Posts: 14
Threads: 3
Joined: Nov 2015
All he could do
Was provide me with vague sensations
Like I had when I was whole
Adrift, unmoored, the dead of night made lively by ocean waters
Crashing around me
I turned away from the land I’d left,
A place of the past, where childhood friends
Never died.
Where, sure as we children were that we’d live forever
We'd waste our precious air on laughing till we wept
On the water, the wind pressed me to forget
An image like a prayer bored into my mind:
A heart beating in a young man’s chest,
Behind me, a vast, splintered ivory castle,
looming beyond the chilled fog.
With a holy fire pulsing at its heart
But weary, resigned, I knew it in my core
That he was dead and that place was mine no more.
And in my wandering, found a living, breathing boy
We met at the funeral, our paths violently converged
After seeing the truth of it
My old dear's pale fingers interlaced over his chest
The sun set that day, stole all of our light away.
We found that the holes in our chests matched
And grasped each other
As if by virtue of our mutual devastation
We were meant to be together
I had never been young with this boy, but,
with the memories of my childhood lying in a pine box,
we were young in our pretending
That someday, things would be okay.
My bed was our little sanctuary on a sea of
roiling black ink
mirrored by the starless sky, our endless night.
And beneath the surface, cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
threatened to break the surface.
We touched not with love, for our hearts were incapacitated
But with a defiance, that we’d stay alive
His body was a glow against mine
Enough to see the outline of our queen sized place of dying
But not to see the undulations of the void
that stretched on for miles.
His captive light blinded me mercifully,
to the writhing shapes breaching and beckoning,
frothing at my bedside.
When the murky sky rumbled, and the ocean rolled and rushed
we found in our hearts a bitter fury
that the tempest couldn’t touch
Not just for the things we thought we’d lost
but for the things the world had taken from us.
Righteous, exalted in our total brokenness
We gripped each other desperately under the blankets
telling each other
we weren’t cold
The waves threw us higher and the thunder rolled.
We didn’t hear our teeth chatter
over the wind and hail
but while we mouthed affirmations of strength
Our fingers grew numb and our lips grew pale
Our bodies were faltering embers,
Such a sorry, fleeting flame.
We would die before the morning
If the morning ever came.
Then characteristic of our rebellion against the inevitable
He threw off the covers, shouted over the din
He pointed to the water
And he said that he would swim
I closed my eyes as I realized that he was leaving
That I was doomed and he’d be just fine
That I was the kind of crazy
he only thought he wanted.
My raw, jagged edges appealing
Until he cut his palms on them.
And this four-posted raft had become like a prison
Alone with a girl
whose grief would kill them
Disgusted, he left me, dove straight into the surf
And that hole in his chest barely cost him a breath
The last embers glowed in the bed where he’d lain
I wrapped my body round them as they faded
sobbing in so many colors of pain
Of all the mercies god could choose:
The one thing that I had was the one thing I’d lose.
I’d felt some mighty agony,
but this pain, this was new.
My mind flickered, exhausted and weak
Plunged me into a place with no dreams
When I woke, my sides were sore
Throat was hoarse
I’d been wailing in my sleep.
And, drawn by the sounds of a creature bound to die
All around me gathered serpents, all glistening skin and gleaming eyes
I heard soft human voices; pleading, familiar whispers
Begging me to leap
That I’d be cold no longer
If I dove into the deep
They promised that the waters would sooth my stinging soul
That the ink would fill in all the blank spaces
that when my lungs swelled with cold water
they would make me whole
My bed began to sink
I clutched the blankets round me, frantically
As if they’d keep me afloat
And wept as the water crept up
And found sweetness in my aching bones
Slowly I went, defenses spent
My future left me, days ago
But now I was alone with them
All the horrors humans know
My eyes opened wide,
watching the flurry of my last breath
And I found a final, and welcome warmth
In the burning that filled my chest
My mind was made, my fate clear-cut
What a perfect way to self destruct
The bodies writhed around me
Fit to their ghastly environment,
perfect monsters in their majesty.
Gargantuan beasts, leviathans
They made the oceans themselves weep
A rough shiver of scales that brushed my cheek
wrapping round me with reptilian affection.
Shepherds guiding me down, down
all worlds I'd known
were lost to me now.
