House Cleaning

*temporarily removed*

Well, I'm no poetry buff, but I liked this.

...I wish I could offer more help, but I'd feel hypocritical because I don't write poetry and consequently know nothing of it. xD

-St. Razorblade
The Official YWS Pirate

Oooh. I love the idea of this and the title is brilliant. I'd love to know why they're burning the house down (or is it just a pile of wood) so perhaps you could add in a line that at least gives the reader a hint. The description of the flames was beautiful though and I love the comparrisson of them to the stars. In fact, your choice of words is very good.

Hmmm. I think the last line could have been stronger. But other than that, it's a beautiful poem and I can't fault anything so great job.

the parched tongue of flame

should flames be plural? Something about this line didn't work for me. Then, a few lines later, you repeated the word flame. Fixing that will help you out.

I really liked this, and your word choice was beautiful. It's called "House Cleaning" But why are you burning things? It really makes you have to think about it for a while. Though I'm not entirely sure of what is happening and why, it was well written and I liked it. The second stanza got kind of run-on-ish and you may want to fix that. It was a tad confusing in places.

WOW. I love this poem! It's very professional, and completely full of originality, wit, and description.

The ending, however, is poor. Usually, good poems end with an image, a metaphoe, a similie, an allusion, an allegory, a surprise. This one ended with a half-image: stars that were faintly warm. Maybe if you add something afterwards about the burned house, like
"...yet faintly warm,
like the black-burnt pieces
of the old wood."
You know what I mean? Think up a good ending.

PM me if you revise it! I like it a lot!

In the early fall, my father and I (make father a capital F)
sprinkled gasoline over an (Capital S)
offering of rotting wood, (Capital O)
anointing it without blessing; (Capital A)
our unceremonious whispers (Capital O)
catching in our throats. (Capital C)

Together we watched as
the parched tongue of flame (Capital T) (Should be flames)
spouted thick mushroom clouds (Capital S)
into the ungrateful night, (Capital I)
the flames spinning the air (Capital T)
into the same ambient light (Capital I)
that was hammered out of stars (Capital T)
that remains so far, so coldly still, (Capital T)
yet faintly warm. (Capital Y)

This was a great poem. Apart from the gramatical errors, it was really good. The words you chose were both really well placed and smoothed, but they made you sound really intelligent.

Oh my, this was very strong. You're word choice was excelletn and made me look deeper but didn't confuse me. I thought it was suposed to be flame. It sounded fine singular.

This was pretty cool and I enjoyed it very much.

You used some powerful and beautiful imagary in this piece and it made it stand out from the normal and expected poetry. I loved how you described the night to be 'ungreatful' and thought that it gave a new and also, old-age? twist to it. I'm not so sure to be honest, all I know is that I liked it.

I agree with Gadi when he points out the use of capitals at the beginnings of each line, but I also know that some people follow a certain strcuture that this is included in - one which I do not understand or use - so therefore, this may be the case.

I didn't understand how the title fitted in with the poem, and maybe this should be revised? I don't know, but I liked this anyway. Wonderful.

I disagree about capitals; they arent always necessary in poetry, IMHO, and it adds to the effect for it to have lower-case. But whatever.

Overall, I love this - especially the concluding image of warm stars. I admit I didnt quite get how it linked to the title, but then, I dont generally take much notice of titles anyway LOL. One line I felt needs tweaking is here:

our unceremonious whispers
catching in our throats.

Well, I guess that's two lines, but basically its the word "unceremonious" which bugs me. It feels...jarring. A bit cliche somehow? I just feel like I've seen it before and it really detracts from the rest of your highly original imagery.

Other than that, it was lovely

Cheers,
~bubbles

I strongly agree with bubbles, and most of what I would say has already been said. My main suggestion has to do with sentence structure and style; in a fifteen-line poem, you only have two sentences. I don't feel this is justified, especially in the last stanza, which is also the last sentence. It begins to feel very dragged out and rushed by the end.

In the first stanza I also notice, of course, the prominent religious imagery ("an offering" and "anointing" contrasting "without blessing" and unceremonious.") The second stanza doesn't offer that same feeling, and I wondered what the point of bringing it up would be if the resolution doesn't quite connect.

Good work!
-Colleen