Vintage postcard image of Michigan Boulevard, Chicago

‘Here Comes the Hybrid Bus’ by K.G. Jackson

The Society

December 4, 2018

Beauty, Humor, Poetry, The Environment

5 Comments

5 Responses

1. 

   Joseph Tessitore December 4, 2018

   How charming is all of this?
   Even “The Hybrid Bus” -which I didn’t get – had me smiling.
   It obviously got me on some level!

   As I read these, I began to suspect that a child was writing them.

   Reply
2. 

   Bruce Wren December 4, 2018

   First time I read this poet here, but as Mr Tessitore says, very charming! Simple but elegant. I just loved the Hybrid Bus: so true! Kudos!

   Reply
3. 

   David Paul Behrens December 4, 2018

   I don’t know what the masters of meter or the syllable counting nitpickers would say, but I think these poems are cool.

   Reply
4. 

   James A. Tweedie December 4, 2018

   There are different awards for different poems. These win the “Made Me Smile” award. Congratulations K.G. Here’s your statuette. Please limit your acceptance speech to 15 seconds or, if you promise to send more poems in the future, you may stretch it to 20 seconds.

   Reply
5. 

   Mark Stone December 4, 2018

   K.G., Hello. I guess I would be the syllable counting nitpicker.

   1. Titles. I notice that all three titles are exactly the same as, or are very close to, the first line of the poem. Of course, there is precedent for this practice, such as “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” by Shakespeare or “When I Have Fears that I May Cease To Be” by Keats. However, it seems to me that having the title and the first line be the same is a lost opportunity. In a short poem, there is limited real estate and one must use every inch of it to express one’s message, in my opinion.

   Also, I have noticed from my visits to poetry websites that poets like ambiguity. So you could use the title for this purpose. For example, the title to the first poem could be something like: “Our City Planners at Work” or “Our Tax Dollars at Work.” This might raise the question about whether you are praising the city planners for bringing a new transportation workhorse into service, or being sarcastic because no one is riding the new hybrid bus.

   2. First poem. In line 3, I would remove the apostrophe from “It’s.” Also, I believe that “length so long” is redundant. Finally, one could smooth the meter of line 5 by changing it from “It’s certainly looking very clean” to “It certainly looks very clean.” Finally, I enjoyed the alliteration and consonance in lines 7 & 8.

   3. Second poem. Line 10 reads as follows: “At the memories that surround me,” I very much like the consonance in that line. One could improve the meter a bit by changing it to: “At the memories surrounding me,”

   4. Third poem. In the fourth line, given the iambic meter, the word “issue” gets stressed on the second syllable. This is problematic (at least for me), since we normally stress the first syllable of that word. Since the word “true” is already in that line, I would make “true” the final word of that line, which would give you a solid rhyme with “knew.” Also, I like the sound of, and the alliteration in, the last four lines, but I notice that there is no verb. Of course, some say that not every line in a poem needs a verb, but to me it just seems odd in this case.

   5. It is a significant achievement to have one’s poems posted at SCP. Hope these comments are helpful. I look forward to reading more of your poems in the future.

   Reply

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