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Critical Analysis #1
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Marilyn
Member Elite
since 1999-09-26
Posts 2621
Ontario, Canada

0 posted 2000-10-10 10:39 PM


I am posting this here because of a discussion I started in the Alley. poertree has continually hyped this forum in that thread. I have posted here before Sir but do again, to let you  know I am not afraid to post my work here...lol. (It wasn't the replies to my own work I was refering to in that thread but rather what I read everyday. You have to understand I moderate the teen forum   )


Listen...

hear the silence
of the eerie
hallowed halls.

Empty footsteps echo
where theres none there
left to call.

Sunshine...

just a memory
of happiness once there.

Laughter...

long forgotten
pass in ghostly
moonlight rare.

Then in dreams
of windswept mist
her hand upon his heart.


There in dreams
they ever live
two lovers
never lost.


[This message has been edited by Marilyn (edited 10-10-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 Marilyn - All Rights Reserved
Local Rebel
Member Ascendant
since 1999-12-21
Posts 5767
Southern Abstentia
1 posted 2000-10-11 12:09 PM


Taking into consideration the structure and content of each strophe as it's own entity the meter and imagery work well Marylin...

when I got to the last two strophes though -- I found myself at a bit of a loss to connect them with the rest of the work --

maybe it needs a bridge in there somewhere???


Poertree
Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359
UK
2 posted 2000-10-11 03:31 PM


Ok marilyn... first off....... HI.  

Secondly - I’ve read all your other posts here in CA now and i apologise if i gave you the impression in the Alley that i thought you hadn’t ever posted here, and i was laying down some sort of challenge. I certainly was not.

Your thread in the Alley merely gave me the chance to have a little rant - one I’ve been wanting to have for a while actually ...lol.  I was quite aware that you were talking generally and not about your own posts, and i knew of course that you moderate teen.  

I just want to make it clear that i was making general points about the nature of Open and Critical and Passions as a whole.  On reflection perhaps in my second or third post i might have rather assumed that you personally wanted a more critical approach on your own poems, but i dunno that i was trying to “hype” CA so much as to say that people can only expect to find comments aimed at the poem alone in this particular forum (or maybe the workshops or prose) but certainly not in Open where the replies are (and always will be) aimed at the poet as much as the poem.

Anyway, apologies for any misunderstanding, as i said before, it was a good thread you started i think  ......

On with looking at the poem:

Let’s see if I’ve got this roughly right.  This seems to be a poem using various metaphors, first of all to suggest the loss of something (probably love), and then ending with the idea that this lost “thing” lives on in dreams.  I hope i am somewhere close.

The first thing I’d say is that the poem suffers slightly from a degree of vagueness.  There is nothing really to excite the reader and make him/her feel something interesting or novel or different is being said. Ideas are kind of introduced out of thin air without any real apparent linkage; this is especially the case towards the end of the poem.  

I’m crying out to know what went wrong (if anything) in this relationship. You take three stanzas full of overly poetic sounding phrases which have been quite well-used in the past to tell me that there is silence and that sunshine and laughter have gone.  Gone from what?  Why did they go?  What are the speaker’s feelings about them going? What is she gonna do about it?    

There’s just nothing to get my teeth into here.  Moreover “footsteps echo”, “memory of happiness”, “sunshine”, “laughter”. “moonlight” are all words used many times before in the context you’ve used them.  They are not in themselves cliches necessarily, but in your poem they become close to being so i think.

On the wording itself i stumbled a lot over the repeated “there” in:

“Where theres none there”

and that line itself is bordering on the ungrammatical probably.

And what is “moonlight rare”? What does it look like?  - it conjures up no image at all for me and comes off as simply being a phrase inserted to maintain a rhyme with “there”.

“Then in dreams
of windswept mist
her hand upon his heart.”

At this point you introduce some characters which certainly has the potential to make for more interest.  But they are inserted abruptly and in a stanza which again sounds overly poetic .....any stanza with the words “dreams”, “windswept”, “mist” and “heart” within three lines is going to be a little difficult to take seriously ...no?

On the positive side i did like the alliteration of “hallowed halls” and “eerie” and “echo”.

So to sum up - my main problem with this is that it isn’t interesting or compelling to read.  As Rebel said, it came off disjointed.  Also i think vague.  There are some overused phrases, but that i feel is a lesser problem.  Your other recent poem i feel is much stronger ...

Anyway marilyn that’s my honest opinion - i know its not exactly heaping praises, but it is only MY opinion of the poem - i could be wrong   ...

Thanks for posting

philip



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