Thread: Fragile gods

No questions of perfection
here all's beautiful, glorious
flawed, without direction,
intrepidly laborious,
silent in derision.
A mortal solace, anticipation
of myths as yet untold
in darkling habitation
that will be made of gold.
The wild walked its weary road
till whisper of a whisper,
this dully dreaming code
enrols its shattered vista
while these fragile gods forebode
with mutterings unheard
that all will come to death
though his grimmest grin be blurred
by every stifling breath.

This is very nice read aloud. A good read.

I agree it reads nicely.

The "all is" contraction seems a bit out of place. It also seems appropriate to me, to break it into two stanzas half way through.

It's quite an abstract piece, hard and challenging to center down on. Made it interesting but also left it hanging there somewhat indifferent to me.

This reads beautifully, Crowley, and once again your language is put to challenging use! The rhyming scheme does the poem nothing but justice, and your firm grasp on it helps you handle it well enough so that the reader doesn't find the words forced. The title induces curiosity, and the poem does not displease after the reader is drawn into it.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Martin and say that breaking it into two stanzas would put an expectation in the reader for more, whereas this - as one whole - seems lengthy enough.

I do feel that you may use the comma too much, where other punctuation could be used to show variation. For example:

here all's beautiful; glorious
flawed, without direction,

Even a simple semi-colon could give a different kind of pause for the reader that doesn't make them sick of commas towards the end of the piece.

A very fine poem. I liked the following alliteration:

The wild walked its weary road

I get a very vivid picture and the words just roll off the tongue.

Flawless meter and rhyme, here. And your use of anthropormorphism, the attribution of human behavior to and inanimate object or behavior, is stunningly haunting.

that all will come to death
though his grimmest grin be blurred
by every stifling breath.

Great job! Laurie

Can't add anything that hasn't been said, so I'll just say that these last lines struck brilliantly.

that all will come to death
though his grimmest grin be blurred
by every stifling breath.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I know what you mean about the commas SNS, I just have an irrational hatred of the semi colon. I'm glad the last lines came across so well, it took me a while to find a way to communicate the finality and the denail of finality in a way that wasn't totally cliched. I just kept thinking of "Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" glad it came across well.

I found the erratic rhyme a bit off-putting, as was the stifling language, which seemed really forced. Let the poem breathe a bit, it seemes like it's over-crammed with passing alliteration and tedious words.

Could you point out where the rhyme is erratic rather than just arbitrarily stating it and what do you mean by stifling language, is this somehow innappropriate for poetry or was there a word you didn't understand and it pissed you off.

The rhyme scheme:

ABABAACACDEDFDGHGH

It just seemed really irregular. One particular instance of the excess alliteration was "the wilde walked its weary road," which just really slowed down the pace a lot. There was many partials throughout, which generated ruts, per se, in the rhythm of the piece. By stifling I mean the drawn-out sentence structures and long words, especially near the beginning. In sparing use such elements may improve a poem, but again in excess they get in their own way.

Thats more like it, the weary road line yes was not the best and I'll need to alter it, alliteration can sometimes sound better in ones head than from the page. On the subject of the rhyme this is not a traditional piece and does not conform, and not intended to conform, to a simple paradigm. Not all poems have to be in rhyming couplets or have a regularly repeating structure, the use of assonance, irregularity and vocal style is commonplace in modern poetry and I don't feel the need to force it to conform to a more regular structure. On the subject of language i know that verbosity can sometimes seem contrived but this is language i am comfortable using, not regurgitation from a thesaurus. For a simple poem, written to be accessible with an easy lilt, yes, absolutely simple language is important, but for the grandiose, the far reaching even a little rediculous or self indulgent subject matter, the language should fit. These words exist for a reason, they have independant meanings, they are for use in conversation and writing, not to be drawn out simply to brocade another more functional word. Upon reading your poem recently I saw that you have a very different style and alot of these pointers seem to be pushing in the direction of your style, simpler more fluid language, regular structure etc, but i am not you, perhaps read it again with that in mind.
On a different note I've just re-read to find examples of overly verbose words and i really don't see how any of these words could be classed as "long" or unusual, they are all well within a GCSE reading level.

I'd find it interesting to hear where your inspiration comes from. When you say you're comfortable with such subjects and wording, I'd like to know what 'picture' to hold the poem up against. I think in general this personal essence, that you're abstracting from, is what lacked clarity for me...

I'm well aware, I almost never use rhyme myself, though I just found it really confusing because although rhyme does not have to be overly strict, there usually needs to be some kind of structure to it. The verbosity wasn't at all to the extreme, but it did have that impression to it. I'd scarcely call that one piece my own style, it's like a year old and rather singular, but then again I try to not cling to a single style regardless. Anyway, thanks for the good read.

Hi Crowley,

I like this poem (especially up to the word 'gold'), but I agree with Moonxw the irregular rythme is offputting combined with the rhymes. This could easily be remedied.

Enjoyed reading.

Love,

Firebird

@ Martin: the inspiration for this poem individually came to me on an ice skating rink bizarrely but the theme of humanities struggle against the orders of determinism and mortality, which is rather more general, came from my own struggle with accepting atheism. In debates at university I often come up against the question of "so do you believe in anything?" or more frightening "How do you cope with mortality if you don't believe in the afterlife?". Attempting to answer these questions is what lead me to discuss them in poetry. I suppose one of the reasons the concepts can be so abstract to readers and why I get very passionate about them (apology to moonxw) is because they are very delicate, precarious solutions to very powerful and scary questions. The voice of a poem like this is, in theory, supposed to be very vocal, very lyrical and fly from word to word and rhyme to rhyme as i try to explore the oddities of human mortality. The rhyme was irregular because of the way i wanted this voice to sound. In places detatched and pensive following more widely spaced structures (ABAB), or more emphatic using alliteration and couplets. I suppose the issue with my poetry is that its very much a personal monologue and that can be a bit offputting for readers, especially as alot of it only makes sense in my rather messed up world view.

@moonxw-As I said apologies for defending my point so rigorously. i wasn't trying to indicate that one poem was the extent of your poetry, just making a comparison with what i had read. I still can't quite commit myself to a regular structure enough to keep one for a whole poem though i may lean more to that method to make it more approachable...

@firebird...or perhaps just remove the rhyme altogether and let the flow speak for itself. Thanks for comments.