I'm glad to discover a tight poem, written in free verse that is the best read I've found yet in your port.
That being said, there is still work to be done.
What I like is what works: the TOTAL surprise at the last line when I discovered you were not speaking of yourself but had written the entire poem from the POV of a tree.
EXCELLENT. This is hard to pull off, and you did so brilliantly. Each of your lines, when re-read a second time are perfectly constructed to be applicable to a broken man as well as a wintering tree.
That being said, you have verb time-line problems. Part of the poem is in the present tense, and part is in the past tense. This is very difficult to avoid but essential in a story poem. It has to be one or the other. And both will work, depending on how you structure the phrases and consider the poem.
The other complication in this poem is its wordiness. You have made a great attempt in writing your poem as you would tell the story to your young brother, sister, niece or nephew and that's a good start for making a poem interesting and immediately available for each reader.
The beginning is the weakest. There is not enough precise detail to keep the reader with you. You have three lines beginning with time setting phrases, which are possibly too many. The first line needs more punch. It is passive and descriptive. Tell us what you see. Dare to write, from the very beginning "For a long time I see (or I have seen) nothing but gray." Even though YOU know you are writing about a tree, the reader does not yet know this, so the visual personification of a tree is poetic license.
I still think there are too many articles than adjectives.
*Shivering as the rain pours on top of me, [what kind of rain?]
*As I wither in the frigid night, [ there was only ONE frigid night? "on frigid eves" would be more poetic....]
*I would seek shelter but I'm all alone on the side of this street. [This side, the street. Even "my street" would be better. But this line is too wordy. The "but" is not necessary. A tree cannot seek shelter, so there are no "if, ands or buts about it." I would have gotten around this long idea by writing "alone on my street corner, I would seek shelter..."
*I stand dormant hoping this would all end. [What is THIS? Vagueness never adds anything to a poem where there are already so many concrete details.]
*There are a few other places where unnecessary words can be eliminated.
*What was forced to leave... [passive voice, and an unclear "what."]
*Glee. This word sticks out like a sore thumb. I agree you need a positive word to end this line, because it's the turning point of the poem, but this one is too childlike. Even ending the line with "and I swayed with joy" would be better I believe. There is another reason I would avoid it and that is because of the end rhymes energy/glee/tree.
All in all you have a very strong beginning for this poem.
Let's just say that people with my same birth date intrigue me.
I am glad I found this poem. It made me laugh. The story unfolds perfectly. Your opening and closing stanzas are perfect book-ends to it.
I like its contemporary nature, by that I mean its talkative nature, the way the words flow as if you are reading them to me.
What I think might be improved is the presentation. Capital letters only at the beginning of each new stanza. Why? because you do not fully punctuate (something I'm a GREAT fan of in modern poetry) and you use enjambment which, when an idea is carried over to another line which starts with a capital letter, bothers me. Capital letters, in 21st century poetry, should be reserved for beginnings of things. And people's names. Or place names.
Of course, I am the type of poet who will support you if you simply haven't dared to write completely non-capitalized poetry. I think this text would be better that way.
Thank you for entering the second round of "Haiku Hunt Contest"
I am one of the three judges for this contest.
All of my reviews were written as the contestants' entries appeared in the forum. Today I am writing them into the review window and honing my original ideas.
Now I will direct myself to your haiku.
Your poem was posted in the contest forum at this date: Feb 10, 2014 at 10:16am
Part of the rules indicate that once posted in the forum, you can no longer edit. Your Static Item bears a Modified date of February 11th.
This is the original text I reviewed. It has nothing to do with the text currently in your static item.
it is a pity
we don't see ourselves as one
except from the moon
Here was my review.
This lovely poem strikes me more as belonging to the senryu than the haiku. Which surprises me since you live in Japan and are immersed in the culture.
I myself have been writing moon haiku to assess the difficulty of your task in this month's round of the contest. You have gotten completely away from every known cliche about the moon and observing it, I only wish you had done so in a more haiku way.
Thank you for entering for this second round.
I cannot accept the new static item as a contender in this contest.
