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Dress Me up in Words (Feedback, pretty please with a cherry on top?)
Find me a gown topped with the crooked tree’s lullabies
Put in me satin from the most divine dreams of the skies,
Sew on sapphire roses and dreamy dark nights,
Use the finest green hills and the rolling black tides,
Bring me the robin-egg ribbon from far-off lands,
A bouquet of sea stars from the coast’s soft sands.
Thread the starlight into your machine, dear tailor sir,
Create tiers made of fables, and dress me up in words.
Finish with a touch of poetry, a dash of alliteration and rhyme,
Garnish the tops with all that jargon of mine,
Lace made of similes, like crystals grown from metaphors,
Archaism makes for dresses that I undyingly adore.
Measure me in iambic parameters and tempos, rhythms and rhymes,
Use a rhapsody of gold, decorative connotations and styles,
Dress me up in the sounds of plucking a string with a tease,
Of the piano’s shrill laugher when you tickle her keys.
Only the best diction for my night dress, dear mister tailor,
Only swaths of fabric constructed with the upmost amount of care,
So that the stars themselves can be jealous of my stanzas,
And the hopes and dreams and beautifully mad chances,
I want the planet to see the beauty of the word
When I sing and I dance and I speak before the world.
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- Ciel the Sky Mortal's blog
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Wow
This is really good. I love how it sort of rhymes, but not entirely. It gives the poem a whole new twist. I would definitly enter it in a contest! Wow.
The World cannot hold the weight of itself; we must each take a small piece
Thanks!
Thanks! Glad you liked it, and I think I'm going to submit it after all! :)
"Even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell, play the game, but play it your own way."
I'm glad you're going to
I'm glad you're going to submit it :). I love this poem.
People say if you look down, you will fall, but if you look up, will you fly?
The concept behind this piece
The concept behind this piece is beautiful! The line "thread the starlight into your machine" conjures up all sorts of magic for me. Open skies and lying on grassy, windswept knolls at midnight holding hands with someone (wow, that sounds a little too romcomy...oh well. It's Valentines Day. Forgive me)
I love it!
But you did ask for feedback, so I'll just make one little comment - when reading it aloud (because that's the best way to read poetry, of course), the second line (the "dreams of the skies" bit) is a little off-kilter with the general flow of the rest of the piece. My tongue kind of trips over itself - there's perhaps one too many syllables with relation to the line above it? It's just a suggestion/pointy-outy thing. :)
Granted, if I hadn't read it aloud I probably wouldn't have noticed it, and if you hadn't asked for feedback I wouldn't have mentioned anything, but you did ask...and from a rhythm-obsessed subscriber, you did receive. :)
Anyways. It's a great piece! I'm glad you're submitting it! See you at the conference, I hope?
ある所に、小さな夢がありました。誰が見たのかわからない、それは小さな夢でした -------> "Somewhere, there was a tiny dream. It was such a tiny dream that no one knew who had dreamt it..."
Thank youuu :3
Thanks for such wonderful feedback, glad you enjoyed it, and that the images worked out as they did. Yes, I sent in my application today, so I hope to see you there!! :D
Off-kilter.... that phrase it way too much fun to say out loud... kilter, kilter, kilter.... Okay, focusing again.... Yeah, when I origionally wrote it, those first two lines were almost twice as long as every other line, but I couldnt cut them quite in half making four lines, so I just shortened them, bound to end slightly off-kilter (tehehe). This will probably be one of those things I'll come back to in a few weeks and try once more to tidy up haha.
Merci encore, mon ami, and hope to see you in May :D
"Even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell, play the game, but play it your own way."
I really like this line: "I
I really like this line:
"I want the planet to see the beauty of the word
When I sing and I dance and I speak before the world."
I think that was a lovely close. You used rhythm really well, and I thought it flowed nicely. I think I would've liked it more if instead of the tailor being the creator of this garmet that it was you. If you were the one venturing to far away lands to claim the robbin-egg ribon.
I think this is a wonderful
I think this is a wonderful piece, you should be really proud of it! I am impressed with your ability to create imagery in such complex ways, and much like the other commenters, I find the rhythm and almost-rhymes of the poem to be really captivating. I was especially drawn to the lines:
"Bring me the robin-egg ribbon from far-off lands,
A bouquet of sea stars from the coast’s soft sands.
Thread the starlight into your machine, dear tailor sir,
Create tiers made of fables, and dress me up in words."
There is something about the image that you create here that really struck me, and I think you have a very sophisticated way of phrasing your thoughts - especially with phrases like "bouquet of sea stars."
In terms of additional feedback, it is hard to find something to critique! Thinking holistically, I guess I was a little confused when thinking about your poem in its entirety and trying to quantify it specifically. It seems like you go back and forth between you being the creator of the words and the tailor being the creator of them, and there is a degree of ambiguity as to who the creator is and/or who owns the creation. Is it you, the tailor, or just the words themselves? That being said, this ambiguity may very well be intentional, and it may be a part of what makes this poem so interesting to read and listen to - so perhaps this point is moot, depending on your intent.
I'd also just point out a few small technicalities: fixing the typo in the 7th line from the bottom (laughter), and considering swapping the comma for a period at the end of the 3rd line from the bottom (as a reader, it feels like the thought has ended a new one has begun as you conclude in the final 2 lines).
Regardless, this is a remarkable piece that I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Emily
Wow, thanks for such a
Wow, thanks for such a wonderful comment!! I love getting stuff like this, and I'm glad you enjoyed the piece! Thanks! And.. haha... I noticed the "laughter error"... after I submitted it for CCYWC... *facepalm* But oh well. Thanks again! :)
"Even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell, play the game, but play it your own way."