Of fire and dreams (edited verson)

Sunlight treads
on midnight blue paths
to new leaves of green,
to barks of brown
and animals of shade.

Looking up at rolling gray,
against the black ground,
running on the crunching gold of last year,
no longer dreaming of providence,
awake in the bellows of smoke.

Racing orange and
fluttering heat,
ashes of dreams and beds of coals,
a bright white and smoldering wish

to be in the sky
where the fires don't burn.

wow, I really like this poem, this imagery and description is amazing though I'm not sure what it was about I don't think it was supposed to be about anything really, was it? I love it, you often find descriptive poetry like this but very few pull it off, but you certainly did! well done

Eddie!

Well I can't review poetry, but this was good. I liked it.

lavabubblingout wrote:Eddie!

Well I can't review poetry, but this was good. I liked it.

=p it's perfectly alright lav =].

I love the description. It has so much emotion! I really can't come up with anything at all to suggest.

The phrase "smoldering wish" is so dramatic! In the begining, it sounds a lot like spring time, and forest fires and other passionate images.

Great job!

Keep writing!

May I have an *actual* review, please?

Hm. We shall see what I can do here.

Sunlight treads
on midnight blue paths

"Midnight blue paths" sets the image of a sky instead of a forest. I had to reread this poem twice because the opening setting felt so different from the forest (and fire) in the rest of the poem. Because your title is "Dreams" I thought you were doing a poem on actual dreams, you do at night, not a wish or daydream.

Looking up at rolling gray,

You never really bring clouds back into the poem before hand. This line felt detached because of it, and on my second reread I deleted the line to understand the poem better. (I also did this for the second line of the first stanza)

against the black ground,

No mater how much I read this line, I always read it as "back ground" instead of "black ground." I'd find some other wording that's not so similar to "back ground" so this line can stop being a stumbling block.

no longer dreaming of providence,

You haven't really mentioned providence or dreaming before this. When I read this line I suddenly felt lost as to the direction of the poem and the imagery you were creating.

smoldering wish

to be in the sky
where the fires don't burn.

So I don't think you set up a strong enough image of destruction for these lines to work. You spend nine lines on what I perceived as a healthy forest, then only five lines to vaguely describe fire. Your second stanza, I now realize, was describing the destruction, but the imagery used I perceived as a forest after the winter thaw (black earth, yellow grass, gray clouds), but because you're giving the effect before the cause there's a disconnect.

All in all, I found this weak. The imagery was disjointed, and the poem needed analysis in order to get any sort of message to it. You seem to be going for some sort of depth with wanting to live in the sky and avoid a forest fire, but the mentions of fire and destruction were so vague I could hardly get it. The mention of dreams is also so quiet (only two disjointed lines in the poem, when that seems to be your whole point of the poem) that I wondered why you put it in.

Hope this helps.

~Rosey

Hey
Well, first of all, I really loved your poem, although I will admit that I only
liked it the third time I read it....I agree with Rosey on something (although not
everything, I liked the ending lines!) I think you need to decide whether it was dark
or light, some of the lines break up the imagery...i struggle to imagine sunlight
on dark paths...although maybe you meant the fire?
Ok, I'm just going to put what I don't (or do) like in brackets and I'm sorry if I get something wrong or miss the point or whatever...

Sunlight treads (I love the immediate image)
on midnight blue paths (sorry but i dont like this!)
to new leaves of green, (imagery )
to barks of brown
and animals of shade. (umm...its probably great but the darkness thing got me again..)
Looking up at rolling gray, (darkness)
against the black ground, (I actually liked, weirdly to me it didn't make the image dark, just the burnt ground)
running on the crunching gold of last year, (crunching?)
no longer dreaming of providence, (I loved this line...dunno y it made me sad)
awake in the bellows of smoke.

Racing orange and
fluttering heat, ( beautiful )
ashes of dreams and beds of coals,
a bright white and smoldering wish

to be in the sky
where the fires don't burn. (as ive said, i love it, it ties it together.)

anyway, hope it helps a little bit...I really liked your poem!
xoxo
T

Ed! So sorry for not doing this earlier.

Sunlight treads
on midnight blue paths
to new leaves of green,
to barks of brown
and animals of shade.

The description is nice. Just that, though -- nice. It looks good, but the opening line isn't very strong, and I personally like it when a first line is sort of unexpected and unique, and hooks me from the very start. The repetition of the "of" structure on the last three lines makes the stanza sound robotic as a whole, and it's also not very extraordinary to read about green leaves and brown bark. Be shrewd!

The second stanza is better. I like "crunching gold of last year" and the last line.

Racing orange and
fluttering heat,
ashes of dreams and beds of coals,
a bright white and smoldering wish

You have to be careful when describing something, so that it's not always "[adjective] [noun]", like "fluttering heat". It's easy not to notice when writing, but when you read it, it has a feeling of repetition. I'm not saying it's wrong to describe like this, because it's definitely easy, but there are also other ways. And the same thing applies to the "something of something". Just pay attention to where you place them, and you should be good.

The ending is quite nice, I like it.

So, I hope I could help you at all, and see you around!


Demeter
x

I'm pretty useless at critiquing poetry, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I don't really understand what you're trying to accomplish with this poem. It just reads like a mash of colors and vague emotions, but I never get a cohesive sense of what's going on, or even just a unified feeling, at the very least. Everything's gone up in smoke? Dreaming of heaven? I get a sense that something's definitely gone to pot, but that's about it. You don't have to have an identified narrator, per se, but a guide would be helpful, because right now it just reads like a set of disjointed, incomplete sentences without an actor behind the actions.

You certainly did do a good job here. I do not know if you meant to play on the abstract idea of poetry, but if you were you pulled it off. I gathered several meanings from this poem and I like that. With several interpretations many more people are attracted to poems such as these, and it also helps that it a shorter poem. I liked this poem a lot and hope you keep writing like this. The style of short and abstract play of strength of the mind and people's interpretations of reality. I love that you challenge that in this poem.