BOS Showcase: 2004 Major Works (2 Viewers)

[glycerine]

ok, last one for today.

i just read 'trapped' and while i like the basic premise, i don't think it's as strong as it could be. i think you failed to play around with language enough, which is really my main complaint. it was well written, but it wasn't overly sophisticated and i think that's what will lose you marks. i think you have what is mostly a strong premise, and some of your poems communicate the emotions very well, but i think it could've been stronger if you'd played around with language and structure more.

 

[hotcocoababe]

LOL i love the way that my story has been viewed 44 times.... yet I've only had two comments! Ahh well, guess i shoulda known that would happen hay. Cept their should be some mandatory thing... like, "BY VIEWING THIS MAJOR WORK YOU HEREBY AGREE TO WRITE AT LEAST A ONE-WORD COMMENT ON IT" wat u reckon guys

Other than that, yea i know its a bit freaky Pitted, but the funny thing was i never actually sat down intending to write something so... well, freaky
Im an incredibly optimistic person, and so far everyone who knows me and has read my story has said its the complete opposite of my personality. Which is interesting huh! LOL maybe its some deep subconcious thing.... or maybe i just wanted to break away from my normal happy self and explore something deeper. Whatever the reason, I wanna reassure you that not ONE of the things in my entire major work every actually happened to me. I started off with a true story as told to me by my mother a few years ago, and then it blossomed from there. My original intention completely changed, as did my story's similarities to the original one. The only things it had left in common with the original true story was 1) the catholic connections
2) the girl
3) the house
4) the mother's death (but only the death itself)

all the rest was meeeeeeeeeeeeee....!

so sorry if i freaked anyone out... didnt mean to, i promise! and dont worry none of it is true (well cept the little bits mentioned above)

Ps- Jezzabelle, my teacher didnt bother to read mine either... so its like, thanks for everything, NOT!

 

[pitted]

hey there glitterfairy.
well i have jsut read your short story and may i say it was a really great story.
but i do have a few problems with it
firstly
writing a story with the protagonists as yr 12 HSC students kinda stupid and risky and very cliched. sorry but it is. however, despite that you have written a story which is a very compelling read and i enjoyed it immensely.
secondly.
ok there is nothing else that i can see which is wrong with your story. just what i wrote in that first sentence. other than that i must say im impressed and worried about my own MW and even more so my RS i think i might have been too blunt...dam!
o well still would appreciate NE feed back but if u dont want to i cant make u so i just hope everyone enjoyed it and (more importantly) i hope that the markers are impressed and give me a really good mark (i think that this will be the only subject that i will excel at - god i hope i do)
ciao

 

[ujuphleg]

hey glycerine, i just read your MW and i think its really excellent.

just a question though, is this the actual version you handed in or was there another version for the BOS? cos i thought you guys had to footnote and stuff for critical response... or maybe i'm just confused

 

[glycerine]

no, the version i handed in has footnotes. you can't upload the file using the word processor i used (ie it's the wrong file type) so i just copied and pasted into wordpad. so yeah, if you were a hsc marker, you would see it with footnotes and all that : )

 

[welshi]

major work...

Here is mine.

"People Who Are Not You"

plus ref. statement. it's just a short story...if u can be bothered reading it plz pass on feedback, u writerly types know how good feedback is. i hate that we don't get it from the markers! i need closure on these things.

 

[welshi]

that is stunning. everyone read zhongie's right now. it's beautiful, not too heavy handed but still intricately written. sucked me right in. my only problem with it is that i get the impression you didn't quite get to do justice to your concepts within the word limit. i'd love to read another version that was just you writing, without time or word constraints.

erin i loved yours. i love anything that can justify my beloved pop culture to the academics.

glitterfairy i have to say when i first started yours i saw the names and just went "god this is just some teenybopper living out her britney and beyonce fantasies" but it was a lot more complex than that and i really enjoyed it. once i worked it out. heheeh nah it was great.

 

[pitted]

WELL I have just read ryan011086 set of poems - and i hope ur reading this!
and i must say they were quite good
i was a bit sceptical in the first few
but the way you have utilised this medium is quite impressive.
beatings had quite a bit of impact on me (not because there was any relation with my own life but its a subject i have strong thoughts about) neway it was extremely good.
the rest of your poems a grade i reckon, i love how u made "scatter poetry" that made me laugh.
also the way u utilised metaphors to give (at least me) one impression of what you are writing about when its about another (or u could see it as working on both levels - for example Sir Edmund Peacock)
there were a few extremely minor but perhaps vital errors in your work.
in war, you had subscription is it meant to be that (i know what you mean by it but i thought it should have been conscription)
in beatings, the protagonist was hit on the check - should have been cheek.
and in poachers you had heard when i htink it was meant to be herd.
now if im wrong quite happily tell me so at the moment i might b living in blissed ignorance.
you RS was great. it really tied up any loose ends or thoughts that (at least i) had about your poetry.
one question did you have more poems that you could have added???? coz it feels like you did.
ciao