Unfortunately, I feel I must rate your effort in a contest and this will reflect negatively on your current poem, which I have ignored.
Thank you for entering the second round of "Haiku Hunt Contest"
I am one of the three judges for this contest.
All of my reviews were written as the contestants' entries appeared in the forum. Today I am writing them into the review window and honing my original ideas.
Now I will direct myself to your haiku.
This is an excellent haiku. It surprises all the way around, from the ashen color to the reflection in the ice to the idea of it being a handmaiden. Your haiku has structure and beauty. It is what we all have difficulty achieving on a regular basis.
Your text perfectly complements the photo.
You have written a beautiful poem for a difficult prompt.
This is most certainly the winner of this round in the contest.
Thank you for entering the second round of "Haiku Hunt Contest"
I am one of the three judges for this contest.
All of my reviews were written as the contestants' entries appeared in the forum. Today I am writing them into the review window and honing my original ideas.
Now I will direct myself to your haiku.
It is unfortunate that you felt compelled to title your haiku. Even more unfortunate that you chose to repeat two essential words from the body of the poem.
That being said, your haiku is lovely. The first two lines are perfect in their descriptive power. "Late winter whispers" is exquisite. The combination of "blinks" and "glance" in the third line is redundant. Both imply a short look at something. And this movement is set up in the preceding line with the "frosty breezes." Repeated words or ideas in such short texts do not permit a writer to elaborate to the maximum the scene being described to the reader. A more fitting end to the poem might have been the simplicity of "moon's glance of soft light." We all know the color of moonlight. And the most creative way to end this poem would have been to speak of the white light without telling us that is is moonlight. Writing about something without naming it is always highly creative!
Thank you for entering the second round of "Haiku Hunt Contest"
I am one of the three judges for this contest.
All of my reviews were written as the contestants' entries appeared in the forum. Today I am writing them into the review window and honing my original ideas.
Now I will direct myself to your haiku.
Haiku writing is difficult. Unknowingly, I just reviewed another of your haiku, which I liked a lot better because it had more potential.
Your opening line reads like Shakespeare. I am certain he was not familiar with the Japanese poetry form of haiku. In all poetry nowadays, it is ALWAYS better to write like you speak. Rearranging words so that a certain one will fall at the end to create a rhyme, or to have a certain "effect" is no longer considered necessary as it was in Shakespeare's day.
Thus, be simple: "moon with great powers" is perfectly expressed. But you cannot limit those powers to only the ebb of the oceans. It is responsible for the ebb and flow, both the inward- and outwardness of the waves.
"Beckons from afar", while very poetic, has little to do with your subject matter of the moon's responsibility in the ebb and flow of the tides. I do not feel that this romanticism closes the poem in a way that adds new light to the beginning you have set out.
moon with great powers
pulls the oceans to and fro
filled with white shadows
My last line breaks unexpectedly with the scene and creates a poetic ending. This is what I am looking for when reading haiku.
The only way to learn to write haiku is to write them daily, three or four per day, and read, read, read. Start with the Japanese specialists whose legacy we all try to emulate. Then turn to contemporary English language haiku writers.
Ideally they should be set in one season or another, if your aim is traditional haiku. The first two lines are two statements about the scene you are trying to describe. In well written haiku, what this reader searches for, the third line, which should contrast with the first two. Your third line does not fill this role.
"Life begins anew" is a line that needs clear statements of the change between winter and spring in order to make it play its role of changing seaons. "Life begins anew" is a clear indication of spring, without the warm sun nor the honeysuckle. So I find in your haiku three statements of what happens at the beginning of spring.
And just to play devil's advocate, if you were a fan of winter skiing, being high in the mountains, you would also enjoy warm sunlight on your skin!
And I always write in my evaluations of poetry that it is a good idea to eliminate articles from tiny poems. Doing so gives the author another bit of opportunity to be descriptive. "Sunlight warms my skin" or "Bright sun warms my skin." The article in your second line is difficult to avoid.
From the static item introduction, I expected at least two texts. You write "poemS" decicated to my brother..."