I reached the bottom, hard rocky ground
head spinning as if the waters had seeped in
to chill my nervous system,
while I stayed sustained on that ripping pain
my lungs fighting against collapse, my fingers and toes grown frighteningly warm
I saw pieces of my body, falling off me, scattered round
and I realized that all my sorry cries wouldn't make a sound
So, I gathered up the pieces
And I made myself a crown
The queen of all the creatures
That the darkness couldn’t drown
(Apologies for the length of this piece, I guess that's what I get for not writing a thing for 8 months. I know it needs a lot of work and clarification. If you made it this far, thank you for your time.)
Posts: 703
Threads: 141
Joined: Oct 2017
Hi xyroph.
It is very overwritten, feels repetitive, rhymes
then doesn't rhyme, the narratives get tangled
and the metaphors seem to be at war.
Basically, I'm confused.
That said, there were some lines/ideas I liked a lot:
cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
Alone with a girl
whose grief would kill them
perfect monsters in their majesty.
And beneath the surface, cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
threatened to break the surface.
So, I gathered up the pieces
And I made myself a crown
The queen of all the creatures
That the darkness couldn’t drown
these stood out for me.
But they were outweighed by things like;
Adrift, unmoored, the dead of night made lively by ocean waters
Either 'adrift' or 'unmoored', not both.
Do you need the 'dead of' cliché?
Dead and lively juxtaposition doesn't entertain.
looming beyond the chilled fog.
fog is by definition 'chilled'.
And in my wandering, found a living, breathing boy
Immediately conjures up Pinocchioo, sorry.
Also, first adrift/unmoored, now wandering, which is it?
I think your canvas is too large, consequently
the story and it's emotional content get lost,
both in the space and through the repetitions.
Find your inner editor.
Best, Knot.
Posts: 38
Threads: 8
Joined: Jan 2018
This was a bit tedious to read to be honest. The economy of words could definitely be improved: after all, the point of poetry is to be expressive, not just to romanticize. I'll try to point out some of the parts that seem to need attention:
(01-25-2018, 05:01 PM)xyroph Wrote: All he could do
Was provide me with vague sensations
Like I had when I was whole
Adrift, unmoored, the dead of night made lively by ocean waters
Crashing around me Adrift and unmoored pretty much mean the same thing in different ways. While this kind of excess word use was preferred in, say, when Shelley lived, it looks rather out of place to contemporary readers
I turned away from the land I’d left,
A place of the past, where childhood friends
Never died.
Where, sure as we children were that we’d live forever
Again, childhood friends never died and we'd live forever look at the same idea from two different chronological perspectives but the reputation adds nothing to the description.
We'd waste our precious air on laughing till we wept Third line on same idea
On the water, the wind pressed me to forget
An image like a prayer bored into my mind:
A heart beating in a young man’s chest,
Behind me, a vast, splintered ivory castle,
looming beyond the chilled fog.
With a holy fire pulsing at its heart Not clear why the fire is holy
But weary, resigned, I knew it in my core
That he was dead and that place was mine no more.
And in my wandering, found a living, breathing boy
We met at the funeral, our paths violently converged
After seeing the truth of it Truth of what? Not that such unidentified subjects are uncommon in poetry, but there is very little in the way of choices here, not to mention that it is a very sudden departure from the excess of details earlier
My old dear's pale fingers interlaced over his chest
The sun set that day, stole all of our light away.
We found that the holes in our chests matched
And grasped each other
As if by virtue of our mutual devastation
We were meant to be together
I had never been young with this boy, but,
with the memories of my childhood lying in a pine box,
we were young in our pretending
That someday, things would be okay. Things would be okay sounds dreadfully out of place in the otherwise extremely formal language of the poem. Almost an anachronism.
My bed was our little sanctuary on a sea of
roiling black ink
mirrored by the starless sky, our endless night.
And beneath the surface, cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
threatened to break the surface.
We touched not with love, for our hearts were incapacitated
But with a defiance, that we’d stay alive
His body was a glow against mine
Enough to see the outline of our queen sized place of dying
But not to see the undulations of the void
that stretched on for miles.
His captive light blinded me mercifully,
to the writhing shapes breaching and beckoning,
frothing at my bedside.
Once again, rather formal.
