[Glenn Wright]

Aubade

The meddlesome sun patrols the forest trail,
peeking in corners, rousting nestled lovers,
provoking flocks of birds to fill the dale
with flashing wings; a jeweled hummingbird hovers
over our bodies, entwined on mossy covers.

I wake before her, free my tangled limbs,
and slip away into the deeper gloom,
waiting for her to rise to skylark hymns,
to feel the dewy chill, smell the perfume
of evergreen and sweet wild rose’s bloom.

I watch her blink into the glaring east,
Stand up, and brush leaf litter from her dress.
A creature of the day, light is her feast.
I know that she’s forgotten my caress,
or, wanting me, she never would confess.

Summoned to her world, so full of weeping,
blighted by sin, cursed with pain and labors,
she looks around her, careful to be keeping
A downcast air, fleeing the woodland’s flavors
for the bitter taste of clocks and chores and neighbors.

[Trevor Conway]

Hi Glenn,

This is a nice enough scene, but the language felt too ornate to me, too old-fashioned and straining for poeticness, as if you're trying too hard. Others might like this approach, but for me anyway, it spoiled the poem to a degree. One example is the "meddlesome" sun. It just feels stilted/awkward to me. Would you could consider a version where you replace various words with more startling (or at least less strained) word choices, then compare the two versions? As an example, a less strained version of "meddlesome" could be "pesky" or "brazen". A more startling alternative could be something like "heat/light-pissing". Radical, I know, but just an example. I'll put in bold below other words that just felt too old-fashioned/strained/cliched/corny to my ear. Up to you if you'd like to experiement with a different approach.

Apart from that, I did feel the rhyme and rhythm worked well, and the final stanza was generally free to what put me off above.

I hope this feedback helps in some way.

All the best,

Trev

The meddlesome sun patrols the forest trail,
peeking in corners, rousting nestled lovers,
provoking flocks of birds to fill the dale
with flashing wings; a jeweled hummingbird hovers
over our bodies, entwined on mossy covers.

I wake before her, free my tangled limbs,
and slip away into the deeper gloom,
waiting for her to rise to skylark hymns,
to feel the dewy chill, smell the perfume
of evergreen and sweet wild rose’s bloom.

I watch her blink into the glaring east,
Stand up, and brush leaf litter from her dress.
A creature of the day, light is her feast.
I know that she’s forgotten my caress,
or, wanting me, she never would confess.

Summoned to her world, so full of weeping,
blighted by sin, cursed with pain and labors,
she looks around her, careful to be keeping
A downcast air, fleeing the woodland’s flavors
for the bitter taste of clocks and chores and neighbors.

[R. Nemo Hill]

For all its ornately detailed modifiers, Glen, the poem's description doesn't seem to be of a real place. I realize an argument could be made that the place is meant to be archetypal, but I think it would be a more interesting experiment to draw more from reality, to make the hummingbird and the rose more particular and personal than universal. Sometimes a more personal focus opens up a woodland far more vast than the literary one echoed by deliberately conjured pastiche.

Nemo

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Trev and Nemo—

Thanks for your considered opinions. They helped me to understand how the piece landed with you and are very useful.

You both had issues with the Keatsian diction in the first two stanzas. Here is my thinking.
I wanted to emphasize the contrast between the world of imagination, Romanticism, night, mystery, and magic to which the N belongs, and the world of common sense, Realism, day, society, and responsibility to which the woman returns after her tryst. I saw dawn as the liminal space between the two worlds. The “meddlesome” sun is a hat tip to Donne’s “Busy old fool, unruly sun” in “The Sun Rising.” He is the personification of the Apollonian world of day with its rules, judgments, religion, and enforcement of social norms. He is counterbalanced by the N, who is the personification of the Dionysian world of magic, wildness, paganism, and sensation. I varied the diction in the two halves of the poem to underscore this contrast.

Nemo—Stanzas 1 and 2 are meant to evoke the magic of “Lamia” or “The Eve of St. Agnes.” The jeweled hummingbird, skylark hymns, and perfume are not supposed to be real. They may have been conjured by the N, an incubus who may have used them to try to seduce the girl. Or they may have been magical gifts offered sincerely by the lovesick N to the girl. In S3 and 4, I change the diction to reflect the lost magic and emphasize the humdrum world she chose, which is a real place. “[H]er world, so full of weeping” is a nod to Yeats’s “The Stolen Child.” I wanted the reader to react to her choice and decide if she made the right one. I also want the reader to decide if the N is a sincere lover or a self-serving seducer.

