6 comments by 2 or more people

1. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, you’re just making a common mistake.

   What’s essentially wrong with this poem is that you are “telling” us stuff. Readers don’t like to be told stuff, they want to be “showed” stuff. Because you are just telling us stuff, it is uninteresting. I’d suggest you try writing about an object, or a scene. It will tell us a lot more interesting stuff about yourself than the long list of cliches you’ve just posted.

   As it stands this can’t be called a poem. It’s not “doing” anything and it’s too self involved.

   25 Oct 2007, 18:45

2. George Ttoouli

   Hi Kristen,

   You seem to have a few ideas here that point towards poems (or stories) I think you should pursue. Such as:
   - about someone hugging a computer
   - about the waves/beaches (no need to say you miss them, make it detailed enough and that will come through, like Claire says)
   - and maybe something about the culture clash, which is a recurring theme in this piece, but isn’t given enough definition – you point towards how people say hello/goodbye, food, weather. I really like the break on: “The time zones change / so much” which could be an opener for a ‘list poem’.

   26 Oct 2007, 14:59

3. I think the poem was hinting as some anxiety towards reverse culture shock too, and think that may be an interesting thing to develop, as it highlights the difference in culture, only the other way around from how we might expect :) good luck

   27 Oct 2007, 11:29

4. It’s a lonely poem indeed, but I do agree with Claire, it isn’t subtle. Still, sometimes poetry is for the writer, not for the reader.

   Good use of “intarweb” by the way – geek colloquialisms for teh win.

   And I’m afraid that Britain is only going to get greyer and colder – you really hit something quintessentially British with that line. Fear not though, we do have a summer. Of sorts. You just have to watch out for it – take a nap at the wrong time and you’ll miss it.

   30 Oct 2007, 13:34

5. I’m gonna have to disagree with Claire here. I think this does qualify as poetry, though it’s clearly not to everyone’s tastes. But the difference between showing and telling is inflated (on a purely semantic point, could one not argue that the poem is ‘showing’ or depicting an emotional state?) – after all, if poetry and art is supposed to be purely mimetic, where does that leave conceptual art or poetry? Subtlety isn’t always desirable, because subtlety and tact can leave room for ambiguity, which isn’t always desirable. Certainly the idea of poetry as a purely descriptive medium I find quite limited, even galling. I would also disagree with such a blanket statement as ‘it’s not doing anything’. It certainly did something for me, and the others have pointed out bits that they did connect with, which is not to say it couldn’t bear some polishing. But I like the almost haiku-like/comic panel style aesthetic of it, where each line contains just a single compact thought or emotion, or even half of one (which you complete through the enjambement). ‘I lose either way’ certainly leapt out at me, and the whole exercise reminded me slightly of Lost in Translation. Anyway, just thought I’d defend the poem’s status as a poem.

   14 Nov 2007, 00:39

6. Your first point seems to be that a poem that “shows” is purely descriptive, and mime’s nature as it were. In my experience, a poem that does its homework well will always let emotion through. It isn’t ambiguous if, again, the poem has been well crafted. Hence the agony that can go into decisions over word-choices. For me, poetry is a way of expressing the innexpressible, and a way to do that is through the concrete. The abstract, which is often a domain of the “telling” leads nowhere because it leaves the reader out in the cold. By “showing” you give the reader the tools to understand where it is you are going. Obviously, rules are made to be broken, and occasionally “telling” can be put to effective use. But to me this is only effective when it is the conscious decision of a poet surveying his toolkit, rather than the default option-tick of a first-timer. This is why i’d recommend begginers to start with the “showing” first before spreading their wings.

   15 Nov 2007, 18:19