A Lifted Life of Leisure

[YaMarVa]

Poem IX

A lifted life of leisure
I walk with you in ways
I never could have imagined
While toiling those dusted plains.

We sought, heft hard
To pass our tide,
Often falling short.
The good lord takes his due
In vengeance,
Through nature’s dyer part.

The farmland that we claimed
Infested stock did not sustain
To quell our hungry hearts
Or bleed our restless souls.
As passions of the past
Are buried
In the bowels of cemetery graves.
In defense of man,
The land was heaven sent.

Yet,
Had I foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?
But now I stand
A leisure man of means
Bred up by coarse poverished hands
It is what exhaled me.

Not given to the dandy,
Or Shirley Temple girls
Stoic laborers, we gave our chance
That wilted world we weaned.

The grand city-scape
Our venture called
With a chance we could redeem.
Not by happenstance,
Our skills stood strong
To serve to building masses.
Poring foundations of concrete
Lapsed our family from entrapment;

The dusted fields I jest upon
Wafts my past away.
A lifted life of Lesure,
How I pass my time
Today.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

Your poem uses language that is too abstract at times. Try swopping some of the archaic words for more common ones - is 'happenstance' really needed? Coincidence has the same meaning.

I like your extended metaphor regarding religion - I think it works very well to uphold a traditional feel to your poem.

[YaMarVa]

Your poem uses language that is too abstract at times. Try swopping some of the archaic words for more common ones - is 'happenstance' really needed? Coincidence has the same meaning.

I like your extended metaphor regarding religion - I think it works very well to uphold a traditional feel to your poem.

Thanks for reading my poem and giving feedback, I take it in stride...

I believe happenstance is neither archaic nor abstract. I am also not sure what other words used in my poem are, as the above words generally exist in our generation’s literature and lexicon. Will you please point them out for me as I seek honest review? Thanks.

Also, this poem is about the 1920s and my word choice subtly might have attempted to reflect those days.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

It might just be my small vocabulary (or that I live in England and have never seen the world happenstance before). It isn't necessarily that they are archaic words, they're good - but you can have too much of a good thing, and I think you do.

Toiling, stoic, etc - it's good you know the meaning and can use them, but you can't make a cake with only butter. I'd just swop a few for simpler things to build a bit of a better flow and understanding, and then throw in more formal words like that.

[YaMarVa]

It might just be my small vocabulary (or that I live in England and have never seen the world happenstance before). It isn't necessarily that they are archaic words, they're good - but you can have too much of a good thing, and I think you do.

Toiling, stoic, etc - it's good you know the meaning and can use them, but you can't make a cake with only butter. I'd just swop a few for simpler things to build a bit of a better flow and understanding, and then throw in more formal words like that.

I believe I understand your critique of word choice, and have noted them in my editing pages.

"Toiling, stoic, etc - it's good you know the meaning and can use them, but you can't make a cake with only butter."
Wouldn’t using only butter to bake a cake be like using the same, simple, words? Not a diverse field of descriptive words? I feel descriptive and precise word choice is like using wheat flower or goat's milk to give more depth the the cake's taste.

In attempting to be concise, I aimed to use words that would pin-point the exactness of significance and description I desire to convey in my poem.

Toiling – hard, exhaustive labor in weariness or pain; close to the point of futility. Generally applied to the lower classes as its origin comes from the 1200’s when this type labor was only done by the lower classes.

Stoic - a person who maintains or affects the mental attitude advocated by the Stoics; unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity.


These both display the exact point I am attempting to convey without being too wordy.
Are you suggesting that instead of using large-umbrella words to make my point (toiling - the hard working, painful, low class laborer), I should build up these meanings by describing the hard work and pain of this low-class laborer with more plain language?


I should also note that as an American Romantic my poems, and general writing, is geared towards my audience; my nation’s compatriots and contemporaries.

