Thanks a bunch for the comments. Very in depth, analytical, and most of all, helpful. I appreciate it. Here's what I have, and if you have the time, let me know what you think. It's due tomorrow (eep).
A stream of light trickles
from a street lamp
through shuttered blinds
into shadows.
The glow glances off one
diamond earring
into eyes waiting
inches away.
Then a wisp
of soft hair falls
over the ear, shrouds
the spark that shot forth
and the room dims to black.
I have a feeling these changes link the images to the meaning better, than before, and I like the rhythm and feel much better.
I'm not sure how much I like having to write in a specific style of poetry, but it sure made me think a bit about the craft. Spent more time on these thirteen stupid lines than I have on any other poem I've ever written.
4 comments:
Just a little note to you to start with. I gather some of the group actually, not just you, are not aware that posts can be edited. All you need to do is click Create New Post at the top then click on Edit Posts directly above the new post box. I don't know why Blogger decided to do it this way. Seems they could have chosen a less confusing method but oh well.
I understood that the speaker of this was near the woman in question. I admit, I thought you were talking about a voyeur though and not someone actually with her. I think that could be a clue. There seems to me to be too much distance in this if you understand me. I'm sure you know Pound's work very well and Williams too for that matter. If you think about Pound's work though in particular, he was a keen observer no doubt but what he wrote showed his passion for his subject. Even the very simple, "In a Station of the Metro", his passion shows with his use of "petals" to describe the faces he saw. He could have used so many other words that would have conveyed a similar image but he chose the word that would convey not only pale and beautiful but also fragile:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Other things–
I like "...glances off one/diamond earring..." very much (nice double meaning to glance there) but I think it would be a stronger line with a noun to start it out rather than the anonymous "It". You don't need to use light again. There are plenty of synonyms for light. :)
With that problem stanza, I can identify several reasons why it is a problem:
One, the light glitters only one eye? I know you wrote it this way for the sound and the somewhat dramatic effect but I think glittering one eye is part of the problem for me at least. Is the speaker laying near her on a bed with one eye covered by a pillow perhaps? Does he literally have only one eye to see her with?
Two, you fixed the problem I observed about not being able to see any detail if the room were truly dark by making the room shadowed instead. But the speaker says, "an eye only three/inches away" and that's a problem for me. I don't object to measurements in poems, sometimes distance is necessary for perspective for instance but in this case, I think the nearness described in cold numbers is actually threatening (hence one reason I thought the speaker was peeping on the woman).
Three, because of the way the stanza is written, it conveys only a cold attitude on the part of the speaker as I mentioned before but also the lines leave me saying, "So what?" I don't mean that in a flip way as I think it might sound to you. I mean it in a very literal way. Why describe this at all? It quite simply needs some suggestion of importance. Why does it matter?
I think you may have meant over the ear rather than on the ear. :)
Finally, "...the dark is black..." makes very little sense to me. The two words are interchangeable in most people's minds I think. That'd be one problem with it. The second problem for me is that it doesn't seem to mean a great deal anyway. Why not go out with a punch? Something dim there that will add some additional meaning? I hope this is a bit of help. Try to ease up a little. I know how difficult that can be, especially in college, but if you could just ease up on yourself a little, I know you'd find the writing will come more easily again.
"try to ease up a little."
lol. Yes us students need to ease up a little, panic strikes and creativity suffers because we have deadlines we demand results. This normallly happens two days before the assignment is due. Refering to myself here really.
As with 'In a Station of the Metro' Pound seems to paint the picture with minimal amount of words though the words he chooses impact on the reader.
Yes the one glitter was brought up by adams so no need to go over that. I just think it could flow better, something is missing here, I guess when you have to stick to a certain structure it could restrict a bit and always be in the back of your mind that you have to perform in this case come up with a poem in this style.
I like your first stanza nice bit of verb usage - light creeping -like a theif, a stalker, light is the intruder. Blinds are closed meaning they are closed to stop things from getting in - but I will stop there :)
'A little light creeps
from a street lamp
through shuttered blinds
into shadows. '
I know it might sound silly but are those question marks really there for a reason?
