Tentsmuir

[eclipse]

Tentsmuir wind-the sea and sands confluence

of dreams searching for the fingerprints of

ministry of nature's hands.The moon drowns

drawn to the dunes hypnotic sands. Gold drains

from the kingfishers wings, winter feigns juggling

suns-forests whispering rumours run. Spring

reaches out out from a mirror to retrieve and put

back the broken piece of glass.

[eclipse]

working on this for a competition...would appreciate any feedback-thanks

[A. Baez]

This has such a Hopkinsesque flavor! As with Hopkins' poems, there is a tradeoff between the delicious fascination of sonances and tightly-jammed concepts--that sense of Dionysian abandon, of Chopin- Étude-like effusion--and clarity; it becomes up to the reader as to how willing they are to make such a tradeoff. I think I would be almost completely willing, given a few minor tweaks.

I'm not sure why the first line is separated from the rest. My understanding is that a double dash should be used in cases like this phrase, and later after "suns,"  to differentiate the punctuation from a hyphen. (Technically, I think a semicolon would be more fitting in the latter case, but I can see the stylistic argument for a dash there instead.) Also, is there any reason you didn't put an apostrophe after "sands" and "dunes,'" and before or after the "s" in "kingfishers," as seem wanting? I am thinking, too, that it should be "sea's," if you do mean a confluence of the dreams of sea and sand, as seems probable. I would chalk all these punctuation omissions up to an intentional stylistic peculiarity, but you do have an apostrophe in "nature's," so that sets an expectation for the reader. I think that providing these punctuation marks would add just enough clarity and fluidity to the poem to make most readers happily willing to negotiate its remaining complexities. 

In Ls 3 and 4, three "of's" in addition to the "for" make for overly convoluted phraseology. If you could just cut out one "of," I think it would be okay. Do you really need "ministry"? Or maybe you could say "nature's hand ministry"?

Starting with "The mood," the wordplay of all the monosyllabic "d"-words and the words around them gets to feeling too much for me; the repetition of the "oo" sound makes it all sound especially, well, loony! I would expect a comma after "drowns," and having it there would take some of the tension off the above-mentioned effect.

I love the sentence starting "Gold drains," except that I really don't know how a winter "feigns juggling suns." Is this an abstraction  of a natural process, or a complete fantasy concept?

I also love the last sentence, but I confess I can't really understand it. It would be nice to both love and understand it--I think you could pull that off!

 

 

 

 

[Tinker]

On 1/29/2020 at 2:36 AM, eclipse said:

Tentsmuir wind-the sea and sands confluence

of dreams searching for the fingerprints of

ministry of nature's hands.The moon drowns

drawn to the dunes hypnotic sands. Gold drains

from the kingfishers wings, winter feigns juggling

suns-forests whispering rumours run. Spring

reaches out out from a mirror to retrieve and put

back the broken piece of glass.

Barry, your work has a unique style, formed around your fantastic ability to create unique images.  My experience with contests is, the judges usually check for technical error first, spelling, punctuation, syntax, etc.   Because you are so focused on your imagery, you often overlook the technical end of writing.  The judges rarely do.  

So the first thing I would do is, because of the judging aspect, put on your technical glasses and search for technical error or confusion.  Start here:

1.  why do you hyphenate wind-the?   It makes no sense to me and I've gone back over it and over it.  Rather I think your line would be better served with a comma, "wind, the sea . . ."  I'm making the assumption you are responding to the wind of Tentsmuir.   I haven't a clue what Tentsmuir is.  I will have to google it, but for now I'm just focusing on technical issues, primarily punctuation.
2.  a comma is needed after dreams in L2, I believe. 
3. line breaks, L2 does "of" warrant attention over fingerprints?   The flow of the poem is thrown off by those natural pauses that occur at the end of a line. If it were mine, I'd move of to the beginning of the next line.
4. L5 apostrophe and cap Kingfisher's - proper name showing ownership
5.  L6 another apostrophe sun's and although less confusing here, the hyphen "sun's-forests", is improper and unnecessary and caused me an unnatural pause, why the hyphen?
6.  L7 "out out"   Should be written in 1 of 3 ways, just one "out", or now a hyphen could be appropriate "out-out" or with a comma, "out, out". But not "out out"

This stuff might not seem important to you, but winning clearly is.  Your poem won't win if the judges disqualify it because of technical error which is so easily fixed.  All poetry contests are writing contests so you have to begin with the basic rules of writing. 