Thanks for taking part in my editing, and poetry learning, process. This is a fun exercise.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

My analogy is attempting to explain that you need a good mix of everything to make a good cake - a mix of simple sentences and more longer, complex clauses to add variety.

I understand the meaning of those words, that isn't the problem. It is that it is a drudge to get through your poem while you have to think about it. I'm not of the background where toiling and stoic is a common everyday word, and so I had to pause and think about the context of what is going on. Any flow you have built up then stops.

I should build up these meanings by describing the hard work and pain of this low-class laborer with more plain language?

Exactly - not necessarily plain, but descriptive. So your stoic workers are there stoically working, but you could describe their faces as being 'unmoved by joy or grief'. You can say so much more when you don't say it.

[YaMarVa]

My analogy is attempting to explain that you need a good mix of everything to make a good cake - a mix of simple sentences and more longer, complex clauses to add variety.

I understand the meaning of those words, that isn't the problem. It is that it is a drudge to get through your poem while you have to think about it. I'm not of the background where toiling and stoic is a common everyday word, and so I had to pause and think about the context of what is going on. Any flow you have built up then stops.

I should build up these meanings by describing the hard work and pain of this low-class laborer with more plain language?

Exactly - not necessarily plain, but descriptive. So your stoic workers are there stoically working, but you could describe their faces as being 'unmoved by joy or grief'. You can say so much more when you don't say it.

Thanks for the feedback...in the spirit of poetic development on my day-off from work.

If I used "common everyday words", which I believe my poem uses a simple vocabulary of words that any native English speaker with a high school education should comprehend without drudge, then the enjoyment I find in writing poetry (taking advantage of the vast amounts of words found in the English dictionary) would be diminished for my person.

I am not against your evaluation, but it seems nit-picky to think that the use of the words "stoic" and "toiling" place a drudge in the reading of this poem. But everyone's opinion is still, just an opinion.

Then in T.S. Elliot you'd find plenty of drudges. But I enjoy him because he uses words that get strait to the ultimate meaning he is intending, without being at length; thus writing poetry and not prose.


"So your stoic workers are there stoically working, but you could describe their faces as being 'unmoved by joy or grief'. You can say so much more when you don't say it." I agree I could display these qualities through the subject’s actions and let the reader come to the conclusion they are stoic.

I take your comments with construction, and a bit of thoughtful defiance.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

I'll reiterate - it is not two words that make your poem instantly worse. I didn't give you an exhaustive list of these words - because then I'd effectively be re-writing your poem for you. It is the altogether over-description (without example actions to explain) that I find could be altered to better effect. I only say this as I believe it could enhance your poem - the whole idea of critique. If you believe any native English speaker should be able to comprehend this poem, then you haven't achieved your purpose, at least for me. As always, this is my view on it, I'm sure people will disagree or agree as they wish.

T. S. Eliot I very much enjoy, ironically because he conveys ideas through actions rather than descriptions.

[YaMarVa]

"If you believe any native English speaker should be able to comprehend this poem, then you haven't achieved your purpose, at least for me."

It is a simple poem, without hidden meaning or play on words. A god fearing family who's farm-life was changed by nature (the dust bowl) and had to move to the city, where they ultimately find success.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

I'm sure somebody will pick that up. I get about the nature and crops, that is clear enough, the rest of it - mainly the family - you might want to build on a bit more to make it clearer.

[Rose Love]

Poem IX

A lifted life of leisure
I walk with you in ways
I never could have imagined
While toiling those dusted plains.

We sought, heft hard
To pass our tide,
Often falling short.
The good lord takes his due
In vengeance,
Through nature’s dyer part.

The farmland that we claimed
Infested stock did not sustain
To quell our hungry hearts
Or bleed our restless souls.
As passions of the past
Are buried
In the bowels of cemetery graves.
In defense of man,
The land was heaven sent.

Yet,
Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?
But now I stand
A leisure man of means
Bred up by coarse poverished hands
It is what exhaled me.

