There is a lot of good writing in this piece. Each paragraph gives the reader a certain insight to the story as it unfolds, but I find that there is a problem in the flow from one scene to the next.
In the space of nine paragraphs, you have taken the reader through a lifetime of a single man. In my humble opinion, the piece is much too short for the amount of information to be imparted with the reader.
Your first two paragraphs set an interesting scene on a lake one cold morning. They lead the reader to believe that you will continue describing this day. You describe is as "one of the best days of my life." We get no further details. Personally, this was my first deception.
A stranger arrives in your story about five members of a family. He takes a picture. Of what? What were you doing in that picture? This is never fully explained in your story. Although that one photograph is the central unifying element of this story.
In your fifth paragraph, where you begin to share a bit of information about this photograph with the reader, the entire tone of this episode sounds like the reason it was so important is because this brother died too early. There is a tone of melancholy that is not explained to the reader nor developed further. Indeed, I was fairly confused because I thought from the tone of this paragraph that the importance would be revealed - this was the first of many memories you had of your brother who had since passed away. But that was not the case.
I am reminded of a typical type of comment judges make in piano competitions: "there were lots of lovely moments in the performance I just heard. But nothing held together."
I have the same feeling about this story. There are lots of well written scenes, but little holding them together.
Keep writing,
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I found this on the Auto-Reward Page. The number of reviews you have already attained for this piece is impressive, yet I think I may have some advice for you.
A poem written from a ghost's point of view is interesting to say the least. What is lacking, in my humble opinion, is why he is trapped in the life he once had, what was the unfinished business which keeps him haunting the place where he died? Suicide? Premature death? Assassination? Every soul after death does not continue haunting the place of their death- only those with unfinished business on earth.
So, for me, there is a major hole in this poem.
Three lines need tweaking.
"Ignoring me as I have grown accustomed." One grows accustomed to something. As what he has grown accustomed to is implied in the preceding line, it would be so easy to write "I have grown accustomed to being ignored." It is always a good idea in free verse where there is absolutely no constraint of rhyme or rhythm, to write like you speak.
Your line "the room encloses" is incomplete. Enclose takes a direct object. "The room encloses ME or MY LIFE" (or something similar) is needed here.
"There is only the blank void I live from now on." This is not terribly poetic in its expression. Yes, the reader understands, but you have lost an opportunity to give the reader more information about your protagonist. "There is only the blank void which has become my life" tells the reader so much more.
Excellent work. It's inventive, quick paced and there is very little which is not essential to the plot line. So you handle the word restrictions perfectly.
I like the way everything falls into place once the reader knows that the missing object is the narrator's heart. You cleverly leave a wonderful clue in the third paragraph. And then build the suspense until the "punch line" ending, which is quite effective.
This was a true pleasure to read.
Keep up the creative work,
alfred
You have some wonderful images in this poem. "Broken dreams begin to deteriorate" and "chaos eats at my every thought." Although in this last phrase I would eliminate "every" and place thought in the plural to create a more percussive phrase.
NightmarIC does not exist. The adjective is nightmarISH. This phrase also is excellent.
My main critique of this poem is that I don't follow the direction of all of your thoughts as they progress from the beginning of the poem to the conclusion (which ideally should be logical) of "when even the angels cry." What you have described in your poem is how a human being can suffer. This you do well. But you do not show the reader how it is that your angels also suffer.
IMHO, there is a bridge missing between this ending and the body of the poem.
And lastly, your underscoring and words in italic and bold add nothing to the poem. Although it is becoming more and more common in contemporary writing to use these printing techniques to force the reader to use the exact same emphasis as the writer conceived, in my opinion, if the writer knows what he is doing, the reader is always aware of the important words.
The form you've chosen for these poems is very interesting. You use it well in the four examples you offer the reader.
In "Redemption", I wonder who the "they" is in the second line. You use "commune" as a verb, which can be justified, but in my opinion you don't use it in such a way that the reader is not forced to guess at its meaning and come up with "communicates" instead. I had to look this word up, which is no problem, but in reading its definition, I remain uncertain as to is proper use in this context. In my opinion, rich vocabulary is great for poetry, but there has to be a reason a more erudite word is used in the place of a more easily understood one. This poem ends with a question - I would use the question mark to finish the poem.
"Stillness" has, in my opinion, the same shortcoming with "short" used as a verb. Any theatre goer is always in admiration of a great actor capable of delivering a monologue, so the definition I find for "to short" as either short-circuit or cheat, doesn't seem to fit the situation. I'm forced, because of your use of uncommon words in strange ituations, to wonder whether I understand everything and why you want to be vague at the beginning of a poem. The rest of this poem fits well the model you have chosen.