Your title is very specific but I do not find a link between it and the body of the poem. There is no exotic city (if you are speaking about the capital of Portugal) nor a body of water the "you" of the poem crosses.
I took this "you" of the opening line to be your brother, or at least a human being.
I get to the end of the poem, and you seem to be talking to and about the walls, instead of the brother. I am reminded of Jerusalem's Wall of Lamentations, which I have never visited.
So, I am confused by the lack of direction in this poem. The twist that takes the reader from the beginning to the end via an unclear path.
I like the lines "I share part of my soul.../You're the diary.../My own private...." These are the most poetic lines of your short text, the ones that do not read like a diary. The ones that begin to read like literature. This is the direction the rest of your words need to take. Get beyond something we all write in our diaries to be read by only ourselves and paraphrase these same ideas into beautifully crafted prose.
The last line of the poem is not needed. For me it lessens the power of the three lines preceding it.
I remind you that in traditional haiku, I look for a perfect form of 5/7/5 syllables for a three-line poem, and a particular way the poem is staged on the page. There should ideally be two lines describing the chosen aspect of nature with a "kijo" or seasonal word. The end of the poem, usually the third line, must contain an element called "kireji" which introduces the contrasting idea that closes the poem, frequently called the "aha" moment.
Haiku is not a mere description of a scene in three lines. It shows a scene and then offers something else concerning it: an observation, a contrast, another viewpoint.
NOW TO REVIEW YOUR TEXT.
This is cute, a nice three-line poem that we have all written as teen-agers to commemorate a fun time making snow angels.
In my opinion, this is not haiku. It is properly considered as a senryu. You do not describe a nature scene but the human act in relationship to the snow. The snow itself is not the subject of your poem. The making of the snow angel is.
I remind you that in traditional haiku, I look for a perfect form of 5/7/5 syllables for a three-line poem, and a particular way the poem is staged on the page. There should ideally be two lines describing the chosen aspect of nature with a "kijo" or seasonal word. The end of the poem, usually the third line, must contain an element called "kireji" which introduces the contrasting idea that closes the poem, frequently called the "aha" moment.
Haiku is not a mere description of a scene in three lines. It shows a scene and then offers something else concerning it: an observation, a contrast, another viewpoint.
NOW TO REVIEW YOUR TEXT.
The image of the fishhook moon is vivid and original. That's my comment for your first line.
Haiku does not rhyme.
Haiku do not have titles.
These are the elements which considerably weaken my appreciation of your poem and which disqualify it from the contest.
Using the very technical title repeated as the second line, weakens the poem, as the repetition does not permit you to add other information to the scene you hope to describe.
A good title is a word or phrase that gives an overview of the poem. Attributing a title to a poem is one of the most difficult parts of the poet's work. And the shorter the poem, the harder the work.
Repeated words in a tiny poem never add anything positive to the text.
Unfortunately the strangeness of the word order or the lack of punctuation in the third line don't cut the mustard and does little to balance the opening image. "Star" can be a verb. If that is how you intended the reader to perceive this word, it needs to be in the plural. "Clouds STAR as winds vie" [what are the winds vying for?] and not the singular "stars." And the fact that there is the possibility of a misunderstanding in such a short text seems proof that it needs more work.
I remind you that in traditional haiku, I look for a perfect form of 5/7/5 syllables for a three-line poem, and a particular way the poem is staged on the page. There should ideally be two lines describing the chosen aspect of nature with a "kijo" or seasonal word. The end of the poem, usually the third line, must contain an element called "kireji" which introduces the contrasting idea that closes the poem, frequently called the "aha" moment.
Haiku is not a mere description of a scene in three lines. It shows a scene and then offers something else concerning it: an observation, a contrast, another viewpoint.
NOW TO REVIEW YOUR TEXT.
This reads in a very predictable way. By that I mean you have all the right words in the right places, but there is no surprise. I do not know whether a full wolf moon truly exists, but you compose the rest of the poem as if it did, the howling at the end pulling everything tight.
Your third line acts as a a proper haiku counterbalance to the first two, but is unfortunately set up by the use of "wolf moon" in the opening. So the surprise is, as I have said, predicable.
