Slipping into the slinky, satin dress,
A reddened rouge, reflecting the rose’s blossoming in the delicate canvas of her skin.
The feeling so exquisite and ethereal,
The excitement incomparable to any previous experience.
Gorgeous brunette waves with a golden sheen,
Naturally tumbling and flowing around the expectant face,
Expensive gold adoring the nape of her neck,
Positively glowing with happiness, revealing the depth of her emotions.
Colour carefully covering the perfectly shaped nails,
The added glamour of inch high heels.
A breathtaking view as he adores her for the first time in this beautiful fashion.
The sparkle of her eyes causes him to raise his head to the twinkling stars above and smile at such a heavenly site.
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musically speaking ........
Written by Bagheera (680 comments posted) 6th March 2006 | ........ you should have Chris de Bergh playing softly in the background 
How I wish I could handle poetry as well as others on this site seem to do!  |
Written by amboline (183 comments posted) 7th March 2006 | I really want to like this, unfortunately it just doesn't work for me. I feel like you're over-labouring the adjectives ("REDDENED rouge", "EXPENSIVE gold", "this BEAUTIFUL fashion") and adverbs ("NATURALLY tumbling", "POSITIVELY glowing", "CAREFULLY covering"). Your central image is so evocative that you don't NEED to spend half the poem telling us how wonderful she is - let us discover that for ourselves. You've also fallen for one of my poetic pet hates which is over-use of alliteration. "Reddened rouge, reflecting the rose" may look clever on paper, but try reading it out loud - it sounds clumsy on the tongue, and un-subtle. Much better to use the same words but spread them out much more instead of packing them all together; that way you create a subtle sense of music in the poem, and the alliteration carries the sound instead of fighting against it.
I think this one is definitely a case of "less is more". | thanks
Written by brook_rivers (484 comments posted) 7th March 2006 | thanks for both the comments here.
to be honest this poem wasa bit of an experiement. i was working on use of alliteration and building up a detailed image, something I dont usually tend to do. I'm still tuning the form of the poem at the moment, for example this line:
A reddened rouge, reflecting the rose’s blossoming in the delicate canvas of her skin.
I am going to chop up so its like this:
A reddened rouge,
reflecting the rose’s blossoming in the delicate canvas of her skin.
to emphasise the pauses in the poem more, as its meant to be read quite slowly.
Personally I admire people who can use alliteration effectively, which just goes to show how subjective poetry is!
thanks
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Written by amboline (183 comments posted) 8th March 2006 | | I have no problem with people who can use alliteration effectively. Used with subtlety, it adds colour to a poetic phrase, and enhances the music that happens when the poem is read aloud. The problem here is that the alliteration has no subtlety at all. In the "reddened rouge" sentence, you have five words in a row, four of which are alliterative, and it's just too much. Leaving aside the fact that "reddened rouge" is tautology, it would be much more effective to spread your four alliterative words out so that they fit into a group of maybe 12 or 20 words, instead of 5. | Needs work
Written by shadowplay (41 comments posted) 8th March 2006 | Hmm. Now, you're got an interesting idea here, even if it immediately reminded me of a certain 80s song they always play for the couples at discos.
For me, I like the concept but you seem to be trying to make it as difficult as possible to read! Why do you have to overload the fisrt stanza with so many adjectives? I as a poet had to force myself to read on, so imagine what it would be like to the casual reader. The first few lines are meant to capture the reader and reel them in, so let's start with them:
Slipping into the slinky, satin dress,
is fine, it's pretty standard stuff though...
A reddened rouge,
rouge is red, so why must you have both of them?
reflecting the rose’s blossoming
this line cancels out the one before it, surely? When I think of roses I think of red.
in the delicate canvas of her skin.
this is a nice, a really nice image. Why not something like (and this is how I'd do it, obviously, but I'm trying to use your words as much as possible):
Slipping into the slinky, satin dress
that reflects the rose's blossoming
in the delicate canvas of her skin.
First of all, you have nice neat lines and none of the excessive alliteration which makes me want to go 'bakcjdkck' when I read it aloud.
The feeling so exquisite and ethereal,
The excitement incomparable to any previous experience.
I like these lines a lot,
Gorgeous brunette waves with a golden sheen,
Yeah, wouldn't change it.
Naturally tumbling and flowing around the expectant face,
You seem to interrup the flow of this with 'Naturally'- do we need it really? Unless you think the reader is going to think she has a mohawk or uses hair straighteners.
Expensive gold adoring the nape of her neck,
Positively glowing with happiness, revealing the depth of her emotions.
Colour carefully covering the perfectly shaped nails,
The added glamour of inch high heels.
I really like those lines. I'm surprised you stopped at colour though- what colour? Crimson?
A breathtaking view as he adores her for the first time in this beautiful fashion.
The sparkle of her eyes causes him to raise his head to the twinkling stars above and smile at such a heavenly site.
'raise his head' and 'above' serve the same purpose. Cut one. 'site' should be 'sight', too, and 'heavenly sight' is a little too cliched for my liking, especially since you've combined a lot of other interesting and original imagery in the rest of the poem.
Basically I think you have to go back over this with an editor's eye and see that you're trying to say the same thing in several different ways. I think this has a lot of potential to be a good poem if you were to do that. | Thanks
Written by brook_rivers (484 comments posted) 8th March 2006 | Thanks for such detailed and useful comments shadowplay. They are really helpful. I had already started to play around with the form of the poem after I had posted it. This really is a first draft here and i should have taken a bit more time over it before it was posted!Will post an updated version as soon as its completed.
thanks again | No worries
Written by amboline (183 comments posted) 9th March 2006 | Part of the purpose of this site is to give writers a chance to refine their work once people have commented on it. When you've finished version 2, feel free to post it up separately so we can see the "before and after"  | Hi Brook
Written by Espiral (44 comments posted) 26th April 2006 |
I made a similar comment on your Easter Bunny poem - I think your lines are too much like sentences. If you ran them all together they would almost pass for a piece of prose.
"The sparkle of her eyes causes him to raise his head to the twinkling stars above and smile at such a heavenly site."
Is this line still part of the poem?
I think with poems, as amboline said, less is more - I can't write poetry myself because I'm too longwinded! I can see a similar tendency with you, but I think you have the capability to condense it and produce a good poem.
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