I Am Alone, I Am Lost

Finding who I am and where I belong is not an easy task

I Am Alone, I Am Lost

I know the many that surround me.

I know their stories.

I have shared their joys and their sadness.

I have watched them grow; I have watched them die.

I have been a part of their lives.

Yet

I am alone, I am lost.

Here is my beautiful home.

There is my favorite chair where I have spent countless hours discussing the ways of the world.

All around me is comfortable and familiar.

Still

I am alone, I am lost.

With old age comes knowledge.

With knowledge comes understanding.

With understanding comes wisdom.

With wisdom comes happiness.

I am an old man.

I know.

I understand.

But there is no happiness.

Because

I am alone, I am lost.

I have learned what is of true value in the world and their place in my life; family and friends.

And yet I do not know my value or my place in the world.

So

I am alone, I am lost.

Reviews

[JayG]

At appears that the critical parts of this piece never made to to the page, leaving the reader wondering what this is about.

Look at it as a reader, who arrives knowing nothing about the situation, and your motivation for writing this must.

• I Am Alone, I Am Lost

So someone we know nothing about is alone, and doesn’t know where they are? That’s not what your intent is, but the reader has no access to your intent or your backstory. So when someone unknown says they’re lost, to the reader it means they are, literally lost.

• I know the many that surround me.

So this person who is lost can see no one, but knows that “the many,” whatever that is, are surrounding them. How many? No way to tell, other than say four? No way to know if they’re human or lions, etc. No way to know what the author means because we don’t even know the age gender, situation or location of this lost person, and, never do learn it.

• I know their stories.

What in the pluperfect hells is this, and how does it relate to the lost person? And what is meant by the term, “their stories?” You know. The unknown lost person knows, but because you provide no context for the reader, the one you wrote this for is, well…alone and lost.

In general, someone unknown says, “Woe is me,” over and over, without ever making the reader know why they feel that way, in terms meaningful to the reader. So why should they care?

Visualize yourself on the train. A stranger comes down the aisle and sits next to you, turns to you, and begans to tell you what we see here. Do you smile and praise them when they finish, or frown and say, "Huh?" Writer from your chair, of course. But always edit from the seat of someone who lacks context, and interest in reading more than a line of three, unless you give the first and stimulate the second.

And that’s my point. As poets our goal isn’t to inform the reader, it’s to move them, emotionally. So don’t tell the reader how you feel. They don’t care, unless you MAKE them care. Instead of telling them you’re lost, introduce them to what made the protagonist feel that way, and do it in a way in a way that makes the reader tell YOU they feel lost.

Is it easy? Nope. The skills and techniques of poetry have been under development for more than a thousand years. Ignore that work and you’re trying to reinvent those techniques without knowing why they were needed, or even that they are.

Just as the approach to writing we learn in our school days doesn’t work for fiction, it doesn’t work for poetry. We’re given only nonfiction writing techniques in school because it’s what employers need us to know. But use those techniques for fiction or poetry and the result reads like a report. Nonfiction is fact-based, and author-centric, and its goal is to inform.

But poetry and fiction’s goal is to move the reader, emotionally, so it’s character-centric and emotion based. And since we literally learn none of those techniques in school, that’s what you need to look into.

The excerpt of Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Traveled, on Amazon is aimed at structured poetry, but what he has to say about the flow of language is what pretty much all readers need to know, so it’s worth taking a look. And check the local library’s section on writing poetry. There’s a lot to writing it that’s obvious once pointed out, but invisible till then.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/