And here are the "before" pictures--I tend to start poems as a bunch of phrases that come to me every which way, starting with one initial phrase (in this case, I've been carrying "Crazy candlelight" around with me for a few months now...just finally started picking at it until it came apart).
11 comments:
I like the process as much as the result!
I love the colors this evokes -
orange (candlelight)
amber (honey)
red (blood)
wine...
I'm obsessed with colors these days (fountain pen inks!) and with each line of your poem I get a strong mental image suffused with color. Great work.
I like that, Adwoa--thank you!
Oh, and I can totally identify with the color obsession thing. Sometimes I'll be, for example, driving home from work, minding my own business, and I'll suddenly find myself thinking, "You know...that car's shade of green would make an awfully pretty ink color..."
That is a good poem. I like how vivid the descriptions are.
So true, LFP - I was literally gasping at the sunset last night. What a burst of gorgeous pink/red color! Of course I must have seen it before, but not really seen it, you know?
And then I promptly went off and purchased a bottle of Caran d'Ache Sunset Red to find out if they managed to capture what I saw.
Er, not really, at those prices... but almost!
Was the man proposing to her and she rejected him and left? Fearful of committing to him, maybe rightfully so?
I know when I right poems (not as much as I would like, but that is the story of all my writing endeavors), I usually start with something simple and then try to mask it in words, feelings. And many times, someone much more creative than me reads into it something extraordinary.
So, just curious, as I sit here and analyze it.
Kinda sorta an image from a past story. They're not free to be together, but had drifted that way. With his declaration, she realizes that they're approaching a point of no return into something very wrong, and panics.
It sounds a lot better as a poem...or a full story with background.
LFP, yeah, most poems do sound better than what they really are.
I mean, I know the last poem I wrote, that was more a time slice of a story, was "Analog Cowboy" in Silent Type II. And really, its just about a typewriter collector that lives in an apartment with a ton of typewriters, going out to his usual haunts, every day, to look for more, then coming home and spending time on the internet, looking for more, in between fixing and cleaning what he's got.
The poem abstracted a lot of that and I think I used some words (that I wouldn't in normal storytelling) to "pretty" it up.
I have read some accounts of "famous" poems being no more than the poet describing a rusted wagon sitting in his yard or other mundane events or objects...
It's not so much that they sound better than what they mean...it's also that they are more than their meaning. It's like...well, a painting or photograph can capture not just a scene, but a mood, or a thought, and translating into flat prose doesn't always quite work.
I think this is the poem you're referring to--it's one of my favorites, actually, simple though it is:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
It's by William Carlos Williams. One of the English professors at the college where I used to work had that poem framed on her wall, and whenever I had to go work on her computer, I would just sit there and let it wash over me. Taken out of poetic form, it's nothing but a view out a window, but the colors and the shape and sound and feel of the words captivates me.
Yup, that is the one.
And you are right, it is more than their meaning and I think its because poetry, is interactive. Its not just the poet telling a story. Its the poet presenting emotions and images and the reading experiencing those emotions and images, but maybe very differently than the poet did (or intended).
Reading poetry, you fill in your own blanks and symbols and whatnot, based on the emotions its evoking (or is it invoking) in you.
That's part of the reason I suck at reading poetry, as an analytical type, I am always trying to find the "right" interpretation (also why I asked for your backstory to the poem). And by "right", I mean, what the poet meant by it.
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