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| Author |
Message |
flem
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The Creator
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Jun 4 02:44 UTC 1999 |
This was written after reading Erinn's "Time Honored Tradition",
item:61. Thanks for the inspiration!
The Creator 6/3/99
As I hold this half-formed wooden figure,
I feel that much closer to my maker.
I know what it must have felt like
Just before the breath of life was
Granted Man; I feel a shadow of God's joy
As I, too, little god of little wooden
Men, shape little worlds.
My people speak to me,
Silently they call on me to free
Their crudely moulded bodies from the
Grain of cedar, oak, mahogany.
Simple folk, stiff and silent always,
I feel so much love for these, my children.
Fashioned in the likeness of their maker,
Crudely, clumsily, they love me too.
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| 6 responses total. |
orinoco
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response 1 of 6:
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Jun 6 22:30 UTC 1999 |
This is a wonderful idea - especially the last line. The image of the artist
as God is pretty common, but the idea of the artists creations loving him as
he loves God is a twist I haven't seen before, and I like it.
The only complaint I have is that some of the line breaks are in awkward
places. Splitting "wooden men" across a line break is especially clunky.
Is there some sort of meter scheme here that I'm not seeing that forces you
to break the line there?
Other than that, as I said before, I like this a lot.
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arianna
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response 2 of 6:
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Jun 7 11:52 UTC 1999 |
WOW! *I* imspired this?
I'm floored. Absolutely knocked asunder. Thank you for the honor!
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orinoco
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response 3 of 6:
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Jun 9 18:41 UTC 1999 |
(10 bonus points for using "asunder" in a spontaneous exclamation)
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flem
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response 4 of 6:
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Jun 9 22:34 UTC 1999 |
re resp:1 - The meter was simply me trying to avoid iambic, since the
first few lines, which were the ones that suddenly came to me, and of
which the rest of the poem is just an elaboration, were not iambic.
Rather than attempt to change them, I tried to stick with the
opposite of iambic (whose name I can't recall off the top of my head;
dactylic perhaps? hmm...), which resulted in odd line breaks
sometimes. But more natural line breaks would have made me slip
into iambic. When that happens, it's hard for me to get back out. :)
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orinoco
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response 5 of 6:
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Jun 10 23:44 UTC 1999 |
Ahh.... I get it. Hmm...
Well, I'd still consider moving the line breaks around now that you've got
it written not-in-iambic-meter, but that's just me.
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flem
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response 6 of 6:
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Jun 13 06:12 UTC 1999 |
I don't know. I mean, lots of the "classic" poetry I read has line
breaks in places that appear funny to me if I've been reading free verse
recently, but it manages to make sense anyway. I think that when
reading poetry, the ability to, when necessary, *ignore* line breaks is
important. A lot of the singsongy effect that inexperienced poets get
(not that I claim to be experienced or anything) when they try to write
metered poetry, especially with lines of fixed length and/or rhyme, is
due to a tendency to try to make line breaks coincide with rhythmic
pauses. Conversely, I picked a random Shakespeare sonnet just now and
found this couplet:
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
When I read that, I pause at the comma, run straight through the line
break as if it weren't there, and put a very slight pause between "back"
and "the" in the second line.
Now, I grant that in the Shakespeare example the line break doesn't
separate a phrase like I did with "wooden / Men", but then I never
claimed to be on the order of Shakespeare yet. :)
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