Pastoral

[alonso ramoran]

Hey RiverNotch, comments below

Pastoral
apt title, imo. I get a sense that this poem is about communication and the creation of art (though other uses of "creation" in the poem could imply the cultivation of crops and use of livestock and whatnot) in the countryside. There's also the use of capitalizing the first letter of every line in this poem but, knowing that you've been around this site for a while and how people respond to that stuff, I'm willing to settle with the possibility that this was a conscious stylistic decision; the themes are dealt with in a sort of archaic fashion and talk about life when it was at its most pure.

A world without language, without context,
Without hidden messages, meanings too complex,
A world of pure creation: a countryside The above two lines seem too tell-y. What I'd start with is "A countryside ready for harvest..." but even then "ready for harvest isn't saying much imagery-wise; I'd expand on that and I'd also show the reader what a world without context, language, and hidden messages look like. I'm guessing that's what you're trying to accomplish after the colon, so I would scrap everything that came before that colon.
Ready for harvest, a clasping hand Can't make sense of "clasping hand"--what is it holding?

Thrust out of fear and fire, out of darkness and delight Interesting imagery, but I fail to see its importance.
(Abstractions from the past, cliched metaphors)
Time and space contracting to exclude memory, This line is where I start to think about dimensions. The way you describe it seems as if this is all happening in real time, as if the reader is able to experience the third dimension that they live in actively regressing to the first. After reading through this poem a couple times, I feel as if this is done through writing or sketching with a good old-fashioned pencil and paper. My gripe here though, is that I feel that not much is done to link this idea to the bucolic setting I thought your poem was aiming for.
To exclude anxiety: to include only creation.

Only the archetypal details shall remain relevant
Not as archetypes (for there shall be no arche) but as subjects
In and of themselves, hypostases within one and without one,
All communication as pure thought, pure feeling, pure action, If you have worked to more strongly convey the purity of the countryside through imagery in my first comment on the poem, I don't think you would need "pure thought, pure feeling, pure action", and instead you could reword the line as "All communication as points blossoming into lines...". If you ever decide to go this route, I'd omit "all".

Points blossoming into lines, your red hair and my rough chin I like the sentiment of "blossoming" but I feel as though you could do better.
Wordlessly crying out, "Genetheto phos!" This reads as "your red hair and my rough chin wordlessly crying out..." which I don't see how can be possible. You mention "wordlessly" but the crying out part still manages to throw me off. And to add to that, they're crying out a biblical phrase in Greek and I'm just confused at that point. I'm not sure if I'm missing any references to any works of literature besides the Bible or what. What I do understand, is that the N was able to create something (points blossoming into lines) in a place where life is simple and everything, including feelings, are genuine. The "Genetheto phos!" seems unnecessary.

Best, Alex