Banana Bread Pudding

So, Persephoneia was talking about Banana Bread Pudding and here goes another experiment! ^^

~~~


The soft yellow light
that she brings
(I smile - or do I?)
ripple and scatter.
Her fingers bleed,
a murky red rage,
cloaked beneath the smile -
a facade.
White swirls embrace
yolk-like eyes;
the fingers work
to cover the sunshine.
Her cover - she peels
letting it fall in
infusing it into the batter.
I see the scents
hastily clinging
between her fingers.
I feel them hover around me,
in yellow, cream and black.
I long to smell all that she does.

For days she bakes,
and I watch for a change.

~~

Lava wrote:ripple and scatter.

I'm not sure if this is in reference to yourself or the light, or if it's just a general observation. "Nice weather out. Ripple and scatter."
If it's yourself, I think it should be "rippling and scattering."
If it's the light, "ripples and scatters."
If it has nothing to do with either of them it's in the right tense but I don't understand its purpose.

Lava wrote:Her cover - she peels
letting it fall in
infusing it into the batter.

This was beautiful and disturbing at once. Maybe it's because I just take all of this personification too literally, but I have myself convinced that this is a person and a bannana all at once, and this is some sort of cannibalistic ritual that I'm watching-- a very vouyeristic experience.
So I loved it, you made something as innocuous as bannana bread really disturbing to me. I doubt that I'll ever recover from this poem.

This is fascinating. I like it because it's quirky and different. You're not going off on some crazy grand theme (I mean, poems that do that are great, but variety from that's even better)--you're just talking about baking... while personifying a banana. Uniqueness, good use of imagery, the use of the vaguely unsettling--all excellent elements that you've clearly mastered.

On a technical level, the poem felt like you were trying for a certain rhythm, but not quite landing it. I'd go one of two directions--either divorce the poem from a set rhythm entirely, making it clear that that's what you're doing, or go through and rework the longer lines, making them shorter. If you opt for that route, maybe try reading each line out loud and tapping when you read a stressed syllable.

But overall I thought it was really fantastic. It intrigued me and left me wanting more. Great job!

Hi Lava,

I really enjoyed this. The title caught my attention. The first four lines were really beautiful and endearing. I'm not sure about "bleed" and "red" - maybe too much?

I love "White swirls embrace
yolk-like eyes;
the fingers work
to cover the sunshine."

I also really loved:

"I see the scents
hastily clinging
between her fingers.
I feel them hover around me,
in yellow, cream and black.
I long to smell all that she does."

Beautiful imagery, great use of language, it flows perfectly.

An absolute pleasure.

Jas

Hello Lava,

The imagery in this is really good in this and you have turned quite a plain thing into a really descriptive interesting poem that is really enjoyable for the reader. I love the short, simple yet amazingly descriptive sentences that make up all of the poem. I have to say I really do agree with CatSamuelson

I like it because it's quirky and different.

It was unique and different to all the other kind of poems that you normally read on this site. Simply because of the interesting choice of subject matter. Now I have a few things that in my opinion could be improved.

Firstly although the lines were all about the same length you still need to split this into stanzas so that it flows better and the presentation is better. By doing this you would also give this poem a much better flow than it currently has. Seeing as you have an odd number of lines it would probably quite difficult to organize this so you might have to have a different number of lines in the last stanza of the poem depending on how many leftover lines you have. You could have 3 stanzas with 8 lines and then 1 leftover stanza of 7 lines, just a suggestion.

ripple and scatter.

I agree with empressoftheuniverse on this part as well, it is quite a confusing line and it is difficult to work out if you are referring to the person or the light, I think you need to define this line a little more clearly. Perhaps you could add another line in to complete this phrase, this would also round up the number of lines from 23 to 24 and then you could have 4 stanzas with 8 lines, so that would help improve tow aspects of the poem.

Also there isn't much punctuation at the end of every line, I think you need to put more commas at the end of every line so that it doesn't look like you have accidentally left out the punctuation, the actual grammar is really good though an everything has been used correctly. You have also used lots of different types of punctuation in this commas, full stops, question marks, semi colons and periods which is all really good.

Overall this was a really awesome poem that I fully enjoyed reading. I love the short lines that still manage to describe everything even better than long lines that turn can turn a poem into something tedious that you have to read. You have really managed to write this so beautifully, you turned it into an incredibly powerful piece of writing that truly captured me. If you ever want another review than by all means PM me and I will get right on it as soon as possible.

From DreamingForever

LAVATAR. <3

So this is where I give my I'm-not-a-poet-but-I'm-going-to-review-this-anyway-'cause-you-asked-for-it spiel.

Hm. Consider that done!

I loved this poem. xD A lot. You remind me of some of the poems I did in high school! (Only you're way better, of course.) Writing poems about simple subjects like this but making it sound like so much more. Needless to say, I approve.

There were a couple quirky areas I found, so I shall, like. Go through the entire thing. Since it's not long. Fragment Sentences. are. win.

The soft yellow light
that she brings
(I smile - or do I?)
ripple and scatter.

This was brought up already, and you probably figured out what was wrong with it. BUt, you know. You asked for it. Grammatically speaking, the sentence should read as "The soft yellow light that she brings ... ripples and scatters."

That aside, prettyful intro! Awesome imagery. I haven't said that yet, but you have such pretty imagery in this poem. :]

Her fingers bleed,
a murky red rage,
cloaked beneath the smile -
a facade.

The bleeding red bit actually lost me. I can't figure out where it comes into play with banana bread pudding, let alone any sort of metaphor for the poem. Could just be me though!

White swirls embrace
yolk-like eyes;
the fingers work
to cover the sunshine.

I love the sunshine bit! It ties into the light bit at the beginning.

Her cover - she peels
letting it fall in
infusing it into the batter.
I see the scents
hastily clinging
between her fingers.

The "I see the scents" bit was a bit odd to me. Not sure what others thought.

I feel them hover around me,
in yellow, cream and black.
I long to smell all that she does.

That last line I was bouncing back and forth on. xD It longs to smell itself? Yet it's a good line too. *flail*

For days she bakes,
and I watch for a change.

Grammatically, this damaged my brain a bit. I couldn't make sense of the sentence, so I was lost. xD But the final reference to baking is awesome. Basically, that really last line I'm unsure of. Not sure if I just missed something in the rest of the poem. Maybe it's waiting for a change in recipe? I'm also assuming the pudding is the speaker here, not a bowl or anything.

It was a cute little diddy though! What a fun subject to write on. I can see you're improving on this whole dabbling in poetry thing. Your imagery is really prettyful. <3

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!

I don't really know alot about poetry, but the imagery was really vivid in this and the rhymth make sit really easy and enjoyable to read . . . made me feel like pudding

I really liked this! Although some of the personification was a little bit disturbing... that could probably be because I take things literally while I'm reading it, and then go back and see the true meaning Just something I need to work on! As for the poem itself and grammatical points, there was only one. When you said

"ripple and scatter"

I didn't quite know what you were trying to say. Maybe you should rephrase that one part so people won't become confused Other than that, this is really good! Keep writing! BRAVO