Green

'lo Preten,

I deeply feel the crescendo of the piece. It gets bogged down a bit there in the middle, but overall, the swell of the music works together with this fear of losing something. It's almost like likening the building screech of violin strings with the itch of anxiety/fear. Intentional? I would've liked to have that connection more prevalent.

Green to me, I associated with youth/verdant beginnings. Bygone days lost, and the speaker struggles to cling on to it. Very little imagery came to mind, this could've been anything. Relationship/intimacy -- it's funny, because I didn't get so much the stage/performance thing, but I did get a twinge of the sex imagery same as Rosey XDD Haha, shows you were my mind is. The stage thing is obvious now that I look at it, but for some reason I missed it.

I actually like what you're intending with this; I like the concept so to speak. I read this poem, and I read your comments, and I think I see where there is a disconnect happening between intentions and what's on the page. The emotion and clarity is leaking out of the poem at the seams, and I'm left with a half-empty container. So, basically, your ideas are good - you have a vision, it is in good taste, it is clever/original/your own- but it needs more crafting. So, let's try to patch up those holes.

And where are those holes? Your words & diction. Don't get me wrong. Keep your style. It is yours. And you have a great vocabulary. But assemble the words better.

I like to categorize words as though they're rungs on a ladder. Your sensory words, your nouns and vivid verbs - things like rock, grass, water buffalo - these are on the bottom rungs of the ladder. These are easily accessible to us. We can walk on grass, we can envision water buffalos, we can throw rocks at them. This is what we engage with, this is how we experience the world and the poem.

Now, here's the caveat with lyrical poetry: emotions. Ideas. These are abstract words, and they're at the top of the ladder. They're lofty. Not easily accessible to us at all.

Your poem is top-heavy. There's nothing wrong with top heavy poems,but ideally, what you want to do is throw your readers a bone. They have to climb up the ladder. Give them a journey, just as you've had your own journey that prompted you to write this down. Without providing us a step to climb into the poem, we're just left in our own space squinting up at the words.

Here, I'll show you.

It is now lost, here, we're wondering what is lost - good, this keeps us reading, this pushes us forward what I shall embed in mind, now we're backtracking and going - oh, so what the speaker has lost is whatever it is that the speaker is embedding in his/her mind, though we still don't know what it is

awakening desire within all of which here we're backtracking again, O! so this thing that the speaker has lost and is being embedding in the speaker's mind, is also awakening some sort of desire, but we still don't know what it is, and now we're wondering what kind of desire this thing can awaken, and if it's awaken, does that imply that the desire's been had before, and it is now back?

I chose to leave behind; another precious memento, now, we're going forward again, I think? Because whatever all of that was up there ^ is left behind, okay, so we just step away from it. Still not sure what we're stepping away from, but whatever it is, it's something that is to be remembered. But I'm already three lines deep and I don't have any image or picture in my head or idea about what this is about.

Hey Preten,

I enjoyed this poem. It has some nice rhythms to it and I found myself carried along by a fairly smooth flow after a few lines.

However, it did take a few lines to get there. I only started to connect into the rhythm after the mind/behind rhyme. Line 2 felt rather long, likely because it started with two words I pronounce with three syllables. While I see that sets you up for "previous memento", it doesn't combine well with the rest of the line. "Within all of which" feels like a transition, something just to bank up words and get to the next part. I figure it's not, because it seems to relate to everything within the mind which you have to chose between. But it is clunky compared to the rest of the poem.

Your imagery is subtle. One of my interpretations is that the narrator is watching somebody they love on stage, but that person may or may not return their affections (hence the "am I a face in the crowd/or just a part of something loud?") and they end up leaving before the true final swell for unknown reason and all that's left is the memory of the performance (which is the memento).

I find it rather clever what you're doing, here. You start off with scattered images that slowly focus, until they build to almost an epic feel with the music and audience. And while I do find it clever I'm not sure I like it. My own personal style is unified images, because it builds a stronger picture. The poem is almost divided by halves, with the first half being more random images (a house, maybe?) then the music. Maybe try creating more of a theatre lobby feel with the first half, so it can lead to the performance? That is completely up to you, of course.

My second interpretation, and correct me if I'm wrong, this could be my tendency to read very deeply into metaphoric poems talking (why I love them), but this looks like a metaphor for sex the partner wasn't into? The line about "awaking desire" coupled with the how the poem uses music shorthand that could play well into a sex scene in a movie is what makes me think that. But, like I said, this could be my tendency to read very deeply into metaphoric poems talking. (I've read this approximately five times)

My own personal suggestion would be to tighten up the imagery. Make it less scattered at the beginning, to unify it with the rather lovely images of the second half. I enjoyed that you repeated "memento" from beginning to the end. But the imagery between "memento" and "crescendo" isn't my favourite.

The imagery I'd look at in particular is "cycling through shades", "left me blind", and "under influence". Especially the latter two. While they are a nice shorthand for how somebody can make you feel, they are: A- common (take a listen to The Cab. They have a whole song called "Intoxicated") and B- stand out the most against the musical imagery of the poem. Cycling through shades also doesn't fit very well, but it could be interpreted as something that ties into the poem.

I'd also take a look at that second line and try to make it flow a little better. You hit quite a nice flow for the rest of the poem and it's a shame that second line doesn't reflect that.

Oh. And the title. I forgot it pretty much as soon as I began reviewing. That is where you get a little too subtle.

Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions/comments.

~Rosey

Hey Preten,

I thoughts I might preempt the possible request to review (unless you're sick of my comments already! And in that cause, it kind of sucks to be you cause I'm reviewing this anyway). So. The biggest thing I get out of this is that it's about a memento. I don't know what the item is, and it probably doesn't matter but you may want to use the title for that because right now Green doesn't mean anything to us. You don't give us anything in the poem which suggests the green, unless it is a reference to jealousy, but I feel lit might be. You have some strong musical imagery here and I can't tell you if it's used correctly cause I don't know enough about music.

I can tell you that it isn't being used effectively here. Nothing is being used particularly effectively here. We have the imagery, we have some description, now we need some finesse. You're doing a weird sort of rhyme thing that is just throwing off what's going on in the poem, it's very distracting because it isn't consistent, or in a pattern. It doesn't have to be, in the end, but right now it is very distracting for me. So I'd lose those, or at least incorporate them in a less obvious manner.

Now, please, utilise that music script! You have the base in the words and the feel but we're being dragged down because they don't understand why they're being used. What purpose do they serve and why here and now? Your poem isn't musically inclined, you're using the imagery without firmly anchoring it to the poem. So anchor this, use these wonderful concepts on their own, or sparingly with others, so that we can grow to know and love your narrator.

In addition to this, while it is no means mandatory, you might consider losing the capital at the beginning of each line. Your lack of full punctuation compounds the problem until everyone is sufficiently confused.I have difficultly moving from one line to the next because the capitals are definitive things and block the way, and I give mention to a smaller understand of how things should be read because the punctuation isn't sufficient. They seem like small things, but they help the overall understanding of your poem.

This is better than you last, but it is still stilted and confusing. I look forward to your continual improvements. You know the drill, hit me up with questions, queries or just to chat.

~Pen