13inchesofboyd ([info]13inchesofboyd) wrote,
@ 2008-05-30 15:42:00
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Each December falls
alongside slaughters
of trembling stalks
and ornate petals:

Casualties
of silent romances
spun from ethereal
arrangements of
snowbanks and earth

Perhaps not silent;
Perhaps what each sees
in the other lives inside
whispers, tucked away
in the infinitesimal space
between cold and ground

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[info]sniadecki
2008-05-31 04:12 am UTC (link)
This one... I like it, but I think you would benefit from making longer lines, at least for the first two stanzas. I fully respect your style, and I know you prefer the shorter line length. The wording and the ideas here are beautiful, but with such short lines it gets sort of chopped-up, hard to follow, especially on the first pass.

My other suggestion is regarding punctuation marks. In your draft above you have a colon and a semicolon... they feel sort of extraneous without other "expected" punctuation following them. I would suggest one of two routes. Either change the semicolon to a regular colon (going for a bit of A.R. Ammons's style) and leave the rest of the poem as-is, or, observe regular English punctuation (and capitalization) throughout the piece.

Keeping these things in mind, here's one possible rearrangement (and yes, I got really liberal with the line breaks, please forgive my impertinence):


Each December falls alongside slaughters
of trembling stalks and ornate petals:

casualties of silent romance
spun from ethereal arrangements
of snowbanks and earth.

Perhaps not silent; perhaps what each
sees in the other lives inside whispers,
tucked away in the infinitesimal
space between cold and ground.

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[info]13inchesofboyd
2008-06-03 06:03 am UTC (link)
Dude, you are better than any creative writing professor I've had. Yes, that line break/punctuation deal resolves the awkwardness problem I couldn't get rid of perfectly.

Thank you for taking the time, much appreciated :)

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