"Envy" is by far the best of the four. It is clear, concise and very upbeat. You take no chances with strange words, and it reads easily.
In "Determination", I read that it is the yellow flowers of the desert which are "dismissed" and "restricted." That is because you have abbreviated too much the opening lines. IN my opinion, they need a bit more information so that the reader does not come to this erroneous conclusion.
All in all, a very interesting series of poems based on a very original model that I myself will try soon.
There is a striking image in the first line. It is excellent. We imagine the a sunny sky somehow casting a blue shadow on the face.
Then, during the rest of the poem, we learn that the azure is not the sky but the eyes. This too is fine.
What is less fine, IMHO, is that by repeating azure two other times, you take away from the extreme force of the opening line. You bat the reader over the head, reminding him that the eyes are not emerald, not hazel, but azure.
You also use the word "eyes" three times, twice coupled with azure. The reader got it the first time.
The ending, while expressed differently, is good. It tells much more than your opening shows, but it is strong enough to close the poem with certainty. It is very difficult to find other phrases as exceptional as your opening line, but this is the direction I think your poem needs to take.
Poetry can always use more imagery. I feel that one reason you might repeat azure is to maintain the imprint of that particular color on the poem. Take the opportunity in the part "Your eyes beckon, they call/ Azure eyes burn with ennui" to find another adjective than azure which would help the reader understand the idea of ennui. I'm not quite sure that ennui can "burn" in the glance of eyes, but that's another matter. "Burn" is a very active verb which contradicts a bit the idea of ennui.
Your line "Come away from here please"; they seem to say" is awkward. Normally one would say "go away from here." Or "come away from there" as in a warning to avoid the sun's strong rays too close to a west window without curtains. I almost feel like this line is really trying to convey "come HERE please", because the following line uses the verb beckon. So either there is a contradiction which is prematurely presented at this moment of the poem (which thus spoils the surprise of the ending) or you haven't quite expressed what was in your mind in an unequivocal fashion.
All in all there is a lot of potential expressed in this poem.
I first read your item called "Commentary on poems". I thought that if a poem is so obscure that the author needs to explain it, then something is wrong in the poem.
This poem is full of imagery. I like it quite a lot. But I certainly don't see in it what you put in it, because I allow your words to connect with my meanings and that creates my own view of your poem. That's what writing poetry is all about. Using words to create images and then sharing them. Once those words are printed on the page, you cannot fault anyone for not understanding your initial meanings. That is almost impossible through poetry.
I was pleasantly surprised to read this text. It is very creative. And I, as a reader of poetry, am always content when I find words which let my imagination run rampant.
Love poems are hard to write. You've done a good job. Your opening stanza has a wonderful image in it, and the metaphor of laughter and rippling water is extremely poetic because it involves the senses.
Then your poem tells instead of shows, which is hard not to do in a love poem, but is becomes much less visual as a result of your word choice. And I got stuck with the line "This absent soul in your memories." I would have thought that something similar to "your absent soul in my memories" would have been more appropriate to the idea of unrequited love. So, IMHO, this line still needs tweaking.
Your poem closes with a very strong image, just as strong as its opening one; these are two essential areas in a poem which remain with the reader.
However, as a gay man who writes poetry, there is nothing in your poem which indicates the sex of either the narrator or the beloved, thus signing this as a "gay" poem. One may assume that that a smile like rose petals and soft laughter refer to a woman, but I personally would have no problem describing those attributes of my lover in those terms. So, I wonder at your presentation (of the homosexual variety) and your genre gay/lesbian.
Please don't get me wrong. It is important for the gay community to speak out about our "forbidden" and "impossible" loves. Except there is not enough detail in this poem to distinguish this poem as gay oriented from any other poem about unrequited love.
The third stanza is absolutely wonderful. It's the best part of the poem for me. It flows so well and the images of a sleeping Santa/cum nature representation are very vivid.
I have never decided how to use "foreign" words in a poem; were this poem to be published in a real life book (as I call them) you wouldn't have the opportunity to add a footnote to explain everything. So I wonder at the practice of doing so here on WDC. Of course it's helpful to the reader, and saved me the trouble of playing google this evening.
It's like using sericate instead of silky. An awfully difficult word to use convincingly.
But that's just an aside.
