What Reckless Dreams

[jonvandalen]

What far-away land now beckons?
What beauty? What danger?
What subtle hope still lives?
We are well past such dreams as these.
Yet, upon a moment where dreams still plead for survival
And hope makes a desperate move to be seen,
Who will go? Who will try?
Who will believe, and then act?
What new beast shall be born when we, at last,
Full of passionate intensity, follow our reckless dreams to the stars?

[Magpie]

Hi, it's quite hard to critique a poem like this when you've placed it in 'Intensive Critique' as usually a line by line is required. It's hard to grasp what you are trying to say. There are so many questions at the beginning that have no reference, they just dangle with no possible chance of an answer. When I first saw this poem a couple of days ago my initial thoughts were that it isn't good to have so many questions in a poem but upon thinking about it I came up with Blake's Tyger Tyger which relies heavily on questions to carry the poem and does it brilliantly.

Your last two lines are the best in the poem. They are poetic and they ask an important question, that of what we become when we follow 'all' of our desires. It feels like this is the question you are wanting to ask and you've asked it right at the end. If you started with those two lines and then look to answer it with the rest of the poem. However at the moment there are too many unnecessary questions that ask the reader to do all of the work.

Check out Blake's Tyger Tyger it is a good example of how questions can be utilised in a poem to good effect. Note that in his poem the initial question he asks is repeated at the end with a slight tweak, which shows a process of learning throughout the poem that has led to a different question. There's a name for that type of poem but it escapes me. However it is a useful device that I feel you could use in your poem.

Sorry if this feels a bit harsh, but this is in intensive. 
Those last two lines are good though and I really think you have something to work with from there
Hope this is of some help.

Cheers for the read

[milo]

Hello

It seems you've written a poem about the yearning for adventure/fulfillment/exploration.

I think it is very difficult to pull off using "Dreams" in the title of a modern poem and I don't think you succeeded here as it comes across as a cliche rather than a novel look at something.

What far-away land now beckons?
What beauty? What danger?
What subtle hope still lives?

So - all this chatter in the beginning of the poem will be annoying to the reader and they will start skimming.  You have asked 4 kind of tired question in a row  which all should be replaced with one powerful new observation/metaphor/question to really bring the reader in

We are well past such dreams as these.

As I mentioned - "dreams" in a modern poem is tough to pull off and you are just using it here in the cliche common way so it gives a reader the ick

Yet, upon a moment where dreams still plead for survival
And hope makes a desperate move to be seen,

dreams and now hopes too.  sigh.  This is not good.  All of this should be re-written with fresh language.  You have something you want to say, now think of an interesting way to say it.

Who will go? Who will try?
Who will believe, and then act?
What new beast shall be born when we, at last,
Full of passionate intensity, follow our reckless dreams to the stars?

sadly, it doesn't get better.

I would like to suggest trimming out all the fat but I think there would be maybe 4 words left. Sorry if this doesn't seem helpful.

Thanks for posting.

[Mark A Becker]

Hello John-
First off, there are way too many questions; you're doing a lot of telling by asking.The abstractions, below, require concrete images to support them, otherwise they are far too general:

beauty danger
hope
dreams
dreams survival
hope desperate

Show me imagery to convey the above abstractions. Then you may more effectively lead in to your last lines.

What new beast shall be born when we, at last, I have no idea, but this part is intriguing, and could be better supported.
Full of passionate intensity, follow our reckless dreams to the stars? Afraid this bolded part is cliche. You probably will need to re-work this line when you re-work the lead-in.

Lastly pose these questions to yourself, then create a scene which your readers can latch onto. Otherwise, you leave us wondering what you're getting at. There needs to be a back-story, with concrete imagery. More meat on the bones is needed here.

Respectfully,
Mark