(no subject)
Christiana Lloyd-Kirk
Review of (Bethaney Hall's The Sound of Fire)
I love the musical quality of the poem you've got on. It's not a bad poem by any means. I guess the one complaint (or drawback) I see is that this poem is really generalized. It sounds like an ancient battle song that has nothing to do with you...so it would work alright as part of a Fantasy Novel...Tolkien is probably the most famous example. He wrote a lot of poetry like this into his novels. The problem is, it's just not compelling enough to stand on it's own. You've got a lot of somewhat cliche lines and images (which again aren't so cliche that they wouldn't perhaps work in the context of a fantasy novel. It is nice language after all) but otherwise...I'm just going to say no. Fire...choir...darkness, cold death, sorrow...These themes and words are used a hell of a lot. They've got to be approached in an original way to keep some sense of integrity....Hell, the very nature of the subject matter you're talking about (soldiers dying and not dying on the battlefield) has been so over done....You have to bring something new to the table because everything you've said here has been said..so many times it's unreal. Fear of mortality- check. Courage- check. Tyrants-check. Ancient pagan Gods and fire- check.
That being said, let me point out some areas where I think you were original and could expand on said thought process..
(1.) "I still hear their screams ringing like sirens." This imagery works. It not so cliche. Further more, you could expand on this idea and make something original. Point to a specific individual. Engage the details. A soldier on the battlefield would know at least one or two of the people they fought beside and if one of them died that grief would be very personal. Saying, "I still hear their screams ringing like sirens" makes you sound less like a soldier and more like a journalist who happens to be in a war zone. There would not be that kind of distance for a soldier talking about his own experience. That soldier doesn't have to outright say, "I'm so devastated" if you don't want him to. Simply a description of one of his buddy's favorite pair of shoes, a letter they left behind, a hilarious nick name...How you want to frame it is all up to you. The sky's the limit but one way or another, you have to close that gap. (Or change your perspective to someone other than a soldier.)
(2.) I notice you talking about PTSD here in these last two lines: "In my madness I still wait for the sound of fire.
I feel the coldness of Death creep nigher and nigher."
This is something you can really expand upon because it doesn't stem from a romanticized view of death or the battlefield. You won't find 800 page volumes of Medieval Lit. battle songs talking about this. Fantasy novelists don't cover this aspect either. Talking about how the finite moment, no matter how dangerous...is many times easier to deal with than the absence of anything happening...This chronic sense of dread and foreboding you have to live with...That's a unique perspective and a very personal one at that. It speaks to a real struggle for soldiers or anyone else with PTSD....It gives the image that you're not just trying to imagine or envision what certain struggles are like...but do in fact know them.
If you want to apply some of the above but don't know who to look towards when it comes to that authentic battle experience...I really recommend some of these poets who went to war:
Vera Brittain, Rupert Brooke, Eleanor Farjeon, Gilbert Frankau, Robert Graves, Julian Grenfell, Ivor Gurney, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, John McCrae, Henry Newbolt, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, John Oxenham,Jessie Pope, Herbert Read, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Owen Seaman, Alan Seeger, Charles Sorley, Muriel Stuart, Edward Thomas,Katharine Tynan, A G West
"DULCE ET DECORUM EST (Wilfred Owen)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)
Review of (Bethaney Hall's The Sound of Fire)
I love the musical quality of the poem you've got on. It's not a bad poem by any means. I guess the one complaint (or drawback) I see is that this poem is really generalized. It sounds like an ancient battle song that has nothing to do with you...so it would work alright as part of a Fantasy Novel...Tolkien is probably the most famous example. He wrote a lot of poetry like this into his novels. The problem is, it's just not compelling enough to stand on it's own. You've got a lot of somewhat cliche lines and images (which again aren't so cliche that they wouldn't perhaps work in the context of a fantasy novel. It is nice language after all) but otherwise...I'm just going to say no. Fire...choir...darkness, cold death, sorrow...These themes and words are used a hell of a lot. They've got to be approached in an original way to keep some sense of integrity....Hell, the very nature of the subject matter you're talking about (soldiers dying and not dying on the battlefield) has been so over done....You have to bring something new to the table because everything you've said here has been said..so many times it's unreal. Fear of mortality- check. Courage- check. Tyrants-check. Ancient pagan Gods and fire- check.
That being said, let me point out some areas where I think you were original and could expand on said thought process..
(1.) "I still hear their screams ringing like sirens." This imagery works. It not so cliche. Further more, you could expand on this idea and make something original. Point to a specific individual. Engage the details. A soldier on the battlefield would know at least one or two of the people they fought beside and if one of them died that grief would be very personal. Saying, "I still hear their screams ringing like sirens" makes you sound less like a soldier and more like a journalist who happens to be in a war zone. There would not be that kind of distance for a soldier talking about his own experience. That soldier doesn't have to outright say, "I'm so devastated" if you don't want him to. Simply a description of one of his buddy's favorite pair of shoes, a letter they left behind, a hilarious nick name...How you want to frame it is all up to you. The sky's the limit but one way or another, you have to close that gap. (Or change your perspective to someone other than a soldier.)
(2.) I notice you talking about PTSD here in these last two lines: "In my madness I still wait for the sound of fire.
I feel the coldness of Death creep nigher and nigher."
This is something you can really expand upon because it doesn't stem from a romanticized view of death or the battlefield. You won't find 800 page volumes of Medieval Lit. battle songs talking about this. Fantasy novelists don't cover this aspect either. Talking about how the finite moment, no matter how dangerous...is many times easier to deal with than the absence of anything happening...This chronic sense of dread and foreboding you have to live with...That's a unique perspective and a very personal one at that. It speaks to a real struggle for soldiers or anyone else with PTSD....It gives the image that you're not just trying to imagine or envision what certain struggles are like...but do in fact know them.
If you want to apply some of the above but don't know who to look towards when it comes to that authentic battle experience...I really recommend some of these poets who went to war:
Vera Brittain, Rupert Brooke, Eleanor Farjeon, Gilbert Frankau, Robert Graves, Julian Grenfell, Ivor Gurney, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, John McCrae, Henry Newbolt, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, John Oxenham,Jessie Pope, Herbert Read, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Owen Seaman, Alan Seeger, Charles Sorley, Muriel Stuart, Edward Thomas,Katharine Tynan, A G West
"DULCE ET DECORUM EST (Wilfred Owen)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)