a diminuendo of love -------------------------------------------
it is as if i've been writing love letters
with dead pens
stranded here by mistake
and never quite got round to moving on
fingering this rosary string
of sacred rememberings
with accidental joy
-i-loved-him--i-loved-him--i-loved-him-
i will not defile this with clichés
to forget he who diminuedoed out of
life seems as futile as trying
to airbrush mondays
yet it seems the grainy quality
of memory betrays me
"as futile as air brushing "
beautiful.
forgive me if i am wrong however i feel that your protraying love as an object that so many people have tried to materialize. the lose of love feels just as complex. i do love this piece but i feel almost a cynic tone with the "i will not defile this with clichés". for such strong similes i feel this distinguishes the seriousness of such a complex as love in which you paint so well. although you may just be trying to keep the poem light "anti-angst" if you will.
good piece look forward to reading more.
kev
You loved him and he passed on out of your life but left his hazy but stubborn memory for you to wrestle with. I could be wrong but I would venture to say that in one form or another we have all harbored a similar situation. How we deal with is is always a highly personal thing and not easily summed up in a few lines of poetry.
Surprised I can still comment at all on this one. I'm sorry I took so blasted long about returning your feedback. I just have not had the mental focus necessary to offer real comments lately; it's like half my brain's gone missing.
Before I start into the actual comment, I've got to say something for freeradical. Smoking at all is smoking too much for your own good. I consider it a dual offense: suicide, yes, but also homicide.
Anyway: the poem.
I like the imagery of dried up inkwells and the rosary; they seem to suggest a deeper story than appears out front, which is a good thing to see. You put the idea of musing over lost love on paper almost fluidly.
Then the stream-of-consciousness lines that break in only add to it. The narrator's repetition of the words "I loved him" to herself are similar to the way people think when something happens to such feelings. It's almost shock, and the repetition is her way of explaining the confusion. The next line is even better: "I will not defile this with clichés."
The last stanza is still strong, but I'm slightly annoyed by the verb "diminuendoed;" it simply doesn't feel right for some reason. That could just be me. In any case, the rest of the stanza--inability to forget, yet the failing of human memory to remember--is just as recognizable as the line that follows once more. This is a very inward-looking piece--in the best of ways. Very well-done.
it's been a week of hell, 10 hour rehearsals, six days a week. my hair is falling out in clumps from the stress, and i'm smoking far too much for my own good.
and sean? well, i told him, finally, that i loved him. last week. then i didn't hear from him for a week. when did i hear of him, it wasn't from him. and it was my best friend, with worry in her voice as she told me the words i knew were coming.
he's in a relationship with his little sister's best friend. the man who professed to be anti-relationship because it ruins everything it sets out to accomplish. is now dating someone five years his junior.
it's funny, that i happened upon this today. it made me look up from the heartbreak. and realize that other people go through this. other people hurt. and that while it might not get better for a long time, there are people who can transform hurt into eloquence.
well said, my lovely.
i loved him, too.
shakespeare said 'journeys end in lovers meeting'. and perhaps that was true for him. for us, it seems to start them.
I think this is a good poem, but I'm not sure whether you are talking about someone who died, or just someone who "stepped out" of your life (in a not-dying sort of way). You have good metaphors with the rosary string and the airbrushing though! But the poem doesn't really have any...location, or real imagery. It's just happening "here." I think if you located the poem in a real setting, it would make it feel more immediate, and give it a sort of anchoring. I like this part but I think it's also too clunky: "of sacred rememberings / with accidental joy." There are a lot of syllables, and it sounds awkward with the repeating modifier-noun. I think also that the bold font is too obnoxious and breaks the quietness of the piece (in an unpleasant way). The "cliché" part, maybe you could try unbolding it and putting it in parenthesis, to give it a whisper quality. Saying things more quietly usually amplifies them.
it is as if i've been writing love letters
with dead pens
writing with dead pens . . . it glidse the same, but no ink. To look back and realize they were dead means that all of a sudden, the past seems to disappear, to not mean what it meant. this is quite an opening. the image, the idea is so powerful, yet so simple. I might add a fwe lines stretching this little simile, expanding it, because it's really the image which perfectly captures the whole poem.
stranded here by mistake
and never quite got round to moving on
here i begin to feel a slight disconnect, mistake is such a basic word, compared to the simple elegant metaphor above. never quite got round to moving on fits what you want, you realize the ink isn't there, what you'd thought was written, thought was beautiful poetic truth, isn't, and you glance up from your fading secret and look around. that's the right feel, but i don't think stranded here by mistake is necessary. maybe just
it is as if i've been writing love letters
with dead pens
Like I never got round to leaving
fingering this rosary string
of sacred rememberings
with accidental joy
accidental joy? you mean, this happiness at looking back is surprising, rare? the metaphor of rosary is quite apt, but i wouldn't think accidental. at least, not when i look back through my old love. The joy isn't accidental, it's breif, powerful, distant, gone but not forgotten. . . but not accidental. Then again, odds are your love and mine were not the same, since i don't remember meeting you :-)
i do like the contrast, the realization, and i like the self modification which follow.