The light shouldn't really be there, whoever it is doesn't want it there that is why the blinds are closed. The light is the intruder, but it finds it way sparking and lighting up a miracle.
I think you can remove and the dark is black. I see no connection of this line with the poem anymore. Though I do like it, unlike adams :P it throughs everything off by ending it like that. Cheers for this though.
Sam,
I think you have a potentially powerful poem here, but the story line needs to be developed a bit. There are also a couple of technical probs for me. Let's see if I've got the basic scene right. I'll just assume here it is a man and a woman.
There are two people here. A stream of light slips thru the blinds and reflects off the woman's diamond earring into the man's eye. Then as the hair falls over the earring, the reflected light is blocked and things go dark for the man.
Is that right?
The key problem for me is the focus. It seems to me the interaction between the couple - two people in a dark room with his eye three inches from her earring - is potentially the most interesting focus. Who are they? How did they get here? What does this mean to their relationship? Etc.
But all the action is about the physical path of the light. The light may well have some important meaning about the relationship, but you don't develop that. It almost seems that the people are just props for the light's journey. You could just as easily have used a mirror and a spoon, a cut glass vase and a fallen flower petal.
Now if you develop the relationship between the light and the couple, you have a powerful poem here. I'll get back to this, but first some 'simple' technical word usage issues.
I think it always helps to review the dictionary definitions of key words.
Main Entry: glit·ter
Pronunciation: 'gli-t&r
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: Middle English gliteren, perhaps from Old Norse glitra; akin to Old English geolu yellow a : to shine by reflection with many small flashes of brilliant light : SPARKLE (sequins glittered in the spotlight) b : to shine with strong emotion : FLASH (eyes glittering in anger)
2 : to be brilliantly attractive, lavish, or spectacular; also : to be superficially attractive or exciting
The critical point for me is that glitter is an intransitive verb. That means it doesn't take an object. The earring 'glitters' (shines by reflection with many small flashes of brilliant light). but the earring can't "glitter an eye" or any other object. It could "glance off one diamond earring to glitter in my nearby eye" (I agree with PW that "three inches away" is too cold, unless, of course, your focus is on the physics of the light, not the couple.)
The second word to look up here is quell.
Main Entry: quell
Pronunciation: 'kwel
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, to kill, quell, from Old English cwellan to kill; akin to Old High German quellen to torture, kill, quAla torment, Lithuanian gelti to hurt
1 : to thoroughly overwhelm and reduce to submission or passivity (quell a riot)
2 : QUIET, PACIFY (quell fears)
- quell·er noun
This is a transitive verb so grammatically you could quell the spark. But quell doesn't really mean to put out a light. And the hair isn't 'reducing to submission.' It's blocking, veiling, hiding, or some other such word.
Now to that last line. Here's where the link between the relationship and the light could be very powerful. If you develop earlier in the poem the idea that the light represents the love of the man for the woman, then in this last line when the glitter in the eye is extinquished it would symbolically end this guy's love for the woman.
So, if you can develop that symbolic connection - the room is aleady dark (his love is already reduced to only one slim beam of light) etc.
If it began:
His love for her is almost gone, like the feeble stream of light that trickles from the street lamp
through the shuttered blinds. [I swtiched creeps to trickles so it works with the idea of a drying stream]
That might be all you need to do to establish the link between the light and his love.
This could be a very powerful poem with a little more work.
I do realise now what "the dark is black." means. It makes it more bleaker and makes the images that came before it worthless though I like to think that even though everything is dark again that at least you partook at that little spark - the miracle even for a moment. Though I think you could leave it on a little bit of a happier note with omitting that line. Everything doesn't have to be obviously bleak, I think from the previous lines you portray the emotion and the mood well enough without having to make the ending so obvious.
I hope everything went well for you and this piece. Cheers. Take care ;)
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