 

[pitted]

well i have just read urs zhongie
and i must say it was excellent.
what else can i say?
i would like to read your reflection statement - although i do not think it is necessary for any exploration of the themes or content, structure purpose etc. but it would be interesting to see how you feel about your own story and how you came about creating it. personally i would just like to get the background info that the RS gives.
i dont think there was one thing missing or weak in your story. there may have been a bit of confusion but everything became clearer near the end. well actually halfway through the story.
i think i have to look up the religion of bushido - and now im hoping it is a religion or at least an order of some sort.
i also think i have to admit that i am a very literal reader and for me the RS is quite thought provoking and would (hopefully in your case) give me a bit more depth to the story - if such depth exists.
so what im trying to say is - wheres you RS!!!?
other than that u shoudl b proud of your MW - i know im proud of my own and that (i think) may be a bit mediocre compared to exemplars such as yours.
ciao
p.s. (yeah a p.s. weird huh? well thats post modernism for ya) its getting increasingly difficult to give feedback to all of you guys who have posted your MWs on here mainly because there are only so many ways that can say "you rock!" and "i love it" without being that obvious.
also i suck at critiquing - i mean if you told me there was a major problem with ur work it would b quite a while b4 i would even find it. so im stuck with saying that everyones MWs are great (which in all honesty) i think they are.

 

[zhongie]

Feedback and Reflection Statement

Thanks guys for the great comments! It made me feel so much better about my MW...which at one point was strangling me...

Some of my friends call it a cross between Kill Bill and Lost in Translation...

Oh, and here's the RS for those who want to read it. Appreciating all comments!

 

[pitted]

no one has given me any feedback
*sobs*
*gets over it really quickly*
oh well who cares?
as long as ppl are reading or have read or are planning to read mine i dont mind at all
and if i get into the top band - i will be extremely happy
although me and my teacher and Jan o'connor (me mentor - for those of you who havent read my MW or RS) think its really good
but who knows what the markers will make of it?????
too late to change
too little knowledge to change it
well
ciao
ill keep u posted about the MWs ive read....or will i?????? lol

 

[tomorrows_angel]

One thing i have to comment on, in everyone's, is the typos... it just seems a shame after so much work and effort to be reading through and pick up on typos. Just my opinion. One of the girls from my school had her mw in the standards packages for 2002, but reading through it, as much as it was absolutely fantastic, finding half a dozen typos detracted from it's sheer ingenuity.

After saying that, i hope there were no typos in mine... i got my father to check it (since my teacher never saw it), and i read through it, hopefully there aren't any!

pitted, yours is really good. 4 typos that i found. (sorry, you people must be thinking i'm compulsive about spelling!) I reads very much as flows of emotions and thoughts, not as a general story. Then again, i suck at creative writing so i really shouldn't be judging anyone's. but yeah, it was effective. i think you could have made it more cyclic in structure, but that's my opinion.

Actually, i've read a lot of the mw's posted on here and they're all amazing... i just haven't gotten aroung to writing up stuff on it, and sorry, but i pobaby won't get the time either! just know that i think they're all great!

i think i'll leave now. bye!

 

[zhongie]

I read yours pitted, and I liked alot of the concepts you had. I have a few reservations on the onomatapoeia, but I haven't read the reflection statement, which might clarify that. Good work.

 

[pitted]

the mimetic effect.
read the RS zhongie - the mimetic effect, not the onomatepia (cant even spell it)
unless of course it is and i have not even bothered to mention it coz i could not see it.
i hope thats not the case...
well thanks for the feedback
much appreciated
ciao

 

[Serpentia]

ryan011086

I read over your poetry and would be interested to find out how much reading you did of poetry in the lead up to composition. What was clear to me is that you don't seem to have a great deal of poetic knowledge. This was most manifest in your enjambement - your line breaks served no purpose most of the time, so it seemed as though you'd just start a new line after writing more than, say, 5 or so words. I found this disappointing because linebreaks can be used for great purpose, but you didn't quite harness this.

secondly your imagery and manner of description seemed more prose-like than poetic. Again, this is something that one develops through reading a lot of poetry (thus my first question/inquiry). It seemed to simple, with too many "sentence filling words" such as "the" and other such words. these words are not as necessary in poetry as poetry tends to focus more upon concept development rather than having perfectly structured sentences. Hell most poems don't make sense on first reading, they have layers of meaning that you discover through each reading. In your pieces I found that what you read on first reading was what you got (simple language etc), which again disappointed me.

