Picture Poetry Contest (...continued...)

Ply on your canoe with care
treacherous is the aquatic snare
Clouds in the sky bow to Earth
Happy and gay and full of mirth
Rocks upping their snake heads
Cold wind slyly the heart bleds
Nature's forces are at their work
at lover's sometimes they do smirk
Have a heart, have a heart, O lover
soon your travail shall be over
Ply your boat with perseverance strong
Love's voyage may be tough and long
Let not Nature's cruelty make you deter
from Love's pursuit whatever may matter
Lover's who paddle their own canoe
Eventually their troubles will undo .

Alrightie, time is up!
I expected a few more entries, like from cacian or Dark Muse, but you can't always compete I guess!

I liked the entries that I got and it was very difficult to have to compare them to one another and to make one stand out as the winner. Let us start with the feedback first:

YesNo

I really love the rhythm and flow of your poem. It’s catchy and memorable. The problem I had with it was that I felt it had so much potential, yet it was cut short and the enjoyment wasn’t as long as one would hope. I would have liked it if you had built on it a bit more. Good job though!

Melanie

At first I felt it was a bit difficult to read through your poem, because I tried putting a rhythm to it and it did not really fit for me, which forced me to try and read it differently. Perhaps that was just my bad and maybe I should not have tried to put a certain rhythm on it.
Looking at the imagery, I really liked that in your poem. Your lines really express emotion and put a good image of the picture in my mind, great work there! I think I can say that I did not only hear your description in my mind, I also felt them.

Pendragon

I like what you did with referring to the front of the kayak as a yellow triangle, because that is all of what you can see of it in the picture. Your poem reflects the imagery well and I like how you speak of the unknown purpose and the unknown person. What contradicted a bit was the lines “ocean of adventure” and then things such as “a sea of peaceful azure”. That broke off the flow a bit for me. Overall well done though!

prendrelemick

Good descriptions of the movement of the kayak. I liked the change of perspective from mainly describing nature to describing it from the “view” of the kayak and what is going on around it rather than ahead. I must say that I liked the previous version of your poem a bit better though, before you edited it.

Rowan

Long poem, so this is going to take me a bit longer to talk about.. Let’s see, first off I am really impressed in general. You took the dynamic in the picture not just a step, but an entire leap further by speaking of your might, in several different aspects. One problem I had there is a stylistic one. You said things like “…it is wise and strong and I will make it feel like…” whereas if you had replaced ‘and’ with ‘, but’ it would have signified the upcoming contrast better. The line about the mountains was funny but could have been a bit better worded in my opinion.
I absolutely adored when you said that you contain no sharks nor made the Titanic sink, but that you are so much better in a sense that water must take the shape of whatever contains it, whereas you are your own free man.
Then the part about the sun. Really the same thing, I really loved the personification and how you compared it to an old sad prisoner in the sky. The line of scotch and calling up the moon felt awkward but at the same time it gave the sun such depressed, earthly characteristics that it once more signified your might over the sun.
The poem is a little bit unstable here and there, with seemingly random lines at certain points, but the comparisons were fantastic. The poem was long and this can be risky, but it’s not like it was too long or boring, it stayed interesting. However as I said before, it is still a bit unstable here and there.

mazHur

The rhyme in your poem had a few flaws here and there (for example heads and bleds or lover and over) but for the most part the rhyme was well done. You deviated from what the rest did and spoke of the canoe as a metaphor of a lover’s path. I liked this metaphor and it was interesting to read about. I also enjoyed how you made the nature not a beautiful thing but more of an obstacle in your poem. I felt like the rhythm and flow of the poem could have been a bit better, though. Overall it was a good read, well done!



Well then, let us see... Really close contest, can't really say that I think one poem stood above the others by far.

The winner of this contest shall be... Rowan. I felt your poem captured not just the imagery in the picture well, but also the feeling one might have when standing in the kayak. Rather than the calm feeling most would get when in that situation (me for example), you took a totally different perspective on it and I could really appreciate this. If you were to change a few things I feel it would be perfect (mostly stylistic, such as what I said in your feedback, and you might want to put a bit of space between the different parts in your poem e.g. a line between the part about the sea and the part about the clouds. that would make it somewhat easier to read). Every poem that was submitted brought me joy to read, but yours, I felt, had just the most feeling to it in the end.

Thank you all who entered again!

