Wandering
poetry
Published on:
May 7, 2:32amWord Count:
336Work Description
It's been edited once I think. Still very rough. I don't know. It is my first post though.
Not comedy or anything. (I'm a hypocrite I think (that has nothing to do with the poem).
I don't want to say too much otherwise I won't know if the person critiquing is influenced more by this description or the actual poem.
This work is archived and isn't accepting critiques or comments. Why?
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Wandering
Today was windy
The kind of wind I remember from the desserts of Texas
The sky turned brown with an edge of pink
a gritty haze
the farther you look the browner everything is
until you feel separated from everyone
in a brown dust globe.
It would be odd if that's how it worked
That if I walked to the edge of the campus I'd reach a brown wall
and couldn't get out
nothing in nothing out
The farther you look the more peaceful it seems.
A far off brown-pink wall
mono colored
closed off
safe
This isn't really the case though
The wind whips through the campus
running around the buildings
throwing papers and leaves everywhere
joining hands in some of the alcoves
and spinning in some little child's game
then giving up interest and going somewhere else
it started harassing me
surrounding me and messing up my hair
and then leaving
the winds take notice of a napkin on the ground and start to play
with it
They throw the small napkin from player to player
not letting it touch the ground
they take it higher and higher above the ground
the little napkin grabs onto one of the trees for dear life
the winds pick at it and eventually tear the tree from the little
napkins grasp
the napkin is hurled into the air
the wind gives up interest for awhile and leaves
Luckily the napkin manges to grab another tree
higher up this time though
he won't let go
He seems as if he is right on the border of this world
if he let go he might be able to fly into the unknown
but he grips tightly to the branch
he looks like a white flag of surrender
I look at the napkin and the tree
I get bored
I leave them to their world
and go back to mine
I don't know if the napkin ever escaped
I didn't see it again though
It left with the wind
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Hey Sam,
I agree with the above - you've got some great imagery going on here, but I think it would be ten times better if written as prose. Reading through the piece, I honestly got no sense whatsoever that it was a poem. There's no rhythm to it, no conscious composition of sounds, and sound is paramount in poetry.
I could see you formatting this piece this way if you were going to read it at an open mike, say, to show you how to break up ideas and where to put emphasis, but I really believe it should be a piece of flash fiction, or something along those lines.
This isn't to say that what you've written is bad - it's really above average - the idea just needs a format that fits it.
Lines I liked:
the sky turned brown with an edge of pink
a brown dust globe
the wind gives up interest for awhile and leaves
I didn't see it again though
it left with the wind.
and then, all of the second stanza as well.
If you are hell-bent on this being a poem, I suggest stripping it down a bit and playing around with sound. What I think is best for you to do, though, is make it prose.
(also, Texas desert)
The kind of wind I remember from the desserts of Texas
"desserts" should be "deserts" I believe.
also
"in a brown dust globe."
"The farther you look the more peaceful it seems."
I feel the periods used at the end of these lines are out of place, as there is no punctuation anywhere else in the poem.
However, other than this, I like the story, the imagery and the stream of thought style. I've written poems like this and I like the free-form prosaic styling of it.
The poem ' wandering' is free-verse and more like a prose than a poem. It lacks the rhythm or rhyme and the flow is choppy.
I starts in past tense even if it says 'today' to begin with. Then all of a sudden in the middle it gets into past tense. The quotation marks and punctuations are not used aptly.
The thought process is not consistent shows the confusion in the mind. As if the words are swirling with the wind. Napkin and life in general-- a good imagery but that too is stretched to far. Sometimes subtlity is mpre effective but I think some authors love to be wordy. I think the poem needs some more work and it needs a flow and some rhythm to call it as a poem.
A good beginning to write,
write on,
Thanks for sharing it.
Jaya H.
I will probably say more about this later, but...
I really enjoyed the imagery you used.
However, I feel like your language was struggling to be prose. It didn't really have any particular sort of rhythm or any other linguistic device that made me feel like it was poetry. I will elaborate on this after I've slept for a while.