Young Writers Society

I really enjoy the concept behind the last poem. I find the second stanza much more exciting than the first, to the point where I feel like the first part may need some new wording in some areas to help lead people into the amazing second one. Maybe just several lines should be rooted out and reworded, perhaps some rearrangement. I find these ones good and sustainable:

Thistle-whisperers are wrapped up tight in robes of periwinkle...
but they get ripped up and dirt falls in speckles from their roots....
it's not the dancers that are killed, but the waltzes that spawned them...

The rest of the imagery falls short and the words just aren't strong enough, or they seem maybe too obvious: "winging in blurs of aqua and rose and dirty, impure emeralds". This line is awkward, and it seems too much at this point and not necessary to be calling them "impure emeralds" at all.

But the second stanza... finalizing the concept... I adore it! I think the dialogue is just perfect, and the way it's formatted lets it trail out wonderfully. Obviously the first stanza is setting up the scenario for this bewilderment -- maybe make it even shorter -- because the last part is just that amazing, and we need only little set up to it.

I wrote a poem on a banana yesterday. I will upload the pictures as soon as I can.

April 9th, 2010;

sometimes, I wish I had a soul

I never meant to kiss her.
But in the way she ate her cereal, I
saw her lips spread and
in spite of her attempts,
a spring of milkweed tumbleweeded

over her chin and landed face down.
So in the space it left, I saw
the auburn her hair had once been
and the way her lips had deflated
like the way my wife's hand once collapsed
when I drew mine out of hers.
And I saw her liver spots disappear

and gather to make her brown eyes richer.
Then I kissed her.

April 10th, 2010

In Notes of New Grass and Pale Blue Afternoons

Walking with kids made me realize in a moment,
how imperative it is that we find big rocks covered with dried dirt
and how imperative it is that there are big rocks enough for all.
The bigger the rock, the louder we will fight for it,
the more hands will grab and cross and twist, and the sadder we will look.

Well, what can we do with these stones, fit for a Stonehenge
that would get toppled over by the pick-up trucks hurtling
dust behind them on the road? The ditch calls to us
and we are angry so we stone it, flinging our precious burdens
into it, not knowing the meaning of a burden
as we wipe dirt on our pants, more gray than brown.

The summer peeks out from under the next harvest,
But wriggles away from our fingers like the potato bugs and millipedes.
And we throw wish after wish into the water:
the bigger the splash, the louder we will squeal
as the water approaches us with outstretched fingers,
mouth gaping and rippling with despair. But it will retreat
when it realizes that we are only small, so much smaller
than the trees with branches still bare and white
as our legs are bare and still white, because the sun has slept in.

“I wish my grandma will come down from heaven
and be with my grandpa, so she can weed the garden again
and I won’t have to help mom.”
“I wish my grandma will go back to vacation.”
“I wanted that rock! That one is mine!”
If we throw the rocks hard enough, if we make a splash big enough—
it’s only if we’re not skilled enough that our wishes don’t come true.
It’s our fault if tomorrow we wake up and the guest room is still cold.

We want to peel off our sweatshirts and cover the windows
so it keeps in the heat, but the sky is not cooperating and the clouds
cast shadows down so that some of the field is dark and some is light.
When the clouds chase us we run to where the light is,
and if a rock is halfway between the cold and warm, we’ll leave it,
no matter how big it is, because we can still make wishes on logs.

We feed the worms from the garden to the chickens and leave the weeds
on the side of the road to grow a new obstacle for next year, because
if the rock lands in the mud and not the water, it’s still only our fault,
but we can walk again tomorrow and try to break the sky open one more time.

HANNARRR.

April 9th, 2010;

Well, I just like this one, simple as that. The first line is amazing, and the last line is too, appropriately, and it sandwiches a content I enjoy. =D

April 10th, 2010

This poem starts off so strong; the coupling of innocence and dark concepts is always such an interesting one, and you use this amazing tone for it.

The summer peeks out from under the next harvest,
But wriggles away from our fingers like the potato bugs and millipedes.
And we throw wish after wish into the water:
the bigger the splash, the louder we will squeal
as the water approaches us with outstretched fingers,
mouth gaping and rippling with despair. But it will retreat
when it realizes that we are only small, so much smaller
than the trees with branches still bare and white
as our legs are bare and still white, because the sun has slept in.

“I wish my grandma will come down from heaven
and be with my grandpa, so she can weed the garden again
and I won’t have to help mom.”
“I wish my grandma will go back to vacation.”
“I wanted that rock! That one is mine!”
If we throw the rocks hard enough, if we make a splash big enough—
it’s only if we’re not skilled enough that our wishes don’t come true.
It’s our fault if tomorrow we wake up and the guest room is still cold.

I think this should be one stanza -- the first stanza felt almost like we were suddenly going somewhere else with the poem with the imagery, something more like reality and substantial, but then we come back to the innocence-ignorance of this dialogue. I kinda want the imagery to be gone, so we can stay in the same sort of tract of thoughts, because it really is delightful.

The ending is odd -- "try to break the sky open one more time" -- I thought they were dealing with the ground and water the entire time? Anyway, I think this poem is sweet and dark and wonderful, and though it needs to be tucked in at some points, and the ending I find strange, I think the concept is such a good one. Hannah, you amazing woman you! Your poems are so hard to critique. T_T The tone you write with is always so frank and sincere, I love it.

