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brian madden
Member Elite

since 2000-05-06

Posts 4374
ireland

0 posted 2000-05-06 08:00 PM

Hello all, I am new on this site. I have being writing poetry for 5 years now, I have gained enough confidence to want to get a book of my poems published I have a manuscript of about 40 poems. I am wondering if anyone has any advice for me on how to approach this. Are my poems print worthy or should I wait and hone my craft for a few years longer? here is one of my poems, it is a good example of my poetry style.

The comfort of nothing

I have not yet had visions
worth expressing, through these tired eyes;
whiskey bruised and diluted,
staring solitarily outwards.
My hands are bound to skin,
choked in filth and stained in absolution.
I can not be touched hiding
under pain of glass
as my pulse fades to a faint tremble.

I have not yet had a comfort
worth seducing, held without emotion;
broken and dimly eternal,
into a splintering passive stupor.
My body seeks the unconfined exposure
of a harvest field, stripped barren,
to stand against the comatose sky shielded
in cumulus; the face of God camouflaged within
is seen only in reflections and blindness.

I numb myself in the refuge
of alcohol, life kisses sweetly
from its obscured vantage;
warmth is its loving illusion.
I see in dislocated rivers
of self-examination the boy
who lusts the strains of man;
public expectation demands non-emotive strength
not this child clinging to the threads of fragility.

I have not yet had peace
worth tasting, a shrinking soul
reflecting man as adolescence
tied to the corsets of femininity;
as a frozen petal of alkaline beauty.
Yet the body corrodes and breasts ache
from the ravages of childbirth;
a constant taunt of the price
of my existence, of nature's fragile balance.

I have not yet had serenity
or self worth, at my most delicate
I curl up to suppress pain,
to suffocate life
I strangle my skin afraid of falling apart,
under this shadow blanket of tranquillising snow.
I am without desire; drained to purity
preserved in an undying coma,where all
I ever needed was the soothing comfort of nothing

Elyse
Member

since 2000-04-16

Posts 414
Apex (think raleigh) NC

1 posted 2000-05-06 11:54 PM

hi brian! some of these images are really nice, but i think maybe overall its a little over-thick with adjectives. but i would definitely submit your stuff to publishers, it seems of decent quality, and things like poetry are so subjective, you should at least try. oh, and welcome to passions

luv Elyse

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then . . . . I contradict myself;
I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.
-Papa Walt

bboog
Member

since 2000-02-29

Posts 303
Valencia, California

2 posted 2000-05-07 05:37 PM

Brian~
I think you should work first on developing a central image and then moving on from it, instead of just "telling". For example, an image that came to my mind when reading this poem was that of a salmon swimming upstream, leaping up out of the water, getting tossed back down by the swift current. Boys with nets and men with hooks on the shoreline trying to get it, perhaps?
Don't know if this helps you.
Good luck with it.
bboog

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