Young Writers Society

edited

I wouldn't have known this was about a ballet performance had you not put the note up above. (By the way, I love dance performances )

Overall, it sounded like it was trying to create a really extravagant, wow, furious, fast effect. For me, that was where that ended - at the word 'trying' - since I could sense what you were trying to get at, without actually feeling it. Perhaps it was an overdose of abstraction, perhaps it was the more common phrases (cliches, I'm sad to say) strung in there with the rest of the imagery - I'll just take you through bit-by-bit to explain this better:

There is a steady thrum
a tension breathes, waiting for its prey

This felt like it was trying too hard to create tension - and by stating that word, you killed the tension entirely. 'Steady thrum...tension breathes...prey' just didn't do it for me, heart-acceleration-wise. Think about completely personifying the 'tension,' instead of half-personifying it as you have done here, and throwing it in half-formed and weak.

pants behind the blood–red wings;

Just HAD to say this - I was thinking, 'what are pants (as in clothing) doing behind wings???' A bit of rearrangement needed here to avoid a miscommunication of ideas, I think. Oh, and 'blood-red'? *raises eyebrows* Surely we can do better, yes?

soon it will spring
like the mighty tiger it is.

I've been thinking lately about who and what we write poetry for. The above line is yet another example of something which should have an immediate impact, but sort of only halfway gets there. I think it's something to do with this: as writers/poets, we have this idea of the effect/meaning we're trying to create in our heads with the poem we write. We use words to create that effect/meaning, and we think it works - at least in our heads. Sometimes, I read poems written beautifully with absolutely no idea of what they mean - but I can sense the writer know what they're on about, though everyone else is clueless. Sometimes, I read poems that are about beautiful subjects that didn't quite get the emotion right, so it sounded only on the edge. This poem might fall into the latter category.

Anyway, random spiel of the day aside, I'll read on:

the sounds continue, yet
hardly constitute music,
but this is hardly dance–

I liked this. It was sarcastic and insightful at once. 'Hardly' was the phrase that interested me here.

this is harmony of disdain and attack
limbs scissor the air–
slice, grasp, carve and–
THWACK!

Firstly, the thwack-attack rhyme was inelegant, and 'thwack' felt bizarrely inappopriate for a ballet. I wanted more description of the dancing than just 'slice, grasp, carve.' Again, were it not for the A/N at the top, I wouldn't have guessed it was dancing. I think that needs to be made clearer somewhere - even the lines 'this is hardly dance' don't make me think it's dance.

Fierce they thunder

Order. This sounds more like an old-fashioned order 'adverb-noun-verb' which stops the flow.

green and black, the bodies
swivel like the crushing vortex,
only to tilt on pristine angles like slices of quivering globes–
the air is cut to pieces

Loved the imagery here. 'Crushing vortex' was a little too extreme, but the 'tilt on ...' line was great. It might have done better were it split into two lines, even. And I really felt it buiding up at 'air is cut to pieces' - now that was some line! The effect was electric there - little pretentiousness, just a simple statement.

with fury–
this is insanity flung from the heights of
elevated lightning.

Urgh. That subtle but powerful impact just got lost in the rather slam-in-the-face line 'with fury,' and 'insanity' and 'lightning' weren't particularly inventive ways of describing the madness, either.

by the end of the dance
a storm has been etched in air and watching eyes.
it is beyond comprehension.
it is wind illustrated visible.

'Wind illustrated visible' - yeah, had to read that twice before I got it. And it was a FANTASTIC image, made too unclear by the placement of words - a bit of a mouthful, not to mention the assonance to take in.

Anyway, I want to see that impact come out clear and sharp, with no pretentiousness at all, in this poem. The fury, the madness, the heat of the dance - these are not to be made cliche and associated with the common things in order to get the idea across. I'd suggest writing another poem, using the bare bones of this, and seeing what you come up with - just as an experiment. PM me if you've got further questions.

Navita was quite thorough and basically said everything I wanted to, so I'll just reinforce her suggestion to use more unique imagery and less pretentious language. For example, the "wind illustrated visible" line would work so much better if you had used "made" in place of "illustrated" (which is misused in this context).

Personally, I liked the "TWHACK!" line. I thought it really got across the violence and energy of the dance.

Heheh. Yeah, I knew this one had some duddy moments, but I couldn't put a finger on it. So thank you for pointing the problems out.

So cliches and clarity are the problem. Okay, I'll have a go at it again shortly.

See you soon.

-antimelrose

So, I see you've taken another hack at this, trying to be less obvious about the emotion you want to create and focussing a little more on the imagery and actual dancing, yes?

Here are my thoughts.

One/two/one/two

The slanted dashes annoy me. They do not disrupt the flow; they actually make the words slide up and down longways - but they displease me aesthetically. Have you played around with this? Because...I love the idea of 'one, two, one, two etc' - I just wonder if this was the right way to pull it off. Try it with full-stops, commas, horizontal dashes, no caps, all first letters capitalised...because at the moment it feels funny.

Legs arms torso pattern.

I like the haphazard nature of this. In fact, I seriously think that you should get rid of all capitals and full-stops in this poem - the dance is crazy, right? So why not make the poem likewise interesting and crazed? I have been reading some poetry that had not a jot of punctuation, and sounded marvellous. Just try it. See what happens

they express and explore the horizontal and vertical–
a company of artists
with females on stilts
and males rearranging their distance from gravity.
the chaos is constructed.

YES! Now, we have a bit more of a theatric effect without you spelling it out for us! 'Express and explore' seemed terribly officious, but they appear scandalous to me - they seem to be trying to cover up the drama of the performance and in doing so, they reveal it all the more. Kind of like emphasising the intended effect by trying to create the opposite, and failing wonderfully, you know? I loved the 'chaos is constructed' part.

then music begins to flaunt.

Urgh. Urgh, urgh. This was shallow and gaudy and...flaunting. Didn't like it at all. Too showy, too fluttery. Totally takes away from the depth and richness of the emotion already created.

so here is a calculating thrum

Nix this. Too repetitious. You've already carefully constructed the chaos, and the phrase sticks out at me; so why bother repeat the 'calculating thrum' idea? Seems like you were unsure if the first one worked or not, and I'm telling you it did. So...wave goodbye to the above line

glimmering and simmering across the theater floor;
a tension seethes, mandibles gnashing with hunger
as it lies waiting for its prey and
panting behind scarlet–wings;
soon it will erupt out of the darkling backstage jungle
like the mighty tiger it is.
the sounds continue, yet
hardly constitute music,
but this is hardly dance–

I didn't feel any of the tension here. The image of prey, gnashing mandibles, predators, panting, wings, jungle...all this forest imagery doesn't work. You've ALREADY created the madness, the tightness, the feeling like we're on the edge of something and could plunge to our deaths at any moment...so what does this serve to do? It's meant to show the whirlwind of emotion when falling through the dance, like a predator-prey chase, but the metaphor is too obvious, which is why it fails. I preferred the deceptive simplcity of the first stanza to this.

The rest is much the same. So - I liked what you had changed, and didn't like what you'd kept the same. Well done for experimentation. A last note (with regards to the changed ending, that I did not enjoy):

it is beyond comprehension.
did we mortals deserve
this torrent of wind
illustrated with sound and fury?

Seems unecessary. Wind, sound fury - you're trying to capture the main 'themes' of the dancing in one go, but it reads like something I'd expect to find in an English-essay dissection of the poem, not in the poem itself.

Anyway, once again, have a think about murdering the capitals and punctuation for fun. Just to see what happens. PM me if the result is disastrous - I would love to see it in any case.

i don't get it. But it's good.