-i-loved-him--i-loved-him--i-loved-him-
i will not defile this with clichés
to forget he who diminuedoed out of
life seems as futile as trying
to airbrush mondays
yet it seems the grainy quality
of memory betrays me
i like this stanza just the way it is. but i don't think you need the next line. just go straight to
-i-loved-him--i-loved-him-i-loved-him-
all that said, i was n't sure upon reading it if you were looking months/years back, or if you just realized you didn't love him anymore. i commented as if the latter, because i saw some other commenters believing that, and considering it's almost 3am, i figured i was wrong. but if you were looking back at a memory less than recent, please tell me so i can reexamine it. I like it, for some reason at 3am recalling love seems the best pastime.
On love, your mind forgets things... but I'd say the heart is ever loud of it. There may be life after death or there may not be, but I say that, either way, love never dies... it's out there like dust in outer space and even without form it exists.
There's no where to go from it sometimes... you just sit there thinking, well... I-loved-them. Sometimes there's just not much else to think of because nothing can be changed and you're left with just that. You know that you have to move on and get living done, but a part of you, it seems, always stays stuck there... in the moment it happened. And you're forgetting things you want to remember and remembering things you want to forget. It's really indescribable, the mesh of things that can be in one thought over such a thing.
Anyhow, it's a beautiful write. I loved it. Keep strong.
~sam~
Hey I thought I'd read this poem again but this time tell you my thoughts on it. Firstly, I like your style of using no capitals, it especially works in the title aswell because I think it gives a calmness, a sadness and a modernness to the poem. Just seeing a lower-case title makes the poem look somewhat passive although the poem can be strong in other senses too.
I wonder in the first line why you write 'it is' as opposed to 'it's' and then go on to write 'i've' as opposed to 'i have'. I know this is a hugely small thing but it appeals to me because I always attempt a consistency with my poems - if I use one contraction, I usually use more throughout the poem where they fit. But I read how you've worded this first line and I think it fits because 'it is as if' rolls nicely off the tongue and also has a slightly longer syllabic build up into the poem. I like it. I think it works better than any of
these ones:
'it's as if i've been'
or
'it's as if i have been'
or
'it is as if i have been'
I always wonder about that word 'round' - line 4. It's only just recently that I learned it can have the same meaning as 'around'. I always thought 'round' was an adjective for circles and stuff. Now this also leads me to think about people who put 'a' in front of a verb for effect, but I don't know what that effect is! For example: 'We'll aparty to the break of dawn'; does it change the meaning or is it just for rhythmic/aesthetic/poetic/other reasons? If anyone knows, please enlighten me
Now I read your first stanza and I wonder with the line breaks, you usually break when the thought slightly changes. I don't know if this is your style or if you were only employing it for this poem but I think that you can make for a more interesting read if you break in unusual places but don't distract from the rhythm/ideas of the piece. For example with the first stanza:
'it is as if i've been writing
love letters with dead
pens stranded here
by mistake
and never quite got round to
moving on, fingering this rosary
string of sacred rememberings
with accidental joy'
I might have over done it but hopefully that gives you an idea of what I'm saying. Although it can distract from the flow so the technique should be applied carefully. What am I saying? I'm not this knowledgeable sorry, and I don't think I know everything - no way! Hopefully this helps though.
What did I like about the poem? I liked the metaphor of the rosary string which indicates how much importance this person had in your life and I especially like your use of 'sacred' because it supports the rosary string idea and also enforces your 'rememberings'. I love the word 'rememberings'!
'accidental joy' is brilliant! No, it's more than that I really love this expression because I see it shows regret for the joys you had? Well that's how I read it anyway.
I wonder about the italics with '-i-loved-him--i-loved-him--i-loved-him-' then moving onto bold in the end. It has a powerful lasting effect but I don't know what else it does. I think it shows that you learnt something or that your feelings/emotions changed during the composition of this poem. The italics seems peaceful and/or weak and the bold italics has that lasting effect as I said. I like how you use bold italics instead of just plain bold because I think it contrasts with the 'i will no defile...' line, instead of blending in with it and also has the same effect as the plain italicized one except it's stronger. One nitpicking detail though! I like how you use hyphens to separate the words but, if you support consistency, you will notice that the first phrase has two hyphens between repetitions and the second is missing a hyphen between the last two repetitions. Capeesh?
