Comments and Questions?

[tarablackwood22]

Okay......this poem is open to ALL comment and critique and questions of ANY kind.

Go after structure, word choice, image, flow.....anything you like.

Beat it like a pinada.....when it's over, I'll try to cover everything that was mentioned.

EVERYONE is free to whip or question it, of course, not only those who spoke above.



one endless childhood summer


in days of berries and barns, summer
seemed a four-winged season
circling death for the kill, shrill
voices slayed by daisy ways,
men made from dust, wet corn.

I flew among the cageless crows, curling
in a whirling wind, bubbling
with the green and growing, flowing
in its rivers, and brazed with trees, their pollen
blowing, waiting to be born.

night found its twin with candle birth,
that light of kin glowed
for the morning, no warning
showed among its stars, sweet joining
of the polar torn.

I never saw the dried-out rivers
with slivers of mud that cracked to dust
or felt the rust of grinding metal, or settled
with men whose hands had swelled
or heard the knells of love forlorn.

in splintered winter wood of barns
I did not fear the cracking, or hear
the tears of colored leaves when leaves
blew off the trees. I could not see the doom
of doors, or know that hearts get worn.

 

[twelveoone]

"polar torn" this made a deep impression on me reading it earlier, looking at this as an engineer would, the amount of stress put on the word "polar' is incredible. "polar" with its implications of coldness, opposite, and also being pivotal,this appears in "polar torn" dead center in the poem. It supports alot of the images used and the direction of the poem. Was this your intent?
When in your writing of this did this phrase show up, intially or later?

what does this line refer to?
"summer
seemed a four-winged season
circling death for the kill," four?

I could never figure out whether this more about a sense of regret or betrayal, what was your intent here?

One more observation, I never noticed the end rhyme, why there, any reason?

 

[twelveoone]

one more. answer this later.
what do you know see as something you would change?

 

[lostandfounder]

All right, since you offer up a sacrifice, far be it from me to push it aside. I shall embarrass myself by offering my two cents in the public realm.

"the tears of colored leaves when leaves
blew off the trees"

I wonder what you meant by this, do you mean colored goodbyes? I think putting "leaves" and "leaves" so close together is distracting and takes away from what you were trying to say.

I like the overall feel. To me it spoke of the desire to recapture the naivety of youth. I think that is what you were going for...right?

Five stanza of five lines made it a nice and balanced poem. I think the end line rhyme works well enough to bring a tiny bit more unity to the peice, but that it could have been just as easily left out.

 

[Miss Oatlash]

Be Not Afraid...

WORD ASSOCIATION

annaswirls - smart
12:01 - deep
tarablackwood22 – guru
minsue – quiet (always be careful of the quiet ones)
Miss Oatlash – afraid (me-to say the wrong thing)
the Mutt – thoughtful
thenry – strong
lostandfounder – help

lostandfounder

I'm really harmless...

 

[The Mutt]

Re: Be Not Afraid...

I'm really harmless...

Sure you are.

 

[Miss Oatlash]

Re: Re: Be Not Afraid...

 

[tarablackwood22]

Does anyone else want to take a run at the poem before I answer the questions posed by 1201 and lostandfounder, and give some genesis and explanation to it?

Come on.....read it and get the questions and knives out.

 

[minsue]

Does anyone else want to take a run at the poem before I answer the questions posed by 1201 and lostandfounder, and give some genesis and explanation to it?

Come on.....read it and get the questions and knives out.

If only to keep you hangin around....

Was it intentional to have so many of the phrases begin with one word at the end of a line and continue below? It was a bit distracting to me, but mainly I'm just curious if it was accident or design. (my money is on design, if only because I find it hard to believe there are any accidents in your poetry )

Also, I must say, I absolutely love this phrase:

in days of berries and barns

 

[The Mutt]

You know me, I'm always happy to see rhymes. But I don't understand the "dust, wet corn".

 

[Tathagata]

Ok

night found its twin with candle birth,
that light of kin glowed
for the morning, no warning
showed among its stars, sweet joining
of the polar torn.

I understand the candle birth, but" sweet joining of the polar torn" I'm a tad unclear on...is that the northern lights?? and how/ why were they torn?





in splintered winter wood of barns
I did not fear the cracking, or hear
the tears of colored leaves when leaves
blew off the trees. I could not see the doom
of doors, or know that hearts get worn.



"doom of doors'..because they enclose...or keep out??

 

[SeattleRain]

you know I love the sounds and images and beautiful phrasing lack of cliche and I do not necessarily want to know what each one means.

Here is my situation. While each of these unusual or cryptic phrasing gives me an individual feel, vision, interpretation, when there are so many in a row, my impressions get twisted and at the end I am left with a basket full of impressions and ideas and I miss the main message.

