Published April 21, 2009
The Tempest
Into the arid and empty spaces of my heart you came,
and my life was like a watered garden.
Let us walk great beaches of water and sand
Simply together, hand in hand.
Let us lay together in swaying fields of grass,
Watching aged stars shine and glimmer like glass.
-----
Oh, but hope be the drink of mad men!
A storm gathers above.
the water is cool beneath our feet.
Let me speak truth before this storm’s flood,
My life is lost—glass shards to the mud.
-----
The storm shatters into a thousand pieces of falling glass.
I cannot avoid them.
They’re beautiful though…like a thousand falling stars.
And I understand now. Take my hand.
Let us fear no ebbing world.
No stormy retribution nor murky death.
Together we’ll sink beneath the writhing waves of the ocean,
already lost to this life in an angelic motion.
---------------------------------------------
To one far away, yet close in mind and heart.
Remnants echo in the rain and their hollow forms betray them.
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141,380 Literary Works • 674,384 Reviews
very well done. I especially like your reference to T.S. Elliot in the first stanza. The nature imagery truly gives me a visual and I can see the action taking place. Though I do think you started to lose the rhyme scheme towards the end, it is still a beautifully written piece.
Brilliant once again. I see you loved those lines as well and so do the others.
"Into the arid..."
You're quite epic, honestly. The wording is beautiful. This is almost heartbreaking to read. Your words are vivid, the emotions are powerful.
Absolutely and breathtakingly lovely.
--Knightly
I loved it, and your right: it is very prufrock-esque... (lovesong is possibly my favourite poem
Wonderful imagery, and even the way it is written adds to the idea of a sort of melancholic storm: the speed of the lines and the like. Sometimes it is not what is said, but how it is said, and you nailed both in this.
A few things: The rhyme in the opening lines I didn't like, it made them too different from the rest of the poem, I would get rid of the rhyme altogether to get rid of this confliction.
And comparing the rain to shards of glass doesn't work for me, because you use glass three times in the piece already, using it here jarred me a bit. And I think you should change up the following line too: I think it would be better without both the rhyme and the repition of thousand and falling.
And the rhyme of motion and ocean is too forced I think, it need to be read fast to work, but you can't do that with this poem, so I think delete all rhyme.
And a wonderful finish!!! No possible criticism there
Overall... great.. starred
Brendan
Hiya Moon!
So, to break this down into stanzas/ideas. (This is more for my own understanding then anything)
I like this stanza. It sets up the whole theme and metaphor usage for the poem.
These two lines are beginning to set up a rhyme scheme you don't exactly follow through on, just with your line-breaks the way they are throughout the poem. I would look at your stanza/rhyme organization to make sure you have a nice consistent pattern.
I love lines one and two, but line three and four (the one after the line-break) seem to be in the wrong order. That's my opinion and you might be doing that for a reason, but the mention of glass before finding out where it comes from jars me.
"Though" in this stanza is bugging me a bit. I realize that it's implying the shards should be dangerous, but I find the line before that implies the same thing.
The last couplet here is a bit jarring, since we're no longer used to rhymed stanzas.
Other then that, I found this cluster of stanzas, without the line right above it (see my previous nit-pick) is absolutely beautiful. I love the message, meaning and structure. Very beautifully done (if they were outside the poem they'd be a poem on their own, almost. Nice work!).
Hmm, I don't feel you've emphasized the last line in the poem a lot. I'd add in a stanza or two about the "hollow forms" to make the meaning a bit clearer. (Without your hint this might have gone right over my head!) With a touch more emphasis, that last line would stand out even more.
Flow: The rhyme here was a bit off. There isn't really a pattern to follow, which I consider key to poetry. If you're going to rhyme stanzas, be sure you're consistent. ^_^
When it comes to line-length, though, you do a good job. Nothing is too jarring here. That I enjoyed.
Imagery: You've got very good imagery here, both by what you describe and what is implied. You use single words to describe things, and the adjectives & adverbs chosen do a good job of implying things. Nice work!
Message: I'm wondering how I would have done without the hint. I think I would have done alright, but the message is still very hidden. I don't mind that so much, but I found the idea of people being shells under-emphasized, which doesn't help me understanding things. I find if you'd put more on that idea in (I find people as shells being such a juicy theme I'd love to see more on it) I find your poem would be a bit less... cryptic? Although I do like the code-like nature, I find it could be toned back just a little.
Overall- This was a very meaty poem to read! I loved the cryptic nature of it, and the different ideas and ideals your presented. Absolutely stunning!
Questions? Send a PM my way.
~Rosey
Hi Papermoon! June here, and I'm going to review this poem for you, offering some suggestions and stuff you might be able to use to improve this (not that it's not great as it is). Let's begin!
• First line! - I think that this "and" you have here can be replaced with a comma! It will take away one syllable of this poem (unless you want that syllable!). It would boostt he flow of this, making it smoother, more easy to read. But! That's just a suggestion, dear. The choice is yours.
• Second line! - I don't like the usage of "and" here. I think that it's kind of a "flat" word to use here for two reasons:
- The lesser reason being that people will disagree with the usage of "and" for beginning a line, especially when it is barely connecting an idea brought up in the previous line.
- I think you should use a verb here, possibly one that would alter this line a bit to read a bit more like: "making my life like a watered garden". (Of course I don't mean use that line exactly) But, if you can understand what I am saying here, this can be worded a lot more creatively, dearie.
• One thing that I want you to pay attention to here is your line length. You have a wonderful rhyme scheme throughout this poem, dear, and the only thing that throws it off is the uneven-ness of the lines. It's all about syllables here, (because a rhymed poem relies on rhythm) and you want your line length to match. For instance, you don't want a line that says:
"Over the hills," followed by a line that says:
"The grass is more green than it is over here." You want it to be consistent, and even throughout dearie.
Let's move on
-----
I really enjoy the formatting that you have used here. I really like this bit here as well-- but I'm not so sure I like the usage of "glass shards". I understand that's used in the figurative sense, but, I'm just not sure if "to" should be "in" or if some other things can be reworked here, dear.
I loved the imagery you used in this poem. It was clean and effective, and the formatting of this added a wonderful touch.
I would advise you to stick with simplicity in this poem. Try not to join so much with conjunctions such as "and". It's good, but it's not great, and if you eliminate some of them, you can make this fantastic.
You have a beautiful poem here, Paper. Very, very enjoyable. Keep up the awesome work.
PM me if you need anything, or if I were unclear.
I adore the beginning of this; it really is a lovely image. The rest gets a bit repetitive in places (I think your'e reusing words deliberately, though, so that's OK), and I found that the disjointed rhyme scheme made it difficult to read - it seemed to screw witht the flow and emphases so that I had to really concentrate to understand what the poet was talking about.
The imagery is gorgeous, though, especially the glass "like a thousand falling stars." I'd just recommend smoothing it out a little, for the reader's sake if nothing else. Otherwise, you have a beautiful poem here.
Cheers,
~bubbles
Once again PaperMoon, you have made my mouth drop! Although I must admit it wasn't as good as 'Bloom of the Rose', but still quite a fantastic read.
Absolutely love the wording! A+!
First two lines = Epic win! I actually pictured an empty and dead garden turn to something beautiful and full of life in my mind. (Something about your work makes me one-hundred percently able to picture whats going on)
The wording in these lines flowed so incredibly well! Saying it allowed sounds amazing.
The rest of the poem was pretty much, well, awesome. If I was one of your teachers and you turned in one of these poems to me, I'd so give you an A+++... and so on.
In my opinion, you should get published.
Keep Writing!
-Audy