Ode to Comfort

[MorpheusSandman]

Sorry if the Code tag is distracting, but it's the only way I know to keep the formatting (to the admin/mods: Is there another way?)

  I slept with her in pleasure’s halls,
Near burning leaves that melt the snow to mush; 
But pleasure waked delirifacient lights,
And raptured we were in the juicing gush,
   Where tongues elicit blood from bites,
   Tasting the sweat of summer squalls.  

      We left for Comfort’s town,
   On downy beds, enwrapped in shawls.
   It’s deep embedded in the sounds
Of sloughs submerging all the trickling slush,
   Under the seraph’s autumn flight,
      Where molded eaves surround.

    Comfort is there inside a cup,
Where cocoa mingles with the evening steam.
Her altruistic smile will warm our lips,
And spirit us to deliquescent dreams.
   She thaws our trembling fingertips,
   Cradling our throats, as slow we sup. 

      Pain from our leaving comes
   Abruptly; shivering like a pup
   That’s blind, we yowl loudly, as scum
Is licked from us—the afterbirth that streams 
   From ruptured dreams, our fort’s eclipse
      Where, curled, we sucked our thumbs. 

   Pain’s born in our eruptive opening
Of eyes, the ash of winters burnt in trying
To close them off again, and shed away
The aftermath. Our deleterious crying
   Is pleasure’s spark, igniting days
   Of moldered leaves and vultures’ wings. 

      But comfort—that can bind,
   Like lovers sleeping in the spring,
   Their limbs as roots so intertwined;
They cleave deep to their bed, together vying
   For sustenance expelled in frays,
      And liquids left behind.

[Hawkman]

This is a very pleasing read, Morpheus. The rhythm and meter are well employed within the form of the poem and it flows really well. There are times though when I can't tell if your ode is to comfort or to pleasure (pleasure need not be all that comfortable) and there are moments when the word choices don't quite marry with the images described.
eg:

"She holds our yearning fingertips,
Cradling our throats, as slow we sup."

Holds our fingertips, might be better as, "...warms our fingertips"

and cradling our throats (which sounds a bit like a strangle hold) might be better as "caressing throats" but it's just a thought.

In the last verse there is a fullstop which I feel would be better as a comma. The verse is so worded that it wants to be one continuous sentence.

In S2 the proximity of, "in bedded" and "embedded" is a little jarring and the sense of "in bedded" feels a little confused. I think, in the context of the sentence, "then bedded"
would be more appropriate.

However, such instances as these are few in number and some of your other word choices have been inspired. "Delirifacient", "altruistic", "deliquescent", "deleterious": just a few which caught my eye. (a lot of D-words, come to think of it ) Such rich, juicy words they have been very nicely incorporated within the text to enrich it.

As I said before, a real pleasure to read.

Live and be well - H

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks for your comments, Hawk.

I largely modeled this on Keats' Odes, and I had his Melancholy in mind particularly in this one, where he also evokes the abstracts of Joy and Pleasure. Here, I use Pleasure, Pain, and Comfort in a kind of three-way relationship, where one leads to another in a circular pattern. But it's TO comfort, since pleasure doesn't come off quite as well (when writing this, I actually began my first draft with: "Sometimes I'd take comfort over all pleasure, / and pleasure isn't comfort..." so as to make the divide even stronger, but then I turned it into more of an allegory, I guess you'd say).

As for the other suggestions, I went with "holds our... fingertips" because I already used "warm our lips" two lines above. I would consider changing it if I could come up with something else for the "warm our lips" line... ("kiss" may work if I completely rewrote the line)...

"Caressing" doesn't work with the meter, but I am open to other suggestions. I thought "cradling our throats" was a rather awkward image, but I was trying to transition to the images of painful birth in the next stanza.

Good point on the comma VS period in the last line, though I think as written it would require a semi-colon. But I think I agree with you that the full stop interrupts the flow there.

I was wondering if I could get away with the "in bedded/embedded" wordplay, but you called me on it! Also, RE, the confusion: I used to hear the term "bedded down" as describing down (the type of feathers) that are made into a bed, but as I tried to look up the term online I'm not getting any hits... hmmmmm...

Thanks for the other compliments. I'm glad you caught my "De" trio that I was trying to connect with pain, pleasure, and comfort, respectively.

