Experiments with verse never turn out as I want them to.
Also, news! I got published. The "youth" sections of both the Antigonish Review and Wet Ink Magazine have put some of my things online, which I think is, as the kids say, pretty rad. I think you can find me here and here. I'm happy. Now if only the big-time journals would answer...
(4:00)
Philosophies, like blankets from a child,
Are flung aside; we shiver in our beds
As truth begins to curl around our toes
(arrived from holes in walls where Love had fled).
And shivering, naked, eyes and faces wild,
we stumble to the streets and feel ourselves
give way to baser hungers which bestow
not courage, but a sympathy in Hell.
Though roads be long and grasses far away,
though others stumble on with half-grown thoughts
that drag and scrape and cry out in dismay
from feeling old roots harden into knots,
we cast aside what all the wise men wrote
and march beneath the silent skies of hope.
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1 comment:
Lots of awesome lines and line breaks! Favourites being:
"As truth begins to curl around our toes"
"we stumble to the streets and feel ourselves / give way to baser hungers" (love the line break on that one because it gives the impression that you go out into the streets and start trying to feel yourselves which gave me the mental image of someone trying to wake up from a dream, or just revelling in their reality of being)
I liked the subtlety of the rhyming. I hadn't noticed it at all in the first stanza and only caught on at "away" and "dismay". That being said, I wasn't sure afterwards what the rhyming scheme was, and felt that it was perhaps a bit too erratic. I did, however, like that you rhymed "ourselves" to "Hell", which gave it quite an ominous and darker tone than I was expecting. That was pretty good.
The line "Though roads be long and grasses far away" bothered me. I think it was the "be". It seemed to break from the rest of the diction in the piece and stuck out awkwardly for me.
Also, as my poetry professor said, it's REALLLYYY tough to use the word "hope" in a poem. So on that note, the last word irked me. I thought it was too optimistic and all-encompassing, a little too abstract. I think you need a concrete image here to wrap up the ideas of the piece. This would make it a bit more accessible and resonant for readers, whereas now it's tough to have any personal emotion evoked on reading. My favourite images were those that were tangible, such as likening philosophies to blankets from a child - that was fantastic and such a perfect way to portray philosophies! More instances like this would make this just fantastic.
I really enjoyed this piece, and honestly think this is one of your best :)
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