Indigo

[lo-lee-ta]

Original
Come dusk I am a haunted girl
disappearing with the heat
Oh how nightfall creeps around the heart and stifles any beat
So until the stars are washed away, the only hope is sleep. (...at least I think that was the original haha)

Revision 1
Come dusk I am
a haunted girl, disappearing
with the heat. Oh how nightfall creeps
around the heart and stifles
any beat. So until the stars are washed
away, the only hope
is sleep.

Revision 2
Come dusk
I am a haunted girl
disappearing with the heat.
O, how nightfall creeps
around the heart,
stifles any beat.
So, until the stars
are washed away,
the only hope is sleep.

[Macavity]

Come dusk I am a haunted girl, disappearing
with the heat. Oh how nightfall creeps around
the heart and stifles any beat. So until
the stars are washed away, the only hope is sleep.


Come dusk I am
a haunted girl, disappearing
with the heat. Oh how nightfall creeps
around the heart and stifles
any beat. So until the stars are washed
away, the only hope
is sleep.

Hope you don't mind, but I thought I'd play around with the lines to illustrate options. Your present content draws attention to those end rhymes. Personally I like the content, but perhaps the sonics could be more balanced by playing around with enjambment.

mac

[lo-lee-ta]

Hey Mac,
Thanks so much for replying. I completely agree with your re-arrangement of the lines. So much so, i'm actually going to edit it that way now It flows much easier!
Thanks again x

[Antcliff]

Hi lo-lee-ta,

lovely sound to this..nice internal rhyme of "heat/creeps" that ends up so nicely emphasing "heart"!
best wishes, seth

[Macavity]

Hey Mac,
Thanks so much for replying. I completely agree with your re-arrangement of the lines. So much so, i'm actually going to edit it that way now It flows much easier!
Thanks again x

Pleased to be of help. However, I should urge caution. The nature of a workshop is to receive a spread of viewpoints. In that context it is wise to post the original and the revision. Another reviewer may disagree with my suggestions. Another reviewer may prefer the original! Another reviewer my offer more helpful suggestions!! Either way it is helpful for readers to read both the original and the revision.

cheers

mac

[Arian]

Yes, I like the driving force of heat/creep/beat/sleep, too. Nice.

The new linebreaks are an improvement, I think. Somehow, they make it feel like a self-contained poem, while the original had an unfinished feel, like a stanza from a longer piece.

Cheers
peter

[Mic]

I like this very much - two very strong images - nightfall creeping around the heart and the stars being washed away - and well-handled internal ryhme that, as someone has said already, gives the poem a good engine.

Here's how I might re-organise the line breaks:

Come dusk
I am a haunted girl
disappearing with the heat.
O, how nightfall creeps
around the heart,
stifles any beat.
So, until the stars
are washed away,
the only hope is sleep.

I think the only awkwardness in the flow of this is that 'disappearing' in l2.

I'm not sure about the title ...

Good work!

Michaela

[lo-lee-ta]

Hi Micheala, thanks for taking the time to reply Yeah, i'm not sure about the title either! I kind of didn't know what to put in the 'title' box so made it up in a hurry! I like your reorganisation of the lines too! I will post the original (good point Mac) and the two revisions!

Arian - Thanks for your response! Yes with it all being in one block previously I guess it did look like it was cut from a longer poem, good point!

Seth - I'm glad you like it and thanks for reading!

[Suzanne]

Hi.

Well done. I enjoyed this little blue thing.
Interested in hearing more.

Can't figure out your avatar, is it doll heads?
You've got me so very curious.


Suzanne

[lo-lee-ta]

Hi Suzanne, thanks for your comments. It is a little short, maybe i'll try and add to it.
Haha, no it's not doll heads, its me from behind with huge fairy wings on, holding a toadstool birthday cake that my friends made for me a few years ago! Maybe if you zoom in you'll be able to see it better.
Thanks again

[KevJ]

I enjoyed reading this Lo_Lee_Ta. For me revision 1 works best.

[BuckMulligan]

I agree, I prefer revision 1. I read all three in order and it's amazing what a little reorganisation of the lines can do - I thought the poem had been rewritten for the better rather than just moved around. So all credit to Macavity.

I don't like the introduction of punctuation in revision 2 - as much as I hate using the word "flow" to describe the sense of a poem, it removes the "flow". For some reason in Revision 1 I can almost feel an oppressive kind of heat about the poem, driven on by the sparse punctuation. The absence of "and" before "stifles" in favour of a comma in R2 bothers me especially. The original and R1 are in what is very nearly iambic pentameter, and the punctuation of R2 breaks that lovely fragile rhythm.

Moving away from the form of the poem, I find it a little difficult to get my head around what it's about. The images you use are quite fresh and arresting - in normal circumstances I don't think I'd go for a line like "creeps around the heart and stifles any beat", but I think there is a stifled nature to the beat and indeed tone of this poem, so where it might normally smack of adolescent lovesickness (admittedly not necessarily something to be criticised) in this case I think it fits.

Clearly the girl's not very happy about something, I just can't quite figure out what - the "heart" line would suggest a relationship. But perhaps I don't need to know what. I like that the poem ends with a resolution that sleep is the only option - I find a good long sleep cures much and I wish poetry and prose recommended it more often. I think fewer lives would have been lost. Just one thing I'm slightly worried about now that I think about it is that the images used, while nice, don't really mean very much. Until the stars are washed away? It's a good line, but does it have any actual significance? Perhaps I haven't fully got it.

Apologies if I'm going a bit far on what's really a nice little lyric. I think as it is in revision 1 it's perfectly lovely.