Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Crocuses

The crocuses as first have seen their bloom
in cold of early spring, heaven’s portend
with call that other life should now ascend,
that world may rise in joy from winter’s gloom.
Though trees were skeletal in frosted tomb
their buds, in pulsing, reached out to send
the spirits force with balm so warm, and mend
the frosty cracks where life does now re-bloom.

Though petals felt the cold of frost delude,
felt beauty’s smile exposed to barren earth,
saw spirit’s call forgotten soon by man;
the flowers speech did teach, in truth allude
that beauty masters time in higher worth
And leaps infinity with wider span.

Editing stage: 

Comments

to be a painter and be able to draw with a pencil and a poet to write with a quill. The obvious archaic aspects of the poem, something that could have been written 200 years ago, for me is a good thing. The stance is that of the beginning of the romantic era, which lingers on today in different forms. You are not present in the poem. Nature becomes idealized.
I am always happy to see any poet prove that he has gone through the discipline to write successfully in the old style. In that respect, the poem is a success and is well done.

Finding your own voice will come through craft writing. and writing like this will help you get there.
This is not your voice. But it shows you are learning the craft. There is the 10,000 hour law, which also applies to poets. It takes that long to go through the motions to master anything- electrician, tennis player, poet...and glad to see you are spending them well.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

Thank you very much for your evaluation and kind words.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

I like the way the last line opens up this poem. Its good writing ie an assimilation of old world literary style evoking the operatic; which has a strange dual nature for me because while it is melodic it is percussive-less and bereft of dynamic rhythm. I think if we speak of the broad contemporary trend in poetry it has an existential immediacy and intimacy about it and in my opinion would add authenticity and heft to your work Do you want to hang 17th century painting of stiff solders with swords dangling or bowls of fruit in your house? I think of contemporary writing as fresh. vital of culturally reviving,an evolution of the because it permits the visceral and reaches beyond the tired formal and ultra picturesque gilded.
Well what do you think? We live in cities and heated homes or small towns with technical and creature comforts and amenities. To me, no matter how well done, this work reads like an exercise or a pretense of a pastoral ghost; or your time slipped.
In other words do you want to make the reader care?
Best Z

This is not my voice, just an experiment to duplicate the sonnet in its old form. This is also not my direction, though I do at times try my hand at classical forms.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

Okay well its not worth the effort and time. I work hard and thoughtfully to review another's work. I take you seriously only to find out its a mere exercise of which you now disassociate yourself. If you want to be taken seriously and you want to be in a workshop environment then take others seriously enough to put your very best authentic work so when you get feedback it actually means something

Hi; listen to me sing ...is it good? ...what you dont like it? ...well I wasn't trying anyway reasoning

Your message to me and perhaps others here is your not to be taken seriously
…...
The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

Heed your own quote ,,,what are you transferring? As you say not your own voice or direction

OK, let me try to explain it another way:

"I think if we speak of the broad contemporary trend in poetry it has an existential immediacy and intimacy about it and in my opinion would add authenticity and heft to your work..."

you suggest I don't have the broad contemporary trend, which in fact, I believe I do.

"and in my opinion would add authenticity and heft to your work" and there is the key word, work, and you do go on as if all my work is such, which of course you must do if you want to set up a general analysis.

So what I was basically saying, its just an exercise into style, a particular thing, not my general leaning.

And serious, yes, I take it serious. I think it is nicely done, both in craft and in style.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

Well ill start where you end.
I think you write well and stated so
"I like the way the last line opens up this poem. Its good writing"

My comment is based on your confession {you said} "not your own voice or direction"
How else would you take that remark?
It seems blatantly surreptitious to me.
Further authenticity goes to the heart of anyone's work because at least to most of us it is a quest for trust and uncovering our own internal resources; not merely an academic quest.
The question remains why do you produce work in the demeanor of a highly stylized pre 20th c. period? To what end?
The thing about it is it feels like pantomime, like an old world show as if to say that you will leave yourself out of the poem ie "just an experiment to duplicate the sonnet in its old form."
Study the sonnet anyway you like. Thats a good thing! Be a scholar of pre 20th c. literature if you wish. Personally I love that. But to write in a stylized provincial manner in the heat of the 21c. remains at least to me a stretch as if I where Sicilian poet interacting with the Provencal troubadours in 13th c. in lyric verse. That is not merely a fiction, its a pretense, the poem as sophistry and evasion. Consider writing something you can stand behind with out the cavoites.

