With eyes that make my heart skip an important beat.
A smile with teeth that sparkle and brighten my day.
Hair as soft as velvet, brushing against my skin.
Just to see that face. Would wash all my fears away.
Skin as smooth as silk. Never touched by any hand.
Cheeks looking as precious as a babies soft head.
Every word spoken from their lips is like a gift.
Their lips, such a perfectly beautiful shade of red.
That face. In my dreams. Every night. As I sleep.
Such beauty, haunts my mind. Each moment I'm awake.
I wish to see a face as beautiful as that.
Every moment without it. My heart does.ache.
So each night as I dream of that. I don't think of
The moment I catch a glimpse of it, the moment
My dreams come true. I'll think of what's behind the face.
Was it worth it. Is it everything I dreamt?
I apololigise for the dodgy paragraphing.
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see your work again. There's some nice stuff with the repetition of 'dream' here - and the hazy feeling of disconnection in words like 'glimpse' 'never touched' 'brushing' - everything feels a little unreal/intangible.
I can see that you've got the syllable count sorted for this task, but there's a problem with your stresses.
The rythm needs to be 'dee dee DUM' - so like the bit in The Owl and The Pussy Cat which goes 'with a ring at the end of his nose.'
So 'With your EYES that creATE a soft SKIP of my HEART' would be a way of restructuring the first line. If you get chance, try taking it from there, and seeing if you can apply the same rythm to the rest of your lines.
No fret about the paragraphing - it happens :)
Thanks and take care,
Andy
Hi giggly angel,
ReplyDeleteIt’s great to see your work again. I like
the magnified feel on the details you’ve concentrated on throughout this. It has a kind of photographic quality, the lens zooming in on the smile, the hair, the face. The object of the persona’s observation is seemingly worshipped and the language reflects this: ‘Every word spoken from their lips is like a gift.’ The close up we get at the beginning of the poem created this effect for me.
As has been mentioned, there is a problem with
the stressed and unstressed words in this. If
you look again at the first two lines for example,
both ‘eyes’ and ‘smile’ are stressed and they should be unstressed. It’s just a matter of getting used to this new meter. You’ll do it. Just have another look and if you decide to redraft the poem tweak here and there so the words you’ve chosen exist within the demands of the meter.
You’ve generated a lot of emotion in this poem
and a great sense of tenderness towards your
subject. These are great qualities and illustrate your writing's strengths. To continue improving it might be interesting to play with what things are not - so, ‘Their lips, such a beautiful shade of red,’ is familiar, whereas you might find another image that reflects red but shocks the reader into the unexpected.
I like how these images haunt the narrator’s sleep and that dream and waking are so closely
connected. This is captured very well in the sentence towards the end of the poem, ‘I’ll think of what’s behind the face.’
Thanks for posting. Good luck with it.
Liz
Hello! Great to see your work again. You've had a good go at another tricky new form (Mr. S. doesn't half give your and my minds' a poetic workout each fortnight...) As has been mentioned, you haven't quite got the stresses figured out yet - but it'll come! Most of your errors are understandable, but there are some which you should be picking up by now (line eight has too many syllables, lines nine and twelve have too few) Getting used to a new stress pattern is all about getting into the rhythm, which I know, personally, can be pretty tricky! Poetry can be one of the art form which is closest to music, and this form can certainly be an example of that musicality - you've just got to get into the groove!
ReplyDeleteTo ensure a better flow to your poem, you need to be careful not to over-punctuate your work. For example, line four doesn't need that full stop (and line twelve certainly doesn't need the second one!) Seemingly small details, but a bit of polish never did anyone any harm!
Also, try and keep that "show, don't tell" mantra going. The key place where this DOESN'T happen for me is line eight's 'a perfectly beautiful shade of red'. You should be judicious about adjective use, and even more so about adverbs - so the combination of both should set alarm bells ringing! SHOW me that red - that its 'perfectly beautiful' doesn't create any mental image at all. You've also used a couple of cliches here - 'soft as velvet', 'smooth as silk' - which is again something you should be careful with. Cliches are phrases that have become so much part of the language that their original impact has been lost; if you're going to use them, you've got to twist them or re-contextualise them to re-energise their meaning.
The best thing, for me, about this work is the last stanza. The note of uncertainty makes the whole thing that much more real - it humanises the emotions of the poem. And I REALLY like how you (partially) undermine the rest of the work with that final line - here you do twist and re-contextualise those phrases drawn from the familiar semantic field of romance. Good job!
Have a lovely Christmas, and looking forwards to reading some more of your work in the New Year.