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Portrait Of A Lover In A Moonlit Orchard
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Portrait Of A Lover In A Moonlit Orchard |
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Kirk T Walker Member
since 2000-01-13
Posts 357Liberty, MO |
Portrait Of A Lover In A Moonlit Orchard by Kirk T Walker Her eyes are flecked with garden-of-eden green, Her thighs are shown apple-blossom white, Her sloped neck is bite-me-gently peach, Her lashes are layered darker than the night. Her eyes grow with nearness to sunflower brown, Her stomach’s stained fertile-apricot, Her bare shoulder is tinted pear-flesh, Her toes are hued albino-forget-me-not. |
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| © Copyright 2000 Kirk T Walker - All Rights Reserved | |||
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mysticharm Member
since 2000-06-08
Posts 189Canada |
Hi Kirk I love it! It's simple yet sensuous, but it somehow seems incomplete...there must be more to this hidden beauty in the Garden of Eden.  Never underestimate the Power of Purpose. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the 'Present' unkn |
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jenni Member
since 1999-09-11
Posts 478Washington D.C. |
hiya kirk-- nice poem here, i enjoyed this! i was just curious, though, why you went with "layered darker than the night" for the eyelashes, rather than with a fruit or botanical reference there like you did in all the other lines. nice work! thanks for sharing this with us. jenni |
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Elyse Member
since 2000-04-16
Posts 414Apex (think raleigh) NC |
hi kirk! i liked this  the only thing i can think of to make it better would be to try and maybe even out the meter some. fine job though  luv Elyseb |
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Kirk T Walker Member
since 2000-01-13
Posts 357Liberty, MO |
Thank you all very much for your comments. mysticcharm: You have made what is a reoccuring comment on a lot of my poetry-"it seems incomplete" I am not sure what else I need to say, however. There is no huge point to the poem, no deep underlying meaning. I meant it to be just as the title says, a portrait, and nothing more. However, I still understand what you are saying because I felt that way too. I would love to add another stanza but I was unable to construct another stanza that fit well with the other two and I am afraid any additional meanings might have to be tacked on. Let me know if you have suggestions for how I could make the poem seem more complete. jenni: Good point, jenni. I hadn't noticed that the line seems somewhat out of place. The intention of the image was to draw a paralel between the fertile nature and abdunce of fruit in the garden to the lover in the orchard. I see now that this only came across (at best) vaguely. Elyse:yes, the meter needs work. I can't quite get it ironed out though. I was playing with 11-9-9-11 syllable patterns and I think some of the meter problems spring from this form. What do you think? |
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Elyse Member
since 2000-04-16
Posts 414Apex (think raleigh) NC |
hmmm, well i think the meter works fine in the first stanza. what i notice is that the hyphenated colors kinda rush out of the mouth in a blur. does that make sense? try saying them out loud and maybe you'll see what i mean. in the second stanza albino-forget-me-not has the same tripping blurring, but pear-flesh and fertile-apricot dont. i think thats maybe where the rhythmic problem is. suggestions to fix it : i would do "stomach is stained" if you look at the second line of the first stanza, its more like what you had there. try "tinted a(n) (adjective)-pear-flesh. try maybe "her eyes grow near to sunflower brown" it keeps the feet more near to what you had in the first line of the first stanza. hope that helps luv Elyse |
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Kirk T Walker Member
since 2000-01-13
Posts 357Liberty, MO |
Elyse: Thanks for the helpful suggestions! |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
Hmmmmm, I just had to get into this issue. What issue? What makes a poem complete? As this poem stands now, it is a snapshot, a picture of the lover. Now, that is fine but what's missing? Well, in the best photographs, there is still a kind of movement, I think. There is more to the picture than, well, a picture. I think it's the same thing with poetry. Every time I like a poem, I look for some movement, some action, some turn, some epiphany that completes and adds to the poem's completeness. This does not have to be as obvious as the turn in the sonnet, it does not have to be an unexpected or twist ending (although I'm quite fond of that) but it does, I think, have to 'move' in some way. A poem is always read through time and an interesting poem then has to accept this temporal movement and parallel that with some spatial or theoretical movement. The best poems seem to vibrate to me. I'm not kidding when I see a change on the page or the screen before me move when I like a poem. This can be due to many things but it all comes down to this sense of movement and change. I think many of us have heard the comment that a poem isn't about something, it is something. Well, I would go a bit further. A poem isn't something unless it does something. Just an opinion, Brad |
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