fate in a february grave

Love is not the color of a wedding dress;
she can’t be written into a musical or tangled up,
snared between piano strings. She, like the E-flat of your hums at night,
though they always came, darling,
cannot be sized up by time or expectancy.

And god knows we expect love.
He knows, though before B-flat rolls of thunder,
he squeezes a bit too tightly on her throat,
leaves love cold and unmoving,
unresponsive as your lips when I heard the news.

So no, she won’t set the table beneath candlelight
or hold an umbrella beneath your chin as you cry,
but love will bring two souls together in a terminal ward,
will introduce two strangers over a February grave,
and birth something new from a cadaver.

In that respect, at least, love is an ashen bird,
a widow held tightly in the ambulance when the road was too slick,
the ice was too dark too see. And so love is cold,
still as eighty-eight ivories in an empty church.
She’ll sing you a song, love will,
though the G-flat may not be what you expect.

Spoiler

I expect about -2 people to get the underlying message within the music.

I'm going to start right off the bat by saying I found this to be too... moral. There was too much of a lesson being learned for me to really truly enjoy this. And I'm sorry for that.

I love the fact you try and variate between emotions. You go from hopeless to hopeful, sad to happy, down to up, and with such grace and ease that takes quite a bit more control than I have. Of course, all things within reason. And, in this case, I didn't feel your reason was strong enough.

Now, by strong, I mean you're getting pretty preachy. Its a topic often portrayed; that one should not be looking for the 'perfect' someone. Rather, that right someone could be something completely different than what you would have wanted. And that was not subtle at all. It was outright, straight forward, and in your face. So much so that I feel as if I was reading a blog on truths rather than a poem, even though your imagery was grand and your comparison between love and music was definitely lovely.

Which brings me to my next point. If it wasn't for the moral of the story here, I would find this to be superb. You're growing out of that prosey-ness that tends to weigh you and your poetry down a great bit. And in moving out of it, your poetry becomes very hard to resist and ignore. Its natural. Its meaningful. Its passionate. Its really, really strong, Lumi, and that's a remarkable change.

Like this, for instance;

He knows, though before B-flat rolls of thunder,
he squeezes a bit too tightly on her throat,
leaves love cold and unmoving,
unresponsive as your lips when I heard the news.

This part in specifics blew my mind. It is so wonderfully natural. So smooth, and the rhythm is absolutely gorgeous. Preachy it may be but aesthetically, its definitely quite the charming bit.

Other than that I really have very little to say. The topic was a bit too much for my tastes and that's about it.

~Walker

To be honest Lumi, I loved this. I found it heartfelt and really well written. It was truly beautiful. If this was an actual song I would be downloading it from i tunes this moment. In fact you should make at least an instrumental of it. Keep at it. This is something everyone will enjoy and everyone can appreciate.

It's time to return that favor from "thomas postures".

Lumi wrote:Love is not the color of a wedding dress;

Do you know what my poetry professor told me? The same thing the Poet Laureate of Illinois told me, and ironically, the same thing a crack poet/philosopher/artist/musician told me and preaches; autological words do nothing for poetry and at best, kill a poem entirely. I'm going out on a limb here, because quite often that's all we do in life, and forcing "love" to be an autological word. It describes nothing but itself, especially in the terms of poetry, love can't help but refer to the ambiguous nothingness and black-hole of meaningless affection that is all too often found to be disappointing and false; thus love means exactly what we think it means: nothing. This is your first word of the poem and I fall straight out of the poem trying to grasp this, whatever it is, but considering it's you, I gave you another chance.

she can’t be written into a musical or tangled up,
snared between piano strings. She, like the E-flat of your hums at night,
though they always came, darling,
cannot be sized up by time or expectancy.