<3 Clo

Clo has said it perfectly - your poems ARE hard to critique, because you've written them so thoughtfully. I feel like I'd simply be repeating myself if I said I enjoyed them, so I'd better try harder than that...

April 9th: brilliant opening lines: 'sometimes I wish I had a soul/I never meant to kiss her' - I don't know why; I'm just really attached here The rest of it I read with 'morbid fascination' - the idea of her eating cereal, of all things (simple, yes, but also really...eerie). I did not like having to reread the last line of that, just to understand what you meant by 'milkweed tumbleweeded' - an interesting image, but I felt it out-of-place, and the repetition of 'weed' was, well, glaringly obvious, but the effect got lost when I got confused. I kind of liked and didn't like the next stanza so much - it's really, really weird, but also quite endearing, if that makes sense. I would not call this poem a favourite, but I would certainly say it had a sharp impact, a double impact, which made it so frighteningly fascinating.

April 10th: I want to quote the whole poem here to say how much I enjoyed it!!!

Favourite lines:

Walking with kids made me realize in a moment,
how imperative it is that we find big rocks covered with dried dirt
and how imperative it is that there are big rocks enough for all.

This is fresh and new. Something we have not thought about before. So it strikes us.

And we throw wish after wish into the water:
the bigger the splash, the louder we will squeal
as the water approaches us with outstretched fingers,
mouth gaping and rippling with despair.

The bolded line was my favourite, and the rest of it just made it more complete.

trees with branches still bare and white
as our legs are bare and still white, because the sun has slept in.

I love the idea behind this, but I think you should rephrase it differently so that the 'bare and white' part isn't such an obvious simile. It disrupts the flow of smooth figures of speech you have used before, 'tucked in' (to use Clo's marvellous description).

We want to peel off our sweatshirts and cover the windows
so it keeps in the heat, but the sky is not cooperating and the clouds
cast shadows down so that some of the field is dark and some is light.
When the clouds chase us we run to where the light is,

How do you DO it? These are such simple words and images, but so startling, all the same!

I think a bit more of a 'bang' might be in order for the finish - it sort of just leaves us with that quiet resolution, almost cheated of something new and cheeky, like the rest of the poem seems to have been.

I was not a big fan of the second and fourth stanzas - they were 'dry' in the sense that there was not much by way of 'different' imagery there; it seemed to me that each of the other stanzas had one central image it clung to, while these seemed like they were simply 'filling in.' So - have a think about these in the context of the poem as a whole.

Ah. And I must echo Navita. She, with her usual characteristic clarity of language, pointed out what I like about these NaPo poems:

How do you DO it? These are such simple words and images, but so startling, all the same!

I also agree with Navita about the second and fourth stanzas...everything else was wonderful -- but 2 and 4 were particularly dry and twiggy.

I like how you opened the poem, and I also love your titles. They're poems in themselves. Of course, any mention or description of an afternoon in a poem, particularly a sunday afternoon strike particular chords in me, which I'm sure you know.

The summer peeks out from under the next harvest,
But wriggles away from our fingers like the potato bugs and millipedes

Lovely. Although, since the insects weren't mentioned before this, I'd nix the "the".

“I wish my grandma will come down from heaven
and be with my grandpa, so she can weed the garden again
and I won’t have to help mom.”
“I wish my grandma will go back to vacation.”
“I wanted that rock! That one is mine!”
If we throw the rocks hard enough, if we make a splash big enough—
it’s only if we’re not skilled enough that our wishes don’t come true.
It’s our fault if tomorrow we wake up and the guest room is still cold.

Like I said, this stanza is meh. And it doesn't do much for me because I've never really been a big fan of in-poem dialogue. It's very difficult to do, in my opinion, and it is done well very rarely. I also think the moral of the story is a little too heavy-handed here.

We feed the worms from the garden to the chickens

I love that you mentioned this. Because I used to do this all the time, and it brought an element of nostalgia to the table that sort of linked the final stanza with the rest of the poem.

Anyway, great topic. It seemed very natural.

-Kylan

April 11th, 2010;

in love with a hundred wandering legs

and when you pass me and have taken all my clothes,
i will stand here still, shivering and waiting for him to return.
i will watch my blouse serve as your beacon-flag,
something white and broken to call in the broken and white
from where he wanders. the dark waves stretch away from us all,
too-long trains to raven dresses and your raven tresses too short
to feel even if his hand were to caress the air by your cheek.
not that you would know, behind your safety-pin bastions.

i will stretch out my arms and i will reach them in an arc around him,
so that he can do nothing but walk into my apricot stripes
and i can hold him close to my blossoming, heaving chest
and press his eyes to the strawberry circles that hang on my cheeks.
he will feel his way along my waist and
to my hips he will press his antennae.
they will twitch like dying mice and i will almost hear
their squeals in my mind as if a door, somewhere, has been opened.

he will turn his legs, one by one, and wriggle out and down my back.
maybe he will send a siren into the night, calling you to him,
and you will sit and talk on his hind legs for hours,
and he will cradle you and run you the length of his segments,
and i will wonder if he has taken himself into your arms yet
or if you are using my blue skirt to tie him up into a ball
and take him behind the silver.

HANNAH I LOVE YOUR POETRY IT MAKES ME GO WOOOOO.

*arrested by Caps Lock police*

HAAAALP.