Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Copeland
This is haunting, Nick—not least, I think, because of the musical repetitions. Also, setting the leave-taking in the future somehow heightens the poignance. I wondered at first about the archaic “nigh” instead of “near,” but after you repeated it a few times, I found that haunting as well.
A few odds and ends:
You don’t need to capitalize “autumn” in S5 and S6 or “night heron.” I’m not sure why the latter is so often capitalized on the Internet, but you wouldn’t capitalize “nightingale,” so …
In S5 and probably S3, “summers” needs an apostrophe.
There’s probably more you could do to vary or jazz or slant or trim the language, but others are better qualified to give you that kind of advice. I felt this poem.
|
Carl, thanks for the reminder on autumn and night heron. This is something I've run into before on another poem, and had someone point out the same, but I missed it on this one. As for the possessive apostrophe on summer, it seems like I need to brush up on my possessive rules. In this case I was considering it a stylistic choice, but it was also a response to a comment on my last one that
it's can be written as
its. Maybe this doesn't apply to nouns? A part of me likes the poem better without the apostrophes, but the incorrect punctuation likely just distracts.