Leather Shoes

Author's Note: Impression #2 for Hannah's contest, the painting is Van Gogh's 'Shoes'. I need to figure out the formatting, I know. But either way, do enjoy!

--

Forgotten sun-tiles -- on the red brick path they lay
Watching from the blotted laces, thick leather made threadbare,
worn out and beaten into shape. Memories of the trail blown off and polished away.
A past beyond recollection like the deformed shadow at your heels,
the door scuffing the tips until the nostalgia frays.
Shoestrings weaved through the open canals and clicking metal,
into the warmth of affinity and furrowed flaps.
Clay streaked onto the tier, thrown to the side before being coaxed with dragging feet.

Wow! Kamas! That is awesome! I love it! I didn't see any mistakes and it was truly awesome! You don't need to change the title! It fits it great, you never say its Leather Shoes in the actual poem, but you can tell even without the picture! Don't change it! Its awesome! I had one called...I don't even remember but it was something plain and simple like that. Don't change it! This was awesome!

this is awesomely awesome truly awesome!

Hi Kamas. ^^
It's been a while since I've brought myself to review something, so excuse me if I'm not much help.
This was a pretty great poem, Kammy-chan. Just have a few things to say about it.

Watching from the blotted laces, thick leather made threadbare,

The transition from thick to threadbare messes with my brain. Also, are you describing the laces or the shoes here? Because I think the laces are something besides leather?

the door scuffing the tips until the nostalgia frays.

Love love love this line. It's beautiful.

Clay streaked onto the tier, thrown to the side before being coaxed with dragging feet.

Where'd the clay come from? Or is it a metaphor for the leather. (Shape clay, shape leather?)

It probably wasn't the best idea to review when I'm sleep deprived, but I couldn't resist your beautiful poetry. Wonderful job on this. *gold stars*

I'm not familiar with what kind of poetry this is called so I'll just give an opinion.
Eliminate the need to needlessly play around with words.Put more substance into the actual focus.

A past beyond recollection like the deformed shadow at your heels,

That's a nice line

The last two lines however sound really cheesy.

What I basically missed was rhythm.It just sounds like lines put together for the sake of it.But than,its just an opinion.

Though I wonder towards the end is this a simple poem or does it have hidden meaning.

Good work on leaving that question.

Hey Kamas!

I enjoyed this a lot. Again, I'm rather rusty at reviewing poetry, so, as always, take what I say as a grain of salt. Anyways, you had some great imagery here. And I just have a few suggestions:

1. Consistent Images. Like Explosive_Pen mentioned, I was confused when clay suddenly came into the picture and some of the transitions between images were abrupt. Taking us through the images a little more slowly and connecting them more cohesively would really help with this. Right now I'm seeing a bunch of individual images and I'd love to see one cohesive, original one. So, when you're editing this, try to think about the way your images are flowing.

2. Articles! Now, articles are an important part of speech, but you used the word 'the' so often that it made the piece feel cluttered. Try cutting down on some of those articles and the images will also flow better. Wherever you can, think of different articles or take them out altogether. I think that would really help this piece.

Anyways, I really liked this! I hope this is helping to you! This is a great start and I can't wait to see how you go about revising it. Keep up the great work and keep writing! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Hey, Kamas! Thanks for the link to this. All of these art inspired poems are awesome.

The format seemed a bit bunched up, and crowded. I think it could be a lot better if you were to make the lines shorter, and maybe divide it up into two stanzas.

I like your use of alliteration. The words here are unique, and very specific. Like the painting, they make a strong image.

The ending was really abrupt, like it was stopped in the middle of a thought. I don't know if this was what you were going for, but to me it was unsatisfying. One effective way to resolve a poem (or story, this works pretty much everywhere) is to tie it back to the beginning. You don't have to be obvious about this, just a little goes a long way. On idea would be to mention the sun again-- something from the first line.

That's all I've got. I really like it, and I look forward to reading more of your work. Let me know if you've got any questions about what I said.

I don't really have anything to say, but I liked it!
Godl star.

Wow! that was VERY poetic. I See why so many have viewed your poem! Your choice of words are phenomenal! I enjoyed reading this very much! Keep up the good work!

Kammieyaz--

Let's break this down:

Forgotten sun-tiles -- on the red brick path they lay

This, to put it bluntly, is distracting. See, the dash would indicate a break, and then you could change you train of speech to say anything, honestly, but it's better that they're connected and whatever. I'll say this, your title is not a part of your poem, Kammie, so you can't expect your audience to understand that what's laying on the path is a pair of shoes, dear.

As I read this opening, I wondered why the sun tiles are forgotten? What is sun tiles a metaphor for? The floor, or the shoes?


Watching from the blotted laces, thick leather made threadbare,
Not too sure what's watching from the laces, and blotted doesn't really fit. Think, think, how can you blot out a lace? This could work if you added supporting imagery, Kammz, but here you don't give yourself enough time to elaborate at all on these images, so instead of being productive, they fall flat. "Worn" would be a much better replacement for "made" because made is too generic and pretty blah.



worn out and beaten into shape. Memories of the trail blown off and polished away.
The first part doesn't do but substantial stuff for us, dear, so it could stand to be reworded; I think beaten out of shape would sound better than into, anyhow, because into would imply that it was intended to be this way...


