Power-walking in Heels (critique me!)

[Mary Poppins]

You crept up on me today.
Ambushing me at work
(surprise!)
Just when my defences were down

All it took was the flick of a page
Catching a glimpse
Of your low slung walls
Your stretching gables
Your sights
Your sounds
Skylines, views,
Familiar territory -
Leaping off the page,
Conjuring up memories
Of life not all that long ago.

In this city people
Stand, eat, talk
Work, sleep standing up

They know nothing of
Filling in time, gesticulating to
All but wide open spaces
Only punctuated by the dreams and futures
I planned
In a city with
Almost nothing to build on
Except myself

Here, it’s never "that will do"
Always - "will that do?"

This city is not just what you make it
It’s already made

 

[(Wordy)]

This is great stuff!

I really wouldn't change anything, or at least not drastically, because everything is working as far as I'm concerned. My only minor gripe would be the punctuation, especially at the end of lines - this seems to lack a bit of consistency. For example:

In this city people
Stand, eat, talk
Work, sleep standing up

Should there be a comma after 'talk'?

Should all the stanzas end with some form of punctuation (full stop / question mark, etc)?

And should the penultimate line end with a comma or perhaps a semi-colon?

I know this is probably sounding a bit anal(!), but I'm often surprised how much (lack of) punctuation can interrupt the flow of a piece, and determine how it is read.

 

[m4dd0g]

I liked it!

I would like to hear your feelings expressed bouncing off the observations of the things that have meaning

 

[up all night]

We built this city on rock and roll.

(How's that for a critique :D)

Cool work, Pea.

 

[Raz]

They know nothing of
Filling in time, gesticulating to
All but wide open spaces
Only punctuated by the dreams and futures
I planned
In a city with
Almost nothing to build on
Except myself

I liked this section the most, I think because I could hear it most clearly as a spoken word piece...it's the way it's not broken up into traditional line structure..

 

[EntrenchdMentalist]

I'm often surprised how much (lack of) punctuation can interrupt the flow of a piece, and determine how it is read.

I'm still only feeling my way with poetry, and I definitely find punctuation to be one of the difficult parts. After I have my words out there and in the order I choose. Often the stuff I write is so illogical, seemingly senseless, that there is multiple meaning possible within phrases that overlap, and by over/under punctuating I can detract from that, which I don't like to do. It's a toughie.


I really liked this. It got better as it went on.

 

[(Wordy)]

Yeah I think with this poem it's no biggie, but if it was to be submitted for publication (which is probably a good idea in this case ) then it's something that needs to be looked at. In my experience, some editors will fix loose punctuation if they feel like it, but some won't feel like it, and will move on to the next submission!

Having said that, loose punctuation has its place, as does eschewing punctuation altogether. It depends on the piece. With your stuff EM, like you say there are often overlapping / multiple meanings battling it out - and this means adding a comma can potentially shift the whole thing off its axis! Therefore "under-punctuating" is probably the better approach, in a sense leaving it up to the reader to punctuate. And that's how punctuation originated anyway. Early manuscripts were a continuous stream of words, with readers marking punctuation after the fact, thereby breaking the text into chunks in order to interpret it! It's only really with the printing press that punctuation became a standard feature of "Western" languages.

</tangent>

 

[lostNfound]

trying to fit into a city already mapped out.
i like this.