To return to the poem itself: Although you use enjambment once in the first stanza, I wonder what it adds used in every line of the last one? It seems like an exercise in different types of presentation within a single poem, and for me this irregularity gets in the way of my appreciation. I'm one for a visual harmony with my poems, at least as much as can be mustered by the varying thoughts we all use to make up our poems!
Thanks for this interesting read.
Keep up the creativity.
alfred
The form is perfect, but then you're a good enough poet to master that aspect.
What I usually don't like about this kind of poetry - that which relies on a syllable count to maintain the form - is that poets leave out words which makes the word flow awkward.
"So far/from cold harsh wind" is an example. The phrase "from cold harsh windS" has no problem, the article a or the is not needed. But you did not write the plural. A singular subject needs the article.
"as grumbling bus inches forward" naturally needs the word "the" and its lack bothers me. It would be easy (and thus grammatically correct) to write "the grumbling bus inches forward/and stops." Your use of "as" is not necessary in this phrase because there is no comparison being made.
Here:
Respite
No locals move
accept weary journey
traffic jam routine affair
daily.{/auote}
the lack of punctuation doesn't help with two or three words missing. "The locals," "accept their weary..." "traffic jam A routine".
A suggestion or two to ease the reading would be:
Respite?
No locals move...
accept weary journeyS!
traffic jam - routine daily
affairS!
It is a common opinion that the closer poetry remains to the spoken word, the easier it is to be appreciated by the reader. Thus the changes proposed in the word order in this stanza.
It is on this basis alone that my rate is low. It's very difficult to write this kind of poem while keeping the necessary words in place. Sometimes leaving out words works well; it is my opinion that it isn't the case in this particular poem.
Your subject matter is creative and the weaving of your garland works very well. One has to be reminded that it's a form which uses a repeated lines in order to realize it.
On the technical side, because you punctuate but don't capitalize the beginnings of new sentences, the reader is sometimes lost. While I'm all for unpunctuated and uncapitalized poetry myself, to write it convincingly is an art and not simply a matter of laziness. A period always indicates an end of a completed thought, and implies a capital letter afterwards.
The very poetic lines here, probably your most original, are easily misinterpreted because of the punctuation:
holding summer blossoms
in the palm of my hand.
gleaming in moonlight,
radiant from kisses
left by raindrops.
Radiant from kisses, the way this phrase is written, refers back to moonlight, and that doesn't work. It should refer back to hand, but after hand you have a period. The expression kisses left by raindrops is wonderful, but the way you have penned it lets the reader think more that you're speaking of romantic kisses instead of those between lovers.
And because I always mention it, in such a short poem you have five times the word "summer", which in my opinion is three too many. Use it at the beginning, and then at the end if you must remind the reader when this poem is taking place, but it's excessive use can read of poetic laziness instead of the true verbal search for other words giving the same hints to the reader.
There is a lot of potential already in your text. The image in "Frilly petticoats of confident splendour" is wonderful! The Trois-Par-Huit form is technically correct - you have the proper rhyme scheme and the proper amount of syllables per line. Although I personally wouldn't rhyme rose with close if close is an adverb and not a verb, which changes the pronunciation.
Form poetry is hard to write because we are tempted to leave out words like "the" and "a" in order to maintain syllable counts.
In my opinion the extreme difficulty of creating great poetry is knowing when one can leave out the tiny words. Were you not limited by your syllable count, you would have written "hidden in A humble hedge" and "Soon opens THE velvet red heart..." In my opinion, the reader stumbles over these phrases because the words he expects are not present and the fact that this forces a second reading where the first, with the proper words would be enough, is bothersome.
Correct grammar would have you write "...coy petals tightLY furled."
And I have a problem with the "thickly" in "bees hover thickly close." Do you mean a swarm of bees?
What I would do now is consult a synonym dictionary to see if I could find substitutes which would change the syllable count so that I could include the bothersome words you omitted from this poem. I think with a tiny bit of work you can resolve these three problems and thus create a perfect poem, both in form and content.
Superb. The use of the form is wonderful, your repeat line melts into each stanza like marshmallows melting in hot chocolate. The story is sweet and well written.
It's been a long time since I've read something as well constructed as this poem. And yet one isn't aware of the artifice at all.
A nice start of a poem. In my opinion it lacks a central stanza explaining the negative words, untamed, victim and prey of the first stanza and forming a bridge to your second stanza. This second stanza nicely closes the poem with a bit of hope.
All of us write beginnings of poems at three in the morning. The next day, the true writers among us go back over those words and change what needs to be changed in order to make the poem more coherent.
