Poetry / After

Well, your explanation helps me understand what you’re aiming for.
Basically, you need to take this idea, which I venture to say is currently expressing itself only abstractly, trapped inside a therapists explanation, and dwell more with it, allowing the images and emotions to reveal themselves that you have, yourself and, perhaps, tying it back into your own individual experience to make a stronger connection with the experience of losing your brother.

DO this, or something like it, and give it another go.  Right now, as you’re well aware, it is too abstract and incomplete.

Good luck – hope this helps!

Michael

Very nice. small, but nice.

I understand this perfectly until the ending. Don’t understand how others could not, everyone reads differently keep in mind. What appeals to one may not appeal to another. Seems to me like you are losing your precious memories of him. It erases everything but the void that was left when he was suddenly ripped away from you. Keep writing!

The first line is my favorite.
I understand from this a pessimistic girl’s point of view and how time has this uneasy effect.
This is a really nice work and I would like to read more.

I wish I hadn’t read the notes first, but having done so, I think the poem achieves what you set out to do.  The third stanza is like a weak lull in it, however.  Existence is just such a passive word…”shadows of existence” sounds like it’s being oblique on purpose, but this actually would be a great place to enunciate his vitality.  Figure out what you mean by the shadows allowing the dreams to approach tragedy, and find another way to say it such that it honors the  life that preceded the tragedy.  

That’s what’s missing for me.  Other than that spot, I think its really spot on.  The other three stanzas are clear, they illustrate the phenomenon, and they articulate the recurrent experience of his absence without being sentimental.  It’s really rather good.  

TNX!

I don’t feel it is yet publishable but you do have a talent worth shaping.  The ‘but’s in V1 and V2 are distracting and don’t allow the poem to feel as sophisticated as it could.
V2 – ‘to approach tragedy from’  this doesn’t make sense to me.  You can approach from the left, right, front or back, etc but I don’t understand how dreams can approach tragedy from a mind.  Is this really what you are trying to say here?
Last verse – “appearance can change the frustration of loss”  this appears contradictory to the tone of the poem.  In my mind I was expecting the frustration of loss to wear away at the appearance.  As written it sounds like the mirrored image elicits hope?  Is that your intent as well?

Existence and appearance are spelled wrong.  The word girls is plural, whereas you mean the possessive case girl’s.  The line “but does not erase any void” feels overly long in the sentence, if by only a syllable.  Wouldn’t the word any be better replaced by the word the, which is more specific to the loss.  Now, for the content.  Easy, now.  Growing older means getting better…until that moment when quality of life is less than the quantity aspect of it.  I doubt you’ve reached that point.  I’d never want to go backwards and go through all that angst again.  So what if there are a few more wrinkles and a couple more aches.  Grow gracefully.  To bitch and whine about a natural condition, such as a rainy day, is not a mature frame of mind; neither is obsessing about irreducible loss.  Cheerio.  

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March 01, 2008

by wulfenstraat

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You know what?  I may not have understood this poem.  Is it about Alzheimers or aging?  I need some help on this.

March 06, 2008

by pencil2008

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Not about aging, just out living my dead brother. He WAS older than me, and now I’m older than his age when he died, and i think we look more alike as I age. I was too abstract with this for people it seems. I just may be too close to it. And I’m a horrible speller.

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This is an interesting poem. i’m sensing some moment of loss and your way to explain that pain does not always heal. Death changes a person. Sometimes very little sometimes in dramatic ways, which what i’m getting from this poem. I do have to say that the poem kept my interest and the breaks are placed well where needed. Good Job.

Needs imagery and visual sustanance to be publishable.  Yet, it is very sentimental and heart wrenching.  Try putting in the “what’s” rather than the feelings to get the imagery.

The topic change from time to the girl didn’t work for me…I would have envisioned a woman (or adult?) pondering time so deeply, not a youth. Other than that, it didn’t quite flow…perhaps because the stanzas’ length wasn’t quite consistent. While this isn’t a necessity, I think it would flow much more fluidly if it were a bit longer, whether the stanzas were consistent or not. Seems to be a good beginning.