The Beloved Stars

The Beloved Stars


The beloved stars hung upon the sky
As your lips rose and so arrayed
Into my eyes like a tempting temptress,
With your sweet scent of hair
Waving acquiescently through the air.

From all eternity I began
To live again under your shroud of mystery,
For your eyes are my heart's study
And your lips are my nocturnal fire
That lives and gives life to me.

Hey Shadow, this is what I'd extract from your poem to give it more strength. Forgive me if I don't know to explain you why, and for interfering, were you not willing. And it's only my humble idea of it. So take it or toss it...


Lips arrayed into my eyes
like a temptress', the scent
of your hair is acquiescent.

In your shroud of mystery,
your eyes are my heart's study,
your lips /predict the day to come/.


Good luck with your poem and all good to you.

I wrote it awfully fast without a single revision.
Perhaps in 5 minutes. I like your version. I'll
have to give you credit when I repost in my notes.
Thanks Bar

Nice try, but overall a rather generic piece that lacks distinction. There have been so many "love poems" written over the centuries, that any attempt you and I would make to write a brandy-new one would be difficult. We've all been taught that the human emotions associated with love are "universal," but when it comes to poetry, the more specific and less abstract the lyric is, the better--and, perhaps "counter-intuitively," the more resonant it will be.

The reason that it takes considerably more than 5 minutes to write a decent piece of verse is that we have to weigh every single word --does it say what we really want it to say? Why are your stars hanging "upon" the sky? The "shroud of mystery" is a cliché. The phrase "tempting temptress" is a tautology. The syntax of line 5 is cumbersome-- what's lyrical (or for that matter, expressive) about "acquiescently"?

The last thing I'd want to do is discourage you from writing. But I strongly suggest that you read as much modern and contemporary poetry as you can, as well as articles and essays about the craft of verse-writing. (At this point, I would advise you to spend as much -- if not more-- time reading as you do writing.) With the added knowledge about the subject, you will, almost by osmosis, begin to produce better writing.


Thirty Poems in Thirty Days

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Words of Whiz Dumb 2012