I love you (+1 redraft)

[TDF]

despite my fear of spamming the forum, I'd like to post up one more poem. I've been toiling over this one for a few days now and I'd really appreciate some crits and ideas. I have written a lot of soppy poetry in my time, most of it with easy rhymes and flow to make girls smile , but wanted to try one alltogether different, more technical and with more wordplay and abstract/complex imagery. So here it is.

original:
I love you

I, amidst your absence, sit
enwrapped in sepia shadows
flame-flicked and flinching,
bewitched.
Flutter-dancing silhouettes
caress sweat-shimmered skin,
a marionette,
a myth of you
tripskips my heart to doubtful mutter
utterance from lip-kissed words:
I love you


Take 2:

Corner of my eye caught by a vision seen fleeting,
a flame-flicked teasing
silhouette that dances
a marionette,
a myth of you.
Turn to trace the arching skinscape of your back,
fingered shadows cast in black
over pearlescent curves.
unnerved and flinching,
knocked sideways
by petrol light from a swaying glass cage
that glows, beguiling, a bitter stage
on which performs
the myth of you.



feedback greatly appreciated for this one.
TDF

edit: for poor, poor spellinz

[Travis]

I love you too.

Now, verbosity is a problem right off the bat. Enwrapped? Amidst your absence? Tripskips? Far too sickly to be effective. Effective meaning something that's written well enough to so as to seem natural and not too contrived. Which is another specificamajiggy that stands out. And that's that the entire poem scans as one big contrivance. Under no circumstances would I buy this, figuratively speaking.

a marionette,
a myth of you

That's beautiful. Those two simple lines, I wish they were mine to insert into some of my own doggerel. No, that wasn't an insult. Merely a self-deprecating observation. Out loud.

Please, don't take this as a suggestion on how to work it, but the sentiments of the poem can be pared down to this:

While you're gone I sit near an open flame which creates visuals that remind me of you. I miss you, I love you. Maybe even hate you?

Anyway, I'm slightly lost at the end.

Others may disagree, but I think this should be ALMOST entirely rewritten.

All that bullshit aside, welcome to the forum. I hope you'll stick around. For what you're probably looking for, this place is the best.

[barrie]

I had to move this to Beginner's, Tom.

Check your spellings for a start: sepia, silhouettes, utterance.
I think you need to read plenty of poetry to give you a better grounding. You should choose your themes wisely - for a poem to work it has to be original, and it takes a lot of craft to make a love poem original. This is too sugary sweet -

Flutter-dancing silohettes
carress sweat-shimmered skin,

utterrance from lip-kissed words:
I love you.

If you really want to improve then you must do some serious reading - Eliot, Auden, Heaney, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas, Larkin, RS Thomas, Bukowski, etc. You'll find these on the net.

You must keep on writing as well. For the time being, post in Beginner's, you'll get help and support if you're willing to learn. Most people improve a hell of a lot after just a few weeks. You've a lot of potential but you need some grounding.

cheers

Barrie

[arunansu]

Dear Tom,

Though I agree with the first reviewer, still I like this work.
Cheers.

[TDF]

Cheers all,

Got moved to beginners... the shame! Mod's should obviously feel free to move my other poems to this section if they think I'm not up to par, I won't be offended. I guess maybe I mix up 'experienced' with 'good'.

I knew this was very wordy and verbose, probably to the extreme, a rebellion against my former style I suppose. However, I think my final style will always be a bit that way, since I like to play with words and abstract images - My mind and my imagination works in a way I often find doesnt sit well with, for want of a better expression, a more mainstream view. That's not to say I think I'm better, or that reviewers are blind, far from it. Rather I like the exploration and play as much as I like the finished product. Maybe I will always be a marmite. But this one particularly was a test of elliteration and the like.

All that said, I do want to 'improve' within the casual confines of my part time writing, so critique is greatly appreciated.

And yes, spelling is shocking (especially for an ex-teacher!) for some reason I wrote this in notepad, away from the safety of a spellcheck... shame on me.

well back to the drawing board for me, thanks for the feedback. I think one of my main problems is finding it hard to put what I see in my mind into appropriate words, they don't ever really do it justive. So in some respect I am always trying to force words to do something they might not be capable of doing. I shall have to reflect on this I think.
TDF

[TDF]

Ok, so I've worked on a little re-write.. pretty drastic one really.
I've played around with structure, and tried to get a bit more flow. cut down on the hounding elliteration, yet probably kept too much verbosity for most.