When the murky sky rumbled, and the ocean rolled and rushed
we found in our hearts a bitter fury
that the tempest couldn’t touch
Not just for the things we thought we’d lost
but for the things the world had taken from us.
Righteous, exalted in our total brokenness
We gripped each other desperately under the blankets
telling each other
we weren’t cold
Fury isn't the emotion this brings out.
The waves threw us higher and the thunder rolled.
We didn’t hear our teeth chatter
over the wind and hail
but while we mouthed affirmations of strength
Our fingers grew numb and our lips grew pale
Our bodies were faltering embers,
Such a sorry, fleeting flame.
We would die before the morning
If the morning ever came.
Then characteristic of our rebellion against the inevitable very awkward here
He threw off the covers, shouted over the din
He pointed to the water
And he said that he would swim
I closed my eyes as I realized that he was leaving
That I was doomed and he’d be just fine
That I was the kind of crazy Once again, fine and crazy are word choices that clash terribly with the otherwise archaic setting of the poem.
he only thought he wanted.
My raw, jagged edges appealing
Until he cut his palms on them.
And this four-posted raft had become like a prison
Alone with a girl
whose grief would kill them
Disgusted, he left me, dove straight into the surf
And that hole in his chest barely cost him a breath
The last embers glowed in the bed where he’d lain
I wrapped my body round them as they faded
sobbing in so many colors of pain
Of all the mercies god could choose:
The one thing that I had was the one thing I’d lose.
I’d felt some mighty agony,
but this pain, this was new.
My mind flickered, exhausted and weak
Plunged me into a place with no dreams
When I woke, my sides were sore
Throat was hoarse
I’d been wailing in my sleep.
And, drawn by the sounds of a creature bound to die
All around me gathered serpents, all glistening skin and gleaming eyes
I heard soft human voices; pleading, familiar whispers
Begging me to leap
That I’d be cold no longer
If I dove into the deep
They promised that the waters would sooth my stinging soul
That the ink would fill in all the blank spaces
that when my lungs swelled with cold water
they would make me whole
My bed began to sink
I clutched the blankets round me, frantically
As if they’d keep me afloat
And wept as the water crept up
And found sweetness in my aching bones
Slowly I went, defenses spent
My future left me, days ago
But now I was alone with them
All the horrors humans know
My eyes opened wide,
watching the flurry of my last breath
And I found a final, and welcome warmth
In the burning that filled my chest
My mind was made, my fate clear-cut
What a perfect way to self destruct
The bodies writhed around me
Fit to their ghastly environment,
perfect monsters in their majesty.
The preceding few paragraphs, while formal, archaic and involving lengthy symbolism and metaphors, is otherwise free of errors. The foreboding and predicament are well portrayed, if in a very classical way.
Gargantuan beasts, leviathans again
They made the oceans themselves weep
A rough shiver of scales that brushed my cheek
wrapping round me with reptilian affection.
Shepherds guiding me down, down
all worlds I'd known
were lost to me now.
I reached the bottom, hard rocky ground
head spinning as if the waters had seeped in
to chill my nervous system,
while I stayed sustained on that ripping pain
my lungs fighting against collapse, my fingers and toes grown frighteningly warm
I saw pieces of my body, falling off me, scattered round
and I realized that all my sorry cries wouldn't make a sound
So, I gathered up the pieces
And I made myself a crown
The queen of all the creatures
That the darkness couldn’t drown
(Apologies for the length of this piece, I guess that's what I get for not writing a thing for 8 months. I know it needs a lot of work and clarification. If you made it this far, thank you for your time.)
In summary, this poem features some rather ugly clashes of stylistic elements that do not belong together, and often expands needlessly on singular emotions using elaborate metaphors that seem rather stretchy. While I am not saying you shouldn't expand on emotions, do so in a way that adds details/vividness to the image being painted. Adding words or paragraphs just because you feel the description is inadequate is uncalled for in contemporary poetry: look for better suited phrases/words, not just more of them. Even if you are trying to write poetry in the style of bards, do try to stay true to whichever genre/period you choose and not mix things.
Posts: 14
Threads: 3
Joined: Nov 2015
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave all the detailed feedback, I appreciate it. I'm not sure what to say for my overall style. It is absolutely old fashioned but thats always been my medium of choice. I'll definitely take your notes into account, especially considering the cliches and repetition. In your opinion, would the old fashioned style be valid if not offset by the previous flaws?
