Amongst the Willow Tree

Put the noose around my neck,
It’s all I’ve waited for.
Sign my will away to mourn,
Sign it from the bellow’s blood.

I will no longer to live,
Amongst the willow tree.
But rather I’d live for you,
In your souls you keep.

Clouded jars filled with – air,
Not knowing what they are.
Could they be here in which we –
Breathe, are they amongst the willow tree?

Living in the hollowed willow,
While we live our dry lives,
Does that make us hollow,
In death only to fly?

Moisture can’t get through the glass,
Only light and such – illuminations.
Of a hope that it might shatter,
Break, or crack.

So that we may be free to live,
Not living in our vessel’s glass.
The answer is the after,
Of our dry, hollowed lives.

Hi Jon! June here!


Your work is always impressive. Your style is clearly defined, and I'm sure that if I saw something by you that was unsigned, I would be able to tell who wrote it.

I'm going to be brutally honest here; when I first read this, I didn't really like it. Someone once told me, "In order to understand and appreciate something that has been written, you can't just read it once. You have to read it twice, thrice, maybe fifteen times. Each time you read it, you might understand something more about it. If you don't, then it's not for you."

When that quote came to mind, I reread this, and tried to understand it. I can't say that I'm interpreting it as you meant it to be interpreted, but, I am beginning to enjoy it.

Let me ask you, is this poem about ending a life/suicide? I can't help but think it is. Something about it has a hint of darkness to it, although I can't pinpoint what it is.

It's very solitary. Some poems have a "togetherness" type of feel to them-- meaning that they feel welcoming, but this feels kind of isolated and distanced. Don't get me wrong! That is not a bad thing. At all.

Let me ask you, this line:

I will no longer to live,

Do you think that the reader can easily understand this? In poetry, it is common to vaguely pose something to make the reader think on it. However! In a certain light, can't this line become confusing? Perhaps read it aloud, and try to see it from the readers point of view.

Also! I understand that structure, and a strict form does not ever have to be strictly followed, but! Do you think that the way this is written could also become confusing? Does it feel to you, as the author, that the flow of this is staggered by jumping around a bit? You have the freedom to play with structure, but do it properly and don't abuse it! Your readers will become confused and walk away shaking their heads instead of marveling about how nice of a read it was.


Another thing! Your wording! Do you think that you have worded everything adequately? Have you overused any words like and, so, the, what, when, how, why, where, a, and so on? Those words are filler words, so make sure that you aren't using them too much!

And! Because of the way this poem is structured, ask yourself if repetition will be accepted in this! Sometimes when I read certain poems that look a certain way, they just don't look like they can stand up to the repetition! Like, if I see a four-stanza poem with four lines in each stanza, it just looks like it can't have much repetition. Ask yourself if this has that look!


----


Overall:

I am assuming that the message here is strong, and deep, and I like how you wrote it so that it's not just plainly written. You've disguised it in words, and are giving us something to search for beneath the words.

However, (Yes, I know, I am being harsh-- the harshness is intentional ), I don't see what the significance of the willow tree in this poem is? Normally, I would never ask an author to explain a piece to me because I feel like I am making them feel like they haven't done their job by writing everything clearly. However! I would really, really like to know more about this poem! I'm not sure if it's just because my brain refuses to work correctly ( ) or whatever reason, but I know I am lacking in the understanding of this.

And maybe it's just because I want this poem to have a happy meaning, but I feel that it doesn't. Bah.

Keep it up, Jon. Well done!

June

Hey Jon! Just wanted to return the favor (finally ), so here I go.

The first thing I noticed was that in the title was that you have a plural preposition, but a singular subject. Shouldn’t it be “Amongst the Willow Trees”? You can’t really be among one willow tree.


Now, I have to be perfectly honest, I don’t understand this at all. I couldn’t get anything out of reading it. Ordinarily I might not be able to understand exactly what the author meant by a poem, but I can take something from it for myself.