I have a short attention span
I am a visual thinker
I get this mosaic of snapshots

you know the kind I mean
snapshots cut and pasted into a collage and when you stand back far enough you see Elvis.

or the Earth.


So
with all of your snapshots so vivid and beautiful, I am having a hard time standing far back enough to see Elvis.

Can you summarize this poem for me, not the meaning of it, but if you stand back

what do you see? one shot?

please

I sometimes feel like I have flipped through a photo album instead of one big picture. Each photo is cool and all, but overall....what was the theme?

yes
short
attention span

poor short term memory

which explains my three line poems

lol

thanks for humoring me with this

I am going to go post the same question to Tath

(funny I write short poems but never shut up with my prosey notes)

 

[tarablackwood22]

I will get to all the questions and requests soon.

I'll need time to sit for a while to do it.

Anyone and everyone, feel free to add more questions, requests, criticisms, and so on and so on.

Tara

 

[tarablackwood22]

There are a lot of questions to be answered and explanations needed here, so I'll do it in sections.

I'll put the poem here again so you don't have to scroll so far up to read it.



one endless childhood summer


in days of berries and barns, summer
seemed a four-winged season
circling death for the kill, shrill
voices slayed by daisy ways,
men made from dust, wet corn.

I flew among the cageless crows, curling
in a whirling wind, bubbling
with the green and growing, flowing
in its rivers, and brazed with trees, their pollen
blowing, waiting to be born.

night found its twin with candle birth,
that light of kin glowed
for the morning, no warning
showed among its stars, sweet joining
of the polar torn.

I never saw the dried-out rivers
with slivers of mud that cracked to dust
or felt the rust of grinding metal, or settled
with men whose hands had swelled
or heard the knells of love forlorn.

in splintered winter wood of barns
I did not fear the cracking, or hear
the tears of colored leaves when leaves
blew off the trees. I could not see the doom
of doors, or know that hearts get worn.


Genesis of the poem:

This poem is drawn from memories of my uncle’s farm in the deep South. I spent extensive time there, whole summers from the age of 8 to 11, and they were some of the happiest days of my life. I learned so many thing there, lessons I try to carry with me. The honesty of hard work, the nobility of sweat and blood that is given for common good and family, and also I developed on that farm an enormous sense of the freedom of open spaces, which is the inspiration for this poem.

As I grew older, I realized there were also things there, and everywhere, that I had not seen in my youth. The passage of time, which was unimportant then. The inevitable decay of inanimate things and living things, and also of the spirit of youth, with death as final result.

The contrast between what I did and did not see is the foundation of the poem, and the reason I began writing it.

 

[tarablackwood22]

"polar torn" this made a deep impression on me reading it earlier, looking at this as an engineer would, the amount of stress put on the word "polar' is incredible. "polar" with its implications of coldness, opposite, and also being pivotal,this appears in "polar torn" dead center in the poem. It supports alot of the images used and the direction of the poem. Was this your intent?
When in your writing of this did this phrase show up, intially or later?

what does this line refer to?
"summer
seemed a four-winged season
circling death for the kill," four?

I could never figure out whether this more about a sense of regret or betrayal, what was your intent here?

One more observation, I never noticed the end rhyme, why there, any reason?

1201:

It became obvious to me very early when writing this that it was going to have two distinct parts -- 1) that which I did see and feel as a child, and 2) that which I did not.

I decided early on to put a transitional stanza in the center, and an equal number of stanzas on both sides of it, which forced the poem into an odd number of stanzas, either 5 or 7.

The concept of 'polar torn' was intentional, as was the idea of having it in the 'center' stanza as a 'pivot'. I thought it greatly accentuated the opposing thoughts and meaning of the beginning and end of the poem.

It also has the dual purpose of not only separating opposites, but also the joining of night and morning through the use of artificial light (candles) as expressed in the center stanza.

The word polar was meant to imply "opposites", not "cold".

"Summer seemed a four-winged season, circling death for the kill"
was meant to mean that summer seemed endless, defying death, becoming a killer in the image of a vulture, as if it would encompass and eat the other 3 seasons and never let autumn, winter, or spring ever occur again from that point on. It would be 'forever'.

The poem is about realization, and was definately tinged with regret.

I did not intend the idea of betrayal, though that may be found here because of the sadness of the realization that death comes to everything.

The end rhyme, last word of each stanza, almost happened by itself. I don't remember when I noticed it, but I definately altered things when I did notice it, so it would occur throughout. The last line of the first stanza seems 'forced' to me because of it, and I am going to do something about that, but I am very happy with the last lines of the other four stanzas.

Thanks for the questions, and for the suggestion of putting this poem up.

 

[The Mutt]

...men made from husks of corn?

 

[tarablackwood22]

...men made from husks of corn?

Mutt -

I'll get to that. Either you are misreading the line, or I miswrote it.

