1stmate | [brigits_flame] prompt

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[brigits_flame] prompt - ember

Alone/Together

It never gets dark here.
The city is full of people
but is completely void of life.
That fire burned brightly once,
a lifetime ago, it seems:
everything in its path was consumed,
more than we can know.
Yet the cinders still glow
hotter than they have any right to.
Our flames burned
uncoupled. Across millions of lives,
the fight never ends.
Sentiments will always travel
without hope.
We are nothing.

We are nothing
without hope.
Sentiments will always travel;
the fight never ends.
Uncoupled across millions of lives,
our flames burned
hotter than they have any right to,
yet the cinders still glow
more than we can know.
Everything in their path was consumed
a lifetime ago, it seems:
that fire burned brightly once
but is completely void of life.
The city is full of people;
it never gets dark here.

author notes:

truc_d_ouf's poem for week three of august used a similar reflective pattern which was shamelessly stolen for this entry, though something different came of the reflection in this piece. credit for that idea! dedicated to my platonic partner, who rambled at me over the phone for half an hour while i scribbled ideas and muttered incoherently before the poem itself would deign to be written.

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This reminds me of the song (which I like to think as 'mine') 'I've looked at clouds from both sides now' and the marvellous thing with this poem is that it makes sense forwards and in reverse mirror image. or whatever. Forwards and back to the start... Its' so CLEVER, and makes such sense!!!!

I love it!!! wow. and the pictures in the first stanza are different to the ones in the second... so it isn't mirror image... it's.... wondrously clever and thoughtprovoking! Thanks so MUCH to whoever you were rambling to on the phone!!! If they were the ones who began to shape this!

Bless you, Blue.

It was so so so hard. But so so so so so so so fun! To use all the same lines in a predetermined order and just change up the punctuation? MIND-BLOWING. I had to write from both ends in to the middle, and I think it was about three times this length before I had to cut it down to actually have some kind of point somewhere. It is possibly the most technically difficult thing I have ever written. (and now I want to do it again, only with some sort of formal poetry, all with line counts or syllable counts or something, can you imagine, it would be AWESOME but probably take a year to write.)

Ahem. Yes. I am glad you liked it, blue! Thanks for the read & comment :D

I've just read it twice more... it's amazing... truly. I wish I could express the thoughts that arise in me (to quote a bard) - but the pictures are... so talkative!!! The persons in the first verse are so different from the last versepersons.... and the views they are seeing are different... AND YET THE WORDS ARE THE SAME! Oh my my! Oh it's brilliant.

How long did it actually take? How you could do it with something 'formal'...golly? you've got me thinking of how to play... my goodness. what a delight! I shall have to try, if you wouldn't mind, just to.... see if I could? Won't be as gorgeous or as 'deep' as yours, probably damn flowers or something. but... the underside of a flower is as interesting as the top?

Lordy, you did something there! Congratulations, and - right - start now, tis... 7th September 2012.... can we have it in time for say.... the first week next September? (bet you'd get it done before then!!!)

LOVES and still shaking head at the brilliance! Blue.

By all means, do one yourself! I'd love to see what you come up with! Like I said, I got the idea from something

truc_d_ouf wrote. Pass it around! It's too much fun not to :D

I think, from the time I sat down and said, "I am going to do this despite my better impulses!" to the time I sent it off to have someone else read it, it was probably 6 hours or more. Far longer than I've spent on any other single poem ever. (Including the one that was pushing 3000 words.) And then I posted it the next day after she'd read it, and then two hours later realized I'd left out a line in the second part. Giant headdesk there.

You make me so happy. I've been staring morosely at this entry for a while, just waiting for someone to read it and say something, anything! And then you come along and leak praise and love everywhere. It's just great. I'll just be over here rolling around in your appreciation like a cat in a tub full of catnip.

Lady is peering out of window looking for a large cat absolutely WRECKING her catnip (IT WAS PRETTY and all flowery and mauvy blue! ) OK go ahead and wreck it properly.... You're welcome!!!!

Bless you, Old blue.

I remember

truc_d_ouf's entry, because I had never seen anything like it. And you have made this not only a trick of wordplay, but so heartfelt. You are blowing my mind, really. It must have been beyond difficult. How did you do it?! I've been trying to work it out, but it's seamless and gorgeous. Something in it glimmers of I Wonder How Many People in This City from Cohen's "The Spice-Box of Earth". That is just about the highest compliment I can think to give you.

Edited 2012-09-10 13:28 (UTC)

How did I do it? Magic! Or: I started at the outside and wrote my way to the middle. Deleted quite a bit along the way, of course. The outside is still kind of rough, but I think by the time I got to the middle (hours and hours, I tell you) I sort of had it figured out. So, so difficult. So, so worth it. You just have to hold those two thought patterns in your head at the same time and work around the words to bring them through.

Thank you! I am superglad you like it :D Your opinion is important to me.

"Like" is an understatement. I am glomming love all over it. *proceeds to loveglom*

That is the most perfect loveglom icon I have ever, ever, ever seen. Do you know. (I have appreciated it before, but it's just amazing with "loveglom" attached to it. Which it will now be, forever, in my head.)

