Winsomeness

Heels and toes in the
scratchy grass,
and a star-sprayed sky.
In one hand are
out-of-season sparklers
that dust the dirt with showers
of pinks to purples.
Colors rebound against
the back-drop
of streaming children,
who clutch crumbling cookies
as they scramble for more.

Silent conversations
in gestures
leap from person to person,
as their lips sip
cinnamon cider
and crinkle upwards.
Hands come alive,
gliding between
drops of light.
Eyes swing open;
hair sprinkling the heads
like willow leaves.

Buttermilk toffees
perch the edge of the table,
fading one by one.
Soiled dishes
sleep about the yard,
their rolling bodies
resting quietly.
The night flicks on,
as the music
weaves through the flaky
bark of the trees,
and the moon beams.

Hi Hibiscus -

So, something more graceful here, I see. Well, more interesting than the last I reviewed at any rate, and like one of your other ones, this had a very free-floating feel to it, a sureal, bubbly, zany sort of feel, like a bright painting in a kid's picture book - like streamers and confetti and sparkling wine and rainbows. That sort of feel.

And when sustained, it doesn't quite work right. It is childish, haphazard, with randomly thrown together lines, words chosen for the sake of words, images for the sake of images, colour for the sake of colour, little central axis, little focus and ideas that run away into the wind never to be seen again. A grab-bag of thoughts, each half-strewn about the stanzas. A motley. A thesaurus list. Nothing to tie them up, leaving the strings of this poem frayed and floating.

Don't get me wrong - the parts by themselves are lovely: 'scratchy grass / star-sprayed sky...clutch crumbling cookies...buttermilk toffees...moon beams' (this last was a great verb-noun pun). Tha parts are fine. The whole is intangible, lacking. You try very hard to be chirpy, happy, bright with the imagery - and it works, of course. It works so well that the emotion again becomes incomprehensible. This may sound bizarre in light of my other review where I asked you to convey the emotion through the image - which I am pleased to see that you have done here - but there is also a danger to using nothing but imagery in a piece. And that is? Loss of tangibility, concreteness. Inability to connect with and relate to the reader. While 'Kisses' sat slumped on the ground, totally literal and mundanely so, this poem is careering off in the sky, abstract and bizarre, failing to convey the emotion you want to convey.

So. This is what you need: a balance. A balance of literal and figurative language to make the poem accesible and still mysterious. To make it shimmer just in front of one's eyes instead of flying in the sky or flopping lamely on the ground. In every line in this poem, there is an image. When I say literal, I don't necessarily mean remove the image entirely, but build upon it in such a natural way so as to make what is imagined stronger by what is real, and vice versa.

What would also help tighten this poem, bring it closer to earth, so to speak, would be some kind of - any kind of - axis. An extended metaphor. A motif. Perhaps even a theme. Can you think of one? Sure, it's a happy gathering, a festival, a celebration - but is that all? Why should we care? What makes it poignant? Why do you feel the need to describe it for us? What's the most memorable thing about it? Once you have decided on this, you can construct an architecture of imagery around it, instead of a terribly-winding road from A to nowhere. Not even to B. Think about webbing your poetry rather than stringing it.

PM me if you'd like to discuss this.

Navita