Hi, Matt here. I just wanted to include Despondence's comments on my collection of poetry ('Just a Boy'), which he emailed to me. I have checked with him before I made his comments public and I want to stress that I have not included his comments through arrogance or an enlarged ego but as I have already explained to Despondence, I beleive his comments, along with Stephen's may help raise the profile of my work and perhaps make more people interested enough to read it. Thank you and here is what he wrote:
Hey Matt,
Here are some comments on you poems - very good stuff indeed! I'll only comment upon the ones that I liked the best.
I really like "Smooth legs and tiny Hips". The subject is just brilliant, and the imagery is powerful - you can really see the trio before your minds eye.
I quite liked "No More" - boy, have I been there. Except I don't get the last line, "No more me" - what are you getting at there? I would rather have expected a "Only me" in closing, breaking the "No more"-pattern. But then, if you wrote what everyone expected it wouldn't be a very interesting read...
"Love and the Lake District" is just great, a light and lovely read, leaving you with a good feeling.
I'm a scientist, and I love simplicity. To Keats' "Beauty is truth" I assert that "Simplicity is beautiful", hence, the truth should be simple. Nothing encapsulates this better than your "No More"! This may also be why your "Pan" doesn't quite work on the same level as your other poems - that sort of undertaking requires a different talent (I don't know what that talent is, but clearly your talents are much stronger in the free verse).
As an aside, if I can't have simplicity, I'll settle for a set of rules to guide the mind - that's why I'm mostly scribbling in metered iambs with a regular rhyming scheme! It's a form of escape: by restricting yourself to a meter and a rhyming scheme, you divest yourself of the burden of freedom with every word and sentence. In other words, if you're a lousy poet (like me) the meter can be a guide to help you avoid the trapdoors of free verse. I can't write free verse, because I'm not a real poet.
Back to your stuff: "The Romantic" is brilliant - perhaps your best piece. Again, the subject you have found amazes me, it's just great. And I love the burlesque ending. Fabulous.
I like "September 13th", but it feels somehow unfinished? Or maybe I just don't get it... Feels like the last verse is wrapping up something that should have been expanded over one or two extra verses.
"A Dream" is also nice, dunno what to say, it just works straight out of the box.
Ok, I hope you'll keep up the good work, and set up that web site so that one can check now and then for your latest productions
cheers
ralf
(grateful if you kept me posted, if/when you put the stuff on your site, or announced it on the forum!)
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