Thread: Reflection

"Reflection"

I once knew a girl like me whose words were keen and free
and all the freedom of those words served to bind me
as they captured my attentions, and often drove me on.
It was sickening to my friends, as it should have been to me,
the sweet murmurs that I pledged to her, and she returned to me.

But I've danced on the salamanders, and foxtrot with the sun
and know that fires that burn this hot, will themselves silently expunge.
Of course I dreamed of forever or atleast forever and a day
so I was quietly suprised that morning she spirited away.

I didn't rage and cry out "No", nor cast about in pain.
I had struck out with an olive branch so nothing ventured gained.
Then I took those embers and banked them cold anew
waiting for just one more
to be my mirror to.

---

Something I worked on over the last couple of days, and in the interest of being new here, brought my newest work with me.

There is too much specificity in this poem for it to be relatable too many people, or so it seems to me. This can be attributed to you word usage, to a degree, however, and may alter if you tighten up the work. You need to watch your word choice, as you tend to get quite verbose in places and tautological in others. This makes the poem dense and difficult to understand. In concordance with this, make certain that you are making use of punctuation, as right now it appears as though you have a great deal of enjambments, which results in a piece of work that is quite difficult to read. It appears as though you initially intended to write this in form, but gave up towards the end where both the rhyme and rhythm are fairly gone. Regardless, a natural rhythm is found, but it is unrefined and so fails to hold up the poem on its own merit. In fact, the rhythm is reminiscent of a limerick initially, but your anapests appear at random throughout the poem and so you lose much of this. Overall, my greatest piece of advice would be to make it concise. Poetry is an art of saying a great deal with few words. If a word does not add to the poem, than it can probably be gotten rid of.



T

Thank you for the review, and honestly it's exactly what I was afraid to hear. I'll take this back to the drawing board during the day, and put in some edits later tonight.

Reflection (Sept. 29 '10)

I once knew a girl like me.
She captured my attentions, and often drove me on.
I should have known better than to let my senses flee
but the sweet murmurs that I pledged to her she'd return to me.

I've danced on salamanders, and foxtrot with the sun
so I knew that fires burnt that hot would themselves expunge.
Of course I dreamed of forever, atleast forever and a day
so I was quietly suprised when she spirited away.

I didn't cry out "No" and didn't storm nor brood
I gathered up the embers and banked them cold anew.
Waiting for just one more
to be my mirror to.

-------

An improvement? Maybe, that's for you to decide.

I was very impressed by your first poem. Where you get descriptive, ("whose words were keen...") you might have interpreted as wordy and verbose. But really you are saying something beautiful and expressing it precisely, so I think the extra words are justified. They would probably not be justified in describing the color of the salamander, but nearly everywhere else you are describing your feelings and that adds more than it takes away (except maybe the olive branch line).

I agree with Tenebris that it's kind of verbose ("pledged".. "expunge"), and the rhythm needs work (the middle part seems to chug at full speed ahead of the first) but I think his criticism of the and density of it is unwarranted. In fact, I find it is the most charming aspect of the poem, and I think his advice seems to contradict itself - if a poem is concise but meaningful, could it not be considered dense?

Maybe what you need to try to go for is to have simplicity without appearing to try to be simple, and to write with density but make the work seem light. Because like Oscar Wilde said, "the way of paradoxes is the way of truth."

Good luck, comrade!

I was attempting to refrain from offering any more critique until another person had stated an opinion so that you weren't looking at my advice as the only available. I would hope you take all of my critique with a grain of salt, as I would not claim to be an expert. The beauty of it is that it is your poem and you make the final call. Respectfully, I believe the rewrite is a step in the right direction. That is too subversive. I believe your rewrite is quite good. I enjoyed it and felt you had command of what you had written, whereas the initial poem felt like a rough draft. It seems as though you, perhaps, have not yet developed your style fully since you were able to make these changes so easily, but it also speaks very highly of your ability to adapt and change a work. For myself, I often have to set aside a work for a time to be able to change much of anything.

I do see a few places where you can continue to work on this poem and improve upon your language, but I do not want to sound forceful in my views of how I think the poem should be altered further. For now, you have a strong free verse poem with a few gentle rhymes that work well and I think you can do with it as you will. Hopefully a few others will stop to offer you an opinion other than my own to give you some more to work with.

In reference to chic, I was referring to a density of words rather than a density of meaning, which I believe is the key factor here. To be concise is to be dense in meaning, but simple in words. As I said, each word should add something to the poem, and far be it from me to say which words are of the most import.



T

I wish I could be as encouraging as I think Tenebris is. I also admire his humility - a characteristic of a sage.

I feel compelled to say I stand by my own criticism. Even using his definition -- which I actually find a much closer one rather than my labeling of your writing "descriptive" -- I support your poem's density 100%. Like I said, I think it's the poem's heart and soul. I think the second draft, in your attempt to pare it down, became a bit too spartan. If anything, you should nurture this density and let it mature into something (for lack of a better word) grand. But to quote another famous saying "On taste, there is no dispute."

Thank you for your honesty and humility Tenebris, and thank you Chic for your earnest contributions as well.

I think I'll set this aside for now and come back to it later, unless some strong criticism comes along. I'm happy with this form (the second one), and since I have two somewhat divergent opinions on where to go (You two may not be the godly authorities on good writing, but you are a responding audience, and who is an author accountable to but them?) and I think I can safely let this poem rest.

Hi Ivan,

Personally I enjoyed the editied version better simply because that's my personal taste (brevity). But it did kind of lose something of the personal touch and become more generic. But on the whole, I enjoyed the poem and look forward to reading more.