I'm seeing this transition from wedding dress to music. If this was about a wedding, I'd totally dig the progression, but it's really like you started the poem over, with the only common link "She" as if that ambiguous pronoun connects to ambiguous "love". Also, your double voice from "She...expectancy" doesn't work because of how awkward your phrasing comes off in unison of referencing back to "love"; you basically overload these two lines and a half with three different circumstances and it's not clean. What's more, where's the imagery? I mean I'm still stuck in "love" and the most concrete you got after that was piano strings (and they're...snaring...love?).

And god knows we expect love.
He knows, though before B-flat rolls of thunder,
he squeezes a bit too tightly on her throat,
leaves love cold and unmoving,
unresponsive as your lips when I heard the news.

So...throats, lips...and assumed expectation of love. Unless your reader understands your diction and your music, this really doesn't mean anything except frustration (and apparently only a few people actually understand this at all, so...what? I think you're getting lost in trying to place too many layers). And what's the news?

Do you see how you do a lot more lyrical harmonizing Lumi? I've told you before, I think you write lyrics more than poetry, but you can decide what to do with that.

So no, she won’t set the table beneath candlelight
or hold an umbrella beneath your chin as you cry,
but love will bring two souls together in a terminal ward,
will introduce two strangers over a February grave,
and birth something new from a cadaver.

In that respect, at least, love is an ashen bird,
a widow held tightly in the ambulance when the road was too slick,
the ice was too dark too see. And so love is cold,
still as eighty-eight ivories in an empty church.
She’ll sing you a song, love will,
though the G-flat may not be what you expect.

Second to last stanza puts me somewhere and lets me actually see and feel, to a limited degree because what do you stumble upon again? "Love", and even better, "souls". What does this mean? You might look at your surrounding stanza/s and point out to piece it all together, but I don't see how love is what brings people together when before you clearly allude to it being half-hearted, a vixen basically, and deceiving. The last two lines of the stanza lose me again; what's this "February Grave"? You're doing all these other things but expanding on what seems to be your underlying metaphor/meaning. And "birth something new"? Really?

The final stanza rings of cliche to me. The most original thing is your play on the music (praising that makes me want to choke), when you once again are using the abstract "love" as your crutch. I come away from this poem not sure what you wanted to do, much less why you bother to tell us you expect no one to understand the music. Then why do it at all?

You know where to reach me if you have questions.

I don't know how to write this review so I'm just going to let it all splurge out.

I've got to be honest: I think you've written two poems.

The first two stanzas are about music and love -- they're abstract and difficult to grasp because they don't have an obvious anchor in reality or experiences. In contrast to that, there's the italicised "voice" that does seem to be grounded in reality but it doesn't really do anything for me other than interrupt the poem.

Then in the third and fourth stanzas you take a new direction and, in my opinion, a better one. The links of love and death aren't, perhaps, amazingly original but you write them in such a compelling way -- the imagery is incredible and I love saying "two strangers over a February grave" aloud. It's just lovely.

But then the focus turns back to music and somehow, this time, the connection feels right. I'm not sure why -- perhaps the logical progression from " love --> death --> church --> music " means it makes more sense to me? I like the "eighty-eight ivories" more than the rest of the musical imagery in the poem (although "snared between piano strings" is also brilliant!) and, I must say, is more appealing than the references to different keys.

As usual I've no idea what you're trying to say. This could be because it's my second year now that I'm not studying English and all my poetry skills have gone to pot -- I feel especially inept after Dreamwalker and Pepper seem to have understood this fine on a much deeper level than me -- but I guess you've got to know that even if it's my fault! Perhaps you'll explain it to me (or at least give me a pointer!) in PM sometime?

So there you are: those were my thoughts and my usual ramblings. I'm not sure if that will "help the author improve" so that's one tick-box that you'll have to complete for me! Speak to you soon, Lumi.


Charlie

I'm guessing you wrote a blank verse, but being honest, usually blank verses have a way of going along or 'rhyming' and I don't seem to feel as much in it here. Then again, it could just be me.