The content is not an academic quest, it speaks of beauty in nature and speaks of beauty being above the ravages of time, it speaks of eternals. .

"The question remains why do you produce work in the demeanor of a highly stylized pre 20th c. period? To what end?" Its an exercise which I believe horns my poetry as a whole.

"That is not merely a fiction, its a pretense, the poem as sophistry and evasion. Consider writing something you can stand behind with out the cavoites." You seem all caught up on the form, but what is said within this form, I think has spiritual weight. Why should I write only one type of poetry?

I will post a sonnet in a different voice, tell me what you think of that one?

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

Write what you like but after you put it out there dont make excuses for it and distance yourself from the outcome by saying its not your voice and direction...Its like saying I take no responsibility for my work

If I dont like something and you do and you own it I respect that as a difference in sensibility and then we can talk about that but to duck and cover seems like guilt. Its not a question of your freedom to write what you want but to back it up when challenged ie the very purpose of a workshop ie to look at ourselves through another's lens
I'm asking you what you stand for as writer and so far you have responded by saying exercise's that are not connected to my direction and voice. Are you in search of an identity?

Why dont you take some time and write a writers statement of intention: I put a lot into mine; Why not read it? I get writing because we love language but I know to many who identify with being a writer that have not drilled down deep enough into there own souls, and uncovered the secrets they keep from themselves to have anything to say or at least indulge a thrilling fiction

"Write what you like but after you put it out there dont make excuses for it and distance yourself from the outcome by saying its not your voice and direction. " ...Its like saying I take no responsibility for my work
You are right, I do seem to be distancing myself, and making excuses for it, but lets go back to the beginning. You wrote: "I think if we speak of the broad contemporary trend in poetry it has an existential immediacy and intimacy about it and in my opinion would add authenticity and heft to your work Do you want to hang 17th century painting of stiff solders with swords dangling or bowls of fruit in your house? I think of contemporary writing as fresh. vital of culturally reviving,an evolution of the because it permits the visceral and reaches beyond the tired formal and ultra picturesque gilded."

You use the term "add authenticity and heft to your work" This bald statement must be interpreted as meaning my work as a whole; and not just this particular piece. I was not distancing myself from the poem, but from your seeming assertion that this is my style, this is my voice,so I simple saying this not my style not may voice. Perhaps its just a misunderstanding of semantics, but when someone use the term 'your work' I think they speak of my poetic output as a whole. If you were only speaking of this poem in particular when you said your work' then we can have a whole different conversation.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

I'm only addressing this piece I'm unfamiliar with your body of work Each poem must stand on its own.

"if we speak of the broad contemporary trend in poetry it has an existential immediacy and intimacy about it" I totally agree with this statement, I never put it into words, but believe I was unconsciously a part of that trend.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

its a case of inner directedness vs outer and how they are comingled
Uncovering the subconscious and making it conscious is at least in my opinion the great prompt, the reason to write poems or we are relegated to the merely decorative like a Hallmark card

"or we are relegated to the merely decorative like Hallmark" I find your ideas very interesting, but this is going a bit too far. although the style is out dated those old poems had universal content that is rally seen in today's poetry. It is that eternal nature I tried to reflect in this poem. And who knows, history may not remember our time as the bastion of art, but more a time of existential confusion brought on by science's dismantling of our former belief system.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment

. "although the style is out dated" What does that mean to you?,,,anachronism ...Its out dated by your own admission ,,consider and move on unless you prefer to write out dated poems which is just another way of saying I'm unable to write like myself and I dont know what and who I am

"consider and move on unless you prefer to write out dated poems which is just another way of saying I'm unable to write like myself and I dont know what and who I am"

I am sorry, but I find your premise far too weak here, to support such a far reaching conclusion. Perhaps you should analyze your text. I am sure it would not give an outside observer the impression you were talking about a single poem, but as advising someone to change a hard and fast trend.

For me content has always been my first priority, more important than the craft or style that brings it to fruition.

T

The most powerful reaction
of mind on mind
is transference of sight

author comment
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.