Gone with the Wind

Gone With the Wind

tumbleweed leaves shimmer
on the emerald carpet;
the old, gnarled women
fan their branches,
grasping for the shreds
of their youth.

scaling the walls of Jericho,
wide-eyed wanderers
bound like gazelles
over maple guardposts,
weaving a web
of clawmarks and acorns.

embers smoke, drifting
lazily toward the Azure.
marshmallow puffs sail
the rippling seas;
Aeolus overpowers them all-
and I am gone.

The language was really expressive and original, I have to say, you didn't resort to normal cliches, so I'm impressed. Things like "marshmallow puffs" and wide-eyed wanderers" made this more readable and memorable.

At the moment the thing I would say is the poem is quite abstract -- what we have is a collection of images that in some ways are hard to connect together. If you can bridge them so they all fit with one another, then you can make this better. I think, right now, you could swop the first two stanzas and it wouldn't change your poem -- you don't want that. You want each stanza and line to progress the poem toward its ending.

But good work!

Thanks Jack. I wrote this when I was sitting outside in a park, and my main purpose was to describe fall. I don't know where the whole "gone with the wind" came from, honestly. Thanks for your suggestions!

Wiggy -

Wow, I'm impressed! This poem actually reminds me of a poem I wrote last year that got accepted into the school's literary magazine. I wrote it when I was outside on a rainy day. It had been raining for what seemed like a month straight, and I finally tried to capture the weight of it in a poem.

Anyway.

I think there has to be more of a point at the end. I know you're trying to capture fall, but maybe you can come up with a point to it all - for instance, the point of my poem was that the rain was God's way of showering us in holy water. Or something.

If you can come up with a meaning behind it all, something that ties all the descriptions together and makes the reader look for all the connections, then I think it will be an absolutely amazing poem!

(By the way, I'm not saying it isn't wonderful as it is - I absolutely loved your imagery, and as Jack said, you came up with a unique way of describing everything. Well done!)

I dare say I also liked this quite a lot. I do think the allusions may be a little too much for YWS, at least it will make it hard for you to good very good critiques because most young people will have no idea what you are talking about [however, that is why they make literary allusion dictionaries haha], and they are also a little difficult to tie together. Personally, however, I enjoyed them and the imagery was outstanding. I don't, however, like the title--it makes me think of the movie and it just kills what I think I'm going to read haha.

Anyway, I like it!

Thanks Crys and wm-I'll try my best! I know I need to tie it together somehow...it's just the that thing I need to actually do it! That one word or phrase...hmmm...*puts thinking cap on*

The title reminded me of a racing horse, hee hee.
Anyway, autumn yeah nice topic
I liked your use of "marshmallow" it struck up nice images for me.
The emarald carpet, loved that too.
I didn't get the Jericho bit? Maybe you could explain.
But other than that *thumbs up.*
Lexy xxx

writingluver5 -


Rework the conclusion (absent right now) and this will be vastly improved.

While you're at it, take a careful look at S2 and compare it to the other strophes. You may come to feel, as I do, that it's a bit of unfocused wordplay at the beginning of an otherwise focused poem.

Also while you're at it, take a second look at S2 to "over maple guardposts," and consider whether dropping it will damage the poem.

You have some good writing here. Get the junk out of the way so the reader can see it.


Best,
Brad

Thanks Brad. Much appreciated crit, as always, and I'll do my best to clear the "junk" out of the way, as your rightly put it.

Lexy-always a pleasure to hear from you. Thanks so much and I'll continue to work on this poem!

yeah I do like this

I liked this; in a sense, the unfocused nature of the poem contributes to the feeling you were trying to describe (or rather, contributes to the scene by giving it a feeling). But I do think it could use a bit of refining.

tumbleweed leaves shimmer
on the emerald carpet;
the old, gnarled women
fan their branches,
grasping for the shreds
of their youth.

Well...nice enough. I've noticed in some of your work that you have a tendency to write in a kind of passive voice (probably the wrong technical term, but right in the sense that I mean). It's difficult to describe, but I get the sense from your poems (at least those I've read recently) that things are static; you might want to work on that.

Anyway. Old women and youth thing is a bit overdone, but I like the tumbleweed leaves and the emerald carpet.

scaling the walls of Jericho,
wide-eyed wanderers
bound like gazelles
over maple guardposts,
weaving a web
of clawmarks and acorns.

This stanza starts in the same way as the first. And last. It kind of makes things dulled and repetitive. Try experimenting with the stanza beginnings and saying something different.

embers smoke, drifting
lazily toward the Azure.
marshmallow puffs sail
the rippling seas;
Aeolus overpowers them all-
and I am gone.

I like the inclusion of Greek myth here. Aeolus = god of the winds, wasnt he? Hehe. The last line, though, seriously bugs me. Where is the "I" in the rest of the poem? What is he or she doing? Where does he or she come from? What relation, if any, does s/he bear to the poem and the subject thereof? If I were you, I'd chuck that line. It only makes the poem seem confusing.

Otherwise, I quite liked this stanza. Just work on that ending!

Cheers,
~bubbles

Oh, this was beautiful. I have found an example where lack of capitalization works!

I really can't think of anything else to say... perhaps tomorrow I'll have more to say on this one. For now, I liked it a lot.