Not given to the dandy,
Or Shirley Temple girls
Stoic laborers, we gave our chance
That wilted world we weaned.

The grand city-scape
Our venture called
With a chance we could redeem.
Not by happenstance,
Our skills stood strong
To serve to building masses.
Poring foundations of concrete
Lapsed our family from entrapment;

The dusted fields I jest upon
Wafts my past away.
A lifted life of Lesure,
How I pass my time
Today.

I don't mind the word choice here so much. Words exist to be used. Whether or not someone knows the definition of a word isn't really relevant. That's what we have dictionaries for. However, there seem to be several grammatical and semantic or orthographical oddities in the text.

The strangest ones being:

Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?

"I have had foreseen" is not a grammatical English construction. It is "I had foreseen," inverted "Had I foreseen..."

"Might I'd riddled..."
Now, I don't know if by "I'd" you mean "I had" or "I would," but it doesn't matter, because the formation is still strange. "I had might riddled," "I would might riddled." Or "Might I had riddled..." These are not English constructions. The proper constructions for this context are:

"Had I foreseen
such gaunt misery,
Might I have riddled these plains
Over more western land?"

Or, if written all out "If I had foreseen such gaunt misery, might I have riddled these plains over more western land?"

Now for the orthographical/semantic problems:

"dyer" - Maybe this is supposed to be "dire." I don't know what it could be otherwise, other than "one who dyes." But that doesn't work in the context.

"poverished" - Maybe this is supposed to be "impoverished." I don't even think "poverished" is a word. I couldn't find it in any online dictionary and I even looked for the alleged verb form of it, which would be "poverish."

"poring" - Maybe this is supposed to be "pouring." I don't think "poring" is a word either, unless there is some verb that has been made out of "pore."

Lastly, I don't know what "heft hard" means. I couldn't make the two words make sense together when I looked up "heft" in the dictionary. But I am not really counting this one in with the other things I listed, because I have never seen the word "heft" before and I'm not familiar with how it is to be used in context.

[milo]

Poem IX

A lifted life of leisure
I walk with you in ways
I never could have imagined
While toiling those dusted plains.

We sought, heft hard
To pass our tide,
Often falling short.
The good lord takes his due
In vengeance,
Through nature’s dyer part.

The farmland that we claimed
Infested stock did not sustain
To quell our hungry hearts
Or bleed our restless souls.
As passions of the past
Are buried
In the bowels of cemetery graves.
In defense of man,
The land was heaven sent.

Yet,
Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?
But now I stand
A leisure man of means
Bred up by coarse poverished hands
It is what exhaled me.

Not given to the dandy,
Or Shirley Temple girls
Stoic laborers, we gave our chance
That wilted world we weaned.

The grand city-scape
Our venture called
With a chance we could redeem.
Not by happenstance,
Our skills stood strong
To serve to building masses.
Poring foundations of concrete
Lapsed our family from entrapment;

The dusted fields I jest upon
Wafts my past away.
A lifted life of Lesure,
How I pass my time
Today.

I don't mind the word choice here so much. Words exist to be used. Whether or not someone knows the definition of a word isn't really relevant. That's what we have dictionaries for. However, there seem to be several grammatical and semantic or orthographical oddities in the text.

The strangest ones being:

Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?

"I have had foreseen" is not a grammatical English construction. It is "I had foreseen," inverted "Had I foreseen..."

"Might I'd riddled..."
Now, I don't know if by "I'd" you mean "I had" or "I would," but it doesn't matter, because the formation is still strange. "I had might riddled," "I would might riddled." Or "Might I had riddled..." These are not English constructions. The proper constructions for this context are:

"Had I foreseen
such gaunt misery,
Might I have riddled these plains
Over more western land?"

Or, if written all out "If I had foreseen such gaunt misery, might I have riddled these plains over more western land?"