I realise some of my intended ideas maybe didnt come through in the first, so this has a slightly different tact/angle.

If nothing else, it is just a fun lesson for me in wordolution.

posted redraft/rewrite in OP.

any further thoughts greatly appreciated.

TDF

[camus]

Fuck me, it's (a)lliteration, come on an ex teacher, surely not?

Sorry, you seem a sound guy, but that can't be let go...

Funny though, (actually quite disturbing) we had a parents evening for my son and chatted to his teacher.

The usual shit arose, but (I couldn't believe this happened) when we mentioned that spelling tests had ceased (he used to bring home spellings each week) his reply was:

"Oh spellings aren't trendy at present, there isn't as much focus on spellings, now there are a multitude of spell checkers"

That's the Gods honest truth, I'm still half-wounded by it. And this is a "Good Christian School"

I guess if I was a proactive parent I'd be at the school gates tomorrow, but I'm not... I'll write a letter perhaps, even better e-mail Jeremy, erm...Kyle, no, Clarkson, no, beadle, no, Vine - thats the guy, yep I'll do that.

cheers
K

[TDF]

haha, chill mate, I can't believe I did that either. Sorry it offended you so, at least I wasn't an English teacher.

And I can believe your parent's evening experience, teachers will teach whatever the government tells them to, and government directives are based on achieving arbitrary targets, unfortunately.
That said, a large proptortion of the kids I taught were so backward, uncontrollable or disinterested that spellinz was the last of my worries. But like you say, whilst some parents aren't proactive, some don't care at all.

so anyway, having berated me, fancy sharing a few thoughts about the poem?

[camus]

so anyway, having berated me, fancy sharing a few thoughts about the poem?

Well, yes, sorry.

An improvement for sure.

Although I can't quite get to grips with your lack of connecting words?

by "connecting words" I'm talking "a", "from" "my" those seemingly inconsequential words.

For example why did you start the poem with:

"Corner of my eye" ?

Why not - From the corner of my eye or the corner of my eye

The corner of my eye, caught a fleeting vision:
a flame-flicked teasing, a silhouette that dances
a marionette; a myth of you.

From the corner of my eye, a fleeting vision:
a flame-flicked teasing, a silhouette that dances
a marionette; a myth of you.

Just ideas

cheers
K

[Merlin]

I prefer version 2...

However, I would bin the first line entirely....not needed, imo...

I would also change some of the line-layout, something like this:

Corner of my eye caught by a vision seen fleeting, = binned


A flame-flicked teasing
silhouette that dances
a marionette,
a myth of you.
Turn to trace
the arching skinscape
of your back,
fingered shadows
cast in black
over pearlescent curves.
unnerved and flinching,
knocked sideways
by petrol light
from a swaying glass cage
that glows,
beguiling,
a bitter stage,
on which performs
the myth of you.

Nice job...

[Binz]

a definite improvement. I think 'skinscape' is a great word.

The line 'Turn to trace the arching skinscape of your back,' seems a bit long though
maybe more simply
'Tracing the skinscape of your back
fingered shadows cast black'

Binz

[dl04]

I think it's a much better rewrite, the spelling and structure is greatly improved.

The only thing i would say is that it's still a bit too wordy. It's like your throwing the kitchen sink of metaphors and adjectives at this poem, when you dont really need to. It takes away the subtlety and the intimacy of a love poem. Just keep it 'real', if you get my drift. For example:

Turn to trace the arching skinscape of your back,
fingered shadows cast in black- this line could me much more simplified by something like:

Turn to trace the printmarks of your back
your fingers cast in black- just feel a more toned down line gives it so much more power and passion.

Keep going, because i think your themes are very strong personally. Just work on the fundamentals such as the structure, grammar and it'll all come together.

Nice work

dl04.

[TDF]

Thanks guys, really appreciate the time taken to reply. You raise some itneresting and thought provoking stuff for me to ponder.

About connecting words and my verbosity. I think this a result of 2 things. 1 I write a lot of prose, which is more able to take my verbosity, so when I write poetry I think I over compensate with my condensing of the words. Hence few connective words and a rather intense word content. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly for me, I like the shapes and sounds of words and how they roll together as much as I like what they say - that is part of the draw to me. Which means I think my poems will always be a tad wordy for most - that's what I enjoy. Although I'm sure there is a happy medium somewhere, and all your great replies certainly help me look for that.

