What a huge success man had recorded
In mastering the material world
A success achieved at the expense of failure!
The failure of man to disciplione himself
On the moral and spiritual planes

Indeed founded is Western Civilisation
On a materialistic philosophy of life
Which like a vanquished soccer coach at his boys
Frowns upon all that is spiritual
And against all moral and spiritual values revolt

Like as a prayer warrior in supplication
So had man become engrossed
In this materialistic world
Of disillusionment and frustration
Of many problems by man caused

The pursuit of carnal pleasures
And the gratificatification of his sensual desires
Are what man had made his goals in life
Totally had he forsaken the spirituals
And the morals he had eschewed

Man's existence may now be likened
To that of a rudderless ship
Drifting aimlessly in a vast and stormy sea
The sea of the unknown

Hi fellow Nairalanders,pls post your comment on this poem, so that I'll know how really good I am in the art of poetry. Thanks.

Hi fellow Nairalanders,pls post your comment on this poem, so that I'll know how really good I am in the art of poetry. Thanks.

For a "budding" poet, you do try too hard to preach. And this I see in your work, shorn of the much-needed conviction that impresses beyond much words or begging. What are you beyond what you have read from books or heard from people (pastors, parents, priests etc)? I believe in poetry that stems from a conviction. Write what you feel. For a start, you might enjoy the flow of your pen as it aimlessly tries to make sense, but don't let it carry you farther than your thoughts can reach. Look below:

Basic:

What a huge success man had recorded
In mastering the material world
A success achieved at the expense of failure!
The failure of man to disciplione himself
On the moral and spiritual planes

Here your thoughts are a little clear, but not original. Even clumsy when you say "A success achieved at the expense of failure". What does that really mean? Then in the next line you go on to misspell one word that should matter most to you. All what you intended to say in five lines you probably could have said as "Man, to change the world, has often failed to change himself"

Let's go on:

Basic:

Indeed founded is Western Civilisation
On a materialistic philosophy of life
Which like a vanquished soccer coach at his boys
Frowns upon all that is spiritual
And against all moral and spiritual values revolt

What I suspect you wanted to say here was "The West spits on all we hold hallowed", or something along the line. Sometimes for a good poet, less (words) is always more, and preferred.

Next verse:

Basic:

Like as a prayer warrior in supplication
So had man become engrossed
In this materialistic world
Of disillusionment and frustration
Of many problems by man caused

I'll say "Like in a trance, man rolls in the mire of waste his own hands have wrought"

You went on:

Basic:

The pursuit of carnal pleasures
And the gratificatification of his sensual desires
Are what man had made his goals in life
Totally had he forsaken the spirituals
And the morals he had eschewed

Here again you try to make a simple morality case with the most unnecessarily skewed set of sentences. For now, I will not ask you why you so make these didactic spats, but why didn't you just say - to continue from my last suggestion - "he now runs to lick the lust of his rebel heart"

Writing in passive sentences as in "as the morals he had eschewed" does not often help either. (Don't mind that I have done the same here )

The best part of the poem undoubtedly is as follows:

Basic:

Man's existence may now be likened
To that of a rudderless ship
Drifting aimlessly in a vast and stormy sea
The sea of the unknown

Only that it could also be re-said, perhaps as: "He floats, drifts, now on a vast stormy sea of the unknown"

From the above, you would see that I only tried to make you write with better accuracy. Say only the words that matter. Leave ostentation for the empty. It doesn't matter whether your poem is short, or little. What matters is that you have said what you feel needs to be said. Leave the rest to the critics.

Listen to J.P.Clark in his poem titled Ibadan:

Running
splash of rust and gold
flung and scattered
among seven hills
Like broken china in the sun.

Soyinka's book of the same title is 397 pages long, and not necessarily a better authority on the city than that poem of just eighteen words!

I hope this helps for now. I'd be back.

