15·Oct·2005 · "Seasons of Emotions" · Elizabetht

[Guest]

I will preface this critique with the fact that poems either work for me or they don’t. I rarely fall into a middle ground where I can see both good and bad writing within a piece. Of course, good and bad are defined by my own internal parameters.

Having said that, this poem did not work for me on any level, I think mainly because for me, it was not engaging. I understand why people write about the seasons. They are ever-present and they so easily speak to our humanity. Is writing about the seasons or using them as a metaphor a bad idea? No, of course not, but if you make that choice, you are setting yourself about fifty meters back from the starting line right from the beginning. You will have the challenge of using imagery that thousands of people before you have already used.

Can a poet find new and exciting ways to use common images? Yes, people do it all the time and those moments are very exciting for a reader. However, I don’t think that happened here. There weren’t any images or modifiers in this poem that I haven’t seen used the exact same way many times before in other poems or stories. When that happens, even if the poet’s intent was to say something new, it doesn’t matter because it is not getting across to the audience. Many readers will start skimming and feel disengaged from the writing.

Solid writing is not about modifiers. The intent, story, theme or message (whatever you want to call it) needs to come from nouns and verbs or the writing will seem like a disjointed list that ends up being vague and undefined. Just because poems don’t follow proper sentence structure doesn’t mean the backbones of writing (nouns and verbs) can be eliminated without a consequence. In this case, it damages the flow and does not give the reader enough direction to make them care about what the poem was meant to communicate.

The style and vocabulary of this poem are consistent and they were a deal-breaker for me so I have nothing to offer in terms of positive comments.

This is all my opinion of the poem in question which centers around my definitions of what makes poems succesful, in general. I have no knowledge of the author’s past work and deliver this opinion without malice.

Thank you for your criticism of the poem and your thoughts that you offered.

 

[Guest]

I love the idea of "gentle dying." In this season, I feel it would be the easiest to die a gentle death, and I have put it on my agenda. For some Autumn far in the future.

"Shyness earned" is another great phrase. It gives me a feeling that I cannot figure out how to describe. A shyness between people who have been intimate for a long time, beyond shyness...?

A gentle dying is in my calender as well. I think that I learned this particular action this year... a gentle dying of the heart and soul... something that slowly happens you can see it you know it is coming and there is not a blasted thing that can be done about it. You can choose to fight and scream and throw a fit.... or you can choose.... that gentle dying.

"rage in the hate" you might consider hatred. I am not sure which is correct, it just sounds better to me that way, it breaks the exact rhyme, and makes the phrase an action (rage) in a thing (hatred) instead of an action in an action.

I think with this I was going for raging within the hate or hatred... being so mad, angry furiuos that you are screaming within the anger that is within your being.

The things that detracted from the poem were some phrases that the poem would be better without-- with more of the fresh phrases I mentioned earlier.

hot blinding love
closing of the mind
daring to dream
souls smiling again


I agree with Champ about the nouns and verbs-- the things you can see moving, things happening. I think that this advice might be useful for future poems, I am not sure how this one could be changed to meet that without really giving it a rehaul. It might be a fun exercize for you to start over with the same idea in your mind, the same messages, and try to write it according to her suggestions?


I suppose some of the phrases could be rewritten, rearranged like the mind closes, this love blinds us, we dare to dream (of course I grabbed those from the list of the phrases I did not like )

It might be interesting to see what happens to the poem if you just rearrange the sentences, even as an experiment to see what happens, not to discard what you have but to play around with it to see what else is hiding in there.

I have found that re-writing poems from the start with a different guide in mind can be really educational, and the end product surprising! Sometimes my original poem is about figuring it all out-- what I want to say, what I want to share, and then the rewrite is more about how to say it.


You are a brave writer putting your poem out here for public dissection. Remember, the people reviewing your poem learn as much as you do in this process. It is a learning experience for all, so we are all in the spotlight in a way, up at the chalkboard together.

All the best!

anna

Thank you very much for your criticism of the poem and your suggestions. I am looking through them as I work on rewriting or rehauling this poem as you suggested as well as others. I am not sure how to pull the meat of what i wanted out into the open more so that it was more... more something to read but i will work on it.

 

[Guest]

I can’t exactly answer your questions individually, because the answers all relate, so just take this rather unstructured reflection and I hope you can make sense out of it.

It seems to me to be about a cycle of a relationship. An intense beginning, the taking it for granted and settling into a habit, then some kind of hurdle, that is overcome, and in the end coming out as strong but more secure than in the beginning. I guess it can be likened to a summer-to-summer cycle. Maybe you should have added the first spring too, to make the story more complete?

What I like about your poem here is that you have an idea and you sticvk with it. It is easy to start to blend in irrelevant themes and styles in a poem, with refeences that makes the reader go Huh?. You also have a good and balanced prosody that flows well, sound- and rhythm-wise it rolld nicely off the tongue.

That being said, I think you are trying too hard. You sprinkle your scenery with lots of hyperbolic (exaggerated) attributes like “searing”, “vibrant”, “betrayal”, “tentative”, “freshness” and “rage”. And at least to this reader, less is almost always more.

It’s a classic example of telling where you could have been showing what was going on. You flat out write “love” on our noses, but to me it is already obvious that that was what you were talking about. (If it isn’t then I’m really confuzzled. ) I think you need to give the reader a little more credit than that.

I suck at giving specific examples as to what to do about it, but I think that if you make an attempt at using the seasonal metaphor even more. You might find that you can communicate what you want to say without throwing it in your readers face.

