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The Hand Of Man

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The Hand of Man

The two power-wielders cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal set forth before them

Will not be achieved easily.

They have been under command of reason;

That which was born in the mind of man

The man who had not succumbed to treason.

He is the one who gave his strength away

To a vehicle on the road

To be able to move and him to obey.

Yes, it is he who flies up in the skies

And it is he who sails the seas

For he has a desire that never dies.

Like a child on the day of its birth

He fights to live on his own

And change the face of the Earth.

Beneath his realization

The sky now presides;

For it is no longer a demarcation.

But he cannot rest just yet

For much still needs to be done.

What he already has is little to what he can get.

A power-wielder cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal he’s set before himself

Will not be achieved easily.

- Nikola N.

I just salvaged this poem from my old disk which broke down. It was my first and last poem I ever wrote. I wrote it about a year ago. Only a few people read it, so I'm posting it here.

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Don't quite [sic] your day job.

Quite the literary critic aren't you, Dan9999999?

At http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...indpost&p=48175 you also wrote

"Anthem is a fairly mediocre literary work. All of Rand’s works are much better in terms of philosophy them in terms of literary quality."

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I think it shows some promise, if it is a thing you want to pursue. I don't have any real recommendations. I write fiction, but my appreciation of poetry is largely subconcsious.

Has anyone noticed that nobody who has criticized Ayn Rand's literary style has actually refered to any specific passage of her works? I'd like to see one person do it.

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...Has anyone noticed that nobody who has criticized Ayn Rand's literary style has actually refered to any specific passage of her works? I'd like to see one person do it.

For a good example of the opposite I'll refer you to this - and as he says this is just the first few sentences of Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.papertig.com/george_barker.htm

Fred Weiss

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The Hand of Man

The two power-wielders cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal set forth before them

Will not be achieved easily ...

I suggest you study poetic meter. You have a healthy appreciation for rhyme and stanza, but you seem to lack a good understanding of meter, which is really what distinguishes a poem from prose.

As a work of rhymed free verse, your piece is confusing and overly abstract. As an attempt at poetry, it is too wordy (unessentialized) and non-metrical.

Here is a quick attempt at your first verse--but in tetrameters with assonant rhyming:

These power-wielders must not sleep.

For, the goal set forth before them

shall not be easy to achieve.

Good luck with your poetry!

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Oh, lol! I guess I should've pointed out that I'm not a poet. Nor do I plan to be one. I wrote this when one day I just sat down and wanted to write something about man's achievements. The first thing that came to mind was man's hands - which he uses in order to achieve.

I didn't care about the meter. Why should I? All I wanted to write at first were a few sentences.

I don't understand what you find so confusing in it, MisterSwig? As for it being abstract, I realized that after I wrote it the first time, so I edited it a few months later, which was when I added 4th and 5th verse. I don't see anything abstract about those. They're quite concrete.

I don't see any wordiness, though. You'll notice that my first verse has only one word more than your own attempt at it, plus yours doesn't rhyme as nicely as mine. :confused: Also, it was very important to say that there are two power-wielders, because they're hands of one man (and each has two). First verse speaks of hands, last verse speaks of man.

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Your poem, though it seems off to a good start, is just that. It seems very much the work in progress, and that's because it lacks flow. I think the idea is very neato, but if you tweaked the meter that would certainly help. Some concrete suggestions:

The two power-wielders cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal set forth before them

Will not be achieved easily.

They have been under command of reason;

That which was born in the mind of man

The man who had not succumbed to treason.

He is the one who gave his strength away

To a vehicle on the road

To be able to move and him to obey.

Well, the fact that the rhyme scheme goes aba without a rhyme for b makes it feel unresolved to my mind. What if it were changed to couplets? Say 13 syllables to the first line and 14 for the coupled?

The two power-wielders cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal that's set forth cannot be acheived easily.

These twin swift, living engines commanded by reason,

Which is bourne of his mind who's not surrendered to treason.

That 3rd line confuses the hell out of me. But revised to my suggested metre with what I think is the intended idea:

Our hero has entrusted his strength somewhat away,

To a swift, careening car that will move him and obey.

Etc, etc. Now some of my word choices are downright ugly and I would never stand by that as my own final product--I just wanted to illustrate how the rhyme scheme and metre could make your stanzas feel more resolved.

If you like the idea of using long lines like that, I think that adding imagery (like the engine thing, or something better) could really enrich your poem.

Yes, it is he who flies up in the skies

And it is he who sails the seas

For he has a desire that never dies.

Like a child on the day of its birth

He fights to live on his own

And change the face of the Earth.

Beneath his realization

The sky now presides;

For it is no longer a demarcation.

I don't get this last stanza, either. What does the sky preside over? And you're saying that it is no longer his limit? That his realization trumps even the sky for it's height? If you allow yourself more syllables, you could make this thought clearer.

But he cannot rest just yet

For much still needs to be done.

What he already has is little to what he can get.

I'll bet if you thought about it, you could find more expressive words to lend to this thought. Also, you already use the word "rest" two other times in the poem. It's not as interesting as it could be.

A power-wielder cannot yet rest peacefully

For the goal he’s set before himself

Will not be achieved easily.

I think the fact that you bring your poem slowly back to the main idea and close with that is cool.

Not too shabby for your first one! And remember--it's yours. If you aren't publishing it, it's for your own enjoyment. So do whatever the hell you want with it! :)

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He is the one who gave his strength away

To a vehicle on the road

To be able to move and him to obey.

In the last line "To be able to move" refers to the vehicle, and "him" refers to "the man who had not succumbed to treason." (making a short pause between "move" and "and" may clarify. It's so because I needed the rhyme.)

Beneath his realization

The sky now presides;

For it is no longer a demarcation.

I don't see why this is unclear. The first two lines mean that the sky is below his realization - his acchievement is beyond the skies (I was thinking of artificial satellites here, and space ships). "It" in the last line refers to the sky.

Now that you mention it, "rest" does seem to appear too many times throughout the poem.

I don't see why you're so insistent on the meter. At school, we never read the poems that way, with exception of the hexameter with two rhymes (in the middle and at the end of the verse); sorry, don't know its exact name in english. And we only mentioned rhythm if it was unique or specific for a particular poem. That's another one of the reasons why I didn't care about the meter anyway.

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