The Night is Early Yet

v2.
The Night is Early Yet

Listless in her early death,
the painted face has colour yet
with green bouquets and purple hues
(there is such life in deadly bruise)
and scattered like red polka dots
(oh way above the chimney tops)
is blood across her open breast
(I must not look too close unless-)
My blade knows nothing of regret!
The night is early yet.

Feather weight with heavy hands,
teeth clenched to hold her last demands,
the warped wrapping and broken bows,
late laundry-day and rendered rose.
A thought's delay, a tear's regret
that the night is early yet.

v1.

Spoiler

The Night is Early Yet

Listless in her early death,
the painted face has colour yet
with green bouquets and purple hues,
red polka-dots and yellow shoes.
Do not deny, do not regret!
The night is early yet.

Feather weight with heavy hands,
teeth clenched to hold her last demands,
the warped wrapping and broken bows,
late laundry-day and rendered rose.
A thought's delay, a tear's regret
that the night is early yet.

____________
A poem I wrote a month or so back that I'm taking another look at. I wonder if I should end here or carry on and delve deeper into the persona?

Hiya Heather!

I couldn't really tell what this was about. It had a lot of pretty imagery and rhythm to it, but it felt kind of disjointed and had a lack of coherence.

Well, you mention the girl who's about to die. That's all good, as it provides an interesting hook to poem, but I sort of get lost after the second line. I'm assuming that you're describing her, but you just kind of say the things are there and it took me about two read-throughs to fully get it.

Your second stanza is a bit better, but still kind of disjointed. You mention 'her last demands' but never touch upon her actual death, which seems to occur midway through the second stanza, and that kind of leaves for a confusing ending.

My advice? Expand upon this. Tell us who this girl is and why she is dying. Describe what she looks like in full detail and then fully show her transition as she gets weaker, weaker, and then finally dies. Don't let your description take over the actual story of this poem.

Please continue with this.

-Elinor

I think there are some good portions of this, but it gets to wrapped up in unnecessary exclamations like "do not deny, do not regret!"

Maybe I just hate the word regret... its just a word that is so abused

Other then that, your piece has a great color palate, but it kind of seems like you are just listing things. That's great, but.. anyone can list things. It seems more like notes than a poem. I think you should rearrange some things and definitely add another stanza or two... but only if you need them after strengthening the first two.

Best,

Hey Kit,

I love the rhyme and rhythm and the idea is an interesting one but I do think that you should expand more on the character/story.

I love the first two lines and "teeth clenched to hold her last demands," and the repetition of "the night is early yet."

I think there's too much colour for the sake of colour. I didn't really believe
"red polka-dots and yellow shoes." I think;
"late laundry-day and rendered rose" is a bit overdone.

Hope this helps.Lovely to read you again.

Jas

Hey there -- my comments are in bold.

Spoiler

Kitty15 wrote:The Night is Early Yet

Listless in her early death,
the painted face has colour yet
with green bouquets and purple hues,
red polka-dots and yellow shoes. << The colour imagery is lovely. Shame you didn't carry it on in the second stanza. If you were to carry on this poem, an extended use of colour would really help bounce images around the reader's mind. >>
Do not deny, do not regret! << This line, on examination, sounds out of place. As though it was just plonked in because it fitted with the rhyme scheme. It's mainly the "Do not deny," which sounds vague, and the comma stunts the flow of the poem, which has been caesura-free up until that point. Scrap the comma, change the first part of the line so that the line itself sounds effortless -- that way the reader is more impressed by the following line. >>
The night is early yet.

