The World There That's Sleeping

Author: Snow9 Elite Ratio:    3 - 38 /21 /17 Words: 96

Class/Type: Poetry /Misc Total Views: 1691 Average Vote:    No vote yet. Bytes: 794

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The World There That's Sleeping

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You go searching for those Pink flowers in the silk-white Bedroom curtains. But The mirror accidentally intervenes- There’s the frost-bitten body Within the candle-lit darkness. Outside, the curtains are extended In the snow-flakes that Faintly fall as drops From a weep-candle. Look closer, you see? Silver and dark, They are porous like skeletons, Beautiful in departing: Deaths get shrouded by deaths. Shut your eyes And- who knows- ceasing before the fall, They may have respite In oblivion. Thus I console, While my guitar gently weeps. Infinity Awaits this line’s end.

Submitted on 2012-10-24 02:36:31     Terms of Service / Copyright Rules
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They may have respite in oblivion this enjambment is great where it first offers some hope with the pause, but then there's that oblivion. good revision, and I think there's always a time/place for employing more classical/traditional means (like all caps) so, bravo to you for knowing what's best for your poem.

| Posted on 2012-10-30 00:00:00 | by emwren | [ Reply to This ]

I think this is a fine poem. I think there are a couple of places that you could cut or refine to make it even finer. I thought I would just show you below where I might adjust (it it were mine) and explain why after and it will be food-for-thought, just that. I'm also going to do away with the caps at the beginning of each line (barring the beginning of a new sentence) just to see how it will look that way, to me poems feel more modern written that way. But, that is a preference, of course. You go searching for those pink flowers in the silk-white bedroom curtains. But the mirror accidentally intervenes- there’s the frost-bitten body within the lamp-lit darkness. Outside, the curtains are extended in the snowflakes that faintly rise like drops from a water-candle. Silver and dark, they are porous like skeletons, beautiful in departing: deaths get shrouded by deaths. Look closer you see, infinity- awaits the line's end while my guitar gently weeps. On first read, I wondered if the song lyric had a place here where it really fit, it felt incongruous to me because it seemed to come out of nowhere, but I think if you were to do something along these lines- just using the line once and as a kind of fade out- it could work well and mesh well. I love the two things that inspired this poem, Joyce's The Dead is the first Joyce story I read, and it led me to read much of his other work, and grow to admire the man, and also he's one of those writers that made me want to write. I can see that influence here, for sure, especially at the beginning. It's that tail end of the story, that mysterious fade out where we are left to come to our own conclusions about what happens- kind of like we must do with life as we live it out- waiting and postulating and such. There are a few lines above that I removed- that penultimate stanza- because I wanted to see how it would read without that section. I think I like the level of mystery that remains when some of that is cut, but it is easy for me to cut when I didn't write it, and only you know what is more important for you and what you want to convey. I also rearranged a bit, just to see how it would like. This is just me playing around with it and kind of offering an alternative view of how the poem might work. I also italicized the song lyric because (and this is a personal preference) italics feel less intrusive to me in poetry then quotation marks, but they do serve the same purpose. One other thing that struck me was that each stanza ended on a full stop. I think, for the sake of flow, poems work well when the placement of full-stops are varied and spread out, using enjambment where possible and varying line breaks to kind of avoid that full stop at the end of each stanza, since this can begin to feel kind of paragraphed. You've got some really nice enjambment in places already here. I think largely it works well. Overall, I think this poem is fantastic, I do think the sections that lean a little more towards telling or spelling it out for the reader could be honed or cut. I hope this is helpful, as I said this is the kind of critique I prefer- enjoy receiving- because it really leads me to examine my poems closely. I hope you find it helpful also.

| Posted on 2012-10-24 00:00:00 | by emwren | [ Reply to This ]

I never liked that line about the weeping guitar but your poem made it seem almost pretty in context.

| Posted on 2012-10-24 00:00:00 | by PassingThru | [ Reply to This ]

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