Little Shadow

a girl with a hat:
........she plays in the park
collecting memories,
........so others don’t have to
she skips around
........experiencing
the moment lived
........(a life lived for them
)rather than captured(
........however vicariously)
to play
........like only a child can.

I love the image, fleeting whimsy.

To be a little tighter would be ideal. As for punctuation, I'm afraid it drops in like an anvil at points, and distracts more than it draws.


Try this?



a girl with a scarf
goes to the park every day,
collecting memories
so others don’t have to;
she skips [s]around[/s] (to experience)
the moment lived--
life for them--

Then in the final lines - why change up into past tense? The brackets break awkward where they fall closed and unclosed before the line drops down.

I very much like the 'capture' against 'punish' in contrast to previous caprice. But it doesn't feel as if the idea connects well with what precedes it. Toy with tense, the emphasis. 'Rather than' is somewhat soft. It could be 'neither' or 'instead'...?


rather than capture(
however vicariously)
and play [s ]ed with [for? enthusiasm
rather than punished.





IMP

Ah, see what you mean, Amelia. ^_^


In fact, it's lovely that way. But I think, still, the punctuation doesn't quite imply the switch-up. I wonder if staggering the lines would help?


So--

a girl with a scarf:
................goes to the park every day,
collecting memories
.................so others don’t have to;
she skips around
................to experience
the moment lived
................(life for them
) rather than captured(
...............however vicariously)
and played with enthusiasm
...............rather than punished.


In that way, it can flow and trip-up, so to speak, to send the reader's mind into the pattern.

Again, I love the poem. And I think, if you stagger things like above, you can get the novelty and neatness of the odd-varied skip in it. ^_^




IMP

Oh, me likes the indents





[I think "played" and "punished" are in the same tense as "captured" and "lived", as past participles, where they're not solid preterite tense, but imply a "have been lived/played/captured/punished" that seems transcendent of tense (?).... I think... *head spins from grammar*]

AmeliaOliver wrote:Oh, me likes the indents





[I think "played" and "punished" are in the same tense as "captured" and "lived", as past participles, where they're not solid preterite tense, but imply a "have been lived/played/captured/punished" that seems transcendent of tense (?).... I think... *head spins from grammar*]

...concerning the verb tense, I think with the indents, the tense isn't out of place. As it could be rewritten (in prose) so: a girl with a scarf: collecting memories, she skips around the moment [that is/was] lived rather than captured and [or perhaps "still"?] played with enthusiasm.

Yes, then. The tense works all right. ^_^





IMP

I think it's a good one, the image works nice.

I don't know if imp spoke of it (I read above, a little bit)

But the ( and ) being off line, or however you want to say it, was distracting, and just a bit odd. Otherwise, very nice.

I was a bit torn about how to use the parentheses at first.... I decided for them to be like this so that however you read it, what I want to be in parentheses is in parentheses. The "rather than captured" part is a little odd, but I wanted to include it offset as a separate part and not within parentheses.

........to experience
the moment lived
........(a life for them
)rather than captured(
........however vicariously)
to play

Here's a part from how I want it to read if you took each section individually:

... to experience (a life for them, however vicariously) like only a child can

...she skips around the moment lived (rather than captured) to play