(01-27-2018, 06:18 AM)ritwiksadhu33 Wrote: This was a bit tedious to read to be honest. The economy of words could definitely be improved: after all, the point of poetry is to be expressive, not just to romanticize. I'll try to point out some of the parts that seem to need attention:
(01-25-2018, 05:01 PM)xyroph Wrote: All he could do
Was provide me with vague sensations
Like I had when I was whole
Adrift, unmoored, the dead of night made lively by ocean waters
Crashing around me Adrift and unmoored pretty much mean the same thing in different ways. While this kind of excess word use was preferred in, say, when Shelley lived, it looks rather out of place to contemporary readers
I turned away from the land I’d left,
A place of the past, where childhood friends
Never died.
Where, sure as we children were that we’d live forever
Again, childhood friends never died and we'd live forever look at the same idea from two different chronological perspectives but the reputation adds nothing to the description.
We'd waste our precious air on laughing till we wept Third line on same idea
On the water, the wind pressed me to forget
An image like a prayer bored into my mind:
A heart beating in a young man’s chest,
Behind me, a vast, splintered ivory castle,
looming beyond the chilled fog.
With a holy fire pulsing at its heart Not clear why the fire is holy
But weary, resigned, I knew it in my core
That he was dead and that place was mine no more.
And in my wandering, found a living, breathing boy
We met at the funeral, our paths violently converged
After seeing the truth of it Truth of what? Not that such unidentified subjects are uncommon in poetry, but there is very little in the way of choices here, not to mention that it is a very sudden departure from the excess of details earlier
My old dear's pale fingers interlaced over his chest
The sun set that day, stole all of our light away.
We found that the holes in our chests matched
And grasped each other
As if by virtue of our mutual devastation
We were meant to be together
I had never been young with this boy, but,
with the memories of my childhood lying in a pine box,
we were young in our pretending
That someday, things would be okay. Things would be okay sounds dreadfully out of place in the otherwise extremely formal language of the poem. Almost an anachronism.
My bed was our little sanctuary on a sea of
roiling black ink
mirrored by the starless sky, our endless night.
And beneath the surface, cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
threatened to break the surface.
We touched not with love, for our hearts were incapacitated
But with a defiance, that we’d stay alive
His body was a glow against mine
Enough to see the outline of our queen sized place of dying
But not to see the undulations of the void
that stretched on for miles.
His captive light blinded me mercifully,
to the writhing shapes breaching and beckoning,
frothing at my bedside.
Once again, rather formal.
When the murky sky rumbled, and the ocean rolled and rushed
we found in our hearts a bitter fury
that the tempest couldn’t touch
Not just for the things we thought we’d lost
but for the things the world had taken from us.
Righteous, exalted in our total brokenness
We gripped each other desperately under the blankets
telling each other
we weren’t cold
Fury isn't the emotion this brings out.
The waves threw us higher and the thunder rolled.
We didn’t hear our teeth chatter
over the wind and hail
but while we mouthed affirmations of strength
Our fingers grew numb and our lips grew pale
Our bodies were faltering embers,
Such a sorry, fleeting flame.
We would die before the morning
If the morning ever came.
Then characteristic of our rebellion against the inevitable very awkward here
He threw off the covers, shouted over the din
He pointed to the water
And he said that he would swim
I closed my eyes as I realized that he was leaving
That I was doomed and he’d be just fine
That I was the kind of crazy Once again, fine and crazy are word choices that clash terribly with the otherwise archaic setting of the poem.
he only thought he wanted.
My raw, jagged edges appealing
Until he cut his palms on them.
And this four-posted raft had become like a prison
Alone with a girl
whose grief would kill them
Disgusted, he left me, dove straight into the surf
And that hole in his chest barely cost him a breath
The last embers glowed in the bed where he’d lain
I wrapped my body round them as they faded
sobbing in so many colors of pain
Of all the mercies god could choose:
The one thing that I had was the one thing I’d lose.
I’d felt some mighty agony,
but this pain, this was new.
My mind flickered, exhausted and weak
Plunged me into a place with no dreams
When I woke, my sides were sore
Throat was hoarse
I’d been wailing in my sleep.