 

[The Mutt]

Mutt -

I'll get to that. Either you are misreading the line, or I miswrote it.

Probably me. I tend to be too literal.

 

[tarablackwood22]

one more. answer this later.
what do you know see as something you would change?

The only thing that I am not happy with is the last line of the first stanza -- not because of any lack of clarity of the line itself (yes, Mutt -- it will be explained), but because it feels a bit out of sorts with the rest of the 1st stanza to me.

That line was written after the last stanza, to keep the last line rhyme scheme, and I think I forced it in there without fully considering its effect on the feel and coherence of the first paragraph. It IS an image of life, as it should be, but something feels wrong to me about it.

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

it's beautiful tara..

i will say that i too found leaves and leaves so close together seemed abit distracting and took notice of it as i read it.

i miss your poetry, this was a treat..so ty for posting it.

 

[tarablackwood22]

it's beautiful tara..

i will say that i too found leaves and leaves so close together seemed abit distracting and took notice of it as i read it.

i miss your poetry, this was a treat..so ty for posting it.

Hey, Asheville Sally!

I heard about the dancing!!

lostandfounder brought up the double use of the word "leaves" also -- I'll explain why I did it when I get to his post.

Also, I see your PM throbbing in my inbox. I'll get to that too.

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

Hey, Asheville Sally!

I heard about the dancing!!

lostandfounder brought up the double use of the word "leaves" also -- I'll explain why I did it when I get to his post.

Also, I see your PM throbbing in my inbox. I'll get to that too.

you're such a tease!

i was just sitting here contemplating my begging techniques..or putting them to use anyhow!

 

[tarablackwood22]

All right, since you offer up a sacrifice, far be it from me to push it aside. I shall embarrass myself by offering my two cents in the public realm.

"the tears of colored leaves when leaves
blew off the trees"

I wonder what you meant by this, do you mean colored goodbyes? I think putting "leaves" and "leaves" so close together is distracting and takes away from what you were trying to say.

I like the overall feel. To me it spoke of the desire to recapture the naivety of youth. I think that is what you were going for...right?

Five stanza of five lines made it a nice and balanced poem. I think the end line rhyme works well enough to bring a tiny bit more unity to the peice, but that it could have been just as easily left out.

That passage, in a stanza where the point is that as a child I did not realize the inevitability of death, is an instance where death (the autumn leaves falling to the ground) was right before my eyes and I didn't realize what it was.

I think all writers are wary of placing the same noun close to itself. When you learn to write, you quickly learn that pronouns are around for that reason.

In poetry, I have seem many instances where it works so well, however, rather than replacing the repeat with a pronoun, or leaving it out altogether.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men

This Eliot passage does not work without the repeat:

We are the hollow men
We are stuffed

It is not even the same concept.

One of my favorite lines of poetry (so much so it is in my sig line):

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thoughts where thoughts smell in the rain.

That, too, does not work without the repeat.

Replacing "leaves" with "they", to me, does not contain the full meaning of what I wanted to say.

"I did not hear the tears of colored leaves when leaves blew off the trees" -- means that they also have tears at other times, perhaps when their color is changing, not only when they float to the ground.

Replacing the second "leaves" with "they" does not work, for me.

Also, "leaves" obviously rhymes with "leaves", reinforcing the internal euphony. This poem is very much about sound, how it plays to the ears.

The poem, as you ask, is most definately about the desire to recapture the naivete of youth.

I agree that the rhyme of each last line does not add much, if anything, to the poem, but it appeared, as I explained above, so I just went with it.

 

[tarablackwood22]

If only to keep you hangin around....

Was it intentional to have so many of the phrases begin with one word at the end of a line and continue below? It was a bit distracting to me, but mainly I'm just curious if it was accident or design. (my money is on design, if only because I find it hard to believe there are any accidents in your poetry )

Also, I must say, I absolutely love this phrase:

in days of berries and barns

Min--

I have this working hypothesis that the most important word in a longer line of poetry, or at least the most prominent word, is the LAST one. It seems to me that the last word is the one that “pulls” the reader to the next line.

I like to leave important words hanging at line’s end for that reason…to make them prominent. Since readers are guided by punctuation here, they should not pause there, but it makes the word important for their eyes.

I see countless poets do this. Some very good poets here do it.

“Summer” is probably the most important word in this poem, and I wanted to make it prominent immediately.

In the second stanza, I left ‘curling’, ‘bubbling’, and ‘flowing’ dangling to enhance the meaning of the stanza – the total freedom I felt and had as a child on that farm.

Plus, I do not at all like poetry that gives each idea its own line. It makes the poem look like a "list" to me.

 

[annaswirls]

omg I am thinking of rescinding my "yes" to do a poem of mine. I do not have any good answers like Tara or Tath.

eek


maybe I can change my name and that will help

Tanna