A past beyond recollection like the deformed shadow at your heels,
the door scuffing the tips until the nostalgia frays.

First line in this part is workable, but the second sounds like an effort to be creative. I'm not even sure what view point you're coming from, and I'll elaborate on that afterwards, but you waver a bit throughout this in ideas. Make your ideas clear, Kammie. You can.


Shoestrings weaved through the open canals and clicking metal,

Weaved seems like it should be woven; is canals a metaphor for shoestring eyelets? I don't know if I like it, because it sounds like a press for creativity.


into the warmth of affinity and furrowed flaps.

Nah, don't like this. This is like... it feels like it's been tacked on in a hurry, and I'll explain afterwards why you don't need parts like this.

Clay streaked onto the tier, thrown to the side before being coaxed with dragging feet.

And here, I'm not sure where the feet or clay come from.

Here's the rundown:


Impressionism, eh? Schweet. In my opinion, Impressionism is of the easiest and funnest art movements to work with, as is Van Gogh, and I think you chose wisely. The problem that I saw in both yours and Kylan's rendition of impressionist work is that you mistook what impressionism is about.

Here, I feel like you wrote down what your impression of the painting is, and generally, that view (or rule) is applied to the visual art side of impressionism. The greater artists looked at an every day object, and painted it how they saw it (say, for example, Picasso; though he wasn't a big impressionist in terms of style, he applied the impressionist technique of portraying through his eyes how he saw things, which is why a lot of his people look mangled, as he was painting their twisted souls in their physical image).

Impressionist painting is characterized by the impression an image gives and how well an artist can translate that to paper, whereas the writing is less so. Use the impression it gives you, yes, but use it lightly. Impressionist writing is where personification is widely used, dearie; objects talk for themselves in impression writing. Instead of narrating the picture to us, you're supposed to give us your impression of the piece with little reliance on narrative terms and the likes. Of course, you're free to integrate your own style and bring about your own twists, but impressionism is largely characterized by the mentality of noun-objects so that, like a painting, you still give the audience plenty of room to digest this and interpret it in our own way.


So, -- no offense meant; I mean this is the most benign way as possible -- I think your poem suffered from misinterpreted impressionism, Kammie. I would have liked to see the shoe talk a little (that sounds weird ) instead of you recreating what I see in the picture. I'm not saying that this isn't good, no; you're in a contest with this, and it has to be top gun.

So, here's what to do. Look at this painting. Look into this painting. Study and stare at this painting until you just can't take it anymore, and write an impression, whether it be how the shoe laments its job or enjoys a walk, and do not narrate this to us, Kammie. Write it, but do it poetically, and we're not talking a narrative poem, either. You're writing impression.

Feel free to brush up a bit on the impression movement as well. Also, as you see here, impression painting is largely characterized by soft edges and blending colors in painting. Similarly, there are no "hard" edges in the writing; no blunt description -- everything is one big soup of goodness.

If I'm unclear-- because I probably really am-- or if you want my further assistance -- not that I haven't annoyed you enough already-- you know where to find me.

Genuinely hope that helped,

Juneth

Hey Kamas!
This was great and definitely very creative. It's amazing what one can do with just a tiny bit of inspiration.
I do have a few points to make, though.

First, what happened to your stanzas? This poem is all one big block of text, when it shouldn't be.

In your first line, what is the metaphor to 'sun-tiles' supposed to mean? Shoes > Sun Tiles? Either replace it with something else or explain a tad more.

You establish that a pair of shoes are being made and then you go on to talk about clay, which was kind of out of the blue.

Overall: This poem was good, but it got confusing at parts. Overall, you had beautiful language and flow-just the kind of things I like in a poem. *stars*

I'm liking this one but I wonder where your plot is? It would be nice if you could mould these poems around more than just the painting. Describing what you can see is great but add to it a little, ask yourself how the shoes got to be there, where they're going and what's special about this pair? Are they the favourite shoes or the old ones being cast off for a new pair?

Forgotten sun-tiles -- on the red brick path they lay [I'm not sure what image you was aiming for with sun tiles. Maybe you wanted a contrast with the forgotten and the image of the sun bathed tiles? A contrast would be nice but this one just causes confusion.]
Watching from the blotted laces, thick leather made threadbare, [I like how blotted hints at the shoes' roots with the artist but this maybe isn't the best use of it. In this case you make blotted sound like a good thing, like the canvas has been carefully blotted to remove excess paint and prevent it from running. It might fit the neglectful theme more to have something like '...blotted out to start afresh...']
worn out and beaten into shape. Memories of the trail blown off and polished away.
A past beyond recollection like the deformed shadow at your heels, [Love this line. I'd like to see you delve deeper into those memories though.]
the door scuffing the tips until the nostalgia frays.[Another awesome line.]
Shoestrings weaved through the open canals and clicking metal,
into the warmth of affinity and furrowed flaps. [I'm not sure about this, it doesn't do much to add to the image or poem.]
Clay streaked onto the tier, thrown to the side before being coaxed with dragging feet.

I think the ending could have been stronger but I like this, it's got some nice potential, particularly for a poem fashioned around an old pair of shoes.

Heather xx