And, drawn by the sounds of a creature bound to die
All around me gathered serpents, all glistening skin and gleaming eyes
I heard soft human voices; pleading, familiar whispers
Begging me to leap
That I’d be cold no longer
If I dove into the deep
They promised that the waters would sooth my stinging soul
That the ink would fill in all the blank spaces
that when my lungs swelled with cold water
they would make me whole
My bed began to sink
I clutched the blankets round me, frantically
As if they’d keep me afloat
And wept as the water crept up
And found sweetness in my aching bones
Slowly I went, defenses spent
My future left me, days ago
But now I was alone with them
All the horrors humans know
My eyes opened wide,
watching the flurry of my last breath
And I found a final, and welcome warmth
In the burning that filled my chest
My mind was made, my fate clear-cut
What a perfect way to self destruct
The bodies writhed around me
Fit to their ghastly environment,
perfect monsters in their majesty.
The preceding few paragraphs, while formal, archaic and involving lengthy symbolism and metaphors, is otherwise free of errors. The foreboding and predicament are well portrayed, if in a very classical way.
Gargantuan beasts, leviathans again
They made the oceans themselves weep
A rough shiver of scales that brushed my cheek
wrapping round me with reptilian affection.
Shepherds guiding me down, down
all worlds I'd known
were lost to me now.
I reached the bottom, hard rocky ground
head spinning as if the waters had seeped in
to chill my nervous system,
while I stayed sustained on that ripping pain
my lungs fighting against collapse, my fingers and toes grown frighteningly warm
I saw pieces of my body, falling off me, scattered round
and I realized that all my sorry cries wouldn't make a sound
So, I gathered up the pieces
And I made myself a crown
The queen of all the creatures
That the darkness couldn’t drown
(Apologies for the length of this piece, I guess that's what I get for not writing a thing for 8 months. I know it needs a lot of work and clarification. If you made it this far, thank you for your time.)
In summary, this poem features some rather ugly clashes of stylistic elements that do not belong together, and often expands needlessly on singular emotions using elaborate metaphors that seem rather stretchy. While I am not saying you shouldn't expand on emotions, do so in a way that adds details/vividness to the image being painted. Adding words or paragraphs just because you feel the description is inadequate is uncalled for in contemporary poetry: look for better suited phrases/words, not just more of them. Even if you are trying to write poetry in the style of bards, do try to stay true to whichever genre/period you choose and not mix things.
Posts: 38
Threads: 8
Joined: Jan 2018
(01-27-2018, 06:40 AM)xyroph Wrote: In your opinion, would the old fashioned style be valid if not offset by the previous flaws?
It has a certain kind of beauty to be honest. I do like reading the older poets once in a while. As to whether it is critically appreciated, I couldn't say: I'm very much an amateur myself.
Posts: 14
Threads: 3
Joined: Nov 2015
Thank you for your feedback. The "editor" muscle is one that I've, quite apparently, never really flexed. Do you think it would do to split it into two separate pieces after heavily purging the repetition/cliches?
I'd love to take it to a face-to-face writing group but honestly, I feel more like I'm inflicting it on people than sharing it with people.
Thanks for your time and your thoughts.
(01-26-2018, 10:50 PM)Knot Wrote: Hi xyroph.
It is very overwritten, feels repetitive, rhymes
then doesn't rhyme, the narratives get tangled
and the metaphors seem to be at war.
Basically, I'm confused.
That said, there were some lines/ideas I liked a lot:
cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
Alone with a girl
whose grief would kill them
perfect monsters in their majesty.
And beneath the surface, cold blooded creatures
Insidious truth-speakers
threatened to break the surface.
So, I gathered up the pieces
And I made myself a crown
The queen of all the creatures
That the darkness couldn’t drown
these stood out for me.
But they were outweighed by things like;
Adrift, unmoored, the dead of night made lively by ocean waters
Either 'adrift' or 'unmoored', not both.
Do you need the 'dead of' cliché?
Dead and lively juxtaposition doesn't entertain.
looming beyond the chilled fog.
fog is by definition 'chilled'.
And in my wandering, found a living, breathing boy
Immediately conjures up Pinocchioo, sorry.
Also, first adrift/unmoored, now wandering, which is it?
I think your canvas is too large, consequently
the story and it's emotional content get lost,
both in the space and through the repetitions.
Find your inner editor.
Best, Knot.
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