The most coherent lines in the whole piece were the first two. I thought, perhaps, that those summed up the point of the poem, but I couldn’t relate anything else back to them.

Sign my will away to mourn,
Sign it from the bellow’s blood.

The first line here I like alright, but together with the second... What do you mean by “bellow’s blood”?

I will no longer to live,
Amongst the willow tree.
But rathercomma I’d live for you,
In your souls you keep.

Like I said in the beginning, it should be ‘willow trees; either that or you need a new preposition.
The last two lines, the way they’re written now, sound like this “I’d rather live in the souls you keep.” I skipped a couple phrases to make it clear what I mean. That’s the way it reads right now. If that’s not what you meant, then clearly there’s a problem.

Clouded jars filled with – air,
Not knowing what they are.
Could they be here in which we –
Breathe, are they amongst the willow tree?

This was one of the most confusing stanzas for me. The dashes make it feel like you’re not finishing your thoughts. Either you really weren’t, or you just stuck dashes in the middle of your sentences, in which case, they don’t belong. Whichever it was, I think the dashes need to go. Just doing that would help you coherence a good deal, I think. I can’t really say a lot about the meaning of this stanza until the form is clearer.

Living in the hollowed willow,
While we live our dry lives,
Does that make us hollow,
In death only to fly?

This stanza started out like it was at least going to make sense, if their wording is extremely abstract and formless, but the last line just came out of nowhere and obliterated any meaning this started to give me.

Moisture can’t get through the glass,
Only light and such – illuminations.
Of a hope that it might shatter,
Break, or crack.

Again, the dash confuses things a great deal.
Now, is this supposed to be referring back to the jar idea? Wouldn’t it make more sense, if that’s so, to have the two stanzas be consecutive?
I don’t think there should be a period at the end of the second line; the second two lines are a continuation of that sentence, aren’t they? Either way, the second two lines are a fragment, which needs to be fixed.

So that we may be free to live,
Not living in our vessel’s glass.
The answer is the after,
Of our dry, hollowed lives.

This stanza kind of helped show what themes you were trying to go with in this poem. There are three things I noticed that you repeated, at least once: something to do with life, something to do with jars/glass, and ‘dry and hollow’ lives.

Now, what I think you need to do with this is establish some kind of order. Go with one idea and complete it, or use it to lead into the next one. What you do instead is you jump from one idea to the next and back again, leaving us completely bewildered.

I addressed examples of this as I went stanza by stanza; one of your biggest problems, if not the biggest, in this poem, is that your wording is chaotic. In some cases, though you had a clearly defined group of words, or one sentence, what you said made absolutely no sense. In other cases, I couldn’t tell where one idea ended and a new one began.

I think the best thing I can suggest is that you write out for yourself, as simply and clearly as possible, exactly what you’re saying in this poem, exactly what you want people to think when they read it.
Then, isolate each phrase, or each sentence, rearrange the wording again and again as many times as necessary until it says exactly what you want it to all by itself, and put it back in again. Make sure it’s obvious that it stands alone; people can’t look at it and say that it should be a part of another sentence.
Do that with every sentence, maybe reading each one aloud (some of the best advice any poet can get, I think; it always helps me). If there are weird pauses, change or remove the punctuation. Maybe some sentences need to be separated into two. Maybe some need to be replaced completely. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about rhythm, I’m talking about clarity. Poetry can have vague ideas, but not vague words, sentences, or structure.



I know that whatever your overall idea is, it’s something wonderful and meaningful and worth reading because your poetry always is. I wish I had been being able to understand what it was. I want to know what this poem is about. There is some benefit in being able to hide our true meaning behind lovely words, but we go to far if the audience can’t find it at all, or if, on the surface, it looks as if there’s no underlying meaning at all (though I'm not saying that's the case here).

I hope I didn’t sound too harsh, and I hope this was helpful. I’d really love to take another look at this later, if you’d like. Good luck, Jon.