Replying to a comment on:

Awasa, Ethiopia by Beatriz Romero (Free verse) by Sunny

I would advise the reader to look up this photograph for this poem @: http://www.picassomio.com/art/3263/en/ Excerpted from the Detailed Description: “…photographs were taken over time…across Africa and Asia…Each image works at the same time in its individual right as a unique story. Its interpretation is open to the spectator who becomes co-author, and who broadens and or completes the voyage with their view.” She is color-blind dreaming, and her focus is blurred - everything in her peripheral is dangling by cornered twig eye lacerations, oblique in her blind spots, and the rough tree climb she braced for, felt like water soaked through the bark heavily when she haled her way up and up the trunk. She first looked to the sky. The Oz ceiling appeared to be quite encompassed with frustrations where the blanketed overcast lie flat on its back on the ebony horizon. Other parts of the sky were showing their sheet of mist, with the sun gaping through it’s teeth, settled and diluted by the fog. She is going to walk on this plain of sorts, whether it be water or sand or a morrow, all the way straight into it’s very eternity: a procession that might go until the clock runs dry if she just keeps on…. Note: This is a huge metaphor…or it can simply be read as my personal interpretation of this scene.

Ranger 9-May-06/8:45 AM
I was thinking about this piece overnight and (as I need a break from reading up on Derrida...damn essays) decided to return. When I read this last night I didn't see good and evil explicitly; I did, however, see the ideas of our struggles through life which is pretty much inextricably entwined with the concepts of good and evil. Therefore your purpose in the piece does present itself, although indirectly. Having said that, I did note the eerie connotations of teeth and fog which bolster the differences between the two notions.
'Sheet of mist' I found fairly effective for the idea of old age bringing a perceptual veil; and as I mentioned above, the first part of the poem has a very sharp 'birth' feel, whereas the end is strongly 'death' related. As such, I would suggest here that you could change the first line so that the poem reads in a circular manner. Perhaps start it as 'Colour-blind dreaming, so her focus...' This really is a circle of life poem, so making it circular would, I think, work very well. And of course it's enhanced by the idea of rainfall; hydrological cycle.

Another thing that impressed me was that you stayed true to the stimulus material (a piece of artwork) by including so many geometrical terms. Peripheral, oblique, [en]compass[ed], flat, plain, straight etc. give a very mathematical (if you will) impression to the poem. This may imply that behind the layers lies the idea of a creator to the life/earth/time circles.

I have to get back to essaying now, unfortunately, but I can guarantee I'll be back to this one. Maybe this evening if all goes well and I conquer that dreadful dark lord - laziness...




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