Hardly any imagination

Hi there, Buranko!

My first impressions of this poem were that it has this dream-like atmosphere that gets progressively more absurd the longer the addressee goes on imagining things. One line that stood out to me as absurd in this context was “the pain of eating/ Grass that shines under the sun”, I suppose because of the sun in this poem seeming to bring forth positive emotions, hence ‘pain’ would seem to be a contradiction.

The speaker’s tone seems to be both authoritative and ironic. Authoritative, because they guide what the addressee is looking at and what the reader is meant to interpret from that, almost. But also ironic, because they seem to be satirising the very content of the imagined world they are asking the addressee to see.

Subject, Themes, Narrative

Although throughout the poem, the ‘imagined world’ is definitely the main subject, it is depicted differently at the beginning than it is at the end. At first, it almost seems to be depicted as a utopia, where the repetition just makes the atmosphere seem innocent and child-like. The following lines especially would seem natural in a children’s book, I think:

The sun shines on the grass and is good friends with the wind
The wind is a good friend of the sun and
Cools the grass which shines under the sun.

Then as the repetition becomes increasingly absurd, so does the idea of this ‘imagined world. By the end of the poem, there is a ‘turn’ at “And now return to your true being” where the speaker concludes that the real world is better than the imagined one.

Language and Imagery

Overall, I thought the word choice focused on simple descriptions centred around the natural world. The sun, the grass and the wind are personified, but don’t seem to ‘do’ anything other than shine and be ‘friends’ with each other, reflecting this sort of unrealistic, idyllic state of the imagined world.

Because imagining isn't a true being.

I thought the word choice in this last line was a bit odd. Is it the addressee who is the ‘being’ spoken of here or is it the imagined world itself? Or is it another stylistic choice to make everything seem a little fragmented and dream-like?

The cow in the far distance will
Let out a painful cry
A cry which is filled with pain
And carries the pain of eating
Grass that shines under the sun.

This stanza tells me that this world doesn’t quite make logical sense and so doesn’t feel real. For instance, why is it painful for a cow to eat lush grass? At the same time it sort of disturbs me, because the image of the “painful cry” does come across as genuine, and the repetition of the word “pain” seems to carry some mood of anguish. It’s quite an interesting effect.

Structure and Sound

A big feature of this poem is the instances of redundancy, for example:

See that cow in the far distance
The cow that is at a far distance
The one that is really far from you and
Eats the grass which shone under the sun

Here, the ‘meaning’ of each of the first three lines is almost exactly the same, with the most being added just one component like line 3, where it is emphasised that the cow is “really” far and not just average far. Furthermore, the last line is repeated meaning-wise in a stanza later on. For most of the poem, I think it didn’t bother me too much, because I got the meaning and thought it was an interesting way to depict this theme. I definitely am guilty of ‘skimming’ over some of the lines at first though, almost without realising I had glanced over them too quickly because of the nature of the repetition.

I thought the final stanza felt a bit anticlimactic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the topic of ‘returning’, away from the dream world, and I could see the anticlimax working as a persuasive technique to hammer in the fact that ‘hey, it may be anticlimactic, but at least it’s real’. I just wonder if it would have been interesting to remove that redundancy/ repetitive structure at the end to contrast the ‘real world’ with the imagined one as the first stanza seems to do.

Another structural device I thought was interesting was the ‘jumping’ from one image to another unrelated image:

Nevermind, forget about the cow in the far distance.
Focus on this tree that is old
This tree is old, proof of his wild wisdom
His wisdom is both wild and old
Just like this old tree.

By saying “Nevermind” the speaker seems to acknowledge that this has nothing to do with the cow and they’re just hopping on to something new, kind of like how the mind drifts in a daydream. Then of course the ‘story’ about the tree and his “wild wisdom” seems to come out of nowhere, and it’s not explained how exactly the wisdom is wild and old at the same time, contributing to the absurd atmosphere and the message.

That's all


Hopefully you found these comments helpful - and keep writing!

Cheers,
-Lim

Hi! I'm here for a quick review.

First, I really like the simplicity. It gives a message at the end but is still so simple to read and understand. The flow is good, and the repetitions of some parts were what really attracted me. Like for example,

For a few seconds let
Your imagination run wild
You will find yourself in a grassy field
Filled with grass shining under the sun
The sun shines on the grass and is good friends with the wind
The wind is a good friend of the sun and
Cools the grass which shines under the sun.

Here you've repeated that the sun shines on the grass, and that the sun and wind are good friends.

See that cow in the far distance
The cow that is at a far distance
The one that is really far from you and
Eats the grass which shone under the sun

And here, you've repeated that the cow is far away. When you analyse it carefully it sounds childish, but when read it sounds cool.

The whole poem has that classic feel in its language, which I really liked.
It's also great how you first went inside yourself, found the scenery, observed it, then came back in. It completes the loop.

And now, let me tell you a few things you might consider changing. It isn't much, your poem's good!

The cow in the far distance will
Let out a painful cry
A cry which is filled with pain
And carries the pain of eating
Grass that shines under the sun.

In this stanza, I didn't exactly understand why the cow is crying. How is eating the grass painful to it? Maybe a little more clarification would help.

And in this line:

Eats the grass which shone under the sun

I think you meant 'shines under the sun', as shone is in the past tense whereas you speak in the present.

So that's all I have to tell about this poem: It's great!

Keep Writing!