In class we read "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home" by Craig Raine. In this poem he showed the wonderful skill of defamiliarization, which is the act of making the ordinary extraordinary. This poem was a great inspiration for my love of word play and creative thought. Here I am trying the technique on my own:
The Clouds
Those cotton balls that float,
Day in and out.
They carry many emotions,
and switch between them in the passing days.
Angrily choking the sun of its radiance,
Crying hazy tears of life,
and smiling with the warmth
of coffee on a cold day
Captivating puffy cotton
candy colored pillows.
(This is a rough draft now, and I will happily take any ideas to help better this poem.)
Interesting improvisation.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like the first few lines: "Those cotton balls that float/Day in and out/They carry many emotions". I think that you can reduce the level of abstraction, that is, introduce more specificity. You can show the variety of emotions that humans oscillate through.
For example: In the morning, the girl's mouth remained crooked upwards, revealing her iron-laced teeth. At school, when other children laughed at the steel molars, her lips reversed their shape. In the evening, she stabbed her eyes with soft white papers.
Secondarily, I think certain point fall into the 'poesy' trap by evoking words such as pillows, puffy, hazy, and warmth. I think you can use, but defamiliarize these words, as you've begun to do elsewhere. Particularly, when you speak of humans "choking the sun" I think you have a great junkyard phrase/concept that can be explored. Is this not how a Martian would describe pollution?
Great entry. Keep it up!
There’s a lot I like about this. Overall, there’s some good imagery in here. “Angrily choking the sun of its radiance, / Crying hazy tears of life,” and “Captivating puffy cotton / candy colored pillows” are my favorites. They call to mind certain colors of the sky, and the first does a better job of describing a sunset than most other attempts I’ve heard. “Those cotton balls that float,” and “and switch between them in the passing days.” are weaker lines, I think. The first to me seems like it could be use a different, more colorful verb to describe the motion of the clouds. And I think that the same would work for the second line I mentioned. But I do like this poem, good job.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Brittany's poem, i think she did a good job for a rough draft. I think the "cotton ball" reference is a bit too cliché and can be changed to something ten times better! I’m not too sure what you can change it too, but I'm sure you can get your creative juices flowing and make something happen. I really like "smiling with the warmth of coffee on a cold day" because it makes me think about starbucks coffee and sitting at an outdoor french cafe watching clouds pass over head on a nice day. I think you can take out the cliché and make this rough draft into a master piece!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your comments! I will take them all and use them for the next draft.
ReplyDelete