- Evo

Awesome! Thank you!
I really appreciate the feedback you're giving around, it really helps me to look at it from the perspective of a reader, awesome. I think unstable is definitely the word I'd have picked for some parts of the poem as well. So yay, thanks for providing the picture, and the feedback.
Tomorrow, I'll throw my own picture on here. I hope it'll inspire some people to puke out literary gold on here, as well.

Cheers!

Congratulations Rowan! And thank you Evo. You did such a good job with your feedback.

Sowwy for not posting it yesterday, as I said I would! I got caught up in some things and nearly forgot about it, until Evo poked my brain about it. Yay for him.

This is the picture I picked:
.. Well. I'm having trouble posting it in a forum-post, it tells me: Post denied. New posts are limited by number of URLs it may contain and checked if it doesn't contain forbidden words.

.. I can't seem to find a way to fix this, it tells me this each time I try to post anything. Any solutions that you know of? =o

Cheers.

Evo's going to post it in my stead, so that bypasses whatever problems. =)

Let's put the deadline at 20th of Novembear.

Rowan asked me if I could post the picture for him, so here it is:

http://xaxor.com/images/Zoltan-Huszt...an-Huszti9.jpg

Hope you guys don't mind my joining in. This photo is awe-striking!

Askew Visions of Poverty

Wrinkles of wondering.
A year bends the skin
in the manner of a lifetime.
A lifetime distorts the mind
to that of a sage.
One eye seeks the man in the sky.
One confronts the man before him.
Both answers leave him in wonder.

One's old and still one sees
Through thick-lensed memories
That keep one focused on the spot
That feels like now and then does not.

Thank you for your entries, enjoying 'em greatly!

Don't turn your face away from me
I know the mirror shows its ugliness
I too get scared when i glance in the mirror
my grandfather's face it looks like
Oh! How brutal time is, you know?
But my face is an almanac of events
Events that made history
Events that shaped my life
and of others too
Read my face and you will know
It's a Himalaya of historical events
If I sit to compile all those events
I can write a new Thousand and One Nights
But hold on. I am not a writer
nor need to read a book of history anew
All you want to know in most of the past century
reflects from my face ....
My face is the book
My looks are the title to it
I may be smitten by age
But don't old books get smitten too ?
Time is the healer....
time is the killer...
Take it whatever way you want
But my face will tell you all
days and nights of years past
first love and the sweetness of my first kiss'
the betrayal of my friends
the loyalty with friends shared
springs, summers, winters, fall
all the seasons long and small
History is not what's in the books
It glosses too so truly in my looks.

There's a line on his face for every breath that he takes
The years and the tears recorded for all to see
The times of want and the loved ones he lost
Reading his face is like exploring history
Sometimes a twinkle in the eye, a chuckle and sigh
Bring light to a visage that is ravaged and scarred
When he's relaxed and asleep, the wrinkles relax and shrink
No worries til dawn, then get up and press on--restart
You haven't really lived your life
If the day doesn't show the scars, and the smoothness returns every night

Pendragon
11/7/2013

Really bump!

Who am I?

Once I tangoed Debutantes across the ballroom floor,
My Argentinian silver mines opened every door,
Ten thousand pampas cattle kept me in high style,
The drive up to my country house I measured by the mile.

But I could not buy a pedigree, my money it was new,
And come the revolution I found my friends were few,
Easy come and quickly go when Fortune turns around,
And all a man is sure of is that last six feet of ground.

So when you see me as I am, remember what I've been,
Read the lines etched on my face by everything I've seen,
Heed the lesson written there - we all are Fortune's slave,
And don't forget no man's secure until he's in his grave.

Dementia (An Old Man)

His eyes confused, a broken yawn.
He wonders what is going on
Around him. Now he frowns his face
As memories of forgotten days
Escape away and let their scoff
Surround him. Glasses broken off
By youngsters, who don’t comprehend
That what they’re doing just hurts and
Confounds him. He thinks of his past
And in his head forms overcast.
He can’t remember what he’s seen,
It drowns him. He has never been
So lost in thoughts. It feels like he’s
forgetting things, from names to keys.

They’re pounding on his door to find
An Old Man, to his house confined.
“Who are you?” to his friends he said.
Astounded, they put him to bed.
Concerned about his sanity,
They call to have his family
Surround him in his darkest hour
As the memories devour
What is left. Now not a trace
Around him. As he frowns his face
He wonders what his going on
His eyes confused, a broken yawn.

~ Evo