Another piece (Sept 11) ...Feedback?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

Training in Chinatown with Master Chan Bong,

I am at peace; All seems right in the universe.

Outside, where the Twin Towers used to stand, I see its remaining aura from Master’s top-floor window.

The burning smell of disaster, the police barricades, the zombies walking Canal Street in disbelief … they seem a world away.

Later, among posters of missing people posted outside Penn Station, this world’s reality – our nation’s foreign-policy disaster – sets in.

A computer print out of a Hopi prayer rests amid the posters suggesting the eternal dance of souls – nothing is lost, just changing shape.

Carefully, focused, I notice a hand written poem among the collage of carnage:

“Now that my old barn has burned down, I can see the moon.”

A Bodhistava? Or militant Muslim propaganda?

Fear makes things uncertain.

2

That’s beautiful man. Even though we’re 5000 miles away - all us Brits feel for you guys - must be d a m n hard.

3

You’ve got some good stuff going on here, but some of the language gets a bit clunky.

i.e.> our nation’s foreign-policy disaster –

You’ve got to remember, poetry isn’t about preaching to people or beating them over the head with a message. Like kung-fu, it’s the finesse that sneaks your technique past a person’s defenses.

The last 3 lines are the strongest. The second line in the poem is a little generic and cliche’. Don’t tell the reader all seems right and you’re at peace, show us through reflections on your specific internal states and your environment.

The fourth and sixth stanzas are strong. Good detail.

Just my 2 cents as a fellow writer.

4

The Sept. 11th WTC attack was so unimaginably awful. Unfortunately, so is your poem. Sorry dude, you posted it.

5

Originally posted by Ralek..
Unfortunately, so is your poem.

A little constructive critism doesn’t hurt. That kind of criticism just sucks. At least EF had the cojones to post it.

I agree with dwid about laying off the politics. I would say go a little deeper into the senses (smell, taste, sounds) of what you experienced.

6

De Notha

I don’t mind the critisism at all. As a writer, if you can’t take the heat get the hel| out of the kitchen.

You’d kind of have to read the other 200 pages to get full context. There’s a blending of present (narrator) and past, a martial story taking place in CHina long ago. The narrator breaks in like that every so often to remind the reader, that the story they are into is not the story, just the body of the koan to be revieled at the end.

Sometimes the prose breaks out in a writing section. Thanks guys.

7

“A little constructive critism doesn’t hurt. That kind of criticism just sucks.”

Notice the irony in that statement my friend? :wink:

Anyway, hey - I didn’t like it! I can respect what he’s trying to say as an artist. Brutal honesty is valuable in the art world, regardless of what the medium may be.

8

the irony

glad to see someone was paying attention!

9

If it was me [which it ain’t - my 2 cents here] I’d use more of the:

they seem a world away

Maybe as a more extended metaphor, and play more on the “changing shape”

I think those are the strogest reflective elements of the piece. But I’m a guitarist with just A-level English - what the f*ck do I know?

:slight_smile:

10

My view of poetry is that is should not be any way, it is the way that it is when it comes out – being that it comes from the heart.

Again, this is not a stand alone piece, but a mere call out to the reader involved in a story, to remember that the narrator is involved in a situation as well, one where he will encounter a foe, someone he knows he is destined to face off against.

That is not evident in this one piece. Many speak of training. Sensing the inevidible. This one just came out the way it came out. Places a sense of time, history, to the story. It just had to come out. I never felt the way I felt that week.