Laura the Poet

[DLutz]

I have had the pleasure to spend the day with the lovely Laura and again she has provided me with a wealth of new images to play with here we have one of her and attached is one of her poems... She along with myself would like to know what you think about it? This was shot at my office in the conference room with florescent lighting and fill from my 580EX w/green gel to balance the light.

Feed back and comments welcome.

Calling Your Name:

[R_Fredrick_Smith]

I like the photo. The lighting works well and color of the outfit seems to work nicely with the background. I have a little trouble reading the text of portions of the poem. I think it would work better in white letters on the red (for readability).

Also it looked like all of the apostrophes disappeared except the one on the last line. I would also advise against ending almost every line with a comma as there are distinct breaks in the poetic story that should have probably have had periods (or no punctuation at all - ala E E Cummings).

Several lines were a bit unclear and I wondered in they were typos. For example, "Knowing you was fading". Is "was" what was intended, or would "were" have really been the intended word. It changes the meaning of the poem based on which word is used at this point. Also there is a curious uses of capital letters in the line "Days are Passing Slowly". Was that accidental or intentional as I don't see any other words capitalized in the interior of a line.

But you know how poetry criticism is. Its strictly in the eye of the beholder. I wrote this poem once to illustrate this concept :

I wrote a good poem
My friend did not like my poem
What a stupid friend

Reminds me, also, of the famous story of a woman doing her oral exams for her College Doctorate and she was being queried about the meaning of one of Robert Frost's poems (exams was open to the public). The person testing her told her that her answer was wrong and that her answer was not what the poet really meant (after she gave her meaning). An old gentlemen rose from the rear of the room and told the tester that he was wrong and that she was right about the meaning. Robert Frost was the old gentleman. The college changed its rules in subsequent years to not test on poetry of living poets.

Cheers,
rfs