Look at my suggestion here:
new year's first full moon
silver reflecting off snow
a distant wolf howls
"Distant" and "echoes" do not work well together; they are redundant. An echo is by definition a distant sound. These two words add a typical element of predictable romanticism, and could so easily be used in a longer poem separated by other words so that their proximity does not bother the reader.
Also, the repeat of moon/moonbeam in a seventeen-syllable poem shows a poet in a hurry to finish a text, I'm sorry to say. As you have begun your poem with the moon, the simple mention of "silver reflecting off snow" is enough here.
I remind you that in traditional haiku, I look for a perfect form of 5/7/5 syllables for a three-line poem, and a particular way the poem is staged on the page. There should ideally be two lines describing the chosen aspect of nature with a "kijo" or seasonal word. The end of the poem, usually the third line, must contain an element called "kireji" which introduces the contrasting idea that closes the poem, frequently called the "aha" moment.
Haiku is not a mere description of a scene in three lines. It shows a scene and then offers something else concerning it: an observation, a contrast, another viewpoint.
NOW TO REVIEW YOUR TEXT.
You have written the only untitled haiku for this contest. Thank you for resisting the urge to create a title for your text especially for the static item.
The haiku writer I am recognizes with joy - and a bit of envy - the work you put into it in order to create a proper haiku. The balance of the two parts is perfect. You suggest well the sound in the first line, you show a clear visual in the second line and your third line offers a surprise that puts the two preceding lines into a perfect perspective.
This haiku does not speak to me personally. For me, the second line lacks the poetry of the first line and the precision of the third line. The word "exertion" needs to be explained. The typical problem of "show, don't tell." "Mortal clouds of heavy breath" conveys perfectly the idea of exertion.
That being said, this is one of best poems I have read recently.
Well put together short fiction is hard to accomplish. You've told your tale well enough that few holes remain for the reader to question.
One technical aspect needs attention, and it is a hard lesson for all of us to learn: ending sentences with prepositions. "...secured me to the metal chair I was sitting on." and "...performed his work on whomever the agency needed information from."
The first is easily corrected: "to the metal chair where I was attached." And the mere mention of the chair is enough to indicate that he was sitting (attached or not) to it. We have all seen these kinds of scenes on TV and read them in books. "...secured me to the chair."
The second example is more bit more awkward to circumvent. "...performed his work on whomever the agency needed to extract information."
Undoubtedly, you have a true poetic soul. Your work in general is well thought out and expressed a sensitivity that I don't find with every one of our WDC poets. This poem describes so well and makes the reader want to subscribe to your world.
As a poet, I object to your enjambment end many lines with either articles or prepositions. I understand your desire to begin each line with an important word or image, thus creating a type of justification for curious line cuts that tear apart words that belong together: in the // caverns; into its // daily routine; across // the sky; unappreciated by // the inhabitants; pushed from // its nest; but the // city shines on. One or two carefully placed enjambments in a poem add speed for the reader and indicate particular attention to the way the lines flow poetically. To me it seems as if you were trying out different types of line cuts and decided arbitrarily upon these.
For a first poem you have an interesting start. You have essentially written a list of elements making up the traditional scene of a shipwreck. There is nothing wrong with this approach, it is a sure way to set the scene. But a simple visual description of a scene must be exceptionally vivid to hold the reader's interest if nothing else is to happen in the poem.
My favorite line is "raven skies." Your poem needs more original vocabulary like this. When a poem contains few words, as does this one, each one has to count double or triple. The line "ocean floor" tells us nothing. What does it look like? Should it not be cloudy, murky, disturbed by the turbulence suggested by "palm trees whipping"?
In a list poem, it is important not to repeat elements unless you establish a reason to do so as the poem evolves. Thus for me "mountain of sand" which opens the poem and "cloudy sand" which closes the second stanza do not work to further the progression of the poem. This progression describes part of the physical aspects of a shipwreck in a very sparse language. When the reader arrives at the crux of the poem, the moment a survivor makes her entrance, every element should lead up to that moment in a sort of literary crescendo. This does not yet happen in your poem.
