Occasionally, when feeling terribly brave or terribly caffeinated (it comes to much the same thing), I shall be posting a poem or some such short work-in-progress for your amusement. I would very much like to invite criticism, please God constructive criticism. Obviously, I would love a bazillion people to all tell me my work is sublime and wonderful and incidentally, can they send me a cash donation and possibly some chocolate, but I am now very caffeinated indeed so I am asking for honest critical appraisal. Comments will be used to create a follow-up post. Discussions good. Me shouting into the void, not so good. Note use of word ‘appraisal’. Say ‘your poem is not very good, because the rhythm is all over the place and this metaphor is hackneyed,’ and I will cry and curse your very name but I will leave the comment up and maybe even think about it, and re-write, and re-post, and soon I’ll be calling you ‘Sensei’ and you will be calling me ‘Grasshopper’. Say ‘your poem sucks and so do you,’ and I will delete your comment with a tinkling laugh and tell all my acquaintances that you have improbably ugly genitals.
And if anyone else wants to join in and have their poem or prose be the star of the show, please send it to Editor at this blog. Don’t be scared. I swear she’s nicer to just about everyone else on the planet than she is to me.
And now for the poem. I wrote it several years ago, before my panic-stricken I-can’t-write-poetry-why-am-I-even-trying phase. If this goes well, you can expect a fresh poem next time.
Astronomer and Comet
Shining ice, written
Across the blackboard of night,
Silver word among
The punctuation of stars,
Unaware that I read you.
That blue planet there,
Spinning as I fall past it,
Is watching my path,
Its gaze as necessary
As the sun that makes me blaze.
I’m sure I tried to comment on this once before… I’m probably terribly slow, but it took me a while to work out that one stanza is from the astronomer’s p.o.v. and the other from the comet’s. I was trying to make them both fit one or the other (which was an interesting exercise). If only I’d paid attention to the title the first time I read it!
I do like it, though. Now that I’ve recovered from my attack of Thickitis.
David, the silly librarian
Left by David B on April 13th, 2006
I like your poem. A lot. I got the two points of view right away, too. I also have this horrible editor and a whole bunch of started and not finished novels in my hard drive. What is it about people who write? It is much easier for me to do massage. Rather than send my poetry to the editor, I wish you’d pop over to my blog and open the poetry page and tell me what you think about Driftwood Voices. Thanks.
It’ll give you a good reason to procrastinate about writing, although the Editor probably won’t agree. . .
Left by healingmagichands on August 17th, 2006