Cumulonimbus

A/N: I'm a fan of the first verse, but the rest of them... bleh. Any suggestions?

A silver lining
Graces every soft contour
Traced in light by some skilled Hand;
A blanket of sweet nothings to comfort a childlike mind;
A realm swept with the absence of color, looming over the world
Creates a glittering web of fantasy that drapes and obscures cold Truth

Torn
Between solid earth
And that nameless, ethereal grace;
An undefined yearning overwhelms the soul;
Fingers reach unbidden, grasping at the unattainable
Longing to scale a mountaintop and embrace the insubstantial.

The mind knows
The substance is so far
From what the heart believes it to be;
The mind does not allow the heart free reign
To climb to the peak of hope and strive towards love
The mind knows it is a futile dream and imprisons the heart.

The heart dreams:
Reaching the heights
The glittering, soft world from afar
Has dissolved to a world of grey mists;
The fingers grope and find nothing but a chill;
Leaping towards the soft embrace, trusting in love
All is lost.

Hey. First of all, I loved the imagery of the stanzas. The shape is pretty fantastic.

I do agree with you - the first stanza is the best. It feels like the one with the original glow. The second has the most content, from vocabulary to what is open for analyzation. After that, when I read the third stanza, it seemed forced.

"
The mind knows
The substance is so far
From what the heart believes it to be;
The mind does not allow the heart free reign
To climb to the peak of hope and strive towards love
The mind knows it is a futile dream and imprisons the heart."

Compared to how much is said in the second verse, this seems disproportionate. It tells us more than it shows us, and in a poem where so much imagery is so evident so quickly, to me this stanza falls flat. I think if this stanza were solely devoted to clarifying the images presented in s2, I might like it better. That way, s3 and s4, which go hand in hand rather more than the other verses, can be condensed into one last stanza.

Those are just my suggestions. Sorry they're so mechanically based; to be completely honest, the images and ideas were incredibly difficult for me to interpret, so I didn't want to pass judgment on what I didn't understand. Wouldn't be fair to you.

Thanks,
-chirish

Hi sokool115,

sokool15 wrote:A silver lining
Graces every soft contour
Traced in light by some skilled Hand;
A blanket of sweet nothings to comfort a childlike mind;

Good beginning. I have nothing to say here except that you managed to incorporate the literal and abstract well - the "silver lining" and whatnot would have crashed your poem had you simply left it as a witty saying, but you managed to save it.

A realm swept with the absence of color, looming over the world
Creates a glittering web of fantasy that drapes and obscures cold Truth

No. Terrible section. Read that out loud to yourself, count the syllables, compare it to the rest of the poem, and realize why it is such an open wound on this piece.

The personification of Truth is also cliche; while not necessary, consider altering the vision from "cold Truth" itself (after all, who can picture such an vague concept?) to more concrete flesh.

Torn
Between solid earth
And that nameless, ethereal grace;
An undefined yearning overwhelms the soul;
Fingers reach unbidden, grasping at the unattainable
Longing to scale a mountaintop and embrace the insubstantial.

The mind knows
The substance is so far
From what the heart believes it to be;
The mind does not allow the heart free reign
To climb to the peak of hope and strive towards love
The mind knows it is a futile dream and imprisons the heart.

Now I am convinced that the entire process of beginning with a simple phrase and then moving on to more complex lines is done deliberately, almost like a cloud shape itself. However, that is not an excusable reason for why you somehow discarded any notion of lyrical fluidity in your pursuit of the poetic structure. "mind knows it is blah blah blah". This is simply elongating for the sake of elongating, and it shows quite plainly.

Both of your stanzas above show this and so both should be corrected. Keep the format if you so wish, but make sure that it retains some sort of flow instead of transforming into blocky chunks of text with filler words making up almost half of each line.

The heart dreams:
Reaching the heights
The glittering, soft world from afar
Has dissolved to a world of grey mists;
The fingers grope and find nothing but a chill;
Leaping towards the soft embrace, trusting in love
All is lost.

Imagery was good and presentation might have been better if your stanzas in the middle of this poem had not been so lacking. Regardless, the ending was passable, if exhibiting something of a "purple poetry" flair - that is, cramming in imagery without each image connecting to another one and gaining meaning.

Overall, concentrate on the middle stanzas for now and then, if you still care, move on to the last stanza. This poem can be good, but much work is required.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Thanks guys!
What refreshingly honest replies. *grin*
If I decide it's worth it I'll work on it. Thanks again,
MademoiselleKool

very refreshing, enlightening too. you know, i've always had a feeling, and you expressed it sublimely in this poem. i totally agree with you about the essence of mind, heart, and soul, and about how many important concepts of the world are beyond human comprehension. love it! i wish i could have written that, because it seems like you read my mind about the subject!!! cool. keep writing, and please don't continue reading other people's minds for ideas. just kidding.

i really liked reading this. it has a wonderful flow and a superb word choice. it also has great emotion and it sounds as if a lot of work was put into it. it was obviously revised a lot, and edited. it must have taken a lot of time and work. good job!

ca va, kool? Just an aside:

About the two lines at the end of verse one:
I like the association of clouds and fantasy and while you tried to bring it out you did push it down a little. Personifying truth isn't even necessary, so you could shoot the capital T on Truth.

Random fact: In your zeal to make little right angled triangles along the margin, you udsed a lot of filler words. I shake your hand- you have a great theme and you found some nice structure ideas. But you couldn't pull it off. But you already know that.

Finally: All that a little revamp will take (and this poem deserves salvaging) is for you to look at a cumulothingumabob again, think a little more about the associations that arise in your mind, find words for it and nix all the complexities. Try imitating Frost on this one (yeah, I know, difficult if you even copy out his lines) and see if you can put nature as you see it and yet bring out the underlying theme of how in the mind the blanketing cloud actually keeps one away from contact with truth and shows you the very essence of all those insubstantial, ethereal, unnattainable, unimaginable etc etc. substances. There are plenty of metaphors, cloud as blanket, cloud as roof, cloud in relation with other clouds, truth above the cloud, with fantasy below, or vice versa as fantasy is what you can't see and should be above the blanket. Lights, sounds (ever thought of how a cloud sounds?), smells...position the sun or bring out its absence. But that's all up to you. Thanks for the read. Keep up the good stuff.

The Plant.