Autumn

[NobodyNothing]

AUTUMN

Autumn...vespertine Muse,
Pageant of relenting
Where life perfects the ruse
Of its own inventing.

Manna for the tender
Wandering 'mid the blue,
Transitory splendor
I almost envy you...

From the coil of desire
Biding the native grief Should this be "binding" as in encoiled
Intent upon the lyre
To quicken some belief

Impatient to rejoice
Its liberty in voice.

Hi,
Yes to this. The melancholia of Autumn is thick and tenuous...I find that the flow is well suited to the content BUT, or should I say but, old pedants like me are easily thrown by stutters of meter and the RANDOM expediency of grammar use. Sometimes you do, sometimes you do not. This is not to say you MUST punctuate with military precision but as you mistakenly believe that "poems" are so defined by the obscure and retro capitalisation of each line I find myself haltingly circumspect as I read. Are you aware of the problem?
This is me liking it a lot.
Best and very well done,
tectak

Hi. Thanks for stopping in, and the offerings of your insight. Honestly, this is an older poem written shortly after I discovered poetry (in my 30's). After an initial exhilarating burst of a few years, I then got overwhelmed by "life" and didn't write poetry for a stretch of years. I wanted to try again (starting about a year and a half ago), and also so much missed talking about art, particularly the literary arts, more particularly poetry. Hence my appearance on this site. I just felt like I had to put some things up of myself in the meantime.

Anyway...that to the side, ellajam has already commented to me about the capitalization thing, and I'm attempting to readjust my thinking and approach in that regard (old habits dying hard). As for the "meter" thing, I'm not at all trained in the "grammar" of poetry as many around here. I simply copied and worked within particular forms I saw/read, and murmured the words/lines I wrote back to my own inner ear to see if I liked/bought the musicality in them. Make sense?

In the case of this poem, I briefly got caught up in Mallarme's petite sonnets, those 6 syllable per line sonnets he composed. I tried writing 5 or 6, but this was the only one I kept. Very difficult to do! I definitely *settled* on the music in the first stanza, for instance. I kept derailing the idea of the poem trying to make it better in that way. Talent limitation.

I love the element of alchemy in poetry, those significant moments of change, transcendence, and the conscious recognition therein and thereof. I especially love poetry that recreates such moments as if it's happening right there in the present-tense of the poem. This mesmerizes me. One of my personal poetic obsessions.

Anyway...I'm babbling. You can probably tell how starved I am in this way now. lol Thanks again for stopping in and sharing your insights.

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I find the weaving of colour and emotion here to be quite good and I really enjoyed the concept, especially in the first stanza. There are some meter problems -- although this does work accentually, a little bit of practise with regular meters would smooth this out perfectly.

As a quick sidebar, please don't feel beholden to comment on anything I've written. If I dig someone's shit, if I think they're hot, if I feel moved to say so, it's just that, simply that, really. I'm more of an appreciator of poetry than anything else. Yes, I like to cajole, coax, cheer, schmooze, motivate, inspire the best in others. Just my nature. More of a teacher/coach than a doer.

I'm glad you liked the concept. It was a concept poem, for sure. You know, the whole "colour and emotion" ablaze in such a death (a somewhat sadomasochistic beauty in that way), the manna or aesthetic food/substance derived therein, the appreciation up to the threshold of envy, back to the inner abyss, the desire to recreate/resurrect it, give it voice, set it free. Fun.

Thanks for the read and encouragement.

God bless.