Gwatala,I really appreciate the fact that you took your precious time to critique my work. Thank you very much for the analysis. I now know my weak points-thanks to one of my role models,Gwatala. I'll be glad if you could still take your time to comment on my other poems. I'm very okay by your comments even if no other person leaves comments. As for this poem,I'll rewrite it and show it to you again. I'm also looking forward to knowing you better. Pls give me your email address. I really like your poems and I wish I could write like you. Pls give me the tips I need to do so. Thanks once again,Gwatala.

Gwatala,I really appreciate the fact that you took your precious time to critique my work. Thank you very much for the analysis. I now know my weak points-thanks to one of my role models,Gwatala. I'll be glad if you could still take your time to comment on my other poems. I'm very okay by your comments even if no other person leaves comments. As for this poem,I'll rewrite it and show it to you again. I'm also looking forward to knowing you better. Pls give me your email address. I really like your poems and I wish I could write like you. Pls give me the tips I need to do so. Thanks once again,Gwatala.

Ok buddy, but listen again,

Being a poet may not really be as "cool" as you might think it is. The first lesson you would have to learn is to believe foremost in yourself. Then it won't matter what people say, and you would not have to beg for their attention.

So cool down buddy with the "knowing you better" stuff. We're cool like this. Don't make posts twice just to make a point. It will be read even if it is a line, as long as it is important.

Just listen. Read other people's work. Read books. Read about tips on how to write better. Learn from them but you do not necessarily have to write like them. Write like you feel, but write well.

A CORRECTION

When I corrected about passive sentences earlier, I must have meant your usage of "reversed" sentences. You seemed to have preferred reversed sentences instead of straight ones.

The following was offered as correction by a friend:

A_Friend:



The Passive Voice in English.
In the "normal," active voice, the subject of the sentence acts upon an object: She snubs him.

Both German and English offer an alternative verb structure, the passive voice, in which the subject of the sentence receives the action: He is snubbed by her. To transform the active to the passive, we turn the direct object "him" into the grammatical subject "he" and place it in the customary first position. The active verb, "snubs," becomes the past participle ("snubbed", and "to be" is inserted as the auxiliary verb: thus She snubs him becomes He is snubbed.

(Colloquial English sometimes uses "to get" as the auxiliary verb, as in: "He gets snubbed all the time."

One purpose of the passive voice is avoid identifying the active subject - "Mistakes were made" - but if we do want to retain that information, we put it into a prepositional phrase: He is snubbed by her.

The passive sentence's tenses are achieved through manipulation of the auxiliary verb:

He was snubbed. He is being snubbed. He had been snubbed. He will be snubbed. Etc.
  http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/Passive/Passiv.html

Regards.

Gwatala, thank you very much for the well-explained correction. I highly appreciate it. Please help me critique my other poems too. Thank you very much Gwatala.

BACK TO THE POEM

Final Words, if these were to be your edited lines, what would we do to them to give them better appearance? We may rhyme? And we may re-edit. Let's see how to do both. Then I will be off.

Man, to change the world, has often failed to change himself
The West spits on all we hold hallowed
Like in a trance, man rolls in the mire of waste his own hands have wrought
he now runs to lick the lust of his rebel heart
He floats, drifts, now on a vast stormy sea of the unknown


A five lined poem that follows a pattern could be a  limerick, or a cinquain, depending on the content. Now let us imagine that we want to write a Cinquain, like that one in Wikipedia by Robert Browning, following the ababb rhyming scheme, and using your poem as specimen. We could have the following:

Man, to change the world, has failed to change himself
The West he blames who spits on him with fangs wide apart.
Like in a trance, he rolls in his mire of waste like a drunken elf,
and he runs with glee to lick the lust of his rebel heart
He floats, drifts, now on a vast stormy sea from where he can't depart.

Now we have rhymes - ababb. Himself/elf, apart/heart/depart. Read about rhyming schemes on Wikipedia/Rhymes).

We have just turned your long tirade against man into a cinquain of some beauty. It can get better - and I leave that to you - but see what we have, short, and showing of some hardwork to the craft of poetry.