[Delta40]

Morpheus I don't study poetry at all and I loved it but didn't notice the flow that Hawk praised you for. Pardon my ignorance but I'd be really interested if you explained Hawks comment:

The rhythm and meter are well employed within the form of the poem and it flows really well.

I can appreciate the rhythm and meter but I don't understand the form.

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks for the comments, Delta.

Pardon my ignorance but I'd be really interested if you explained Hawks comment: "The rhythm and meter are well employed within the form of the poem and it flows really well."

You'd probably have to ask Hawks about that! The form isn't a traditional one, by any means. I vary the beats per line (in a 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3 pattern) and the rhyme scheme is a wonky ABCBCA DADBCD. But the piece is almost entirely in traditional iambs (ba-BUM) with only a few metrical substitutions (hopefully placed at relevant points). But Hawks would have to explain to you what he means by it flowing well within the form.

[Hawkman]

Hi Delta. I was using "Form" loosely here to indicate the general structure of the poem. Although there have been more formal structures to an Ode these structures do vary somewhat, with variations in metre, line length and line count in the various stanzas or strophes. Morpheus has largely stuck to an iambic structure in his stanzas, some lines being straight pentameter and others not. Some odes employ three foot structure varying with 4, and there can be rhyming schemes. A quick look at Wiikipedia > ode might be enlightening. The general structure of an ode should be strophe, anti-strophe and epode, but the borders are a bit blurred in this poem, where the transitions, as Morpheus acknowledged in his reply to my comment centre more around the concepts of pleasure pain and comfort. (which can be interpeted as strophe, anti-storpe and epode , though they are mixed up a bit between the verses.

Morpheus: I don't think you need really worry overly much about repeating "Warm" but "...Thaws our fingertips," is a possible alternative. Actually, I think caressing tightens the metre, as cradling can be read as 2 or three syllable, depending on pronunciation. cra-dl-ing or crad-ling, though I don't like the second. caressing is actually more iambic, "car ess ing throats as slow we sup." this gives you two 8 syllable lines instead of one 8 and one 9 and reads more smothly.

As for bedded down, as in downy - this would require, "downy bed" but bedded down just means getting tucked in

Again, a real pleasure to read.

live and be well - H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I didn't always follow on the most literal prosaic level what was going on but was more than content to enjoy this as a jubilant romp.

[MorpheusSandman]

FWIW, Hawkman, the English Ode tended to abandon the Pindaric Strophe, Anti-Strophe, and Epode form. Works like Keats' Nightingale, Shelley's West Wind, or Wordsworth's Intimations don't have any relationship with the idea. I tried to keep a hint of it in the way in which the three concepts are combined, but not so much that they were completely separate, as was typical with Pindar. Perhaps I should try my hand at an honest-to-goodness Pindaric Ode as I always liked the idea and thought it could fit well with a Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis form as well.

"Thaw our fingertips" is an excellent suggestion! I think I'll have to use that. But do you think it would be better, then, to change "yearning fingertips" to "trembling fingertips"? Because thawing yearning fingertips makes less sense... I actually had "trembling" at one point in the draft, but thought maybe it was too cliched.

I read "Cradling" as two syllables, making it an inverted first foot. The thing about "Caressing" not fitting is that I would have to remove the "our" before "throats". I'll have to think about that, but thanks for the suggestion.

I could have sworn I used to hear the phrase "bedded down" to refer to "downy beds," but I guess I'll have to rewrite them since apparently if there ever was such a thing, nobody else has heard of them!

[Hawkman]

Yes, I grant that the strict form of strophe anti-strophe and epode is largely neglected in the English ode, I should have said "traditionally", but I did say it had evolved somewhat. I rather liked the way your "nod" to it was incorporated throughout your poem. I think the change to "trembling" is good, but I don't see the necessity to retain "our". You said "our" before lips and fingertips, and frequently refer to "we". Our and we repeated in the line isn't really necessary.

[Delta40]

Man I'm gonna have a stophe just reading this stuff! lol. I once enrolled in a unit on poetry but pulled out because the words scared me so much...

[cogs]

'bedded down' is an excellent pun. perhaps, 'Enraptured we were in the juicing gush,
Where bloody tongues begat from bites, Now taste the sweat of summer squalls'?
i like the contrast of innocence and frays, and of pleasure and painful emergence. i will read this a few times more.