Goodeth lucketh and all that.

#L

ps. I wrote this before reading any other comments on your poem, so I might be repeating what others have said. And my spelling and grammar is guaranteed to suck. Bear with me.

"Its a classic example of telling instead of showing."
That line right there sticks out of all that you have said more then the rest. I role play in some chats online. Part of being a good rper is to be able to show what you are doing so that the others that are there can form the picture in their mind as well and not be told what you are doing. It made me cringe that I pretty much broke the cardinal rule of that.... show the movements... be the senses of those that are watching you.... don't just tell them what they should see... show them all the possiblities of what they could see. Thank you so much.

 

[Guest]

1. What do you think the poem is about? A life cycle of sorts. I'm assuming because you give little hint, a personal relationship but it's one I find difficulty in relating to.

2. What do you think was the intent of the poem? Purging yourself of the emotional content of the assumed relationship. I have to admit I found nothing to relate to in the poem because of its vagueness.

3. Does it leave you wanting more? If I'm brutally honest, no. I think its way too personal and you aren't giving the reader any secrets or titbits to wet ones curiousity. It's like a bland sketch of something that happened but what, I'm left clueless and not hooked enough to project an explanation of my own.

4. How could it have in your opinion been a stronger piece? By knowing through the poem who you are. You are hiding too much for a poem about what I assume is a personal relationship. You have to be brave enough to expose yourself to the reader.

5. Is there anything that detracts from the poem? Its vagueness. You are hiding behind cliches.

6. Any extra thoughts and opinions? If you are going to write a personal poem, there has to be something in it the reader can identify and empathise with.

Reading what I have just written sounds brutal but I'm assuming you posted it here to be told how it is.

You are correct... it is and was personal. Maybe I was not ready to put this out like this yet... maybe I simply was not ready to cut open that part of myself and allow it to be seen yet because it is in no way healed enough for me to touch it without screaming in pain.

 

[Guest]

Good questions. I wish I really had answers I was comfortable with.

My first take was a sort of comparison of a person's life to the season's of the year, but I think it is narrower than that. It's like how a given relationship ebbed and flowed through time, mirroring aspects of each season as it went from impetuous beginnings into a cooling period then turmoil and disjunction that eventually give way to a renewed romance.

My personal inclination is almost always towards structure, and I think a more parallel construction to each strophe might make a more regular flow to the work. Whether that's actually stronger is, naturally, debatable.

The only detraction is just that niggling point of not knowing for sure if this was a start, breakup, and restart or if the second summer was a fresh start using from what had happened before.

The second summer was a different relationship. Still a love but an entirely different love that was completely of a different flavor from the first.

Structure has always been my weakest point. I tend to go with what feels good and not necessarily what is structurally good for the readers to try and digust.

Part of me screams but its my poetry my soul what I feel inside why can't it look like that and the other part says... but if it cannot be understood then what is the point in letting others read it if they cannot understand it either.

 

[Guest]

1. well at first it seemed to be about how relationships seem to change with the season. It also reminds me how we, as humans, also change emotionally during each season.
2. I may be wrong, but it almost sounds as if the poem rationalizes how people (and also love) changes sometimes, as if it is really due to some seasonal affects and not those envolved
3. I think it's simple and complete
4. it could be stronger, I think, if you worked a bit on the wording, especially for the early part of "spring"
5.just a few spelling errors, but no big deal
6. I really liked the beat of it, and how it seemed to swing back in forth at times

Thank you for your comments and criticisms. I think its important to see many opinions and take them all into account because it helps me as a person grow as a writer.

Relationships and love.... that is where I was with this... how we can be in the throes of one wild passion and then have it utterly destroyed and find ourselves in a new love a new place.

It's not always easy inthat new place... and its not always easy forgetting or letting go of that old love.

 

[Guest]

Very well stated, but it is truer for prose than poetry. When you write poetry it is possible (desirable?) to let the adj.s and adv.s indicate/hint about what the verbs and nouns are. This is particularly so when you prune toward minimalism. (IMO)


Run Spot run.
See Spot run.
See dick and Jane chase Spot.


Blackishness merges whitely
Blurred in moving
chasing the barking blur

Interesting take on that point.... I will definately look at this when I am rewriting.

 

[Guest]

The one point that I would like to add as a reader is that I would have preferred not to see ~season. You are using the seasons as a metaphor, so continue to do so without directly telling me. It might require rewording certain strophes to strengthen that connection between the relationship, but would certainly be worth it. My impression was that you were taking me by the hand to explain your thoughts. Don't. Make me struggle for it.....

I'm a bit of a masochist that way....

*smiles*
You would get along well with my friend Kat.

thank you very much for your explainations and criticisms.

 

[Guest]

I want to apologize to everyone that was so prompt in responding....

I was not because I broke my leg and ankle on oct 16th.... so thank you all for your responses and I hope that my answers to you were in line with what you were thinking.

 

[CharleyH]

the changing of seasons, the changing of love, the movement from one love to another, the aging of the one involved so that they can see that there is more then one love in a life, more then one season and more then one chance

Sometimes I think that the feeling or emotion that I was looking for was one thing but when I wrote it out something entirely different came out and that is how things get confused.

Again, thank you for your help and your criticisms of the poem.

I did get that, as I said, but maybe it was not clear enough for others? It was maybe not clear enough for me:? Maybe that is the inherant problem?

Thanks for answering.