From Leaves To Stone... And So Forth

This is a poem based on Walt Witman's style of writing. Enjoy!


I celebrate the nature roads tinged with Humans.


The way the trees seem to sway to the same music,
The way the melody seems to kiss a newcomer’s blushing cheeks,
It’s an amazing feeling, is it not?
To ride the notes at the speed of infinity,
And feel the lashes of wind through your hair.
The earthly towers tell the difference,
The linguists’ savage life calls for diversity.
The bumpy roads of the wild take me home.
Nature combined with Human --though still Nature--
Is an odd mixture rather divinely put.
I sit and watch,
The darkest of days and the lightest of nights
With warmth over me and warmth in me.
The beauty and cruelty
Of two worlds colliding; it is heavenly hell.
I celebrate it.

I like the whole poem. =] It's nice, I really do like =]. Thanks for posting.

They way the trees seem to sway to the same music

I like this line.

To ride the notes at the speed of infinity

I like this line, too. =]
Those are my favorites.

Also I liked the ending. A lot. *stars*
Be seeing you.
Good luck, keep writing.

Silented1.

I celebrate natured roads with a tinged ofwith Humans.

I made those changes...the way you had it was oddly worded. Also, it just sounded off. (I got what you were saying, but there's a different way to word it.

TheyThe way the trees seem to sway to the same music,

The way
'the' instead of 'they'. Minor, probably typo'd mistake.

The earthenly towers tell the difference,

The 'en' doesn't make much sense to me. 'ly' sounds better. Reads better.

Nature combined with Human --though still Nature--
Is an odd mixture… rather heavenly put.I sit and watch,
The darkest of days, and the lightest of nights,
With warmth over me and warmth in me

This whole chunk is completely redundant.

The first line: We know it's nature...and even if it is mixed with something, we still know that you're talking about nature. Take, "--though still Nature--" bit out.

Second line of this chunk: Get rid of the "...". (It will make it sound better. It was an unneeded pause that does nothing, really.

Third line on (in this chunk): Get rid of all those commas! ^_^ They give, yet again, unwanted pauses. You can grammatically get away without having them. Plus, they just halt the poem and the flow. You have good words/imagery, but you ruin it by the repetitive pause. It can get a bit annoying, which you don't want the reader to feel that way. ;D

Of two worlds colliding,: it is heavenly hell. I celebrate it.

Overall: I liked this! It needs some work, but I think you can change what needs to be changed to make this poem it's best!

Good luck!


-Jon

I celebrate natured roads with a tinge of Human.

What? O_o Was this supposed to not make sense?

The way the trees seem to sway to the same music,

It’s an amazing feeling, is it not,

The earthen towers tell the difference. (or ;)

What difference? How do they tell the difference? Expand upon this; right now, it's too vague to form a clear image of what you mean.

The linguists’ savage life calls for diversity.

How is a linguist's life savage?

I sit and watch,
The darkest of days, and the lightest of nights,
With warmth over me and warmth in me

The repetition of "warmth __ me" feels a bit redundant and awkward. You can try tweaking it so that the repetition sounds nicer, but I suggest rephrasing the line entirely.

Is an odd mixture… rather heavenly put.
[...]
Of two worlds colliding, it is heavenly hell.

You use "heavenly" twice. In such a short poem, this really sticks out. I would suggest replacing the first "heavenly" with "divinely".

I celebrate it.

I think this line would work best set off by itself.

Overall, this poem could use expanding. Imagery in poetry should be tangible and easy to envision; most of your imagery was vague and/or generic. Your transitions between ideas could also use work. How do earthen towers, linguists' lives, and wilderness roads relate to one another? What is a natured road, and how can it be tinged with Human? Also, why are all these things important?

Your poem didn't flow well in certain places; try reading it aloud. Take note of wherever you trip up/something sounds off and see if you can rephrase things so that you don't trip up/it doesn't sound off. Another thing that will help improve the flow is consistent punctuation.

Overall, this is a good start, and it's great that you're reading other poets' works and trying to emulate their style; it's an excellent way to learn and practice how to write poetry. :D

Hi Navi! I can definitely see Whitman's influence in this piece. I have to admit he's not a favourite poet of mine, but that's not to say that will have any affect on this review.

