And Words Vanish

Alright, this is an example of "Imagery" Poetry, which is supposed to creative images in your head... if anbody can seriously DEFINE imagery poetry and help me with this, it's finally something that I'm writing for school, and it's much appreciated. It' snot really formatted yet, but I need words and such, if somebody could grammatically help me that would be nice, the entire poem, and then I'd give them 100 points... but I need this critiqued good in a week, and I'll continusoulsy fix it at school.

Basically the poem is how words and phrases are becoming so cliche, it's practicully dead.

And Words Vanished
Elizabeth Mathers
May 1, 2006


Poets are dead...

Words get lost in mazes of
purple-orange sunsets at the beach
and the sandy sea shelled tides
wash away the footprints of the phrases

And the chorus of angels whisper no more
their voices stolen, silence golden
Feathers become thin and dry; flightless
as one syllable words take over the lands

Whispering hills gather around the grass
as it is woven by the midnight fireflies
the moon is risen high about the silky clouds
As the stars die down as sentences become undone

There's an eternity to sit in a sobbing cave, listening
as the echoes steal the words that I made
and who can stand this silence any longer?
To bellow to the openness and have it return is a sin
and then the words just vanish
into the wry world

Well, first of all, this was very good. I don't know if it was very YOU though - as I know you, this sounded a bit forced from your personality. Everything was related and you tend to be random and, basically, it just seemed like it was written by someone else, not you. =/

Moving on: imagery poetry. My first tip to you is to dwindle on the images...what makes them so special, for instance. Then, increase your vocabulary. Lastly, you also have to learn to cut down - but that's for people who are far too enrapt in the beauty of language and go on poetic rants, not the likes of you. =]

It was pretty good, but as xanthan said, some of the imagery is not really that moving or interesting or useful or whatever. Basically, theres a lot of imagery, but none of it is exellent. Its good, i'll give you that.

I loved the idea of the poem, and you expressed it fairly well.

I'll try and break it down into each image:

Beach: this could use a lot better description. When reading it i thought it lacked interesting verbs. More detailed (not necessarily longer, but better word choice) descriptions would be nice.

Angels: I liked this a lot, except the last line. "as one syllable words take over the lands " just seems to straightforward/blunt compared to the rest of the poem. I would definitely change it. When reading this I thought that the explanation of the feathers changing could improve as well. I'm not really sure how...

the Hill: The first two lines irritated me. I'll quote them "Whispering hills gather around the grass as it is woven by the midnight fireflies." Mainly because it just doesn't make sense at all. I understand its for poetic imagery impact, but hills just don't "gather" around grass, and grass isn't "woven by the midnight fireflies." I guess I just can't stand when imagery doesn't make sense if you read it literally.

Cave: I liked this one a lot. Probably the best paragraph overall in my opinon. Not much to say here.

Overall: lots of good stuff in this. My favorites:
"tides wash away the footprints of the phrases"
" and the chorus of angels whisper no more their voices stolen, silence golden"
"There's an eternity to sit in a sobbing cave"

Low points:
"as one syllable words take over the lands" (to blatant, not poetic enough.)

"As the stars die down as sentences become undone" (the second "as" really throws it off,)

"purple-orange sunsets at the beach and the sandy sea shelled tides" (this is mediocre description. This is an imagery poem, so make the descriptions magnificant and stick in the readers mind. Use a thesaurus to find good descriptive words that don't take away the meaning.)

"Whispering hills gather around the grass as it is woven by the midnight fireflies" (I already explained my reasons for this. Personally, I just don't like it. sorry.)

I am being kinda brutal with this critique. Probably cause I have a bunch of homework left to do and its already 8:43. At least its 8:43 pm, not 8:43 am. Thats happened to me before. Trust me you don't want that to happen to you. Ever.

Hope this helped....