This reads well. I especially love 'puddles crumble' - quite beautiful - and the penultimate stanza is marvelous but on the whole I feel frustrated by the piece. I keep wanting to cast the characters, find a suitable location, time frame and plot but I don't feel there is enough there for me to attach a significant meaning for me. I have scenes - beautiful scenes - but no story. It reminds me a little of the collection of short stories by Kay Dick, They, where every story contains a malevolent 'they' but they are never identified.
thanks jim, it was a bit of an experiment but I'm struggling to draw all the bits together. I'll probably have to chop a bunch of it to get anywhere. Thanks for your thoughts.
Haunting use of language as usual. I would cut down the third section of commentary to just -'they came while we were eating, they came in twos and threes'. If this is an actual event I think the reader should be told about it, maybe by putting the location in the title?
I think you could still trim and tidy a tad:
'...at the edge of bramble leaves, love letters to birds in crystal.'
'the sun glows through layers of cloud dust'
'drowning the mysteries in smooth eddies, my voices, my words, my muddied feet.'
Oh dear, I think I am going to say almost the opposite to Jim. I loved it all, including the penultimate stanza, which I felt, had it been my poem - and how I wish it was! - I would have made into two stanzas, splitting it after "... we did not speak// at all." The whole had a slightly surreal appeal for me, a cumulative effect of parallel images, almost like part song. I don't know if that is what you were intending. Maybe it sounds fanciful, but if I had written it, that is the way I would have wanted to develop it. Okay, if that's no help, forget it.
thanks very much hugh, that's a great help. I mixed together reworded eyewitness statements of different actual events so I can't really attribute it to one location, though it really would have helped the poem if I could. thanks again for that.
unreliable narrator? that'll do for me! yes, the nature images are good but we know you can do that so this was a bit of a surprise. nicely done. like it!
There's a lot to like in this, but at the end I wanted some kind of resolution - some hint of where the two themes would eventually connect. Definitely worth working on.
I subscribe to the Dick and Dave faction. I like the effect of a story told in a fragmentary way, as if seen "through a window" rather than seen in its entirety.
14 comments:
This reads well. I especially love 'puddles crumble' - quite beautiful - and the penultimate stanza is marvelous but on the whole I feel frustrated by the piece. I keep wanting to cast the characters, find a suitable location, time frame and plot but I don't feel there is enough there for me to attach a significant meaning for me. I have scenes - beautiful scenes - but no story. It reminds me a little of the collection of short stories by Kay Dick, They, where every story contains a malevolent 'they' but they are never identified.
thanks jim, it was a bit of an experiment but I'm struggling to draw all the bits together. I'll probably have to chop a bunch of it to get anywhere. Thanks for your thoughts.
Haunting use of language as usual. I would cut down the third section of commentary to just -'they came while we were eating, they came in twos and threes'. If this is an actual event I think the reader should be told about it, maybe by putting the location in the title?
I think you could still trim and tidy a tad:
'...at the edge of bramble leaves,
love letters to birds
in crystal.'
'the sun glows
through layers of cloud dust'
'drowning the mysteries
in smooth eddies, my voices,
my words, my muddied feet.'
Oh dear, I think I am going to say almost the opposite to Jim. I loved it all, including the penultimate stanza, which I felt, had it been my poem - and how I wish it was! - I would have made into two stanzas, splitting it after "... we did not speak// at all."
The whole had a slightly surreal appeal for me, a cumulative effect of parallel images, almost like part song. I don't know if that is what you were intending. Maybe it sounds fanciful, but if I had written it, that is the way I would have wanted to develop it. Okay, if that's no help, forget it.
thanks very much hugh, that's a great help. I mixed together reworded eyewitness statements of different actual events so I can't really attribute it to one location, though it really would have helped the poem if I could. thanks again for that.
dave, that so kind of you, thankyou. an interesting idea, I hadn't thought of it at all! I'm glad you like it, thanks.
unreliable narrator? that'll do for me! yes, the nature images are good but we know you can do that so this was a bit of a surprise. nicely done. like it!
thankyou, I'm glad you like it!
There's a lot to like in this, but at the end I wanted some kind of resolution - some hint of where the two themes would eventually connect. Definitely worth working on.
I'm pretty much of Dave's persuasion. And I relish its mystery rather than requiring narrative and resolution.
thanks for your thoughts colin, I know what you mean, I need to find a way to draw it all together.
thankyou dick, I'm glad you like it.
I love it! the mixture of voices makes it dazzling. and the last stanza is my favourite.
I subscribe to the Dick and Dave faction. I like the effect of a story told in a fragmentary way, as if seen "through a window" rather than seen in its entirety.
thankyou roxana, I'm very glad you like it!
hi dominic, thanks for that, that's a nice way to think about it!
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