A few poems

[Tarkovsky]

Hi everyone. I'll make my into with a few poems. I'm in the process of trying to get some of these published.

I

What brilliant wonders lie above
Through dark, encasing clouds;
The tremble of a summer love
Below the draping of a shroud.

Sweet smell of lilac --
The grainy taste of pear;
Coolness of dew upon our backs --
A fragment in time shared.

What mysteries lie await
Through dense, engulfing gloom;
Mortal scale of love and hate
Above the lilac bloom.


III

Clothes laid carelessly by the sea;
Its timeless tide come unto me --
Waves or immortality.

Its power instill a certain peace
Far beyond the coral reef;
Close my eyes and release.

V

Seeking vindication, as a child seeks the sun’s splendor;
Basking in warmth, gold and tender;
Instead, gazing into dark with fanciful fear,
As remnants of matter are left to cinder.

Seasons stored away in diaries and jars,
Absolve sought from pulpits to dying stars;
Slaughter of the lamb -- ignorance cease,
Or the greatest wonders shunned to disregard.

Above a stone grid, the ringing of church brass,
Mourners maneuver through overgrown grass;
What significance of existence be
When all are left but weathered epitaphs?

[Fellsman]

Muddled use of metaphor all the way through made this hard going. Good luck with the publishing.

[Bar22do]

Hello Tarkovsky (Andreï the film maker? or Stasiu, from Sienkiewicz's novel?)

Your poems need thorough trimming and further work I think. Some of your rhymes scream... metaphors are packed here, hard to digest. Form needs care.

Perhaps try to take a little distance before you send it off, I definitely feel your potential, but your creation needs more application and practice, that is IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.

Thanks for sharing your work, T,

best from Bar

[Haunted]

A lot of abstractions and somewhat hard to follow, both images and messages.

What brilliant wonders lie above
Through dark, encasing clouds;
The tremble of a summer love
Below the draping of a shroud.

Wonders lie above but tremble of a summer love is below the draping of a shroud? Should I be looking up or looking down?

Clothes laid carelessly by the sea;

Why carelessly? Care to expand that?

Close my eyes and release.

What is being released? The thought of a bladder immediately came to mind but I'm sure that's not what you meant.

Slaughter of the lamb

I would avoid idioms and try to say it in your own words.


Are theses three connected and meant to be read together? Because from what I see, they contradict each other.

I
Mortal scale of love and hate
Above the lilac bloom.

III
Its timeless tide come unto me --
Waves or immortality.

V
What significance of existence be
When all are left but weathered epitaphs?


V totally lost me. Actually I don't know what you are trying to say in each one and the flowery language and metaphors aren't helping. I think some parts need to be simplified, others elaborated. Consider some rewrites before you send it off. Good luck.

[hillwalker]

Seriously, no one is going to publish material like this because it’s not particularly original and doesn’t actually say anything.

I starts well enough – but we soon lose the sense of what the writer is trying to say. I’m not sure how the ‘tremble’ (?) of a summer love can fit above a cloud. And is there someone’s body lying ‘below’ in the ‘shroud’? It’s no good using metaphors if they reveal nothing.

The second verse evokes the senses of summer but have no relation to verse 1.

Verse 3 – ‘lie await’ isn’t even grammatically correct – and the closing two lines are incomprehensible. Any editor of a poetry magazine would treat this quality of writing as an insult to his/her intelligence.

Others have already noted your use of rhyme - poetry doesn't have to rhyme. But when it does it's essential the rhyme is unobtrusive. In the case of your pieces it has taken over.

I notice there’s no II and IV – no real explanation why.

III is again grammatically inconsistent – and I can’t begin to figure out what it’s trying to say other than that someone has undressed at the shore and gone for a swim (or possibly drowned themselves). Hardly an insightful piece of poetry.

Phrases like ‘timeless tide’ are pure cliché. If you can’t come up with a fresher perspective on mortality and the sea there’s no chance of anyone looking twice at your work. It’s a harsh world out there if you're looking to get into print.

V is even more confusing. The opening 2 lines suggest someone (the narrator?) is seeking vindication but we will never know for sure because the poem wanders off in a completely different direction.

V2 L2 makes no sense whatsoever – did you mean ‘absolution’?

After the first few lines I actually gave up on V because it’s a mess and I have better things to do than try to make sense of this stuff.

I’m not sure what stage you are at on the ‘seeking publication’ route but take it from someone who is trying to be honest with you, until you tighten up your grammar, learn to write concisely and discover something original to share with us you will get nowhere.

The best advice I can offer is that you read as much contemporary poetry as you can in order to discover how far you have yet to travel before anyone will take your writing seriously. Join a local writing group so you can get meaningful feedback from others with similar ambitions. And bear in mind that getting poetry published anywhere is infinitely more difficult than getting a novel published. How many best-selling books of poetry have you read in the last 5 years? If your work isn't going to earn it's keep you're wasting everybody's time.

If you’re sitting at home writing in the comfort of your own room (like most of us begin) and expecting to suddenly set the world of poetry alight with your rhyming gems you’re in for an unpleasant shock.
Keep writing but also read, read, read. Your work shows you have a rather rigid idea of what constitutes fine poetry – but you’re misguided I fear, and your execution shows you have a long way to go before ending up in print.

Good luck all the same.

H