Although I like your title "waiting for nothing" which you use to close the poem, it does not fit into the sequence of this poem. It is the only line which carries an enormous emotional content and thus sticks out like a sore thumb. It begs a companion line or some other sort of explanation. It absolutely needs to be explained somehow. I cannot imagine a survivor of a shipwreck who is not impatient, or even desperate to be rescued, so this line is so completely beyond the boundary of what I think of concerning this kind of scene that I cannot understand its presence here.
Either you need to find another way to end the poem without this line and reserve it for a better use in another more emotional poem, or you need to add something that suggests to the reader why the survivor is waiting for nothing.
I notice that this is a new item which does not seem to have been revised since you posted it here a few days ago. Never fear editing your writing. Doing so is the only way to make it more and more visual and exciting for the reader to discover and ultimately want to read more from your portfolio.
Congratulations for having this poem selected in this week's Author's Newsletter.
Although I agree with the more soul implications of your final line "we can't see them with the naked eye," I don't think the poem flows well from the "or a Demon...." line to the end. The bridge from the first two examples does not smoothly arrive at the concluding line.
Congratulations for having this poem selected in this week's Author's Newsletter.
When you get to the crux of describing fireworks without sight, these stanzas are brilliantly written. Your examples are strong and add the dimension necessary to involve other senses in your "vision."
Technically, the syllable count is correct but I wonder, as in many forms reflecting a particular nation's sensitivities, if there was not a particular direction this poem should have taken, like nature with the haiku.
I gather that the two words in bold type were prompt words. I personally would not have written the second gerund, opting for an active verb, but I think you didn't want to deter from "wake" in the third line.
For me, the "wake unforgiving memories" is lacking in glue. The words do not flow well together and force this (lazy) reader to try and figure out what you meant. I usually don't like poetry that poses a question at the end and offers the reader no hope of an answer.
Why were the memories unforgiving? Had she killed someone? Had she had too much to drink? Was there a stranger in her bed?
As much as visual poetry may allow our minds to wander, when poems are too vague they touch the reader less than if the poet had shown instead of told.
Love poetry is difficult to write in a convincing manner. Your poem here is excellent. Your writing is simple and yours are sensitive and do not fall into the typical cliches about love.
I happened upon this poem with the Random Review Tool.
Great poetry, great images and a consistent form.
The only thing I object to is "fists." You have set up your pattern so that this single one-syllable word should be a verb. My first, and even second read, tried to force it into that pattern, and of course it couldn't be read as a verb! I would maintain the pattern and find word usable as a verb.
(But I bet everyone doesn't follow it as closely as I did...)
This is a beautiful poem, but it took me a while to understand that you truly meant "mourning" at the beginning.
I find that the poem truly ends with the third stanza. With your refrain line expertly closing each of the three quatrains, I do not believe it is necessary to add the final couplet, which, in my opinion, should continue to rhyme. Not only does it break the rhythm of the quatrains, it breaks the rhythm of the rhymes.
All in all an excellent read. And from your statistics, many have appreciated it!
This is an excellent tanka which respects the volta aspect that should happen in the second part of the poem.
Your photo helps the reader but is not completely necessary.
On a purely grammatical side, the pronoun "their" in the last line technically refers to "freedom" which is the last noun in your text and not the "wings" of the third line. Although I've never been close enough to a hummingbird to feel the beat of its wings, it would seem to me that the sensation would be more breeze than wind, which implies a certain force.
Therefore I probably would appreciate "I feel its wind in my hair."
The Musette form requires four syllables for the second line of each stanza. Your second one has five syllables.
I find this an ambitious poem for such a subject matter. Ideally, each stanza should clearly relate to the poem's title, "longing." I do not find this to be true. In my opinion, only the first stanza treats the subject convincingly. In the second stanza, the person is indeed in love and shows it; in the third, the line 'each time" lets the reader know the person is involved. For me longing is best described when, like the first stanza implies, a person cannot catch love's echo and remains alone, hoping for companionship.
In general, the shortest poetry forms are easiest for purely descriptive poetry where strong visuals can be constructed with small words.
Write on!
alfred
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