Brigit's Flame April Week 2 Entry
This one is doing double duty as both my NaPoWriMo poem for today (11/30) and my week 2 Brigit's Flame entry.
November Sunflower
Palms stretched out like horizons
absorbing the mid-day sun-
granules of hope settling into the creases.
There is no more fertile soil than her skin,
Her mother swallowed too many sunflower seeds
purchased in convenience store ( Read more... )
November Sunflower
Palms stretched out like horizons
absorbing the mid-day sun-
granules of hope settling into the creases.
There is no more fertile soil than her skin,
Her mother swallowed too many sunflower seeds
purchased in convenience store ( Read more... )
Cedarwolfsinger got most of the grammatical concerns with her edit, so I'll hit you up with more along the lines of enjambment and style and such.
I think the last line of Stanza 1 should end with a period, though. I think you might've meant to do that anyway. So, not a big deal.
I like the idea of 'her March back home', because double-semantic packing always enthuses me. But in the next stanza, for whatever reason? It took me a few re-reads to get that "she's always been this way" applied to "a bloom out of season", and thus I recommend a possible change to "and she's always been a bit late that way." Or something similar. I mean, because there's not really a This Way that's concretely defined in Stanza 2 that I can readily identify in Stanza 3. Does that make sense? I know it says "a bit too late" immediately after, but I just don't read it the same way. Also, to address Cedar's concern, this recommended change does nothing to really indicate which woman you are talking about - mother or child. Although I'm inclined to think it's about the child? I'm 80% sure. But Cedar's right; we need to be surer.
Hum te tum tum. I think I'd change "just after" in the sunset stanza to "once", just for the syllables. Try it out and see if that works for you.
In that next stanza, I read the end-of-the-line as grace-petals. and that's probably not what you meant. Am I just reading too much into that em-dash? shouldn't there be a lil' space before said dash?
Anyway. This happens to be quite a lovely poem, with touching (Annie-Proulx-like!) imagery. You are obviously a talented poet. Keep knockin' 'em out like this and you'll go places, if you haven't gone there already.
-D
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Yes, that comma was meant to be a period. Haha. I'll correct it.
I'm really happy that both of my editors liked the March part and understood it. Haha. I tried to make it really clear and obvious, but no one else mentioned it after reading so I began to worry that it wasn't as clear as I thought it was. Either that, or it was just corny and no one had the heart to tell me. ;)
Yes, you and Cedar are both right about the subject not being clear enough. But as I told Cedar, the subject is the child. The mother is only mentioned in the second stanza regarding the child's birth. As I also told Cedar, I think it's not quite clear enough because I originally wrote the poem in first person and then decided at the last minute to change it. When I go back to revise the poem, I'll probably change it back to first person.
Hm. I like grace-petals, so it doesn't bother me that you read it that way. Haha. But, no, I didn't mean it that way. I probably just didn't put in the dash because of the line break. I wouldn't have separated a hyphenated word between lines like that. But I'll add a little space in there. :)
Annie Proulx-like?! :D Yay! Haha. Thank you so much! I feel like this poem was a bit sloppy and that I should have spent a little more time on it. But with my poetry, I never do much editing at all. I write them and they are what they are. That's why I wanted in-depth edits for this one. To show me things I need to think about when going back to polish up a poem.
Again, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
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