Lumi wrote:Love is not the color of a wedding dress;
she can’t be written into a musical or tangled up,
snared between piano strings. She, like the E-flat of your hums at night,
though they always came, darling,
cannot be sized up by time or expectancy. If the third sentence were split at the fullstop, I guess it'd be easier to read.

......So no, she won’t set the table beneath candlelight
or hold an umbrella beneath your chin as you cry,I like this statement

........In that respect, at least, love is an ashen bird,
a widow held tightly in the ambulance when the road was too slick,The writing style seems to change here. I think there was a change in tenses.

The last statement sort of seemed to lose this flow you had created. I don't know what B-flats, G-flats and E-flats are but I'm guessing they're sth in music. I understand the idea of your poem and the inspiration, but I don't get it completely. I find most of your works quite too hard to ccomprehend. Also, I feel like you keep changing the topics, or maybe that's because I don't understand. I like the plot or whatever and I can see you're very much into your work, as in, I can see your attention in it. But I guess it's just too good for me to fully understand .
Btw, is sth of yours always featured? hahah...Or is it just a coincidence that I always login when you have featured work?

I personally really loved the first line, first of all. Yes, "love" is an abstract word, which generally we try to avoid - but you describe it with imagery and metaphor right away. "Love is not the color of a wedding dress." By telling us what it is not, you give us some small insight into what it is, and, as I said, you give the abstract idea some definition. So I think you're okay there.

However, towards the end of the poem - the last stanza especially - I felt that this wasn't a poem any more so much as poetic prose. Maybe it was the "in that respect, at least," the "and so love is cold," the "love will," the "may not be what you expect." I'm not really sure. Because you obviously still had figurative language going on, but somehow it just became more prosey... I think you need to rewrite that last stanza. Also the "And God knows we expect love" - that sounded more like something someone would SAY, or write in a blog, than poetry.

I hope this helped, although I realize I didn't branch out nearly as much as most everyone else...

~Blue

i don't think i have enough experience or ability to give you a review as other have done.
but what i admire about your writing is, the darkness of really simple topics, and how you confuse your readers by your complicated method of writing. your readers (or atleast me) need to read your writings twice, and wreck my brains to find what you meant, and this for me, is better than the conventional method of poetry.

Lumi,

Well, I'm sure I've attempted a few pitiful reviews at your stunning work before, but never have I truly gone in depth on deciphering your poetic mind and style and how it truly comes off to me. So that's exactly what I'm going to do here with this. Or at least, you know, try.

. . .Don't laugh.

Love is not the color of a wedding dress;
she can’t be written into a musical or tangled up,
snared between piano strings. She, like the E-flat of your hums at night,
though they always came, darling,
cannot be sized up by time or expectancy.

 

As for this first stanza, I feel the continuity in your words, but I don't want to jump into the conclusion of it being absolutely stunning so quickly as my reflex normally urges me to when first reading something of yours. I'm going to pause to take in its essence a moment here.

Don't judge me for my eye for the insignificance so soon, but I loved the way in which you made love seem such the tangible object by personifying it the way in which you did. I read this and I'm in love at the intricacy you paid mind in shaping your words around a single idea. The bit you italicized was a bit rough my first time reading it through. In fact, my eye sort of simply fluttered over it. It was the only thing that made me double take for that brief moment of, "Wait, what did he say?" When I take a moment to read back through once more, slower, I begin to understand why you would put that there. And it's lovely, but the fact that it didn't stick out to me as strongly my first tine reading through is disappointing. I wanted to take it in all in a single breath, but it didn't happen that way. The break was awkward for me. But perhaps it's just me. . . I'm a bit slow you see.

And god knows we expect love. 
He knows, though before B-flat rolls of thunder,
he squeezes a bit too tightly on her throat,
leaves love cold and unmoving,
unresponsive as your lips when I heard the news.