I celebrate natured roads

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming by "natured" you meant to refer to nature? However, the adjective "natured" means something has a nature or temperament of a certain kind; it really has nothing to do with the nature that includes trees, flowers, outdoors etc.

I don't really care for your first line. To be honest, it's bland. It summarizes the poem without making me interested in how you're going to expand on it. Something like that might be somewhat workable at the end of the poem, establishing what the poem is about after we've already seen it, making sure your meaning gets across. But the first line is important and we--the readers--need to be hooked. If I was browsing through poetry just for reading pleasure, I would have passed this over based on the first line.

They way the trees seem to sway to the same music, <-- Good image; it should be expanded
The way the melody seems to kiss a newcomer’s blushing cheeks, <-- This doesn't really connect to the last line in terms of the music, because the point was, there isn't music. The trees are swaying in unison *as if* to music, even though there is none.
It’s an amazing feeling, is it not? <-- superfluous. If the feeling is amazing, then we'll feel it, without having to be told it's amazing.
To ride the notes at the speed of infinity, <-- If you really want to use the image of music for these lines, then it needs to be changed so that we're imagining the music. Make the music your focus in the line about the trees, instead of the trees. Possible example: "Music seems to weave through the trees, which sway to its rhythm." See how starting with the music, making it the subject of the sentence, allows you to continue with that image? I would only do that if you're very attatched to the music idea, however. Otherwise, I'd suggest different imagery to describe the scene.

The earthen towers tell the difference,
The linguists’ savage life calls for diversity.

Out of the whole poem, these lines particularly stuck out to me in three ways: they're unrelated to the poem as a whole (especially the second line), they don't make sense without further explanation, and they... don't make sense. "Earthen towers" is vague-- not necessarily a bad thing, but "tell the difference" from what? Between what?
And I'm afraid I can't see why the linguist is savage, why that is a call for diversity, or what either one of those things has to do with your subject.

The bumpy roads of the wild take me home.

Again, this seems out of place, but perhaps not so much as the last two lines. The narrater's home is nothing to do with this poem. If you intended it too, one mention of it isn't enough. We need to know how it's connected or we dismiss it entirely and the line might as well not be there at all.

Nature combined with Human --though still Nature-- Is an odd mixture… rather heavenly put.

Heavenly *put*? I'm afraid I don't understand. =] These lines are a little awkardly phrased.

The last five lines before the last are the best connected to each other, but as a whole this poem seemed very disjointed. It didn't give me one image, one focus, one meaning as a whole. It was like you were trying to explore completely different aspects of the same thing, but you barely touched on each one, so I couldn't see where you were going with any of the ideas. The concept of nature is *hugely* broad. If you're going to write a poem concerning it, I would definitely suggest making sure you have one very specific focus or your mind is going to go tumbling in all directions, trying frantically to fit it all into one short poem and find something to tie them together with, but I'm afraid "I celebrate nature" is a very weak tie.

The best advice I can give you for this is step away from it, think carefully about what you're writing about (one very specific theme; and not that you celebrate nature. It's not specific enough unless you're describing how you do it. But you were describing why, and there certainly must be far more reasons than you can even think of =]), then come back to it and redirect or rewrite every thought so it reflects that one focus.

Best of luck!

-Adna

Hullo, Navi, Welcome! June here.

As mentioned, it's easy to see Whitman's influence on this piece, in terms of stylistic language. I'm afraid, though, that you haven't caught all of it; Whitman's poems were more than just nature and his words -- in fact, a lot of his poems featured subliminal undertones on things like love and depression. Here, I'm not getting the same gist; I feel like this is the literal meaning, and fore ward, it's pretty flat.

With that said, I'm having a hard time appreciating it. Walt Whitman often used lines that were boring to read, but, as mentioned he had metaphors concealed in these that made the poems appreciative for plenty of read-overs. I think you should try to construct these around metaphors, because there aren't any obvious ones here to be enjoyed.

Best of luck,
June

Hey there!

So, I don't actually know Walt Witman's writing, so I won't be able to comment on how yours is like his, or not. But I think that's been done well before me. What I will say is that you do have some lovely imagery here. The words you use are nice, and it sounds great. So well done for that!

~Amy