The ring of darker pigment
around the edge of your iris
is an event horizon.
An all consuming midnight
of inescapable unknowns.
Time and distance disappear.
---------------------------------------
I'd really like some help with and criticism of this to try and finish it. I thought the first stanza was worth developing but I'm not happy with the last line of S2. Or is the whole thing beyond saving?
The Edge Of Your Iris.
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figure eight
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Last edited by figure eight on Tue Apr 21, 2015 10:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
S1 fine. The whole an interesting conceit. S2 a bit too abstract for me. Are black holes all consuming? Perhaps you could make some metaphor of Hawking Radiation. I would rather not suggest wording that's your mind's work.
Regards, C.
Regards, C.
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Arian
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I like s1, both for its sound and rhythm and for its implication (see below). Not sure s2 gels with it, really.
s1:
If an even horizon is something that light (or anything) can't get beyond, s1 implies that the iris' owner can see no further than their own eyes. I quite like that. S1 becomes a poetic way of saying that someone is self-obsessed. Sort of. S2 could develop the idea. Maybe.
Cheers
peter
s1:
If an even horizon is something that light (or anything) can't get beyond, s1 implies that the iris' owner can see no further than their own eyes. I quite like that. S1 becomes a poetic way of saying that someone is self-obsessed. Sort of. S2 could develop the idea. Maybe.
Cheers
peter
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bodkin
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Hi FE,
The event horizon is indeed the point beyond which even light cannot escape, but I read that as outwardly facing rather than inwardly. e.g. it is the observer who is trapped in the eye not the eye's owner...
I agree with Peter's point as regards S2, but I think that the final line could work very nicely, I think it is:
"An all consuming midnight
of inescapable unknowns."
That may be letting the strophe down. I think because it is a bit abstract "inescapable unknowns" and although the idea of "all consuming midnight" is good, it isn't sufficiently anchored in the poem that I can tell exactly what it refers to... what is consumed, why, how? I'm tentatively taking it as the obsession of the observer for the observed, but need just a touch more detail to place a meaning firmly on that.
A promising piece all-in-all, I thought.
Ian
The event horizon is indeed the point beyond which even light cannot escape, but I read that as outwardly facing rather than inwardly. e.g. it is the observer who is trapped in the eye not the eye's owner...
I agree with Peter's point as regards S2, but I think that the final line could work very nicely, I think it is:
"An all consuming midnight
of inescapable unknowns."
That may be letting the strophe down. I think because it is a bit abstract "inescapable unknowns" and although the idea of "all consuming midnight" is good, it isn't sufficiently anchored in the poem that I can tell exactly what it refers to... what is consumed, why, how? I'm tentatively taking it as the obsession of the observer for the observed, but need just a touch more detail to place a meaning firmly on that.
A promising piece all-in-all, I thought.
Ian
http://www.ianbadcoe.uk/
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Arian
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Fair point that. Certainly another way of looking at it.bodkin wrote:I read that as outwardly facing rather than inwardly. e.g. it is the observer who is trapped in the eye not the eye's owner...
p
Well, I'm learning. I hadn't realised 'conceit' was a technical term, and was puzzled by this comment, until I came across the word by chance in the book I'm reading by Drury.cynwulf wrote:The whole an interesting conceit.
The poem's an interesting idea. I think it would work without the last line: I quite like '... of inescapable unknowns' as an end. It is a little mysterious, but then so is that part of the eye - I was reminded of selective attention, and how we can miss important things nearby merely by not attending to them.
Hello figure eight,
I like the idea of this, if it is what I'm taking it to mean, that this is the eye of your lover that you are gazing into and find it inescapable. That's what I felt anyway, and if it is so, I would maybe have made it a touch more personal, perhaps finishing S1 with "My last event horizon". or "My lights event horizon" or just "My event horizon". That's not to say that what you have in not good, only that I found it a little blunt, impersonal, though that may be exactly what you were going for, I'm not sure.
I don't think I would change anything about S2, I like it as it is. I'm still reading it in the context of describing what is passing between you and your lover, and maybe that is not what it is, but in that vein, I think it's got a certain mystery, which these things should have IMO.
Enjoyed
Mark
I like the idea of this, if it is what I'm taking it to mean, that this is the eye of your lover that you are gazing into and find it inescapable. That's what I felt anyway, and if it is so, I would maybe have made it a touch more personal, perhaps finishing S1 with "My last event horizon". or "My lights event horizon" or just "My event horizon". That's not to say that what you have in not good, only that I found it a little blunt, impersonal, though that may be exactly what you were going for, I'm not sure.
I don't think I would change anything about S2, I like it as it is. I'm still reading it in the context of describing what is passing between you and your lover, and maybe that is not what it is, but in that vein, I think it's got a certain mystery, which these things should have IMO.
Enjoyed
Mark