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Embrace
Posted: 15 April 2006
Word Count: 37
Summary: I've tried to completely drop the rhyme and cut as much as possible while still getting the point across. Works??
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Lost as I quivered, surprising touch.
As you first clasped my hand,
jumped my heart, opened to our embrace.
Lost as I teetered over luscious lips,
remembered breasts, hands and legs.
Pearly white beads, goose-pimpled red cheeks.
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 paul53 [for I am he] at 07:39 on 16 April 2006
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Before I give comment of my own, ask yourself: are you pleased with it?
The phrase "less is more" has been bandied about so much that it has begun to lose its meaning, but it still holds true with poetry.
If writing a novel is a Hollywood film, a poem is an MTV video. Instead of a couple of hours, you have mere minutes to fill - so every shot either counts and hits home, or else it ends up edited out. Putting a value on each "shot" seems crass, but the MTV video is priced at so much cash per minute, so each take adds or it doesn't, and there's no in-between. This is also how poets come to regard their work: line by line and word by word, distilling, synthesising, searching for the perfect word like a director searches for the best camera angle. When it works, it is great. There's more story squeezed into 9 minutes of Guns-n-Roses' "November Rain" than two-plus hours of a Hollywood tear-jerker.
But you have to like the result as well. You have to be pleased with it, and come to know when you've got somewhere with it. You have to have gone line by line and word by word before a critic does. You are the director of your piece, and you have to do it the best way you think possible. You also have to make it uniquely your own, so others come to recognise yur work. But, like a director, you have to remain unseen.
With all the above in mind, this came as a surprise. If it had been uploaded anonymously or under another name, I would not have known it was yours.
Sometimes writing poetry is like feeling in the dark. Instead of describing everything for the reader, one is creating flash images that will hopefully spark a reaction within the minds of those reading. You have managed here just such an emotive piece.
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radavies1uk at 12:25 on 16 April 2006
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Hi Paul
Thanks very much. I tried a different approach with this one, I can't decide if I like it but I see that it is a tad more concise.
It looks ok, but I keep thinking if I add something it will be better, more precise or something. I'm rather used to writing where the goal is a fixed specification that it seems unusual to remove so much and to actually introduce vagueties.
I'll try some more with this approach soon.
Cheers :)
Bob
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