Now for the orthographical/semantic problems:

"dyer" - Maybe this is supposed to be "dire." I don't know what it could be otherwise, other than "one who dyes." But that doesn't work in the context.

"poverished" - Maybe this is supposed to be "impoverished." I don't even think "poverished" is a word. I couldn't find it in any online dictionary and I even looked for the alleged verb form of it, which would be "poverish."

"poring" - Maybe this is supposed to be "pouring." I don't think "poring" is a word either, unless there is some verb that has been made out of "pore."

Lastly, I don't know what "heft hard" means. I couldn't make the two words make sense together when I looked up "heft" in the dictionary. But I am not really counting this one in with the other things I listed, because I have never seen the word "heft" before and I'm not familiar with how it is to be used in context.

It reads almost like a google translation from another language which could be the reason for the odd grammatical constructs as well as the interesting word choices. Heft is pretty common - like heave and lift but makes no sense at all in the current usage. Poring is also pretty common for studying the written word but here it should almost definitely be "pouring"

[YaMarVa]

I'm sure somebody will pick that up. I get about the nature and crops, that is clear enough, the rest of it - mainly the family - you might want to build on a bit more to make it clearer.

I tend to agree, I think I need to be clearer about the family and the varied agricultural conditions brought on by man in the early 20th century.
I think a second stanza, or splitting the current 2nd one, would be a good place to interject these topics?
Fortunately, I believe we are both correct about T.S., as both his descriptive word choice and displays of action are the reason I rank him in the high echelons of poetry.
Thanks for the reposed back and forth today, I appreciate your positive criticisms and allowing me to fine comb them as I am going to edit and move on to another poem.

[UnicornRainbowCake]

My pleasure, I prefer someone who responds to critique with questions - makes it all the better to respond to

Your first stanza is quite misleading. It almost reads like a love poem to a woman - perhaps there is where to introduce the idea of a family.

[YaMarVa]

Poem IX

A lifted life of leisure
I walk with you in ways
I never could have imagined
While toiling those dusted plains.

We sought, heft hard
To pass our tide,
Often falling short.
The good lord takes his due
In vengeance,
Through nature’s dyer part.

The farmland that we claimed
Infested stock did not sustain
To quell our hungry hearts
Or bleed our restless souls.
As passions of the past
Are buried
In the bowels of cemetery graves.
In defense of man,
The land was heaven sent.

Yet,
Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?
But now I stand
A leisure man of means
Bred up by coarse poverished hands
It is what exhaled me.

Not given to the dandy,
Or Shirley Temple girls
Stoic laborers, we gave our chance
That wilted world we weaned.

The grand city-scape
Our venture called
With a chance we could redeem.
Not by happenstance,
Our skills stood strong
To serve to building masses.
Poring foundations of concrete
Lapsed our family from entrapment;

The dusted fields I jest upon
Wafts my past away.
A lifted life of Lesure,
How I pass my time
Today.

I don't mind the word choice here so much. Words exist to be used. Whether or not someone knows the definition of a word isn't really relevant. That's what we have dictionaries for. However, there seem to be several grammatical and semantic or orthographical oddities in the text.

The strangest ones being:

Had I have foreseen
Such gaunt misery,
Might I'd riddled these plains
Over more western land?

"I have had foreseen" is not a grammatical English construction. It is "I had foreseen," inverted "Had I foreseen..."

"Might I'd riddled..."
Now, I don't know if by "I'd" you mean "I had" or "I would," but it doesn't matter, because the formation is still strange. "I had might riddled," "I would might riddled." Or "Might I had riddled..." These are not English constructions. The proper constructions for this context are:

"Had I foreseen
such gaunt misery,
Might I have riddled these plains
Over more western land?"

Or, if written all out "If I had foreseen such gaunt misery, might I have riddled these plains over more western land?"

Now for the orthographical/semantic problems:

"dyer" - Maybe this is supposed to be "dire." I don't know what it could be otherwise, other than "one who dyes." But that doesn't work in the context.