I think the word 'defile' is brilliant and it shows the disgustingness of clichés. Well in this sense anyway. They can be employed in satirical/other ways but yeah, I agree with you. Stay away. Defile is a great word for this.
I never hated Mondays as much as other people. I guess I was always excited about going to school.
I don't understand what the 'grainy quality of memory' is, just the 'grainy' part in this sense though.
I like in the second to last line, the repetition of 'stranded' and 'rememberings'.
The title is perfect for this... yes a diminuendo of love. And it is strange when it happens, when all of a sudden you catch yourself thinking in the past tense. I loved, not I love.
The first stanza fuels a couple of things for me: a meditation for moving on, realization, comfort zone, dead ends, catching yourself, and in some way, it's as if those love poems are the beads.
The repetition works well here... like reminders, a manifestation of sorts, even a mantra.
And I love - i will not defile this with clichés
Kinda like a refusal to besmirch a memory/love with triteness...or take away from its absolute importance...to you/to them.
(I often feel I fall into the clichéd love poem dept. And the thought of that just turns my stomach)
I the last stanza should it be - diminuendoed? (I make up words like that too... hey, poetic license)
I don't know, it feels like a coming to terms, even though the memories are there they have blured with time.... like knowing someones voice but forgetting how it sounds when it calls you. There is this understanding that it will never go away (the love) but somehow it is changing.
What I love most... is there is not one tinge of regret.
this seems to fit well with a creak of an old wooden rocking chair and a glum day.
i approve of your word choice *stamp of approval* though i can't say that's worth too much :-P
i felt that this piece was an almost mellow way of speaking on something melancholy.
playing it down. it's a good weave of words and thoughts, and i especially enjoyed the line "i will not defile this with clichés" as though this person revels in their self-torment and their nostalgic thoughts.
i reeaallllly liked this piece and your use of words. Im not going to waste any time trying to tell you how to improve it or what should be changed because i think its pretty good the way it is....and it doesnt need any adjustments. At least thats my opinion. So i dont really know what to say other than good job!! :)
I love the words you chose for this piece...like as futile as trying to airbrush mondays...that's just such a strange senario, but it works so well....
"Isn't it odd how carefully we keep the beautiful fragments of shattered perfection that our love once was despite the fact that they were carved in ice and not diamond?" Said the wise little shrink from the nether hollow. "It's as if we relish the pain that this wonderful emotion has become, as if a rabid pet were still worth keeping in our homes near our hearts. Of course, memories are beautiful if we recall them correctly; defang them, declaw them and hush them when they misbehave. Wouldn't you agree, Melvin the Wood Sprite?"
"I prefer Pepsi."
"No, I meant, oh, nevermind."
"This was a lovely rendition of sorrow, my dear. Certainly worth reading and digesting slowly."
It makes me envious of how easy writing things like this seem to you. I'm not saying that it feels unpolished... what I'm saying it is that it possesses powerful sense of ease to it, something confident as to look at her body and say "this old thing, it's nothing special" but you know that it is. You humble us lady. We make it seem like a chore... you make it seem like it is as easy as breathing.
Some people are just born with it, huh?
This is why I believe you should be raising our kid. This would put his pro-death vocab to good use. The world needs a more merciless version of good ol' William, I think.
Anyway... these are my favorite lines:
"and never quite got round to moving on
fingering this rosary string
of sacred rememberings
with accidental joy..."
Accidental joy, to me is so beautiful. It gives that tragic sense of smoking a cigarette, or drinking (no... I'm not a drinker. The kid'll love me for that) no matter how much you know it'll hurt. It describes perfectly a level of love that most of the human race, the Icaruses, can relate to.
something so.......overwhelming as love i suppose is more often than not painfull as a memory. but i suppose a void, as apposed to a remembering that feels as such, is better. but meh idk. some pain needs felt. well the focus isn't so much the pain. i wonder is the silence at the end something to look forward to or feared?
i will not defile this with clichés
i don't know if i like this line so much, kinda diffuses the focus alitte, maybe i'm a little diffused so who knows. either way very diffrent from what i remember but it has been a while
yet it seems the grainy quality
of memory betrays me
Interesting title. First I had to look up diminuendo. It's the same thing as a decrescendo, which I do know, and it is a decrease in volume and strength. So I just applied your title to the poem and it fits very well. The love just decreases...
"I loved him - I loved him - I loved him"
This line seems almost desperate. It is past tense, so we know that you no longer love him. It seems to me that you say it in disbelief, repeating it over and over, trying to make sense out of it all.
"it is as futile as trying to airbrush mondays"
That is a very good line. You're correct, it's not possible to make mondays feel good. Everyone knows its the return to school or work or dreariness. Even if it is a sunny day, it still doesn't feel right. I wonder why, even if you have monday off work or school, it still lingers.
Submission Name: a diminuendo of love