So for example thats why I have "vision seen fleeting", not "see a fleeting vision".
It's why I chose "turn to trace the arching skinscape of your back". It's a long action I am describing, following with my hand the curved shape of her spine and outline. dlo4, It's why personaly I wouldnt like "printmarks" for eg, as I don't think it sounds as smooth and lush as skinscape, which better reflects how I feel - plus it conjures images of a landscape, a flow of up and down, with shadowed valleys etc... well it does to me anyway. Plus my intended meaning is slighlty different from your interpretation.

That said, I do love your re-adjust Merlin, a lot. And in truth the first line actually came from another poem originally, and I was never totally happy with it's use here.

Thanks again guys, I shall see if I can work a 3rd draft this weekend, or whether I'd prefer to move on.

[kozmikdave]

Just catching up. Hardly been here, lately.

Your redraft is definely an improvement.

An observation:

Corner of my eye caught by a vision seen fleeting, [works better without the "by", but could scrap line anyway.]

As a rule, I'm not too keen on love poems unless they really cross new boundaries. The re-write isn't as Mills and Boone as I've come to expect, so I found it borderline-OK. (That's a bit of a compliment.)

Others have given some sound advice in this thread, so I won't reiterate.

[TDF]

As a rule, I'm not too keen on love poems unless they really cross new boundaries. The re-write isn't as Mills and Boone as I've come to expect, so I found it borderline-OK. (That's a bit of a compliment.)

haha, thanks.

The first line is definitely a hmmm at the mo, and funnily enough it didn't have the 'by' in the original poem it was taken from... damn connecting words!

TDF

[ccvulture]

Hello TDF

Fundamentally I feel that you're mistaking verbosity for art, and you seem to be finding justifications for it (eg the "it's because I write prose" reason), rather than listening to the observations here and working at being less overblown. (I don't see that prose is any better at taking this kind of treatment than poetry, at any rate.) In the workshop we all have the luxury of explaining what we meant by this-or-that stanza, or why this-or-that line is 6 beats long, but a work should stand on its own and need no such explanation.

Consider the following points:

1. An "arching" back is a cliche, so any points you might score with "skinscape" (which is arguable) are cancelled out. Cliche or not, the word "arching" adds nothing to this line, and is in any case implied by the use of "curves" two lines later. If you keep it in to make the line longer, so to reflect the long drawn-out process of back-stroking, I would suggest that's not a good enough reason. After all, how long does it really take to run your fingers over someone's back? Or is it because the person has a long back? But nothing else in the poem refers to that.

2. What does "pearlescent" mean? It ought to mean "becoming pearl-like" but I can't see how that fits in here. It doesn't exist in my Chambers, so I assume it's a fabricated word. I can cope with it in principle, but here it seems to have no place. It seems showy and thus insincere - I think this is what dl04 was driving at in saying Tone it down to increase the power and passion. I'm asking myself: if I don't understand the meaning of the word, then why is it here?

Stuart


Corner of my eye caught by a vision seen fleeting,
a flame-flicked teasing
silhouette that dances
a marionette,
a myth of you.
Turn to trace the arching skinscape of your back,
fingered shadows cast in black
over pearlescent curves.
unnerved and flinching,
knocked sideways
by petrol light from a swaying glass cage
that glows, beguiling, a bitter stage
on which performs
the myth of you.

[TDF]

Fundamentally I feel that you're mistaking verbosity for art ... In the workshop we all have the luxury of explaining what we meant by this-or-that stanza ... but a work should stand on its own and need no such explanation.

Fair points. I guess my explanations are more to express how I am as a person, rather than the actual work I create. Maybe it's a way of me saying "I only care a certain amount about changing my style, afterall I enjoy it". That's not to say I don't appreciate feedback and help, I do, that's why I'm here. But there is also a certain amount of my work that will always remain me. Plus I just like discussions like this!

1. An "arching" back is a cliche ... the word "arching" adds nothing to this line, and is in any case implied by the use of "curves" two lines later.

It is a cliche, yet it's also simple and accurate a word imo, plus I tink it sounds beautiful, as if it is stretching itself. Plus, to me, curves and arching are two very different aspects, not describing the same thing.

After all, how long does it really take to run your fingers over someone's back?

If you look at it in that generic, practical way, then not long. But over the body of my lover, it can take an eternity.

2. What does "pearlescent" mean?

-having a play of lustrous rainbow colours; "an iridescent oil slick"; "nacreous (or pearlescent) clouds looking like mother-of-pearl"; "a milky opalescent (or opaline) luster. It is also used to describe multicolour/tone car paint, that changes with the viewers angle.

Thank you for your thoughts, much appreciate the time taken to reply.

TDF