Poemranker [Replying] Thu May 02 23:00:25 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

Lake Michigan's soft and ceaseless cobalt breakers, the dulcet breeze by the Beer Garden in such peculiar concert with your silly laugh. It blew your russet hair against my cheek, as I drank the rest of your warm Black & Tan and stared at the shimmering of your freckled shoulder, half-concerned that sweat and sun could make such splendor.

zodiac

18-Jun-04/9:37 PM

Here's the grammar bit: You don't need a comma between stoic and cobalt. "It's" should "its", and I had trouble remembering that 'it' was Lake Michigan. I'd consider saying "the lilted breeze" and running the sentence into the next stanza, instead. At any rate, the second bit needs a little work. You've got "as I drank" doing double duty as subordinate clause for two main clauses, a big No-no. The best I can come up with for a revision would be something like:

I can still hear Lake Michigan's
soft and stoic cobalt breakers.
The lilted breeze by the Beer Garden
mixed so well with your silly laugh,

blew your russet hair against my cheek
as I drank the rest of your warm Black & Tan,
stared at the shimmering of your freckled shoulder,
half concerned that sweat and sun could make such splendor.

I'm not really pleased with that - as you've pointed out, I'm not great shakes at poetry-writing lately. But you get the idea.

Some other little things:
1) "stared at" bothers me. I hate that construction, and though everyone on this site is bound to bust my ass for saying it, I like "watched" a lot better. Or "stared ______ at" with some adverb or other (hard, sleepily, stupidly, come to mind) inserted.

2) I wasn't really prepared for "half-concerned". Looking back for clues, I get the "silly" girl who doesn't deserve to be so splendorous - and that's about it. Maybe it's enough and I just wasn't paying enough attention the first time; see what other people think about it.

3) "so well" is a waste of space, a place-holder expression. You can think of a better description.

4) You should break the line after "sun". Then you get an easy half-rhyme with "Tan" and you don't have to worry about the last line being much longer than any of the others.

That's about it. It's not bad, really. Definitely the best of your posts.

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