Flutter

[Revolte]

Laying on my red plaid bed
I sing my rustic songs,
And past my window flew an owl
To flutter night to dawn.

Fans are blowing false calm wind
As the bird flew farther on,
So far now to where he soars
To flutter night to dawn.

I fell in love with owl's pass
For from his wing was spawned,
A heartfelt kiss within the wind
As he fluttered night to dawn.

[Dark Muse]

I love owls, and I thought this was a great poem and wonderful discriptive, it made the scene so vivid.

[lallison]

This one is great. I love the imagery! Its almost as if the owl is flying in the window of your thought, which is quite lovely. Nicely written.

[Revolte]

Thank you! It really was a wondeful moment, the owls out here always soothe my soul a bit when I start getting edgy from the more modern way of life.

[blank|verse]

The line

To flutter night to dawn.
is the poem's great strength. To repeat a line in a poem, it needs to bear repeating, and this line certainly stands up to scrutiny. You might like to consider rewriting this as a villanelle, which requires strong, repeated lines like this to work well.

I would be interested to know how you intend the meaning - does the owl 'flutter from night until dawn'? Or do you mean that the night is transformed to dawn? I took it on first reading to be the latter, which is much stronger poetically. But I suppose both are suggested by the line, regardless of your actual intentions.

Do you read any Ted Hughes poems? His 'Pike' contains the line 'Owls hushing the floating woods', which this reminds me of. He also wrote about owls (and many other creatures) so he is worth reading if you haven't already. His nature is much more Tennysonian ('red in tooth and claw') than the one you present here.

I wasn't too keen on the 'red plaid bed' at first, as it seemed too strong to be in the first line - all three words are strongly stressed, so are slow to read. But I notice the first line of the second stanza contains 'false calm wind' - again, three equally stongly stressed words. This is well achieved. The problem is the first line of the third stanza doesn't repeat this, and is one of the weaker lines in the poem.

Overall, I think I would like more to happen in the poem, but what you've got is very well written. Good stuff, Revolte.

[Revolte]

The line

is the poem's great strength. To repeat a line in a poem, it needs to bear repeating, and this line certainly stands up to scrutiny. You might like to consider rewriting this as a villanelle, which requires strong, repeated lines like this to work well.

I would be interested to know how you intend the meaning - does the owl 'flutter from night until dawn'? Or do you mean that the night is transformed to dawn? I took it on first reading to be the latter, which is much stronger poetically. But I suppose both are suggested by the line, regardless of your actual intentions.

Do you read any Ted Hughes poems? His 'Pike' contains the line 'Owls hushing the floating woods', which this reminds me of. He also wrote about owls (and many other creatures) so he is worth reading if you haven't already. His nature is much more Tennysonian ('red in tooth and claw') than the one you present here.

I wasn't too keen on the 'red plaid bed' at first, as it seemed too strong to be in the first line - all three words are strongly stressed, so are slow to read. But I notice the first line of the second stanza contains 'false calm wind' - again, three equally stongly stressed words. This is well achieved. The problem is the first line of the third stanza doesn't repeat this, and is one of the weaker lines in the poem.

Overall, I think I would like more to happen in the poem, but what you've got is very well written. Good stuff, Revolte.

I probably wont rewrite it like that, because if I do there's too good of a chance I'll lose the meaning it held to me personally due to the moment being gone, but I will definitely look into that for future reference.

The meaning of the line "flutter night to dawn" is giving the owl a certain power over the night, as around here I'm somewhere in between nature and lack of nature, the owls are one of the few creatures left and the only, other then coyotes to live in the night. So I suppose its the second meaning, at least more then the other, but both hold a certain truth to my intent.

I actually haven't read any Ted Hughes, to be honest I haven't read much poetry outside of Plath, Poe and the people here on litnet, but I'm curious now to read his work.

That's a good point " I fell in love with owl's pass" flows a bit better then the others, I suppose I just got comfortable after the first to beginning lines.