Also it did seem quite teenagerish. Of course you're a teenager, as am I (I wrote poetry too), however there are ways of describing one's emotional state without reverting to a fairly generic way of description. Again this is something that you could/would learn through reading extensively.

Also you tended to use a lot punctuation. I am of the school of thought that believes words should speak for themselves. thus i do not use exclamation marks in my pieces. Personal choice really.

a lot of telling and not showing as well. Again something that can be improved

oh yes and I noticed a general lack of flow or rhythm in your pieces. sentences that are not associated with the next and such. I used to do that a lot, but worked on that through developing enjambement, run on sentences, condensing language etc.

on the other hand your very raw manner of showing emotion worked well in some places (such as P.O.W.)

I could continue but I'll probably get myself in trouble for being too truthful. I know a fair bit about what I'm talking about, and while I enjoyed reading your major work, i could see a lot of things that could have bee improved - even simple things such as line breaks and imagery. or avoiding such "obviousness" in your lines - be a little more vague perhaps, force the reader to think a bit on what you're saying rather than handing it to them straight out.

 

[jhakka]

Sometimes people don't see the need to make people think about their meaning. If his goal was to say what he wanted to say, there shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Hoplite]

Serpentia, considering your vast poetic knowledge you would realise that prose poetry is in fact a form of poetry in itself...it's a type of free verse poetry

Poetry can be anything and everything, including prose.

 

[zhongie]

I think Serpentia meant that in poetry writers employ a much more emphatic use of language, where conventions of prose, like punctuation and articles are omitted for the sake of the development of a perspective/concept. I agree that prose poetry is poetry, but there is a difference between poetry and prose that should be reflected through the use of language.

 

[Serpentia]

Serpentia, considering your vast poetic knowledge you would realise that prose poetry is in fact a form of poetry in itself...it's a type of free verse poetry

Poetry can be anything and everything, including prose.

long answer quoted from
http://www.poetrypreviews.com/poets/prosepoem.html
The prose poem is a type of poetry characterized by its lack of line breaks. Although the prose poem resembles a short piece of prose, its allegiance to poetry can be seen in the use of rhythms, figures of speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds), consonance (repetition of similar consonant sounds), and images. Early poetry (such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, both written by Homer approximately 2,800 years ago) lacked conventional line breaks for the simple fact that these works were not written down for hundreds of years, instead being passed along (and presumably embellished) in the oral tradition. However, once poetry began to be written down, poets began to consider line breaks as another important element to the art. With the exception of slight pauses and inherent rhyme schemes, it is very hard for a listener of poetry to tell where a line actually breaks.


short answer: I noted the fact he used many sentence filling words, making it read like prose. Prose poetry still does not have the same structure to it as prose.

Poetry can be everything and anything? Wow, what a vapid statement.

 

[Hoplite]

Oh get off my case.

Surely the winking smilie face made the tongue in cheek nature of my post obvious. And if not, the highly pretentious and exaggerated Willy Wonka type waft of the final statement must have given it away. I guess its vapidity was too much of a guise?

I mean really, my post was just a parady of Serpentia's. While it was predominantly filled with very good constructive criticism (which to tell you the truth I mostly agree with) it did come across as slightly patronising, at least to me. The whole "oh yes and I noticed a general lack of flow" type language seemed very "I have a large stick up my arse"ish.

Seriously though, I was just joking, it's obvious that it wasn't your intention to come across like that Serpentia so I apologise...I guess it's just hard to intelligently criticise without sounding snotty. You're work is obviously fantastic so you're not being at all hypocritical.

On your work, it really is very good. Some of the images you convey are absolutely brilliant and it's obvious you attempted many different technical things relating to form and structure. I also like your use of language. Although I feel it sometimes gets a little too wafty, it's a pleasure to read. It's obvious that you like to use alliteration, particularly with 'm' words ...

'so minimally

through monotonous murmers through my memories'

to quote the guy from the Matrix, it's like wiping your ass with silk.

On the whole, the only real criticism I have is that in general I don't really like the titles of the individual poems (like 'Bang-band rythms')...and also that you used the word "cum" - it made me wince...I mean you can't show that to your grandparents!! Also, being a male, I obviously didn't relate to some things, and others seemed dragged out, and others seemed chick flickish.

My fave individual poem was probably 'The Gap' - although, again I didn't like the title. To be truthful there were only a couple I didn't like.

Anyway, well done...I think you're an absolute certainty for the top band.