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As we come to life and hear the songbird,
The world looks bright beneath the trees.
It has come to pass, the bout of sorrow
That kept us trembling at the knees.
It is lighter now beside the songbird,
The weight is swaying with the leaves.
And the plight of doubt is silent, unheard,
The voices whisper in the breeze:
We come together
So naturally,
Procreation
Binds us endlessly.
I see you through the clouds,
You're even higher now.
You fill the misty nights,
You keep my dreams alive.
I look above in awe,
I watch my angel soar.
You set my soul alight,
You weave the midnight sky.
If time were ours to bend,
If it would never end,
If I could stay with you,
Forever's far too few.
We'll meet again someday,
When looming ravens take
Our feathered souls away,
And lay our flesh in graves.
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As we come to life and hear the songbird, I like your opening lines. There is a smoothness, an evenness to your rhyming pattern. There is a feeling of
The world looks bright beneath the trees. positive happening, but with the sense that that might not continue.
It has come to pass, the bout of sorrow
That kept us trembling at the knees.
It is lighter now beside the songbird,
The weight is swaying with the leaves.
And the plight of doubt is silent, unheard,
The voices whisper in the breeze:
We come together
So naturally,
Procreation These two lines felt a little off. I think it was the word "procreation". Something like "The life we produced binds
Binds us endlessly. us..."
I see you through the clouds, I like that you were disciplined enough (except for the first line) to have six syllables per line.
You're even higher now.
You fill the misty nights,
You keep my dreams alive.
I look above in awe,
I watch my angel soar.
You set my soul alight,
You weave the midnight sky.
If time were ours to bend,
If it would never end,
If I could stay with you,
Forever's far too few. This line didn't make sense to me. I found myself asking "Forever's far too few what?"
We'll meet again someday, I like that your ending picked and resolved your beginning.
When looming ravens take Good poem with, I thought, some minor points to consider.
Our feathered souls away,
And lay our flesh in graves.
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Thank you so much for your feedback!
I will certainly take your points into consideration for the next draft.
Thanks again!
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When I click on a poem to comment on, I always do it before I read the poem. I'm active, not reactive. So any prejudice is my own.
Now, if you've gotten that joke, let's get to this one.
And if you have gotten both, you are open to listen:
As we come to life and hear the songbird,
The world looks bright beneath the trees.
It has come to pass, the bout of sorrow
That kept us trembling at the knees.
This is a wellstructured stanza.
It is lighter now beside the songbird,
This line is making a someone wonder.
The weight is swaying with the leaves.
And the plight of doubt is silent, unheard,
The voices whisper in the breeze:
There is nothing wrong with this way of writing, and this will work in many ways
besides
what I'm saying here
about how picky readers, at first glance, with not much patience, but with lots of intelligence,
will pick apart the plight doubt silent unheard and see nothing about voices and how they can whisper on a breeze whether they care about any of that or not.
We come together
So naturally,
Procreation
Binds us endlessly.
I see you through the clouds,
You're even higher now.
You fill the misty nights,
You keep my dreams alive.
The change of pace tricks out of the nothing into something. O My! There is a sonic method to the madness.
I look above in awe,
I watch my angel soar.
You set my soul alight,
You weave the midnight sky.
The rest keeps the rhythm. And what is happening is good. You talk, then you allow the reader (that critical or take it as I cum masturbater) to make up their spirit, whether or not, and
then you make it natural and easy and natural again if anyone second-guessed . . .
If time were ours to bend,
If it would never end,
If I could stay with you,
Forever's far too few.
through the rest of the poem . . .
We'll meet again someday,
When looming ravens take
Our feathered souls away,
And lay our flesh in graves.
Which means that you are a potential Genius of feeling and sound, with no substance.
Don't take this up with me, but with your Genius. Which is there . . . if you don't give up.
pip pap pop
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Threads: 466
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(11-12-2024, 08:15 PM)Meus Wrote: First two stanzas metrically unusual. Five trochees, four iambs, five trochees, four iambs.
As we come to life and hear the songbird,
The world looks bright beneath the trees.
It has come to pass, the bout of sorrow
That kept us trembling at the knees.
Big slip-up, metrically, on line 7. No one says " UN-heard". Not only does the line end up kinda awkward, it also breaks the rhyme -- fortunately, I don't think rhyme is necessary here, since the scheme of the first stanza is ABCB.
It is lighter now beside the songbird,
The weight is swaying with the leaves.
And the plight of doubt is silent, unheard,
The voices whisper in the breeze:
Suddenly no regular meter, or at least nothing apparent. The sentiment is also too dull to support this sudden shift, but I'll elaborate on this more later.
We come together
So naturally,
Procreation
Binds us endlessly.
Third metrical shift (or, I should say, "beat change"). Here it's better placed, since there is at least some kind of strong image here: last stanzas were under the trees, now it's through the clouds.
I see you through the clouds,
You're even higher now.
You fill the misty nights,
You keep my dreams alive.
I look above in awe,
I watch my angel soar.
You set my soul alight,
You weave the midnight sky.
If time were ours to bend,
If it would never end,
If I could stay with you,
Forever's far too few.
We'll meet again someday,
When looming ravens take
Our feathered souls away,
And lay our flesh in graves.
I like it when folks try out meter and really stick to it. A lot of pop poets, when they try to make their work sound more-or-less pre-20th century, aren't nearly as exacting. But here, bar the second and third stanzas, you properly keep a couple of schemes. That's great!
I also like that you're not afraid to do slant rhymes. The rhymes you picked, while dull, at least are never tortured, so that the one instance of enjambment -- "When looming ravens take / Our feathered souls away" -- sounds natural.
But notice that I've repeated that adjective, "dull". Comparing love to a songbird....comparing a beloved to an angel....having love end with "ravens"...."It has come to pass, the bout of sorrow", "misty nights, / You keep my dreams alive", "If it would never end", "We'll meet again someday": we've all heard this before, we all continue hearing this if we listen enough to the radio, and yet there's absolutely nothing here to hook the reader/listener, not even a particular context known enough by the reader ("We'll Meet Again" is literally the title of a Vera Lynn song) or at least neat sound effects to make the banal instead seem effortless (Madonna's "Angel" doesn't read great, not at all, but hey).
I hope this doesn't discourage you, because the fact that you kept to the meter means you have an ear for this sort of thing -- as another commentator said, you have a "potential Genius of sound" -- means you have a big, and all-too-often neglected, aspect of poetry down, but this particular piece only really works as an exercise, as a test of your abilities to work with prosody. As an actual poem, I can only recommend discarding it, unless you manage to think up something truly particular for your speaker to say. As an example, you can elaborate on the kind of bird, on certain details of its song:
Listen to the "hoo-haw-haw"
of the oriole on the branch:
black-and-yellow "Love-me-now".
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