Dovina
replying on Smoky Mountain High by Dovina
6 Jun 2005, 2:44 PM
Summer has many answers to the extreme rains the mountains of Southern California have received this past winter. The answer Iâm focusing on is the strong probability of wildfire. These mountains burn every 50 years on average, and this year, if a fire starts as the Santa Ana winds come hot and dry off the desert, the rain-swollen bushes will burn like a hell we have never seen.
The last line is for comparison with the first verse, but it may be rubbing an obvious comparison into the readers face. I am so often accused of not including enough information, and being unclear, that I put it in just to be sure.
I beg to differ with your premise that there is a difference in what the people in each place are seeing. The bloody sun rises on the lower Mississippi in late summer and looks like the red sun rising through smoke of Southern California firestorm. The yellow murk and the hot pink evening look similar too. The only differences are ashes falling and the attitude of the residents.
'It's my party,
and I'll cry if I want to,
cry if I want to,
cry if I want to,
You would cry too
if it happened tohoo youououou'
(1963; a couple of months later)
'And now it's Judy's turn to cry
Judy's turn to cry
Judy's turn to cry-ay-ayyyy
cause Johnny's come baaaack to me'
I really start to like your stuff. It keeps me reading. Iâve read this, using the âdistractionâ poem as a kind of key â how to concentrate time, guess Iâm sounding a bit pretentious here but who cares.
Finally a luv poem with guts.
This is about loving someone. But WHERE is the love? I don't see it. All I see is the statement of a fact.
'Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
So please love me do'...
Lennon/McCartney did in fact a much lousier job, so don't let it get you down, oké?
Just wait until senator Schwarzenegger has sucked up the last of L.A.'s fog in his mighty lungs, and you'll be able to watch the sun performing live again.
The real differnce between the first stanza and the second is what the people at each place are seeing. In the second stanza all of us in LA are watching the bloody, red sun on television. Who goes outside in LaLaLand before sunrise? Oh yeah, sanitation workers, hookers going home to shootup and go to sleep and cops. Personally, I Tivo the 6 AM news just to see the sun.
Had to fumble with my interpretation mode...I did my best, but this simply isn't my kind of teacup. A windblown story, a chaotic 'poem'.
I hope the last line does not express regret over not having had an abortion, it would be too much... I'm probably way off.
Am I oldfashioned? Yes, I'm oldfashioned.
Please try to not post comments explaining your poems. -10-
its hope. No apostrophe.
Except for "pretends only he be humble", which is incomprehensible, the best oldey talk you've ever written.
If I told you my name is John Updike, would that make a difference?
Yes, you'd say, Ha ha, more like 'Up Johndick'.
Real mature. -10-
What exactly, as far as this life is concerned?
In other words, can you think of another word to complete the sentence, "You've got to _____ just to make it today"? I can't.
Or "The sun's red swelling balls"?
Do you mean "comes summer's answer" or "come summer's answers"? Or is there another subject somewhere I haven't noticed?
Would you consider dropping the last line? I liked it the first time, though. Really.
The title made me think of both the actual Smoky Mountains, in my home part of the world, and the Rocky Mountains of the song. Neither of which are referenced in the poem.
PS-I do wish you'd stop taking Shuushin's word about end-line punctuation.
PPS-Very good, overall.
>>Sun rises a ball of red<<
But he's heading for a descent, right? Why not
'sun swells a ball of red'? Better alliteration to 'afternoon' and 'valley' this way.
The second part shows quite strong images.
The problem with most writing critters (a Rockmage tone now) is that they write without thinking. Contradictions and pleonasms (f.i. 'tiny little firefly') can unintentionally turn out comical or ridiculous if they're not thought over by the author.
This one contains a contradiction, and it's not >>always forever<<. The contradiction is in lines 12-13 and lines 15-16.
There is a poetic thought in this poem, but not one poetic line. There's not one moment where I give a shit about you and your dear friend. You wrote this to please yourself and did't give a shit about your readers. Hence my zero.