
The violent flashes blinding!
We ran senselessly amidst the chaos
Scurrying among the dying!

Tears streamed down my cheek
As I call for my mother
But I gazed at my surroundings
And could see no others.

I scream, but no sound escapes me!
I try to run, but my legs fail me!

I cannot move, yet I cannot rest!
O, will Death clasp me in his cold breast?

I am but a child! I cannot die!
It’s not my time to be one with sky!

O mother, o father, where have you gone?!
Please make me safe! Comfort me with your song!

Please, make haste! I hear them draw near!
O, God, if you’re there, please make me disappear…



A loud noise.



A flash.



Silence.


And to this very day
Every bitter sunrise
Is but a forlorn torch, shedding
light upon our demise.

All that remained were feeble cries
Emanating from the young
Whose songs of hope and wonderment
Will forever remain unsung

A destitute young girl
Lays asleep in the snow
Dreaming of a mother
She’ll never again know

And now I only wish
That we had put up a fight!
To retain what he had
And avoid such a blight

But wishes are futile
Our bitter past endures
But why must it have happened?
I am still unsure.

And here I remain seated
Upon this citadel of stone
Looking out upon the sky
Gazing into the unknown…

…Father, I still hear your voice
Within each passing storm
You still resonate with all the power
And glory of the Gods above

Mother, I feel your caress even now
Lovingly present in the wind
And I realize now, mother,
That you’ll always care of me…

But the day fate brought your ruin
Will be a day forever accursed
And I promise to you both
When the sorrow inside me is nursed

The infernal intruders will face the doom
Which they themselves have brought
For they sought upon us terrible affliction
A passion in which they have wrought

But my wrath will take its course -
The sinful emotion that more often hinders -
Will turn their raging inferno of power
Into nothing more than mere cinders.


They will feel the burn of bereavement
The bitter taste of mortification
The uncompromising scent of atrophy
And the deafening sound of desperation

The choice was theirs and theirs alone
Their fate was forever reaped and sown

And If I succeed, all of our tarnished souls will be avenged
And if I fail, we shall reunite in the glorious light
At the end of the world,
For all time.

Surprisingly, that's really good.

Thanks! I think.

Wow, that was really good.

The only thing that bothered me was the change in tone near the end. It went from feeling sad to very vengeful. Just felt the slightest bit wrong.


Of course, I don't like to say that anything is perfect, so I'm nitpicking.

Rhyming makes poems read so smootly. ^_^

thats pretty pantsless awesome.

Impressive.

Why do you have to be good at everything you do >:(

Wow, that was really good. :shock:
The only thing that bothered me was the change in tone near the end. It went from feeling sad to very vengeful. Just felt the slightest bit wrong.

I was a little shoddy on that too, at first, but it's a good effect when you're performing it. It allows the presenter to show a wider range of emotions than if it was just sad all the way through, etc.

....Wow..... All kinds of awesome there, Angela. Stamp of win.

Just really one thing that I saw, I think if you replaced the word "avarice" with it's synonym, "greed", it would flow a little better, also "They" is spelled wrong:

We offered them treasures
Precious gifts from our fathers;
They accepted with greed
But went on with the slaughter.

Oh yeah, and this line should totally be in a song:

They will feel the burn of bereavement
The bitter taste of mortification
The uncompromising scent of atrophy
And the deafening sound of desperation

It distresses me to say that your poem is incredibly excellent Angela B)

Whoa...that's some powerful stuff. Very nice. Can't say too much about it cuase me and poetry usually aren't on the best of terms....i.e. I'm not a poet.

To be caught in the rhyme
To be caught in the verse,
Is there no way to express?
The countless good and varying traits
That this poem doth equate?
So from one poet to another
Let me say this, ANOTHER! ANOTHER!
I tip my hat, and present my arms;
A job well done...this poem was GREAT!

English Teacher Alert!!



In terms of imagery, structure and linguistic devices this poem is, unfortunately, somewhat bland. I feel, when reading it, that I've read it already. In other words - it's predictable and if you're looking to create an impact, predictability is a disaster.

I'm not a fan of the assonance in this poem. It creates a self-contradictory feel that interrupts the flow of the lines, especially in the cases where you've aimed to include some enjambment.

There are places where you've seemingly seriously compromised the writing for the sake of forcing a rhyme: ("Sadly, we knew not/Of the lives they would slay.").

The contrived and clichéd imagery (especially in the first verse) puts me right off this and I'd wager that the judges, who will be listening to a LOT of poetry that day, will feel the same.

****

My Advice:

1. Contemporise the language. It feels stilted and false right now and that isn't working. The whole "Oh, egads, what for the doom that befalls!" doesn't come across as authentic - it comes across as hackneyed. Contemporary language is much more powerful when spoken.

2. Lose the overblown imagery or at least aim for originality of expression.

3. Think about the metre of the poem. There are some places where reading it is like driving over a bumpy road. You want it to flow, especially if you're intending the "Loud noise. Flash. Silence" bit to have any impact whatsoever. Those words have to be the speedbumps on an otherwise smooth road.


****

Hopefully that's of use to you.

English teacher I am not, but I feel I must still write a reply that includes some detail... because I know you love details, and all of the "teh pome roxxx" responses probably didn't mean that much to you.

That being said, it feels like this poem is using a lot of words to not say very much. The entire first act is basically just "death death death", restated in varied forms. Plus the first act jumps around in time a bit much... it's difficult to tell when a flashback ends and the present begins. Sometimes it even happens within a single stanza.

For the sake of an example, here is a song by Harry Chapin, which expresses very similar ideas (not identical! but similar), but with very few words.

I am born today, the sun burns its promise in my eyes;
Mama strikes me and I draw a breath and cry.
Above me a cloud softly tumbles through the sky;
I am glad to be alive.

It is my seventh day, I taste the hunger and I cry;
my brother and sister cling to Mama's side.
She squeezes her breast, but it has nothing to provide;
someone weeps, I fall asleep.

It is twenty days today, Mama does not hold me anymore;
I open my mouth but I am too weak to cry.
Above me a bird slowly crawls across the sky;
why is there nothing now to do but die?

My advice, therefore:

1) Be less repetitive in your imagery. You have seventy lines; use them to go into vivid detail, or to describe multiple different scenes, etc.

2) Try to be careful with the temporal shifts.

Wow, the last two posts totally killed my poem. But that's okay - I posted for criticism, not ego-boosting "omg you r0xx0r".

I know I was being a bit bland on some parts - especially towards the beginning. I wasn't really feeling anything at the beginning - I was writing purely because I had to get a poem together and memorize it in three days. That being said, as of now, I don't have any time to really alter this poem at all now, given that I'm doing four other events at this tournament that I also need to practice four. So it will have to stay as it is right now - I shall depend upon my performing abilities to carry me through this. Well, I'll probably change the "Loud noise. Flash. Silence" transition since, upon rehearsing, it came out a lot lamer than I thought it would.

Again, I am hardly a poet, or much of writer - that's why I posted this here. I'll definitely take these thoughts into consideration should I continue writing, though. The last two posts have taught that my biggest problems are

1. Overblown language/imagery
2. Repetitiveness
3. Sketchy transitions (although, this won't be a problem when actually performing. To be honest, I wrote this poem thinking more along the lines of how it could be performed rather than its actual literary merit.)

All will be taken into account.