And Then, Our Endeavour

Sabine wrote:as real as a dream of a thing I have done,
just a figment.

Kamas wrote:I still have a key, tucked in a pocket
and some nights in the penumbra of sleep I imagine--
there is our tarpaulin, and there is our wool,
that high empty space, so bitterly cold--
those memories walk, waking
with the smell sea-brine, mud-flat lingering,
repugnant, clean decay

Okay...That really clarified things! I'm sorry that I failed to notice that these things were literal. Most, if not all of the "bogged down metaphors" have been cleared, so great! Now that I fully understand its meaning, this is a wonderful poem. I'd like to read more like it!

~RedBird

I adore your similies. They are truly unique and fit with the mood of this poem. This poem has a very distinct mood and you did a fantastic job of making that apparent. Its rare that you come across a poet who can portray emotions so well. I love this poem and all I can say is keep up the good work. (:

I find myself rather confused, I'm afraid. This is one of the most literal poems I've ever written, based entirely of of things that actually happened to me. A very large project, in my work as head assistant to a masterclass felt maker. I acknowledge it was a very surreal experience, so I suppose it might sound made up.

could you please point out the lines with the heavy or confusing metaphors? It would be very helpful to me. really very helpful indeed

for reference I'm going through and pointing out mentions of real things that happened. If these are things that seem like confusing metaphors I probably didn't phrase it well enough. It's hard to know how much to obfuscate. It seemed like a diary entry with funny line breaks at times, instead of a poem, to me.

Sabine wrote:
This is all rather late being said,
I realise,
the endeavour is done, done and packed in cold storage. this is true, the piece is disassembled and being stored by the museum until it moves to the next museum
I still have a key, tucked in a pocket i do infact still have a key to the old annex, when infact I ought to have have handed it over
and some nights in the penumbra of sleep I imagine--
there is our tarpaulin, and there is our wool,
that high empty space, so bitterly cold--
those memories walk, waking
as real as a dream of thing I have done,
with the smell sea-brine, mud-flat lingering,
repugnant, clean decay
and the white plaster windowsill with its desiccated frogs, actual dead, dried out frogs on the window ledge, but I didn't have the nerve to touch them long enough to get rid of them
and I was barefoot and damp-kneed,
waiting for the water to boil. a conglomeration of nights probably, we had an electric kettle for tea.

We worked and we worked
a trembling, stumbling dogged urgency
a yawning, firm resolve
and the wet rip, slap, pulling felt from the net the layups are netted so they don't just felt in a lump
Until my fingers dyed green and my knuckles chapped red,
pins and pins, and water and pins
pricking our fingers and cutting our thumbs, there are in fact a lot of pins involved
and laying down white, so much white, so much snowy white
drowning and covered and cocooned
I relived white wool in my dreams,
and then a faint salve of blue, trailing in
soft rivers and curls, and deliberate, every fibre deliberate starting from raw fibres we made felt in colour gradations from white to blue
until we could stand to see it no more,
ready to wrap it up, beat it down through its sopping, rolling
Metamorphosis.felt is made with wool, hot water, soap and agitation, shrinks nearly 50% and sometimes discharge dyes


The space that we made, the night that it rose,
an elephant’s wedding dress, an alien egg things we called it when we started putting it together. it was a re-imagined art yurt
broad sweeps of colour, so pale as the haze on the moon,
and I sat inside it,
just once, just one night, we put it together for the party and took it down again the next morning to ship it off
but I failed to dully admire our soft, round room,
It stands diffuse
Unfixed in my mind.
I chose to instead be transfixed by the curl of your hair,
a sight nearly startling, nearly intimate,
you without your hat, this is true, it was very strange to see her without her hat on, for the first time in months
and I was so tired, sitting there by your feet,
with such a feeling of desperate tenderness
binding down my ribs.

In the summer I had an island,
my very own table to climb on, and sit i did end up sitting on the table to work quite often as my arms were too short to reach the middle (it was ~8'x30'
and the sunlight, goldenrod and saffron,
scraping against soft white rumples and hillocks
of the cloth spread across, different felt that was all white
as though they were tiny evening water ripples,
and wind blowing in from the door, cool with a hint of salt,
to appease the absurd, muffling heat.
And just when I was sure of this place,
had walked it’s length and breadth,
found a way to be at peace with the spiders and the salamanders
living in the closet real ones. My boss took an ailing salamander home one time and resuscitated it
we took it all down, sorted, packed flat and folded,
sweating and unsentimental,
efficient as a school teacher at the beginning of summer,
and shuddering, grime in every corner where I had not closely looked
and a dead bird, dry and limp we actually had to deal with five dead sparrows that spring and summer
to be bundled out and disposed of, with no ceremony.
And then champagne and cookies, in the lackluster breeze off the bay,
you let me braid your hair with a ribbon, also things that happened, my boldness with the hair braiding thing was probably down to the champagne. The other assistant was there too and i think i felt provoked to prove my place as favourite
talking of nothing like work, or the empty space that loomed ahead
hardly time to feel bereft.
And the evening petered away,
Far too warm to believe in frozen fingers,
The smell of wet sheep and silk and soap
just a figment.

This really drew me in, at the beginning. It was very well thought out, I can see.
Firstly, on the ninth line of the first stanza, I think you meant "things" not "thing." Am I right?
Secondly, I agree with Kamas. The first stanza, as I said before, was great; it really pulled me in. However, after that, the poem gets bogged down in the heavy imagery (which is very, good by the way. There's just too much of it) and metaphorical ideas. If you just ease up on that, it will work out much better. One of the best ways to fix this will be to get out your thesaurus and find some simpler description words. That will lessen the purple prose feeling.
One of the things that I liked most about it, actually, was the way that you repeated "done" in the first stanza.
Sometimes, when words are repeated like that, the effect is terrible. In this case, it's beautiful.

Keep up writing poetry. You're great at it!

~RedBird

I must say, I quite enjoyed this. Your ability to create imagery is great and obvious.
The one things that I see as a big problem is that you turned it into purple poetry. (kind of like purple prose.)

Your language is very flowery and overpowering your idea. I lost track of what the motivation of this poem is. You throttled your poem with large amounts of heavy metaphors and similes, though the imagery is fantastic. You only create separate small pictures, not one big picture with your poem.

Use more simple language and have a theme for your metaphors. But you have a lot of potential. Just tone it down a little bit darling, and you'll be absolutely fantastic!

Kamas

Dearie, you're too good for this website. Aim for the stars.