[kittypaws]

Man I'm gonna have a stophe just reading this stuff! lol. I once enrolled in a unit on poetry but pulled out because the words scared me so much...

Delta....I am with You!

[MorpheusSandman]

Prince: A somewhat brief prose-summary of the work may go:

S1 - he and she are awakened to the sensory indulgence of pleasure
S2 - he and she leave pleasure to try and find comfort
S3 - a description of comfort
S4 - a description of the pain that arises after pleasure and before comfort
S5 - a summary of pain and pleasure
S6 - a concluding simile on comfort

That said, I tried to express the above with a heavily concatenated dose of symbols, and several motifs crop up throughout, hopefully conveying the idea on a sensory/imagistic/intuitive level.

Thanks for reading.

cogs: I changed "bedded down" to "downy beds," though I may change it back but put "while bedded down," as that seems to work too. Any particular reason you want to change the "Enraptured we were..." to "summer squalls" bit?

Delta & kittypaws: Stephen Fry talks about in The Ode Less Traveled how too many poets get hung up on the technical terminology of poetry like it's something to be afraid of, but as he goes onto explain, you wouldn't become a photographer without knowing what an "aperture" and "f-stop" is, you wouldn't become a philosopher without knowing what "ontology" and "epistemology" is, you wouldn't become a painter without knowing what "sfumato" and "chiaroscuro" is, so you shouldn't be afraid of having to learn new terms when you're trying to become a poet. As he goes on to argue, knowing the language is part of what makes you part of the "in-crowd," and learning new words and terms should always be welcomed by poets whose entire craft rests on the medium of language! So don't let all of these terms scare you off; even a cursory reading of Wikipedia will give you more than sufficient definitions and examples of what they mean. We're not talking about quantum physics here!

Hawk: Thanks for all your thoughts. You've definitely given me much to think about when I further revise this piece.

[cogs]

i'm sorry, i should have explained myself!
"'Enraptured we were in the juicing gush,
Where bloody tongues begat from bites, Now taste the sweat of summer squalls'?"

i chose 'enraptured', simply because it avoids the 'and', and has nearly the same meaning.
i chose'begat', firstly, because it's past tense, matching 'raptured'. secondly, 'begat' is a single verb that describes the blood elicit(ed) from bites. thirdly, 'begat' continues the birthing (mating) motif you 'began'.
'now taste', because the second syllable is accented, and 'tongues taste', changes the present participle to the present, from 'begat's past.

thank you for reading my uneducated edits... for the last line, i offer, 'And liquids drunk there, dying'?
let me say that i utterly enjoyed this epic poem - so much content to digest, that yes, i experienced pleasure, comfort, pain, and other engaging emotions.

[MorpheusSandman]

cogs, they're all interesting suggestions. I chose "raptured" because of the connection to the Theological concept, which "enraptured" doesn't have. Plus, I felt "raptured" was a bit more ambiguous as to whether it was a verb or adjective. I hoped the ambiguity of the line would mimic the kind of ecstatic experience. But maybe you're right that getting rid of the needless conjunction would be better, especially since the Theological angle isn't really developed (outside the seraph bit).

But I think I have to decline on "begat" if only because it's so archaic sounding. This piece is already old-fashioned enough without using words that went out with Early Modern-English... though I do like the idea of establishing the birth motif earlier; maybe I can work that in in another way. I was conscious about the move from the past tense of "raptured" to the present tense of "elicit," but I hoped it could transition from the memorial nature to the present (which is always a difficult transition to make in narratives without being obvious about it; you're quite perceptive in picking up on it). Also, I wanted those lines to have a slightly vampiric quality to them, as if what's happening happening is that they're actually drinking the blood, since that would connect with the roots trying to drink the liquids in the last stanza.

As for the accent on the second syllable of "now taste," it's actually very common to begin iambic lines with an inversed foot. It's one of the oldest technical traiditons in the form and some of the best effects in poetry written in iambic pentameter come from carefully placed inversed first foot (Milton's "shatter your leaves before the mellowing year" in Lycidas comes to mind). So it's usually not necessary to make sure the first foot of a line (or the first foot after a caesura) are iambic.

As for the "and liquids drunk there, dying" would ruin the rhyme scheme (the line has to rhyme with "bind" and "intertwined".)

But a sincere thanks for the reading and suggestions. It's always interesting to hear how other people would've written the same as thing as it allows me to see the piece from various angles.