Trev—I thought about changing “meddlesome” to “copper” in order to play on both the color of the sun at dawn and the role of policeman that the sun plays, intruding into dark nooks and dim crannies, but I decided I liked the sound of “meddlesome.” I also thought about changing “caress” to something like “ardent kiss,” but it introduced metrical problems and “caress” makes the N sound more sensitive and vulnerable. I also thought introducing even one more adjective might make the poem explode.

Thanks, gentlemen, for your thoughts and encouragement.

Glenn

[Trevor Conway]

No bother, Glenn. "Copper" doesn't work there for me, but kudos for trying something so out-there!

Best of luck with it.

Trev

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

Hi, Trev and Nemo—

Thanks for your considered opinions. They helped me to understand how the piece landed with you and are very useful.

You both had issues with the Keatsian diction in the first two stanzas. Here is my thinking.
I wanted to emphasize the contrast between the world of imagination, Romanticism, night, mystery, and magic to which the N belongs, and the world of common sense, Realism, day, society, and responsibility to which the woman returns after her tryst. I saw dawn as the liminal space between the two worlds. The “meddlesome” sun is a hat tip to Donne’s “Busy old fool, unruly sun” in “The Sun Rising.” He is the personification of the Apollonian world of day with its rules, judgments, religion, and enforcement of social norms. He is counterbalanced by the N, who is the personification of the Dionysian world of magic, wildness, paganism, and sensation. I varied the diction in the two halves of the poem to underscore this contrast.

Nemo—Stanzas 1 and 2 are meant to evoke the magic of “Lamia” or “The Eve of St. Agnes.” The jeweled hummingbird, skylark hymns, and perfume are not supposed to be real. They may have been conjured by the N, an incubus who may have used them to try to seduce the girl. Or they may have been magical gifts offered sincerely by the lovesick N to the girl. In S3 and 4, I change the diction to reflect the lost magic and emphasize the humdrum world she chose, which is a real place. “[H]er world, so full of weeping” is a nod to Yeats’s “The Stolen Child.” I wanted the reader to react to her choice and decide if she made the right one. I also want the reader to decide if the N is a sincere lover or a self-serving seducer.

Trev—I thought about changing “meddlesome” to “copper” in order to play on both the color of the sun at dawn and the role of policeman that the sun plays, intruding into dark nooks and dim crannies, but I decided I liked the sound of “meddlesome.” I also thought about changing “caress” to something like “ardent kiss,” but it introduced metrical problems and “caress” makes the N sound more sensitive and vulnerable. I also thought introducing even one more adjective might make the poem explode.

Thanks, gentlemen, for your thoughts and encouragement.

Glenn

[R. Nemo Hill]

I guess I have a problem with poems which don't have a reality outside of other poems, poems whose very body is built of references to the work of others. Not that I entirely eschew such echoes. But when they are foregrounded, and block out the magic of the world as it is before words, then I feel the genre is an academic genre and not the soul-speak of an individual poet. When I read Keats, I feel he is very much looking beyond the page, out the window of the library, deep into the recesses of life as he experienced them. And while I guess it is possible to look through the pages of the past, as if through a lens, something vital is atrophied when that page stops the trajectory of the eye and leaves the reader with the feeling that they can see no farther than the piece of paper the poem is written on. For me poetry must be more than words: the words are merely the evidence of the struggle with what cannot be expressed.

But that's me.
And you are you, of course.
Carry on.

Nemo

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Nemo—

We have rather different views of literature, I think. Before words there were experiences, emotions, internal struggles, but not literature. Literature for you seems to be in the mystical relationship between reader and author. I am more often inclined to see literature as a dialogue between the work under consideration and all the voices that went before it. I am very aware of the fact that, at the end of the day, Hamlet was right. Literature is “words, words, words.”

Just as poets have different personal styles, so critics. My earliest training was in New Criticism, which, I have come to realize, can be limiting. I continue to try to grow and try new ways to encounter literature—not only as words, but as historical documents, manifestos of the author’s beliefs, things of beauty to be appreciated, and in every way that a work of literature may be regarded, including intertextually. In simplest terms, I would describe my favorite approach to literature as structuralist. I am guessing that your favorite approach is post-structuralist.

But not every poem speaks to me, even if I can appreciate its craftsmanship. As I study literature, I discover my own interests, biases, passions, and sometimes fears and struggles.
As I am sure you do yours.

Thanks for taking time to comment.

Glenn