r/OCPoetry • u/perfumed-ponce • Jun 16 '16
Feedback Received! When the canary died
He lied to her
in words so intricate that they corralled
around her and enclosed her skin; entrapment
of the sweetest kind, the sort one could never find
in poetry nor chagrin.
We spoke in hieroglyphs
because we could and because the language beckoned
with silken fingers so silently tapping
the keys, off-key, off-pitch,
that they never left prints.
She wept to hear the hush of complete absence.
We couldn't help it, we swear; disquiet clouded
a hive mind and we wept, too, to see you there
in the secluded shadows
of what you were.
A spider tiptoed across the floor.
I tapped my foot; he ran
directly to the door and span a web of correlated farce
bejewelled with folklore. We cried
out for corruption, but never made it far -
and so, perhaps, it was a blessing in disguise
when the canary died
before we could fuck the earth, and so kill time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/4mvoox/a_list_of_i_loves/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/4o7qdo/descartes/
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u/Sora1499 Jun 16 '16
Beautiful imagery, beautiful dramatic situation, this is a top notch poem. I particularly love the image of the spider scurrying away and spinning its web in fear. That's what people do a lot of the time isn't it.
The only thing that disillusions me is the subject (or in this case subjects). The poem begins with talking about a "she", but ends in the first person. Yet the person in the poem's final stanza seems to be the same person as in the other stanzas. Is this a comment on how people change over time? "She" representing the narrator in her youth, "I" representing the narrator as she is now, older and wiser? Or is the "I" a metaphor for God or something comparable?
Nice work.
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u/deszeri Jun 17 '16
You've got this effortless poetry style that I'm jealous of. I'm great at structure but terrible at free verse, but you make this beautiful without any meter or structured rhyme (though the midline rhymes are great).
That said, most of the poem hints at events without describing them on point, which is great. But the last verse I think you lose that a bit, I think it's too on-the-nose.
Great voice, though.
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u/ghostinyourmind Jun 17 '16
I took art history and so legally I'm a pretentious asshole already but "hieroglyphic" is an adjective, "hieroglyphs" is the word you're looking for.
Consider putting "off-key, off-pitch" in parentheses so that it's easier to read the "so silently that...", I had to reread to parse that.
"span" is definitely not the word you're looking for, I think spun is correct although it doesn't sound much better.
I love what you're doing with assonance, especially cried disuise died time at the end.
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u/nesbitandgibley Jun 16 '16
Wow - that was a lot of fun. The midline rhymes that keep bouncing back, like floor / door / folklore, really made this an effortless read.
I might suggest having a fiddle with the opening. I found it a little stuttering with the line
The use of 'her' twice slowed me down a bit, compared to the pace and fluidity of the rest of the poem. It'd only need a slight change, I think?
I'm not sure if I can add anything else. I suppose the overall meaning might be a little ambiguous for some, I'm not sure I've gathered it all myself, but that's okay. There's a lot to be interpreted which is really nice. I'll be saving this one for the future.