Feather weight with heavy hands, << As I said above, it's a shame you didn't carry the colour imagery onto the second stanza. As a result, we lose the vibrance in we'd built in the following few lines (although I appreciate it may have been your intention to show a shift in tone). Nice juxtaposition here, however. >>
teeth clenched to hold her last demands,
the warped wrapping and broken bows, << "Warped" doesn't ring true for me, somehow. This would be an opportunity for you to replace it with a colour e.g. "white". Just a suggestion. >>
late laundry-day and rendered rose.
A thought's delay, a tear's regret << You've slightly lost the reader by this point. I'll embellish below. >>
that the night is early yet. << Nicely conclusive final line. >>

A few things to note:

1. Try to carry any metaphors and imagery you use in your first stanza, forward to your next stanzas. Consistency is key, or else the images in the reader's mind are scrambled.

2. Don't force yourself into a rhyme scheme if you find you have to significantly alter words and phrasings in order to fit to the rhythm. You're not half as guilty of this as some, but a few times I sensed lines being slightly forced e.g. "Do not deny, do not regret!" -- When put in the context of the lines either side of it, we don't know the speaker, or, indeed, enough about the character's thoughts, to achieve anything from it.

3. Similarly to 2, in the second stanza I noticed there was a lot of:
adjective --> noun --> conjunction --> adjective --> noun
... For example, "Feather weight with heavy hands" and "the warped wrapping and broken bows" -- again, this shows a slightly forced approach to your rhyme scheme. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a simple structure; but viewing line after line of the same "the sky above and the yellow moon / the kitchen stove and the wooden spoon," gets monotonous and detracts from your images. It's a special shame in your case as your ability to conjure imagery is clearly well-developed.

4. Every line in this poem says something different to the reader. Like I said above, it scrambles the reader's thoughts. As a result we have no clear idea of what the poem is actually about. You need to build a greater sense of continuity from line to line, or else it seems stagnant. For instance, "late laundry-day," in the second stanza means relatively little to us. This is, perhaps, an opportunity for you to extend the poem and have her reminiscing about some laundry-day experience she had once. Give the reader something substantial to feast their imaginations on. "broken bows" and "red polka-dots" are all very pretty, but would be considered the glass windows of a building -- if the foundations, the meaning behind it all, are not strong enough, the building itself crumbles.

Overall this is a lovely little poem, and I see strong potential in your poetic layout. The passive tone, for instance, stays consistent and is subtly shown. It would definitely benefit from extending, I think, because right now there just isn't enough of it for the reader to really get stuck into. It would also provide you with a chance to cement your meaning in the text and gloss over weak lines like "Do not deny, do not regret!"

Finally, if you were to go on to do similar pieces after this, I would advise you to play around more with the rhyme scheme, and allow yourself to swing out of the regular AABBCC/8-syllables-per-line rhythm you've set for yourself, which is, in fact, extremely limiting. If you're more lenient with your rhymes and experiment with letting them drop in naturally (listen to a few rappers e.g. Aesop Rock to get a real feel for it) it will allow you more freedom to avoid succumbing to the adj>noun>conjunction>adj>noun dilemma.

Keep writing, PM me if you have more!

Thanks everyone!

Elinor: You're right, it's much too short to say everything I wanted to so it's all ended up making little sense. I'll work on adding some more stanzas, maybe I can use this month to edit old poetry instead of writing new.

Perdido: It is a little listy I'll admit, I'll see if I can shake it up.

Jas: *snugs* Thank you my dear. Yes, those two lines were a little forced or rather half of each. I think I need to explain the laundrey reference better.

Standard: Some awesome suggestions, I'll keep them all in mind when I re-write this. Thank you very much

Hello! (:
I like it, just at one point, I kinda hesitated. You know? I stopped and re-read the line, and it just...

Do not deny, do not regret!
The night is early yet.

The second line seemed too short, the statment was too sharp
for me. Other than that I liked it, it had a nice rythem, but
I couldnt quite understand what it was about, but I had an idea.

Lovely poem! Mind you, it seems a little unfinished... I think it would definitely be a good idea to delve further in the persona, just because it doesn't say what you wanted it to, but still. Lovely start! Have you, by chance, added anything since you posted this?

Sort of. I have an edited version of the first stanza but hadn't got much further than that. And it still needs tweaking XD