Ra

[GrhmJngL]

Her body lies ochre-and-black dappled,
smokey and flecked, jittery, content;
Her mass of fraying, saliva-slicked tufts
rising and falling in rhythm, in waves;
Her voicings of pleasure, droning and stayed,
in time with her motions,
             mechanations of a godly machine;
Her skin still steaming from the heat of the sun:
the mother-god, father-god, her kin, the one
fresh-risen and fruitful, who bears life to all
with embracing and absence, time's twist and fall
that awakens the healthy and taunts the unslept,
unkempt subject, the wretch, unflecked
by the chaos and passion and the warmth of the sun.

*

[I guess this is me trying to be Heaney-esque.]

[tectak]

Her body lies ochre-and-black dappled,
smokey and flecked, jittery, content,
Her mass of fraying, saliva-slicked tufts
rising and falling in rhythm, in waves,
Her voicings of pleasure, droning and stayed,
in time with her motions,
             mechanations of a godly machine,
Her skin still steaming from the heat of the sun:
the mother-god, father-god, her kin, the one
fresh-risen and fruitful, who bears life to all
with embracing and absence, time's twist and fall
that awakens the healthy and taunts the unslept,
unkempt subject, the wretch, unflecked
by the chaos and passion and the warmth of the sun.

Hi ghrmjm,
This piece is moved to novice...do not be alarmed. There is much wrong in the following departments:
Punctuation
Syntax
Meter
Meaning
That is not to say you should make huge changes in order to submit this to the Serious Workshopping forum...it is just that there is so much to do that the work involved would be better tackled at a more basic level and with more input.
Best,
tectak


[I guess this is me trying to be Heaney-esque.]

[ChristopherSea]

Seamus Heaney, you say? That is quite the quill you have taken on! The flow is there, although 'machinations of a godly machine' was a stutter-step for me. It's probably machinations with machine (even though I like the word). Maybe something like, 'workings of a Godly machine.' The first line may read better as, 'Her body lies dappled in ochre-and-black' for me (in my voice). You want smoky, pertaining to smoke, not Smokey, pertaining to the Bear. You have flecked and unflecked herein. I might ditch one. What about 'smoky and marred', as I would never break that 'unslept, unkempt, unflecked' combination, ha ha. This golden gal is radiant, but I thought that RA was a male deity with the sun as his eye or body. This also creates some confusion for me (possible me alone), as she is the sun in the first 'stanza', but she steams 'from the heat of the sun' in the second part. Are the 'sun' and 'Her' one or two entities? I will have to read this again to comment further, but all in all it's a superior work. Nice!

[GrhmJngL]

Hi.

Punctuation-wise (and hence syntax), something weird happened there. There were supposed to semi-colons where there weren't any when I posted this. I don't know what the deal with that was. I've changed where I had put semi-colons.

Meter-wise: there's not supposed to be one.

Meaning/clarity: the octet is about my cat. I thought "saliva-slicked" would act as an indicator of that, but I guess I could have made that clearer.

[ChristopherSea]

Whoops, Ra the sun-like and sun-loving feline basking in the rays. I got it!

[GrhmJngL]

Seamus Heaney, you say? That is quite the quill you have taken on! The flow is there, although 'machinations of a godly machine' was a stutter-step for me. It's probably machinations with machine (even though I like the word). Maybe something like, 'workings of a Godly machine.' The first line may read better as, 'Her body lies dappled in ochre-and-black' for me (in my voice). You want smoky, pertaining to smoke, not Smokey, pertaining to the Bear. You have flecked and unflecked herein. I might ditch one. What about 'smoky and marred', as I would never break that 'unslept, unkempt, unflecked' combination, ha ha. This golden gal is radiant, but I thought that RA was a male deity with the sun as his eye or body. This also creates some confusion for me (possible me alone), as she is the sun in the first 'stanza', but she steams 'from the heat of the sun' in the second part. Are the 'sun' and 'Her' one or two entities? I will have to read this again to comment further, but all in all it's a superior work. Nice!

The subject of the octave is my cat, and then the start of the sestet is referring to the Sun, which can be taken literally, or as some kind of deity (be it the "Ra" of the title some sort of pantheistic force or whatever else), or as sort of "life-force" or energy (not in a spiritual but a profane sense, as in physical/mental/emotional energy). The main intention was for this third idea to be the predominant one.

