From blossom to bottle (Edit 2)

[tectak]

Hi tec,
thanks again for your thoughts.
It is obviously not working if I need to explain it but then again if you wrote a poem about a mathmatical formula - no matter how famous it was i would need you to explain it. Look up elder flowers (+ berries) and then if you are at all creative (in the kitchen) think about the process for making elderflower cordial or syrup. (In ciderland i then add this to the cider).

The wounded leaves (5 points) E/ flower leaves come in sets of five. and then this referance is probably a bit too "local"
= a ref to the five wounds of christ (our local village was the site of the prayer book rebelion...whose flag was the five wounds). In my mind the understory relates a period of phisical and spiritual pain that resulted in the emergance of something of greater worth than that which it was birthed from.
The soft and foppish I was trying to illicit an image of a youthful hair style.

Don't normally set out thoughts like this but I am getting frusrated with this one as to how I can communicate my metaphore and understory without it becoming abstract or unacessable...and without loosing the story. I guess I have too much of a fixed idea in my head of where I want the poem to go. I know the advice is for the writer to control the poem, but I also get a feeling that sometimes we have to work with the poem.

Does any of this make sense?...and any of you experianced poets got any thoughts on this ? (can be moved to a discussion thread)

Hi Cider,
Yes...I do all the cooking in our house, and we are overstocked with elder- flower cordial (frozen from last year), elderberry wine 1999-2011 (none last year, ruibbish weather) and that just made tincture of flowers, gin, sugar and mint. Delicious. Never thought about god, though.
Re. metaphors. You made an interesting comment "I am getting frusrated with this one as to how I can communicate my metaphor(e) and understory without it becoming abstract or unacessable...".
Metaphors ARE the communicator. Metaphors are supposed to HELP the reader "see" the way you see. If you have to explain your metaphors they are poor metaphors...what is wrong with writing clearly both in direct prose and in metaphor. To say "The wounded leaves (5 points) E/ flower leaves come in sets of five" and then to expect the reader to take from this " a ref to the five wounds of christ (our local village was the site of the prayer book rebelion...whose flag was the five wounds). " Yikes! That is just way out there!
Similarly, how do we get from "soft and foppish " to "an image of a youthful hair style."... and why that anyway? How does it actually fit the context of what you are trying to say. If you had healed the metaphor with " soft and foppish as an adolescent's coiffure" you would have got it....but you leave out the bit you are trying to portray! The metaphor only works if you relate image to actuality. It does not work if you simply pair one image with another, neither of which is apparent anywhere except in your head.
...and there you have it. Great mental images are the most damnably difficult to portray in poetic precis. The imagined image is fractal in detail. You can think in any resolution you choose...but you must only print sufficient to avoid pixelating...otherwise we would be here all night, every night downloading
Best,
tectak