01-24-2017, 01:32 PM
Thanks so much for your helpful comments, Armadillo. I'm still thinking about the poem, though I'm in a very busy work stretch right now, so I won't get around to revising--or reconceiving---for a few weeks.
Some reactions to your comments:
Yes, there's ice in the sky: cirrus clouds are always composed of ice crystals. And ice is a color shade of blue (ice blue).
In my organic conception here, the sky reflects the sea and vice versa (the next line). FWIW, from _Cannery Row_:"...and the Row has taken the shimmer of the green world and the sky-reflecting seas." And 'sea' is a color shade of green and also of blue, and both are apropos to SF Bay.
It's interesting to me that, to you, celestial indexes a star-flecked nighttime sky. To me, celestial means simply sky and, extending outwards, physical universe and divine heavens (including gods or angels). It can also mean 'supremely good', which works very nicely for the meanings I wish to smuggle in here. It happens also to be a color shade of blue: celestial blue; if it were not, I c/would not use it here. But I am not married to celestial...still working on it.
'Impartial' is an association I (again) smuggle to the pelicans from the technical meaning of 'achromatic white'--see my reply to tectak. 'Sympathetic', for me here, means 'a pathos of similitude' (do you know that meaning?)--the (American white) pelicans literally all look alike (to me, a mere human). I smuggle (again) to the pelicans, which co-exist seemingly peacefully on the small and densely packed isle, all the extended meanings of 'sympathy'. See the symbolism of the pelican--selfless, self-sacrificing (they pierce their own flesh to draw blood with which to feed their young when food is in short supply), etc. 'Pure' is what is achromatic white, which I felt might, in the light of 'impartial' and 'sympathetic' and 'pulsing stars' and 'sunlight' and 'clear night', vindicate my choice of an otherwise hackneyed word--sometimes a cigar...(but maybe not).
Ah, Beauty (note the cap accorded to it by Western metaphysics). This invocation of yours is most helpful. Imagine an Italian trying to write a poem that steers clear of Beauty? I see I've not fooled you. I suppose I do intend a certain sense of Beauty to emanate from the first stanza/palette, but only insofar as 'nature' might permit. I'm nothing but melancholy over the possibility that my second stanza/palette might intimate a sense of beauty (even with a small 'b'). Please do run with gaudy and overstimulating, as that's much closer to what I have in mind! But I would want you to 'think' it further too, perhaps by researching (if you might care to) the technical distinction between achromatic and chromatic (I wish I had a dollar for every minute I've spent investigating the layered meanings of words/phrases I've encountered in poems, but that's just me).
I used to like my repetition of structure, but that might be because my intention was to perpetrate a repetition of structure without a repetition of meaning--soft color shades (grounded in natural phenomena) give way to man-made rainbows (manufactured of stark primary colors). Hence, 'impulse, desire, fantasy' deliberately have nothing to do with (natural) descriptive scenes (I have both succeeded and failed, it seems). I'm beginning to think that, if you are a millennial, 'man-made rainbows' might be contemporary comfort food (google decided that this would be true when you were born, which is why they are now rolling in the $$).
Many thanks again,
mahjong
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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.
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Some reactions to your comments:
Yes, there's ice in the sky: cirrus clouds are always composed of ice crystals. And ice is a color shade of blue (ice blue).
In my organic conception here, the sky reflects the sea and vice versa (the next line). FWIW, from _Cannery Row_:"...and the Row has taken the shimmer of the green world and the sky-reflecting seas." And 'sea' is a color shade of green and also of blue, and both are apropos to SF Bay.
It's interesting to me that, to you, celestial indexes a star-flecked nighttime sky. To me, celestial means simply sky and, extending outwards, physical universe and divine heavens (including gods or angels). It can also mean 'supremely good', which works very nicely for the meanings I wish to smuggle in here. It happens also to be a color shade of blue: celestial blue; if it were not, I c/would not use it here. But I am not married to celestial...still working on it.
'Impartial' is an association I (again) smuggle to the pelicans from the technical meaning of 'achromatic white'--see my reply to tectak. 'Sympathetic', for me here, means 'a pathos of similitude' (do you know that meaning?)--the (American white) pelicans literally all look alike (to me, a mere human). I smuggle (again) to the pelicans, which co-exist seemingly peacefully on the small and densely packed isle, all the extended meanings of 'sympathy'. See the symbolism of the pelican--selfless, self-sacrificing (they pierce their own flesh to draw blood with which to feed their young when food is in short supply), etc. 'Pure' is what is achromatic white, which I felt might, in the light of 'impartial' and 'sympathetic' and 'pulsing stars' and 'sunlight' and 'clear night', vindicate my choice of an otherwise hackneyed word--sometimes a cigar...(but maybe not).
Ah, Beauty (note the cap accorded to it by Western metaphysics). This invocation of yours is most helpful. Imagine an Italian trying to write a poem that steers clear of Beauty? I see I've not fooled you. I suppose I do intend a certain sense of Beauty to emanate from the first stanza/palette, but only insofar as 'nature' might permit. I'm nothing but melancholy over the possibility that my second stanza/palette might intimate a sense of beauty (even with a small 'b'). Please do run with gaudy and overstimulating, as that's much closer to what I have in mind! But I would want you to 'think' it further too, perhaps by researching (if you might care to) the technical distinction between achromatic and chromatic (I wish I had a dollar for every minute I've spent investigating the layered meanings of words/phrases I've encountered in poems, but that's just me).
I used to like my repetition of structure, but that might be because my intention was to perpetrate a repetition of structure without a repetition of meaning--soft color shades (grounded in natural phenomena) give way to man-made rainbows (manufactured of stark primary colors). Hence, 'impulse, desire, fantasy' deliberately have nothing to do with (natural) descriptive scenes (I have both succeeded and failed, it seems). I'm beginning to think that, if you are a millennial, 'man-made rainbows' might be contemporary comfort food (google decided that this would be true when you were born, which is why they are now rolling in the $$).
Many thanks again,
mahjong
[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.
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