"...the mother-god, father-god, her kin(as in the Sun is the cat's kin, ie., Egyptian mythology),the one
fresh-risen and fruitful, who bears life to all
with embracing and absence, time's twist and fall(ie.the sun brings about life by coming and going, providing us with the fluctuations with which we mark time, etc.)..."

"...that awakens the healthy and taunts the unslept,
unkempt subject, the wretch, unflecked
by the chaos and passion and the warmth of the sun.."
There's sort of two ideas involved here, one in reference to the sun literally, and the other to that idea of "energy" or however you want to phrase it. The first (more literal) reading is that the passage of night to day wakes up the healthy (ie. people with a proper sleep pattern), but, for the insomniac, the sun in this case only serves to instill dread as the dawn signifies that they have stayed awake the whole night and will thus have to suffer through the next day deprived of sleep. The second (less literal) reading is that while in an normal, fully healthy person the natural fluctuations of life (from one state of being/mood/situation/period in time/etc. to another) aren't much of an issue, but in someone drained of such emotional and mental energy (because of depression or whatever), such fluctuations only seem to intensify already present suffering. This subject is intentionally contrasted with the cat, who's described as a sort of embodiment of this energy.

Also, generally, the idea of going from discussing the cat to the sun as some sort of all-providing deity was to sort of emphasize this sense of the pantheistic (in terms of belief I'm a total materialist, but I'm not trying to actually express any literal spiritual belief here).

[ChristopherSea]

Love cats, Ra and the sun Grhm. I especially appreciate the indepth explanation and I did see the two entities and therefore, I am not seeing double, as there were two gals. You cleared that up nicely, much obliged for you taking the time. I did acknowledge the depth of your theme here by stating that this is a superior poem.
Cheers/Chris

[milo]

Her body lies ochre-and-black dappled,
smokey and flecked, jittery, content;

the opening line is awkward on its own with all of its modification, but you continue modifying all through the second line. Nouns and verbs are the bread and meat, adjectives are the spice. This is a bowl of spice with nothing else!

Her mass of fraying, saliva-slicked tufts
rising and falling in rhythm, in waves;

you wouldn't need both 'in rhythm' and 'in waves' as waves imply rhythm.

Her voicings of pleasure, droning and stayed,
in time with her motions,

once again, overmodification. A note about the word 'of' in poetry - there is a road to poetic hell and it is paved with bricks of - "of". Your modifications outweigh your subjects 3:1

             mechanations of a godly machine;
Her skin still steaming from the heat of the sun:
the mother-god, father-god, her kin, the one
fresh-risen and fruitful, who bears life to all
with embracing and absence, time's twist and fall
that awakens the healthy and taunts the unslept,
unkempt subject, the wretch, unflecked
by the chaos and passion and the warmth of the sun.

*

[I guess this is me trying to be Heaney-esque.]

the sestet is better, partially because you seem to have found your meter (though anapests seem an odd choice, they work), but to get there you use a lot of "ands" and "the's" to the point you sound more like my stuttering nephew, bartholomew heaney than grand master of the noun-and-verb seamus heaney.

[ChristopherSea]

Her body lies ochre-and-black dappled,
smokey and flecked, jittery, content;

the opening line is awkward on its own with all of its modification, but you continue modifying all through the second line. Nouns and verbs are the bread and meat, adjectives are the spice. This is a bowl of spice with nothing else!

Her mass of fraying, saliva-slicked tufts
rising and falling in rhythm, in waves;

you wouldn't need both 'in rhythm' and 'in waves' as waves imply rhythm.

Her voicings of pleasure, droning and stayed,
in time with her motions,

once again, overmodification. A note about the word 'of' in poetry - there is a road to poetic hell and it is paved with bricks of - "of". Your modifications outweigh your subjects 3:1

             mechanations of a godly machine;
Her skin still steaming from the heat of the sun:
the mother-god, father-god, her kin, the one
fresh-risen and fruitful, who bears life to all
with embracing and absence, time's twist and fall
that awakens the healthy and taunts the unslept,
unkempt subject, the wretch, unflecked
by the chaos and passion and the warmth of the sun.

*

[I guess this is me trying to be Heaney-esque.]

the sestet is better, partially because you seem to have found your meter (though anapests seem an odd choice, they work), but to get there you use a lot of "ands" and "the's" to the point you sound more like my stuttering nephew, bartholomew heaney than grand master of the noun-and-verb seamus heaney.

‘…you sound more like my stuttering nephew, bartholomew heaney than grand master of the noun-and-verb seamus heaney.’ Milo, you are trouble maker, but hilarious!