another new day.
i want to edit the poem i wrote yesterday. the rhythm and cadence doesn't suit the ideas and feelings i want to portray. I want to capture the sense of splitting apart (body and life), tearing apart (from the crowd), and the consuming longing to hear the word that will put me together again.
The idea of being split apart stems from the disgust at having disembodied emotions, unrealised dreams, and an unlivable future. There needs to be both conflict and tension in the words.
it's like "The Second Coming" by Yeats -
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Feel the pulse in that? There is no pulse in mine.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
tumbling, procrastinating,
yearning to tear away
and to feel my pounding heart inside,
a drum beating with a life that's separate,
beyond, above, and all around
'till life and body're ripped apart
and my story's lost in the gushing stream
of faces, piety, of blood and tears
that swirls in the incense at God's throne
pulling, straining for one more breath
o'er the mad'ning, stifling babble,
to hear one word, one name, one phrase
that's burned into the memory by an eternal longing
and the drumbeat thunders on and on
with falling feet upon the gravel
cool. :) i kinda like it. your amendments add a certain dimension of violence, which in turn makes the imagery more vivid. Will mull over it some more. Thanks for your efforts!
like i said... glad you liked the changes... it helped to know what you were trying to achieve and you clearly did know what that was as reflected in this post...
some tricks of the trade:
always go for the more "active" verb/noun etc. just because it conveys more intensity than a passive one... unless "passive" is the thing that your poem is trying to bring across to the reader...
the timing thing can also be quite easily fixed by adding more syllables/additional words or even changing the phrasing while keeping the original sense... also, read it out loud several times... see where the timing doesn't quite work and try to figure out how many syllables to add or take away...
don't be afraid to experiment with what you've already done... try different ways of saying the same thing and see if it works... a poem is never truly finished... you can keep on polishing it and polishing it till it dazzles like a diamond... don't think for one moment the great poets got it right in their first draft...
don't be shy about using a thesaurus... they're great for providing you with lots of parallel options, and then some that you may not have thought of even...
btw... your poem had a lot going for it before i even changed a dot... as you can see... i hardly did anything to the overall structure and shape... great stuff!
Post a Comment