Comments and critique welcome on my poem, thanks?
Beth (Age 9)
The thoughts go racing in her mind
And pictures flicker through her head.
She’s on a mission to search out
Her father who has long been dead.
He died when she was one year old,
No recollection is in store,
But still she looks to comfort find
Each nook and cranny she’ll explore.
The questions volley one by one,
It’s meat she seeks to flesh out bone.
She hunts her bedroom looking for
Her Dad who’s buried under stone.
There’s not much left of him to find,
Few teddy bears he bought for her,
Old cards placed in a biscuit tin
And all the rest is just a blur.
A canvas with no sign of paint,
The past is past but can’t stay blank.
A gap so wide that’s left behind
Is best compressed by being frank.
Trolls are out again I see. I don’t block or give TD’s
Thank you Iano but in this case, the last thing she wants to do is shed tears. She’s after the truth, she is seeking knowledge. That’s what she is looking for. She knows he’s dead, she wants to get to know what he was like, who he was.
Peter (I was Beth) – Beth’s Mother is off stage (nice way of putting it)both in the poem and in real life. My knowledge of Beth’s Father is limited. He was a bit of a rascal. He did not have many redeeming qualities other than he loved her. In her quest for truth at some point I have to be more frank with her. There’s no other way of putting it. She’ll only learn it from me – drip feed style. She knows why he died and that he loved her, there’s more.
Tagged with: biscuit tin • blur • canvas • cards • dad • drip feed • feed style • flesh • flicker • gap • left behind • mage • nook • paint • poem • quest for truth • recollection • redeeming qualities • trolls • volley
Filed under: How To Make Art Form Tin
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Personally, I love this poem. It tells a moving story and the last two lines chisel that story’s significance in stone. I love a poem with memorable lines and this one several. I agree that the inverted word order in the seventh line is awkward, but that could be easily fixed. Beautiful work!
I don’t know what to make of it. Sad story.
Heart’s questions sometimes bring no resolved answers.
heartfelt pen, you are a natural at these expressions.
You make sad lovely.
I see your intent but I wonder if you poem might have best been conveyed by focusing on a simple thing, such as a teddy bear, then going back to the search? To me it would have added more to the story, but perhaps that is just me. Forced rhyme to me on ‘comfort find’.
Nice
There’s so much talent to come out of Yahoo! Answers.
It’s still too soon for her to forget that a part of her has left and gone. "Compressed by being frank " sometimes does not work when a higher sense or reason is still being actively used to understand the world, when higher functions still govern. As the child attaches herself more to "reality", she activates those tools that enable her to function in this material world, and drops those that escorted her upon entry which also explains how sometimes blind men are able to activate a higher sense of sight that enables them "see" more clearly than men with eyes.
…and so she is to learn her father was, in Koye’s coined term, a bit ‘flawsome’? People do not rise to sainthood just because they died. Very nice, Chris.
Wow I actually quite liked that even though I don’t usually like poems that rhyme but I think it flowed really well. I think it is really sad and highlights things such as children losing parents to the war and it is really appropriate to our times. Its really well written. Its got a very complex vocabulary range and it compliments the poem well, it is very distinct between other poems that get posted to yahoo answers on how it is quite morbid. I love the metaphors such as "canvas with no sign of paint". I don’t know if this was intentional but there are a lot of "S" sounds and it has good aural quality as I read it out to myself and it reminded me of whispers. I enjoyed that, well done.
Why am I being thumbed down, I provided a legitimate response.
You weave emotions masterfully, cassie!!!
You sure do have a big throbbing feeling forgiving heart…that can change other hearts too! You seem to have achieved the impossible. Someone who was throwing stones yesterday is eating right out of your hands today
)
Don’t change…ever!
Bless you, dear!
"A gap so wide that’s left behind
Is best compressed by being frank."
exactly
"But comfort she still looks to find" – why don’t you speak English? Also, lines 11 and 12 give the impression that her dad is buried under a stone in her bedroom. Now – disregard everyone who only tells you this is good – because it’s clear they don’t know what they’re talking about. It has potential, but needs a lot of work. Your last line is lame because it’s not obvious that you’re referring to another person – the impression is that Beth needs to be frank.
Perhaps…
A canvas with no sign of paint.
The past is past, so shed no tears.
The gap so wide that’s left behind
Will be compressed in coming years.
This suggests that, over time, she will learn the answers – or that the gap will be compressed (or filled) by other life experiences.
Bless her heart. She longs for a piece of herself that is missing in her life.
Excellent poem, Cassie. This flows beautifully and tells the story effortlessly. She’s lucky to have you in her life.
Parisa 4 is only being nice because shes sick of me messing with her.
First of all, to risk labeling myself a rank amateur in the eyes of someone so self-assured as Ian, I will say that this poem is already quite solid, although I do think that the grammatical inversion you have chosen in the line ‘But still she looks to comfort find’ is unnecessarily abstruse; I personally understand your intent exactly, but my grammatical sense is unusually refined and I know you adopted it to maintain the exacting, metronomic cadence this poem has. However, it was unnecessary. You could have said as easily ‘But comfort still she looks to find’ and have avoided placing the direct object in a split infinitive. Is what you did incorrect gramatically? No, but by the same token it is not preferable .Now on to the end of the poem, and the penultimate line: I think it would better serve your purpose to replace the period ending the antepenultimate line by a comma (making of the line a clause), and then replacing ‘that’s’ with ‘what’s’ in the penultimate line. I agree with you that you can’t change the last line to Ian’s recommendation without changing the affect of the entire poem, which is that Beth is trying to find some memento of the father she never knew. She will solve nothing by crying; she’s simply curious. I grew up in a single-parent household; my mother raised me, and my brother, without him. He left her between the time of my conception and my birth; I’ve never met him or talked to him. I have seen photographs and heard the stories, but that’s it. I can, up to a point, empathize with ‘Beth.’ It’s not an occasion for crying so much as one for questioning, "Who was he?" and "Who am I?" That being said, the word ‘frank’ must be one you wish to apply to Beth’s mother, who lives for the purposes of the poem ‘offstage’, which serves to make Beth’s questing more solitary, more heartbreaking. To the extent that your approach draws the reader closer to her, it makes the word ‘frank’ seem odd (in my opinion). A knotty problem you have there Cassie! How will you solve it. I don’t intend to tell you ‘how you should’ because our lively correspondence has assured me regularly of the keenness of your mind and you will find the way… your way! Just don’t take ‘Beth’ away to some far remove in the process. All in all, a fine poem but one you can, through further careful thought, make even more special.