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Re:Help needed with poem - 05/31/2007
antryg wrote:
I need honest comments about this poem, entitled Danny's Lament. I've rewritten it about 5 times in the past 2 months. Tell me what you like, don't like and/or don't understand. I need some outside perspective to help me.
I’ve stolen the sound of the ocean
from the depths of a sand swept shell
And in it’s place I have hidden
pale echoes of my anguish and pain
Tell nobody, with this do not share
This dubious secret I gift to you
All my trust, heart and soul is there
I sorrow that such a shabby gift
Is all that my strength will bear
What kind of love shares trouble
Tell nobody, with this do not share
Yet you alone do I trust and love
Sharing all the hidden me found within
Pale echoes of anguish and pain
Back to the poem...
The first two lines are exquisite, some fine poetry. The third line of that stanza, while expressing something heartwrenchingly lovely, does not scan as well as the first two lines but could be smoothed easily enough.
I love how that whole stanza so beautifully captures yet almost resists the mind, the way Wallace Stevens said poetry should.
The "tell nobody" stanza reads like a refrain of sorts, not just because it rhymes but because it grounds the poem and draws us in. And it's lovely, darkly romantic and disconsolate -- all good stuff!
But then instead of using it as a proper refrain, you chop it up and repeat only the first line of it in the third stanza... also... and this is the bigger issue: you put it at a place where you've started a thought that you fail to finish.
I wonder if taking out the "Tell nobody" line in that third stanza, replacing it with, if not a rhetorical answer to your rhetorical question ; ) at least a deepening of the thought you've started. THEN go back to that couplet-ish thing that I'm calling the refrain, repeating it in full. It almost seems like you are wanting to repeat it anyway.
Just for balance the fourth stanza should probably have four lines. It ends abruptly and without a full thought or resolution.
Don't take any of this to mean I don't like your poem, by the way! It is beautiful, and I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't like it! With the title Danny's Lament, I can almost hear it being sung with a sorrowful ancient Celtic tune.
Cheers -- to your poetic mind 
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