poemranker ::The Natural Course of Fear by half.italian

DetailsThe poem, its numbers, and the conversation.

Free verse № 145841

The Natural Course of Fear

Member since 2006 · Posted 10 Sep 2006 · 10 comments

Begin by breathing in twos. Follow with a rasberry tingle. Complete only when parallel skeins run up and down.

Rate it

0 is the worst, 10 the best. Pick a number, add a comment if you like, then send it. Keys: 0–9 pick, Enter sends.

mean 5.50 weighted 5.06 rank 6696 views 322 View voting details →

4 votes so far. Yours would make 5.4 votes so far

10 comments

[8] Ranger 10-Sep-06/1:00 PM Reply
Curse of the typos strikes - 'raspberry'. Love the last line, although as an Englishman I, of course, don't feel fear ;-)
[7] Dovina 10-Sep-06/4:22 PM Reply
Skeins of yarn are not parallel. Skeins of birds do not run up and down. It must be a sequence of events which run up and down,as opposed to something.
????
[n/a] half.italian › Dovina 10-Sep-06/4:36 PM Reply
Point taken. I'll try a few with a bit less abstraction.
[7] Dovina › half.italian 10-Sep-06/4:57 PM Reply
It's probably just me. I don't do well with a lot of abstraction. As you can see, mine are mostly plain.
[n/a] half.italian › Dovina 10-Sep-06/5:03 PM Reply
Yours are not plain at all. They have beautiful imagery.
[7] Dovina › half.italian 10-Sep-06/6:24 PM Reply
Thanks. For that I raise your vote. If you say my new hairstyle is attractive, I'll raise it again.
[7] dvincent 1-Oct-06/3:20 PM Reply
Two phrases bother me in this poem. "Raspberry tingle" is hard to grasp and has a "cutesy," "sugary" sense to it. And "parallel skeins" is also hard ot grasp and, like the former, doesn't lend to the idea of fear. Neither phrase suports the idea of fear.

Not sure if I'm off base with what were after but these things distracted me.

I love "Begin by breathig in twos." Although I don't know what it means, it has a sene of fear in it, like hyperventilating or something.

And it's original and flows well.
[n/a] half.italian › dvincent 1-Oct-06/3:31 PM Reply
I envisioned raspberry as a burn on your skin from scraping along the ground. It is uncomfortable and creates a scab. Not fun. I think I was reaching more with parallel skeins. Maybe it was just the connection with the word veins and skeleton that made it scary to me.
[n/a] half.italian › dvincent 1-Oct-06/3:33 PM Reply
It's trying to describe the phases that your body goes through when you feel fear. First you get short of breath, then you get an uncomfortable tingle (hair stands on end) then some kind of overwhelming force courses through your body.
[7] dvincent › half.italian 3-Oct-06/8:01 AM Reply
I see what you were after and you're close. The firt line starts it off great. I remember a poem by Leanord Cohen in which there was a line describing a positive sensation as "...singing in the wires of my spine". This is something like you're after with the skeins, but in your case in a negetive way.

Dig for some other word/phrase choices on this. "crawling" under the skin? "Inching" Not sure.

poem is a good example of how important every singel word is.