"poverished" - Maybe this is supposed to be "impoverished." I don't even think "poverished" is a word. I couldn't find it in any online dictionary and I even looked for the alleged verb form of it, which would be "poverish."

"poring" - Maybe this is supposed to be "pouring." I don't think "poring" is a word either, unless there is some verb that has been made out of "pore."

Lastly, I don't know what "heft hard" means. I couldn't make the two words make sense together when I looked up "heft" in the dictionary. But I am not really counting this one in with the other things I listed, because I have never seen the word "heft" before and I'm not familiar with how it is to be used in context.

Thanks for the exacting review, I appreciate your time spent….

‘Have’ should read ‘Had I foreseen’
Dire is correct too.
Poverished, I guess I made it up then, and I am sticking with it.
Pour is correct also.

Editing clearly is not my strong point, as I am new to poetry and writing as a whole (this was my 9th poem).
I will take more time to review and check proper spelling and grammar prior to posting - although writing it is the fun part, I am not in this for serious pursuits.

[rowens]

Editing clearly is not my strong point, as I am new to poetry and writing as a whole (this was my 9th poem).

What about poem number LXIV?

Maybe they're all out of order. And that's what's confusing some people?

[YaMarVa]

Editing clearly is not my strong point, as I am new to poetry and writing as a whole (this was my 9th poem).

What about poem number LXIV?

Maybe they're all out of order. And that's what's confusing some people?

What about it?

I am sure the audience of this board is not confused by numbers appearing out of order.

I have read poetry on and off since High School, without any prior writing attempts, I figured to write a few poems a day for a couple of months. Since I wrote about 100 short/simple poems without anyone seeing them or having named them beyond their number, I thought this a good place to start, on a novice thread. To gauge and guide my poetry skills I will not pay or attend a class for this simple hobby.

[Rose Love]

Editing clearly is not my strong point, as I am new to poetry and writing as a whole (this was my 9th poem).

Well, you're in luck, then, because it is part of my profession--spotting grammatical, orthographical and general linguistic errors...and when not work-related, keeping them like deep, dark secrets to myself, because people get really bent out of shape when you correct their language.

IMO, more important than a person's current level of writing or editing skills, is their desire to improve their skills, so I'm glad you didn't get upset by my comments, because it speaks well of you and, secondly, because, like I said, I don't like to draw attention to grammar and spelling and other linguistic errors, not just on this site, but generally in life, because it brings about such a negative response from people.

[rowens]

This was your 9th poem, but you've made a hundred some poems. I knew you had more than nine.

Where did you meet the Romantic American contemporaries? I'd like to know more about them.

[YaMarVa]

This was your 9th poem, but you've made a hundred some poems. I knew you had more than nine.

Where did you meet the Romantic American contemporaries? I'd like to know more about them.

I am an American romantic (write about what you know), and I would guess that some of my friends would consider themselves to be one too.
TR comes to mind as an American Romantic, I wish he where my friend and contemporary.

For this being a poetry editing board, you sure comment about a lot of stuff not related to the poem I submitted for review. I also feel I am playing to your sarcasm, which at least cures my boredom.

---

Editing clearly is not my strong point, as I am new to poetry and writing as a whole (this was my 9th poem).

Well, you're in luck, then, because it is part of my profession--spotting grammatical, orthographical and general linguistic errors...and when not work-related, keeping them like deep, dark secrets to myself, because people get really bent out of shape when you correct their language.

IMO, more important than a person's current level of writing or editing skills, is their desire to improve their skills, so I'm glad you didn't get upset by my comments, because it speaks well of you and, secondly, because, like I said, I don't like to draw attention to grammar and spelling and other linguistic errors, not just on this site, but generally in life, because it brings about such a negative response from people.

Dark secrets! I like that.

Unlike other posters on many internet boards, I appreciate the editing (why I am here). Please continue to freely critique any of my work as I know you provide honest review.