You want to write good poetry, the first step is to start. And to work hard.

(For a starter, check this article at Wikipedia on Poetry. Get some other books, and read them. You will need all the information on the way people have written over the years. Read all the links. Becoming a good writer will not take a day, but a journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with the first step )

Hope I've helped. Be well.

Infact,you've really helped. Gwatala,you are wonderful. Thank you very much. I shall work further on the poem.

Infact,you've really helped. Gwatala,you are wonderful. Thank you very much. I shall work further on the poem.

Infact,you've really helped. Gwatala,you are wonderful. Thank you very much. I shall work further on the poem.

Hi Basic, I am using your poem on my blog, for teaching/information purposes. I hope you don't mind.

Be well.

Mr. Basic,

I read your poem and I somewhat agree with what has been said. Your name reminds me of something that my Literature professor told me all the time. K>I>S>S> keep it simple sweetie. the reason being was that I too I had a tendency to be longwinded and redundant. To overcome this, I write my poems then I read them to myself. If I see that there are changes to be made, then I make them.

The thing about poetic expressions is that it can be a soulful expression. This can be overwhelming when writing. Zeal and passion can be misinterpreted as ostentation. It is better to allow inspiration to get you started then use logic to organize your thoughts so that others can understand your work. I felt your words and the passion of the poem but I didn't quite understand it.

As far as what kind of poet you are, only you can determine that. Others may not see or may not acknowledge the truth of what you possess talent-wise. Stop kneeling down to Mr. Gwatala. He is not God. He can only give you the points of view and/or poetic structures that he learned from his studies while not completely following these rules himself. Haven't you heard that teachers can only teach what they have been taught. The people who we learn from and/or about in literature are the people who created a format for everyone else to follow. You can either be someone's stool pigeon or be a trendsetter. Where is your backbone? Where is your fire? Greatness is something that is first recognized by you. Once you know that you are great, it will show. It won't come from begging someone to trash your work. You have common sense. Is this poem good? Did you like it? Do you need to edit it?
Take advice from others but always follow YOUR heart. Be great in your own way, not mine, not Mr. Gwatala's. With all due respect, I like your work.

All good stuff above.

I would have passed on commenting but since there was something else, I'll add.

I've read you works, they're great.

Like is said above, poems should have soul, but not all poems need soul. For instance, if you were to write about a man you shot, I wouldn't think you'd need too much soul to express that. Like Gwatala recomended, try getting poems from old and read em up. Of course some you'll understand, some others you wont. But read them anyways just to see what they wrote about and have an idea how much "soul" and wording you would need for a poem you'd write with similar topic. Poems written in those times (15-1800's) that you read today have been critically acclaimed; funny as it may be, many of those writings aren't the easiest to fully decipher, as they're best known to the author.

Poetry is multi-faced. Not every poem is actual, some are fictitious. write on.

One more thing.

Basic,
The fact that your poems are not commented on by fellow "poets" doesn't mean that the poem isn't good. Nowadays, people approach poetry with notions that every piece has a moral to it. So more or less, people want to be told what they wish to hear; sometimes they reserve good comments for only tear-jerking romance pieces. Sometimes or even most times, only good poets know the value of a good piece. But the flip-side to this coin is that everyone is opinionated; in other words, even poets have their different standards. Some see good-rhyming and rythm as masterpieces, some others love being lost in a poets fantasy world, someone else might love poems with the least words possible, saying the most.

The truth is, as chi said, you be your best judge. Another thing is, the nature of your poems should depend on your audience. Some published poems are written for personal use, sometimes not for a specific audience. If you write for yourself, then you ask yourself: does BASIC like this? If you're writting for me, then you can ask me if I like it; and if you really want to kiss my foot, then you can plan on going out of your way to please me; If you wont, then what I say wont matter much. Not everyone must like your poems.

                     you choose: I left only 2 cents.