I Mahjong! I've read through the comments on the last revision, but not the first two since the versions are pretty different than this one. So, just bear that in mind.
(12-06-2016, 12:39 AM)Mahjong Wrote: [b]
[/b] Silicon Valley Palettes
A windy cirrus sky wisping
ice, celestial, sea; there's ice in the sky? The sky is a sea? I can see that it's a sea, being a big blue expanse, but ice confuses me, and this poem seems to be describing a daytime scene, so celestial is also odd in that you wouldn't be able to see the stars in the daytime
the cold brackish Bay shimmering
azure, diamond, sage;
gird a saltgrass-fringed, pickleweedy isle, -- pickleweedy makes me smile. It's a delightful word and unexpected.
harboring a peaceful colony of oceanic -- peaceful is a vague word like lovely or beautiful
pelicans−each one plumed achromatic
white: impartial, sympathetic, pure, -- impartial to what? Pelicans don't have opinions? Everything has a need or desire for something. How do you see that they are sympathetic? Nurturing their young perhaps? I'd show how and where you see that manifesting. Pure is another vague word, and it's overused. I like the next phrase, but choose something more precise than pure.
as pulsing stars, sunlight, clear night.
Giant swirly lollipops,
clownish cruiser bicycles,
M&M-top umbrellas−
blue, green, red, yellow− I love these last 4 lines -- the best part of the poem for me. Full of life and vibrant.
bound glaringly off squat specular architecture -- bound glaringly makes no sense to me. I think it's glaringly that's off for me, because that makes the scene gaudy and overstimulating. Perhaps it is, but you seem to be trying to convey beauty in this piece.
over a sprawling synthetic archipelago, -- like this line; synthetic goes well with silicon
cloaking in fulgent rainbows kaleidoscopic -- cloaking seems like the wrong tense. Cloaked?
kids−each one a fractal of chromatic
intensity: particular, contrastive, spectral,
as an impulse, desire, fantasy. -- by this point, the repeated pattern of three adjectives is starting to bother me. I know what's coming, but not in a good way. It's too predictable, but, unlike a refrain, it's slightly different every time, so I don't get that pleasant feeling of continuity throughout the piece. So, I don't think that the repetition of that structure is working. And the last three words don't seem to have anything to do with the visual scene like the rest of the poem does. They seem out of place.
Overall, I agree with tectak that it does seem like you're trying too hard to make it beautiful. And there's too many individual scenes which could be treated in more depth separately. The pelicans can be their own poem, the umbrellas can be their own, etc. You could link them as a series of poems with your title that pulls it all together, if you like, to set up the context.
You have great stuff in here, but it needs to be properly fleshed out. There's little in the way of simile or metaphor, it's just straight description. If you want to keep it as little descriptive scenes, I would break it up into a series of haiku, which are usually observation based.
That's my take on it. I hope you keep working on it because you'll get there.
Cheers.
[b]
[/b]
[b]Silicon Valley Palettes
[/b]
A windy cirrus sky wisping
ice, celestial, sea;
the cold brackish Bay shimmering
azure, diamond, sage;
gird a saltgrass-fringed, pickleweedy isle,
harboring a peaceful colony of oceanic
pelicans−each one plumed achromatic
white: indistinct, impartial, colorless,
as pulsing stars, sunlight, clear night.
Giant swirly lollipops,
clownish cruiser bicycles,
M&M-top umbrellas−blue
green
red
yellow−
bound glaringly off squat
specular architecture over a
sprawling synthetic archipelago,
raining warm rainbows on
kaleidoscopic kids−each one a
fractal of chromatic intensity:
singular, contrastive, vivid,
as a perspective, desire,
fantasy.
I've just returned home from 12 days in China, during which I had hoped to keep this workshop session moving along. However, the Great Firewall has deemed 'pigpenpoetry.com' a 'Forbidden' site (perhaps the 'colorful' language found therein?). I decided to avoid the hassle of finding a VPN and therefore had no access to this site during my stay, hence my belated revision.