There is often confusion about what poetry should be. Good poetry is not the first series of ideas which once written down must never be changed. So many young poets, and I personally suffer from this, do not like striking out words already formed into rhyme or meter. A good writer never fears the editing process; and if that changes a rhyme (like your may/way one in the second stanza) it can only be for the overall improvement of the poem.
Three words bother me. As I reread the proper definition of "closure" it seems to be misused here. That particular line has two important words - "closure" and "untamed". The idea of untamed is continued in the following lines with the words victim and prey so technically there is no closure at this point in the poem. It would be so easy to write "bring an end to this untamed day." It seems to me that you decided to use the word "closure" and put it in as best you could. In my opinion, it is not the right word here.
In the last line of the second stanza, you use "dusk". Dusk happened at the beginning of the poem, when the sky purpled. It means sunset. What you are describing in this stanza is the following dawn. This is, I hope, simply a confusion between dusk and dawn.
And personally, I would avoid pat cliché phrases like "come what may" especially when you do not use the phrase correctly.
With a bit of editing, I'm certain that you can turn this poem into a better one.
There is too much left out of this poem for me to appreciate it. We all write diatribes but if we expect our public to understand our swiftly written words then we have to take a bit of time to edit some sense into them once the initial verse is caught in ink.
The editing process is important. I feel that there has been little or none done to this poem. There are too many holes in this poem. It is evident only to the writer, and that's not enough of a reason to place our poetry before a critical public. It must be well enough written to please that public, or at least give him enough understanding of the subject to be able to say "yeah" or "nay."
You have two contradictory definitions side by side of "alone" in your poem:
To be alone is to find peacefulness.
To be alone is to be alone.
And to be frank, this second line is bad. It makes no sense.
Because you use a very specific form in two lines separated by a third:
"Sadness -- Cold -- Dark
Is this what is desired.
Exhaustion -- Loud -- Relentless"
The reader should be able to find a parallel between these six words. He cannot do so because you have not shared enough information with him. That information is certainly in your own head and makes perfect sense to you because you know what you meant in abbreviating so much of this part of the poem. But the reader is completely lost.
I am always available for rereads and eventually re-rates if a fellow poet is interested in improving his poetry.
It's strange that in your introduction you give the impression that you don't care about whether or not you have correctly written this item and in the last part of your poem you speak about "respect is what I ask nothing more".
We all seek respect. The respect a writer earns comes back to him when he uses language as best as he can in order to convey his message. When this is done well, even if the reader does not admire his message, the reader can at least say "he puts a good foot forward and expresses himself well."
The only fault with this poem is that it has not been thought out. You write parts of phrases which are not clearly expressed and then skip immediately to another part of a phrase with no rhyme or reason. I find that there is little cement between your words.
Were you to go back and edit this poem, fill in a few of the holes and share more of what was going through your mind when you wrote this with the reader, it would be a better, more complete poem.
Your introduction describes this story "Quick and refreshing." I fully agree with the "quick." Refreshing is a matter of opinion.
My major complaint is your incessant use of "my beloved." There are 30 uses of this phrase. It is aggravating to no end.
Stories, even flash fiction, mean more to the reader if he can identify himself with the characters. Naming them is part of that process. Your 30 repetitions of "my beloved", i.e. 60 words could have been so much less, if every now and then you used a single word, a name like Lucy, "she" or "her" to replace your poat phrase " my beloved."
And I can't honestly say that I understood much about what was supposed to be the big dark secret his mother told her. I'm sorry but "Those rainy days, the video camera, the man. I trembled uncontrollably." is simply not enough information for the average reader to understand what you are hinting at. The fact that you write flash fiction is no excuse for the outline of the action to be crystal clear to the reader.
As this piece did not seem to be written for a contest, there is no reason not to go back to it and edit in some more detail to help the reader understand some of the missing pieces.
Love poems are extremely difficult to write in a convincing fashion. You have done this hands down. Your voice is original and comes across with honesty and humility. Though your words are simple they convey a strong message of attachment and love.
My less than perfect score is only due to typos which should be corrected.
This story is absolutely brilliant. The writing is swift and witty and there are no words which do not serve the story. A take-off on the angel of death in a funny humorous way that makes the reader feel good. There are a couple of incredible images that come to mind, the most usual is a bicycle pedaling itself in the sunset.
You've done a very original job here. A story to be read by all.
This is a very unusual story that keeps the reader involved until the very last sentence. It is well written and there is nothing superfluous in it. All through the story I wondered what the product would be. And when I got to the end and was amply rewarded, I wonder about calling it a "product" though a synonym check didn't reveal a "nicer" word. My only tiny complaint is that when I got to the end, I would have liked a more endearing presentation of that product in the ultimate line.
