admittedly cheesy poem/ conversation with aspen

i wrote a poem for the first time in a long time. i'm not a poet, but i sent it to a friend who is.

so here's the poem and here is the critique.



i feel your wind, i feel the pull
dragging me far away
i see the fields, you're lifting horizons
and i could throw it all away

oh, thunder
taking it all
taking it all away
oh, thunder
taking it all
there's nothing left to say

open my back door, open my window
to let you in
so i can breathe
breathe you in

then you take it all away

you are coming
coming closer
never saying when
but you'll be here
raging thunder
until the end




Hi, Gina,

I liked your poem / song for several reasons.

First, I felt you got the meter right.

But even more importantly, the imagery is excellent. As in the first stanza:

i feel your wind, i feel the pull
dragging me far away
i see the fields, you're lifting horizons
and i could throw it all away

There's an intriguing flow here. It starts up close, with an image of you (or the reader / listener):

i feel your wind, i feel the pull

Then there's sudden dramatic movement:

dragging me far away

That's followed by an appropriate shift of perspective. The reader can see large things from far away:

i see the fields

But then comes the first really good part. You say:

you're lifting horizons

I used to write about a brand of philosophy that I called "horizontology". It's a real subset of philosophy (also psychology), but it enjoys other formal names than the one I gave it. Foucault's philosophy is associated.

I have always been fascinated by the question of what an horizon actually IS. In theory, an horizon is nothing physical, but in our minds, it's unquestionably real. It's a real place that we go, in our thoughts. For example, it is the place where paradoxes exist: the impossible nothingness that we can name. It is the zero-point line between opposites as well.

I have never heard anyone say "lifting horizons" before. Maybe you have heard that phrase, but I haven't. "Lifting a / my horizoN", yes. HorizonS, no.

When I read that line of your poem, it reminded me of a light drug experience I had a long time ago, where I saw infinite horizons streaming out from a central location. It was one of the most disjunctive episodes of my life, because I had never seen such a thing before. I had always only concentrated on the idea of a single horizon here and there.

I had to wonder: Was this visualization merely a reflection of my own mind's way of thinking -- or could it be that there is such a type of event happening out there in broad reality?

So, I guess I liked this part of your poem for personal reasons, but they're good reasons, and so I felt you generated something good.

Next, you wrote:

and i could throw it all away

Not a remarkable line, but it works with the general emotional atmosphere of the piece. The same could be said of the next parts:

oh, thunder
taking it all
taking it all away
oh, thunder
taking it all
there's nothing left to say

I like that. Usually, thunder brings noise and disconcertion (ignore the spell-check, it's a real word, I checked the Oxford Dictionary). But here, you characterize thunder as taking something away. I think that's unusual. I also think it works. I agree with it. In my own experience, there's little left to say, following the happenstance of the uncontrollable. It's just what happens. There's no justifiable call to wrap it in artificial poses of "meaning", just to make ourselves feel better about it.

If you're parroting someone else's lyrics, sorry, I wouldn't know -- I'm way out of the mainstream.

Anyway, you go on:

open my back door, open my window
to let you in
so i can breathe
breathe you in

This part works too, because you leave the name of the actor anonymous: WHO is opening the door? WHO is opening the window? It sounds at first like you're giving a command, but the latter lines suggest that this is what you want, so it could be anyone doing it, or maybe a mix of wills is involved.

then you take it all away

Again, the foregoing ambiguity heightens the emotional tension of this line.

Going on:

you are coming
coming closer
never saying when
but you'll be here
raging thunder
until the end

This is GOOD. You throw all the accumulated presumptions and question to hell with this totally unexpected wildness of perspective. You reveal that the thunderstorm is far away in fact, but immediately close in truth. Then you characterize the two interacting energies as parallel and eternal. Then, you wrap the entirety in a recognition of the human time-dependent condition: We can't help but feel events passing, events coming, events lasting forever, even.

It's a GOOD POEM, Gina. Everything about it works.

If you don't like it, have it your way. I liked it and I'm keeping it.

Love,

Aspen