Hi, Toddm. Several observations. I do like the first version because visually it looks like a long teardrop. Like a visual onomatopoeia.
onomatopoeia (ŏn'əmăt'əpē'ə) [Gr.,=word-making], in language, the representation of a sound by an imitation thereof; e.g., the cat mews. Poets often convey the meaning of a verse through its very sound. For example, in "Song of the Lotus-Eaters" Tennyson indicates the slow, sensuous, and langorous life of the Lotus-Eaters by the sound of the words he uses to describe the land in which they live:
Here are cool mosses deep,And through the moss the ivies creep,And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
Onomatopoeia can also represent harsh and unpleasant sounds, as in Browning's "Meeting at Night":
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratchAnd blue spurt of a lighted match.
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Your alliterations are aptly placed and extreemely keen in the first part of the poem. Nearly literally the first half of it. The bottom part reads rather bald lacking this Figure of Speech. I read/see an imbalance. I'm being the hard taskmaster, here, but you might want to tinker a bit. Now, I'm just addressing the technical. The content is very enganging.
Perfect! You have only eight lines following where you could empoly the alliterave.
The act
of standing
by a window
and staring out,
alone
and in silence,
is such a
sad sad thing
when the day
is cold
and damp
and dreary,
when you’re
Below the thought is incomplete:
when you’re
alone inside
with nose
on cold pane,
your breath
clouding the view
of life on the outside,
the stillness in the world.
"the stillness in the world" does what to you?" A challenge worth taking on so that the poem is not hanging. I so much wanted to know where you finally stood!
About editing. I love it. I edit my work to death. It's like sculpting for me. Almost like a tactile process. I'm a very harsh critic of my work (sometimes my worst enemy because I can be obsessive about it, editing). It can be fun if you look at your words like puzzle pieces needing to fit snugly next to each other. A snap shot, picture complete.
Writing a poem about sadnes: it provides catharsis but that should always be the byproduct of the work. Often times I write sad because I believe that there is beauty in it. My mother, a poet, taught me that at a very early age. I often write Confessionally reflecting on long ago past events which do not belong in a child's story book! Point. Sad poems need not stay locked up in an old box or an old box in your mind even while you're quite happy at the time.
Confessional poetry emphasizes the intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poet's personal life, such as in poems about mental illness, sexuality, and despondence. The confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the 1950s and 1960s. John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and William De Witt Snodgrass have all been called 'Confessional Poets'. As fresh and different as the work of these poets appeared at the time, it is also true that several poets prominent in the canon of Western literature, perhaps most notably Sextus Propertius and Petrarch, could easily share the label of "confessional" with the confessional poets of the fifties and sixties.
I had hidden away some thoroughly "sad" poems from years ago, never read by anyone.
Toddm, thank you for sharing this special poem with us. I am honored to have read it. Hopefully, I've been of help in some way. Laurie
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Originally Posted by Trides
, but obviously it's been so long. Writing helps me too, but the burden doesn't lift itself off until I've shown it to people.
. I suppose I was mostly just curious why you broke it up that way, but you did explain it. It's a very nice read.
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