A ship it truly is, salt spray, wrecks and all
Never sure of your footing
Grab the rigging before you fall
The boat pitches and keels
As passion ebbs and rises again
You have the option
To jump ship and swim
Leaving me to sail on
But the seas are unforgiving
Wouldn’t you rather brave these storms together
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6 comments:
I quite like this, but I think it would work best if you cut some lines and shortened others because there's a fair amount of repetition, especially in the second stanza. The message and the metaphor would be more impactful with some density, unless you developed new sub-metaphors as well.
Thanks Charles! I wasn't completely satisfied with this piece, and I just wasn't sure how to fix it. Are there any lines in particular that you'd cut? I'll definitely try to rework it a bit though.
Well, quickly some of the lines I would take out are: "Unpredictable waves" (making it "the ship pitches and heaves / As passion ebbs and fades...) and then the first three lines of the second stanza (I don't like the "my dear" especially), as well as "they take as easily as they change" and "than drift away on your own"... Like I said, if you then added more sub-metaphors it would work nicely, or even just like that as a very short poem.
I like this quite a bit! An important concept, however, has arisen in my mind, and I think I need to throw it out there now.
The concept is this: there is a difference between the use of a metaphor and riding on that metaphor, using it almost as a crutch. Your poem speaks of things that are understandable in one way or another--either just through the ship metaphor or in the pure speech of emotions. You, however, place both on the reader.
Emlyn, you're a wonderful poet, but I don't think that you trust your audience enough. If you force both the metaphor and the message down our throats, we'll gag--be subtle! Be coy!
Let us figure it out, or else we lose all the fun of the poetry. Poems are doors that give us keys, but this poem forces the hand to the lock. The best answers/meanings/poems are, in my mind, discovered, not shown.
Thank you both so much for your comments, I really appreciate them. Charles I cut those lines and some others. I tried to tighten it up, take out some of the superfluos words, but I am not sure how much I like the edited version or if it is even an improvement...
Thank you Bernard for your observation, now that you say that I realise it is something that I might do too often, riding metaphors, and shoving whatever I am saying down readers throats...I will try to be more subtle, it will give me something to focus on.
ps I will try to keep working on this poem...
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