For the same reason, I have only just read the comments by ameril and tectak, for which I am much obliged. I will think about them further and consider them in future revisions. For now, a few comments: The crux of the criticism in both comments, as I see it, is that the poem is unnecessarily wordy. My latest revision, in most instances, would still be guilty on this score, I suppose. I did remove the 'dashes' in the first few lines, where the stacked 'colors' are supposed to suggest something like the palette for the respective image. The 'colors' deliberately range and blend; are non-primary, softish, and not vivid; and do (now) attempt to resonate meaningfully with the image and/or general environment (e.g., high cirrus clouds are comprised of ice crystals, while ice is generally colorless or can be associated with 'ice blue'; diamond is perhaps the only exception in this regard, but the shimmering Bay sure does glimmer in sunlight like a sea of diamonds, which again are generally considered colorless--and I like it with 'cold' and for the rhythm, when pronounced with two syllables /.--that palette reads: /././). Also, the sky and Bay are supposed to meld--hence, 'sea' on the palette in line one and 'azure' (nearly a synonym for sky) on line two's palette--and perhaps refract indistinctly the 'colors' of each other and the general topography--hence, 'sage'[brush] is ubiquitous and a pretty good representative of the color of most other scrub, brush, and marsh grasses in the area (e.g., the saltgrass, a slightly darker green, and the very soft pickleweed in line five), beyond describing the soft 'green' hue of the Bay water (at times, in places, and from certain angles).
Regarding 'achromatic' and 'chromatic': the scienctific reference is deliberate. I was inspired to write the poem in part by a correspondence that struck me between the science (and my scientific understanding is simple, to be sure) and the philosophy/psychology of color (s). Achromatic (white) refers to the refraction of light without color separation; white, for example, stimulates the three types of color sensitive cone cells almost 'equally'--hence, 'indistinct, impartial, colorless' (I do believe it is an overstatement to say that these three words mean "exactly" the same thing; they are indeed close, but in different contexts they become differently nuanced and the point here is to enable, if not 'push', contextual reference outside that which the poem takes up more specifically). There is sharp color separation and 'unequal' stimulation with the chromatic colors; hence, "singular, contrastive, vivid." Ditto regarding meaning and context. The closing triune of terms in each stanza aims to 'push' wider contextual associations and implications.
The stanzas (each one a palette of palettes) are obviously intended meaningfully to contrast; I've carried the contrast into the visual form of each stanza. But I will think more about this experimentation.
Regarding perspective: the giant lollipops are indeed outside, just like the bicycles and umbrellas (I've never been inside the googleplex, though I've seen pictures and the movie). In my first draft, I placed lollipop inside single quotation marks because here it stands for any number of giant puerile props peppering the sprawling googleplex grounds, including a chocolate covered donut with rainbow flecks, monsters of some sort, an ice cream sundae, a ginger bread boy, etc. All our outside for anyone to see. No need for a bird's-eye view either. A walk through will do. Do keep in mind that the spatial scope here is open and expansive and squat, and deliberately designed so; you almost do feel like you have a bird's-eye view of the place from ground level.
[pre verse]
Silicon Valley Palettes
A cloud-wisped sky of celestial-to-tiffany,
thistle and foothills of sienna-to-coyote,
the shimmering Bay of viridian-to-sea,
surround a grassy myrtle-to-moss isle,
brimming with a colony of aquatic pelicans−
each one achromatic white:
indistinct, impartial, colorless,
as pulsing stars, sunlight, clear night.
Giant swirly l@llipops,
clownish cruiser bicycles,
M&M-top umbrellas−blue
green
red
yellow−
bound glaringly off squat
specular architecture over a
sprawling synthetic archipelago,
raining warm rainbows on
kaleidoscopic kids−each one a
fractal of chromatic intensity:
singular, contrastive, vivid,
as a private perspective,
desire, fantasy.
[pre verse
A Silicon Valley Color Scheme; Or a Sop to Goethe
Under the cloud-wisped sky of celestial to Jordy;
Between the thistle and foothills of sienna to coyote;
Upon the shimmering Bay of viridian to sea;
There floats a grassy islet of myrtle to moss,
Brimming with a colony of pelicans--each one
Achromatic white:
Indistinct, impartial, and colorless,
Just like the stars, sunlight, and dark night.
Clownish cruiser bicycles−yellow, blue, green;
M&M-top umbrellas−blue, red, yellow;
Giant swirly lollipops−green, yellow, red;
Rainbow optics ornamenting
The sprawling archipelago of specular architecture,
Reflecting gayly the ceaseless swarm of kaleidoscopic
Kids−each one a fractal of chromatic intensity:
Singular, contrastive, and vivid,
Just like a perspective, a desire, or a fantasy.
This is to say it like I see it, or not.
But what am I to make of it?
Pelicans
Can't
Hide
Behind
Achromatic
White.
[/pre verse