The beginning of this stanza here, I like how you pick off with the "expecting", and you seem to jump off quite abruptly into a whole different vision of what you want to say. If there was a smoother pick-off, I think I could really grow to like what you say in this bit, because they indeed go together I feel; the two stanzas that is. If I could wish for something more as a reader, it would be the ability to have the time to soak up the presence and direction of your words before they dive off into the next great thing.

You go from speaking about how love cannot be held indefinitely, and it's wild and beautiful, and I liked that whole deal you had going on there. Then you speak of --I don't know what Id perceive it as exactly-- the holder of love, snatching it up and having that ability to cease it's will to keep thriving. I love this bit you left lingering at the end about "when I heard the news". It was rightly timed, giving me just enough room to soak up the preceding message.

The "unresponsive as your lips" part made less sense I think. Again, for only that brief moment, but perhaps I'm thinking too much on it. Either way, I figured I'd let my thoughts speak aloud. x) I understood after staggering through it to think a bit. (Wow Smylin', slow thinker much!?)

So no, she won’t set the table beneath candlelight
or hold an umbrella beneath your chin as you cry,
but love will bring two souls together in a terminal ward,
will introduce two strangers over a February grave,
and birth something new from a cadaver.

 

H'okay, a bit more to say here, methinks, so I'll jump right in to it. The continuous flow of this single sentence alone isn't too great a bite to take in. I like the way you've gone and kept it flowing smoothly yet not drone on and on as one might fear. In the beginning of this however, it seems you introduce the concept of love being swept into a person by this point, am I correct? In the second stanza, you introduce love as an almost tangible thing, yet here it seems it's morphed; into an actual someone. I'm not sure how I feel about it, thought it took some analyzing to exactly pinpoint this jump in conclusion anyway. Perhaps this contradicts my approval of it. Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting you. I won't deny the latter.

A quick pointless thing I have to mention: "will introduce two strangers over a February grave". Love. I don't think there's a better word I can articulate with how much I think this reeks of awesome. Reading things like this is what makes me swoon over your poetry. Quite literally, I can't seem to wrap my head around what inside you allows words like this to mesh together so flawlessly. When I think of February I get images of cloudy overcast and leafless trees and a gloominess about the air. The word alone paired with grave, I love you for it. I think it was brilliant writing.

In that respect, at least, love is an ashen bird,
a widow held tightly in the ambulance when the road was too slick,
the ice was too dark too see. And so love is cold,
still as eighty-eight ivories in an empty church.
She’ll sing you a song, love will,
though the G-flat may not be what you expect.

I'm a bit at a loss for words as to how to go about giving feedback on this last bit here. To be honest, it rang a bit darker to me, but if that was your intention then all the more power to you on it. I'm not so sure about you comparing love to an ashen bird here, it just seems out of place from the other things you've pulled in here as far as music and love being this dark and beautiful travesty. It's a nice line in itself, but what exactly was meant by it? This isn't me questioning you in a sense like What on earth were you thinking? More like, please, enlighten me oh luminous one. :3

Anyway. Well, I hope this was okay. This was truly more than I was expecting myself to hand to you. Even if only some or perhaps none of it made any sense to you. Keep in mind the next time you ponder me lending you a review, I'm not the most constructive person with poetry this thought out and intricate. Though, expect me to gush some. ;] I knew there was a lot I wanted to say about your work, but I didn't want to come off as biting off a bit more sense than I should have. You're a far more experienced poet than me. I greatly admire the things you can do with your words. Even if it came out to be the most pointless travesty of a mess, I've no doubts you would've accomplished it with style and love. And that's why your writing is win.

Keep doing what you do. Maybe somehow I'll pick up a thing or two.

-Smylin' <3

And god knows we expect love. He knows, though before B-flat rolls of thunder,he squeezes a bit too tightly on her throat,leaves love cold and unmoving,unresponsive as your lips when I heard the news.

this was won of my favorite parts of your poem. i felt that it was very decriptive and that you got your point across. it was very good. keep writing.