Prose "The Burglar" by Nordic Cloud revised to Poetry (Prose to Poetry Workshop)

Have read this but will withhold comment until some others chime in. Don't want to muddy their ideas with my opinion yet..................stan

to me this reads as prose - sorry
it could be put in a paragraph as is and read almost perfectly

it would be helpful to have the original prose write here too, as scribbler asked,
to compare it without having to go back to the workshop

love judy

Hi, Barb, another tricky conversion I suspect, the bit that worked best for me was this stanza :

The day damp from the night rain
The park colored by the sun
The swarthy young fellow
Black hair, ruddy face
Kept rhythm with the fence pailing

As with all of us, it's worth having a quick spell-check before posting, most of us miss a typo or 2... I think I noticed "omnious" & assume you meant ominouss? etc.

As with Judy, I would have liked the original Prose posted here (you can easilly add it on an edit), since the whole idea is to transform the Prose... I also felt it fitted the Prose definition, but am personally struggling with that in this workshop, since a story in plain prose such as this is really quite difficult to make into poem I think, without losing/changing much of the original... So good on you for this effort.

Cheers Anni

To me this reads a s prose, just broken into lines. I also think in this line:

Not knowing his intent at the time
you could drop : (at the time)

I would also like to see the prose that this was converted from. I liked the same lines as Anni.

always, Cat

to the original prose, to avoiding losing something or offending the writer.

We need to ruthlessly eliminate absolutely everything that is inessential to a single meaning, thought or feeling to be conveyed.

I feel bad for not commenting before here, it being my prose, and not an easy one either, I should have made a simpler one, but just put it in, not making it very poetic for once!! Sorry.

I had better have a go at it myself as i don't think it was easy dear you Barbara,
I shall make myself do it as a penance! Might not show it though...!

You're doing well Barbara, Ann.

i think you have done well with your editing - a lot of work here
and although imho it still borders on prose (just an aside for workshop purposes) i think you have done a great job with a very hard write

love judy
xx

I would like to add that I really liked these lines:

As he eyed houses stopping in her direction
She dropped the curtain
Stepping back from the window
As his facial imprint burned in her mind

An air of evil consumed her
Paranoia partook him
Suddenly he lurched in uneven strides
Then stopped, walking softer as if to covet a secret

always, Cat

Hi Barbara. think you should pat yourself on the back with these efforts. It is a difficult job & you have stuck with it & rewardingly so... A small query, when you say "partook him", did you mean "overtook"? or overcame?, if not it's an interesting use of the word, made me think. (Could I humbly offer these?-

An air of evil descended on her
Paranoia agitated him

I still agree with Jess, (though cowardly ended up not doing so with mine in the end), stripping it back mercilessly would make for a better poem speaking generally of all the works in this workshop.

Good work here though!

Cheers, hope the pressure eases for you very soon (I often wish we could purchase thicker skin like we can an umbrella... so that all the "discouragement" could just run off us like water off a ducks back... if I could I would send you some. Imagine how well we'd do if we could just let that stuff run off without affecting us! Wishing you the strength to make it do so Barbara... Write lots of good things eh)

Anni xx

I agree there is a grammar problem here. The verb "partake" (past tense- "partook") describes an action performed by the subject of the sentence. Someone must "partake" OF or IN something. "Partook" cannot perform that action itself, so to say that "paranoia partook him" is grammatically wrong. "Paranoia" is a lifeless noun and cannot "partake" of anything.
Strangely, I did NOT read this as prose as so many others did. A problem I did have with either the posting format or the poem itself is that it appeared to have several revised versions within the body of the poem. Almost as though you periodically started over or were perhaps posting all of your revisions in this one version.
It was a tad confusing.
As I had a bitch of a time with Stan's paragraph, I sure as hell aren't going to begrudge you the alleged problems you may have had. I feel it is a good adaptation as is. By no stretch of the imagination one of your better poems, but given the deceptively difficult nature of this workshop it is a worthy success.
wesley

the post is nowhere near 'disasterous' - it is a good write
just (imo only) still mainly prose
that does not (again imo only) detract from the work itself
it is a good descriptive write

one tiny thing - since the typos have been pointed out - there is one more
'dehevelled' should be 'dishevelled'

love judy

I think that for a subject far outside your usual comfort zone you did well. I hope I haven't worked you and others so hard that you avoid my future shops lol............stan

Yours above:-

I am as stubborn as those
ominous clouds
blocking the full moon tonight
as the rain fell on my peaceful thoughts

Why can't I just do the inevitable
and learn something new
Try something different
Without the song and dance

Its not a ethnic thing
or a gender thing
not even a status thing;
its me being me trying to be better,

but stuck in a world
where none will come to visit
or stay any length of time.
if they wanna survive my craziness.

Barbara this is wonderful stuff, like me when fired with anger at a misunderstanding, my poems can have that fire in them too, and this bit has just that, if you wanted you could add to it and make this into something terrific, it is already for me. My mother once said something I felt unforgivable and I reacted so strongly that I wrote a letter to her telling her what I thought. E said its a fantastic letter Ann, but don't send it. He was right, but I had said my bit and cleared my mind of it in the letter, therapeutic for myself, even if the originator had no idea of it.

We are here for you, you know that, and as Anni says, be yourself, its you who lives your life, no one else can do that for you, we have to make choices sometimes that are dire, but we still have to be faithful to our own character, otherwise what sort of life would we lead.

according to different linguists about 60-80 % of communication is purely non-verbal. As poets you would think we would be better than that, but we are still human.

What I saw happen here was pure mis-understanding between people with absolutely no ill intent, only kindness and support. No-one at all was to blame.

These threads, between who is responding to whom, and with time factors involved, become very confusing. Barbara was not wrong to get upset either, it did look bad to me from my perspective as her friend, I very nearly jumped in aggressively in her defence, until I very carefully read the whole thread and traced the steps and response times.

We are all good with words, we are all emotional people. We can say whatever the fuck we want in our poems, but we do need to be very careful in threads, especially when there is deep emotional content involved.

Love you Barbara and you do deserve to be better treated and understood by those in your world. You know I've always known this.