"My product? It's only my simple ......"
Ah, you all thought I was going to give it away? You'll have to read this wonderful little story to find out for yourselves.
This is a story I would recommend for ever reader here on WDC. Honestly.
This sounds more like a religious poem than the genre Adult or Young Adult.
In your second stanza you write he in the first line and then His, implying god, in the second line. Whichever it the proper spelling, you need to harmonize this stanza: either He and His or he and his.
Maybe it's a typo, but this might be a perfect example, if your capital His is an error, of how one small mistake can change the way a reader views a poem.
There is an idea in it, that all of us in life will have a rough time of things, i.e. be broken many times and desire to be something other than what we truly are.
I'm not sure I agree with the implication that we are deliberately broken, that's a matter for philosophers.
All in all, you have written a very interesting and thought-provoking poem.
Keep writing!
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There seems to be style, gumption and creativity, but in my mind if a writer's words are not clear enough for the general public to be able to decipher the meanings behind those words, then why place it before the public's eye?
I'm sorry to be so dense, but I understood nothing.
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There is definitely drama here, in your words and in the event you recount. Unfortunately, I must be a bit dense because I do not understand what the relationship to the man's death has to do with the baby which was already dead.
Makes no sense to me. Now, if you had described the baby as still living, everything would make sense. But you did not.
Obviously I've missed something but it is also my opinion that even within the framework of 55 words, your scene is not written in a crystal clear fashion for every reader who may happen upon this item.
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You have written a nice poem about fear; it comes across as truthful and insightful.
Two details bother my aesthetic sense, however: the fact that you don't maintain the rhyming in the last two lines, for if rhyme is not an inherent part of the Pleiades form, when a poet chooses to include it in the poem, it should logically continue to the end. Thus there is a problem with nightmares/daylight.
The second point is the double use of "day" in the last line. It would be much simpler to write "...and I can see the light" at the end - the meaning is still conveyed and you remove the doubling of an important word which is redundant, because at dawn no one will be bathed in moonlight, for example.
I particularly appreciate that the individual lines of this poem stand on their own - you haven't used a continual run-on sentence like many do with this form, but succeeded in writing independent phrases all beginning with the proper letter.
Keep up the creative work,
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A touchy subject for a poem. You've courage and that counts you among the more original poets.
Your poem begins with two stanzas about the way diamonds have had their play in destroying the country. Then you turn to the general public's indifference to this situation to end the poem in shorter and shorter lines, with a hideous truth : "while darfur rots."
It's a shame that you didn't find a way to continue tying in the quest for wealth throughout the poem.
What you have written is, for the most part, well put forward.
There are, however slight problems.
On the technical side, you need a comma in the first line, to separate your first statement with its resulting question. I personally would have placed these separate ideas on different lines in order to avoid the necessity of punctuation, but I did not write this poem.
You next need to write girls in the possessive form.
And your line "that part of the world's end" is very impersonal. It's like the common disinterested phrase: "Darfur? Oh yeah. It's in THAT part of the world." There is something very derogatory in this simple expression which I feel goes against what you want to convey. Darfur is a country, where an entire people live, and they are slowly but surely becoming victims of a very organized genocide.
The following lines are amongst the most poignant of your poem:
mines built with the bones
of tribes fleeing their homes
In your third stanza you write "and use sites like..." I think it would be stronger to write "to consult sites...". That's a more intelligent word and we need intelligent reasons to defend why we are collectively sitting on our rear ends doing nothing. You perfectly convey this idea in the last portion of your poem.
You say this twice in this stanza : "not get involved." It's repetition becomes a subliminal message which I hope is not the message you intend to convey through this poem.
Your poetry almost perfectly rhymes. Your rhyming sequences are not standardized throughout the poem. In the first stanza you have abab, the second you have a monorhyme (cccc), in the third you return to abab but in my opinion you cheat by using "involved" a second time to rhyme with itself, and in your last stanza, you have a poor abca.
When writing poetry, a poet has only two choices. To rhyme, or not to rhyme. There are many forms governing the former type of poem, and if one chooses to rhyme the reader expects the same type of rhyme to be found throughout the entire poem. This is one of the greatest unifying devices poets may use to create words that the general public recognizes as "poetry."
You have a good start here. A sensitive subject about which you have enough ideas to express yourself and pull in a readership to your cause.
In your bio-block I read that you are only just beginning to finish polishing your poems. Now would be an excellent time to begin doing so.
Keep writing,
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