By the way I love "Gold drains / from the Kingfisher's wings, " too.   The image sparkles in my mind.

~~Judi
 

[A. Baez]

I'm glad to see that Judi echoed most of my points, plus adding a couple other valid ones. I would say, though, that I didn't read "kingfisher" as a proper noun, but simply as the common name of a species of bird. Although many people capitalize certain common names of animals and plants (usually not uniformly), this is not correct. 

[Tinker]

AB, I guess, it's in how it is read and the cap could go either way, but the apostrophe is still necessary. 

[A. Baez]

Agreed about the apostrophe; were you reading this as something other than a bird's name?

[eclipse]

i have been in bed with flu for the past week-can anyone help me amend the poem with suggested changes-thank you the time 

[tonyv]

On 1/29/2020 at 5:36 AM, eclipse said:

Tentsmuir wind-the sea and sands confluence

of dreams searching for the fingerprints of

ministry of nature's hands.The moon drowns

drawn to the dunes hypnotic sands. Gold drains

from the kingfishers wings, winter feigns juggling

suns-forests whispering rumours run. Spring

reaches out out from a mirror to retrieve and put

back the broken piece of glass.

 

Start here. With a few minor changes (word choices and linebreaks) you'll have meter:

 

Tentsmuir wind -- the sea and sands, a merge
of dreams are searching for the fingerprints
of ministry of nature's hands. The moon
drowns, drawn to the dunes' hypnotic sands. Gold drains
from the kingfisher's wings, and winter feigns
juggling suns. Woods whisper. Rumours run.
Spring reaches out from a mirror to retrieve
and to put back the broken piece of glass.

 

It's looking good.

Tony

 

On 1/30/2020 at 3:07 PM, Tinker said:

why do you hyphenate wind-the?   It makes no sense to me and I've gone back over it and over it.

I think Barry is using a hyphen (-) when he should be using an em-dash (--).

[tonyv]

Another way might be along these lines (pun intended):

 

Tentsmuir

The wind, the sea, and sands -- a merge of dreams
is hunting fingerprints, a ministry
of nature's hands. The moon drowns, drawn to dunes' 
hypnotic sands, gold drains from the kingfisher's 
wings, and winter feigns it's juggling suns. 
Forests whisper, rumours run, and spring 
reaches out from a mirror to retrieve
and to put back the broken piece of glass.
 

 

Choice of meter shouldn't be random. I also messed around a little with iambic trimeter and iambic terameter, but so far iambic pentameter still seems to be best for carrying the poem's overall hypnotic feel and mood. 

I would drop Tentsmuir from the first line for meter and because it's redundant. It's already the title.

I would continue to tighten this up until the poem is a lyrical and image-rich (already there) metrical masterpiece.

Tony

[tonyv]

Another change to L6. I added "while" (which just as easily could have been "as" or "the") for metrical flow and an ever-so-subtle shift in meaning as is ever possible with English:

 

Tentsmuir

The wind, the sea, and sands -- a merge of dreams
is hunting fingerprints, a ministry
of nature's hands. The moon drowns, drawn to dunes' 
hypnotic sands, gold drains from the kingfisher's 
wings, and winter feigns it's juggling suns. 
While forests whisper rumours run, and spring 
reaches out from a mirror to retrieve
and to put back the broken piece of glass.

 

[eclipse]

This is great tony....thank you...

[tonyv]

Barry, you're welcome, and I hope you feel better soon.

[A. Baez]

Tony, I like some of the things you did with this. They don't incorporate all of Tinker's or my suggestions, but I do feel that they offer some improvements as well as just some interesting ideas. I don't agree that the meter of all poems has to be regular and I feel that Barry's version was fine on that count; however, I like your regularized versions, too.