I am revoking the teensiest bit of my previous glommed love. Not for your poem, but because I am trying to work with that line you gave me. I curse thee!!! *shakes a fist at you* (imagine I have an icon that is me shaking my fist at you and not dancing like Brad Pitt. I order you. That's me shaking a fist, do you hear me?! It totally is. I order you not to imagine gleefulness here)

HAHAHAHA. Well, you can't complain too much. 98% of all people think that is an excellent ending line for that poem, which is all that was on my mind when I wrote it. ;)

I should have foreseen the extent of your deviousness. No wonder Carole jumped in there with "And Keppie will take YOURS ..." I was played! Played like a fiddle, damn you both! ;)

HEY. I'm trying to be nice to you this week! You might be able to bribe Carole into giving me something horrid, though. Maybe. (I don't know. She likes me an awful lot. I text her about rainbows and drinking games at random times. Hard to top that.)

Or we could reverse the line-giving for next time, giving everyone a chance to get revenge! I don't know that I could live through that, though! :D

ALSO, you should be played like a cello, instead. Cellos are sexy. A little less portable, but way sexier than fiddles. (Also, I will always maintain that violins are sexier than fiddles, sense be damned.) but. CELLOS. CELLOS, KEPPIE. I LOVE CELLOS.

Celloes ARE sexier, but sadly, I am not a cellist. I AM a violinist, so I should have gone with that one.

For some awesome cello playing check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Vbr93AGMw The CD features Yo Yo Ma, and it is one of the most gorgeous trios out there. Good stuff for the old-timey classical music enthusiast (is that a niche market?)

Wow.

Edited 2012-09-13 02:26 (UTC)

Primary editor
[[I'm new and still figuring out this site, and this is my first edit for it! I'm so sorry for the delay and hope I don't get cut for this. I just found out yesterday, so here goes!]]

Grammar
first stanza: "hotter than they have any right to." ends in a preposition. Not a big deal for me unless you care.

second stanza "our flames burned
hotter than they have any right to," This must've been a tricky negotiation. It makes sense in the first stanza, but when you move the punctuation around, the tense doesn't match here. Ad lib the nouns and verbs in my suggestions, of course, since my examples miss your effect: "hotter than they should," "hotter than would be decent," "hotter than virtue would allow." I like the effect of "right" and its connotation so it's up to you to accept or adjust.

I am so thrilled to see this applied appreciation for punctuation.

Content/My Feels
The details are dim and sparse, which I'm reading as intended because of "more than we can know," which has the nice chill of being forgotten or trimmed by the many retellings of history. The first stanza is bleak!, and I wasn't sure what was going on when I started reading, but then I finished, and I loved how the second stanza mirrored the first. I haven't read many poems of this structure, but I find the structure to be fun and am glad you chose to experiment with it. I'm assuming experiment since you credit the idea to someone else. I like how by the end I can see how the title plays into the poem. We are together in the struggle of the first stanza.

I'm intrigued by the suggestion behind the last lines of both stanzas and the contrast of their mirror roles, "We are nothing" and "that fire burned brightly once / but is completely void of life. / The city is full of people; / it never gets dark here." I'm imagining a cannibalistic fire. I'm intrigued by the motif of fire here. There's so much light to the point of destruction so that it never gets dark yet is void of life. I really like the feel of the last two lines, a fact, that's loaded with the connotations leading up to it.

[[That's all I have to sayyy. T.T I read your piece over 20 times. I like that this was inspired by listening to your platonic, it does sound like recalling a distant story. I feel like I haven't yet bled all the meanings and implications yet.]]

Edited 2012-09-13 02:32 (UTC)

Haha! I'm an acknowledged grammar lover, so I did pause at the ending-in-a-preposition bit, but I decided that the voice of the poem (and the structure!) really demanded it in that case.

Second stanza: I changed tense once from first to second stanza to make it fit, or I changed something grammatically that was a pretty minor adjustment, so I should have changed that one, too! I just overlooked it, is all, and probably would have continued to do so. Many thanks for pointing that out! (You can read something a million times and still miss the big obvious mistake. *headdesk*)

applied appreciation for punctuation
YOU ARE SO RIGHT. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS. Flipping the lines changes the meaning a bit, but it's the punctuation that really brings this poem together. I ... am a giant nerd :D You have no idea how happy it makes me to see that someone else gets it and also appreciates it. Punctuation: it's there for a reason, everybody! Look what it can do! One of the most powerful tools in a writer's arsenal!

Giant experiment, one I look forward to repeating. As I mentioned to Blue, I'd like to play with using this sort of flip/repeat in a formal framework. I imagine that'll be even more difficult and time-consuming, but how much fun!

You're spot on to what I was thinking with much of your comments! Not sure how much you'd like to know of an author's thought process, so feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not interested! I was imagining a sort of past-lives eternal soul mate sort of situation, so in the first stanza, these two people are hearing about a story of some past incarnations of themselves that struggled in different places to find their mates. It's distant and hazy and forgotten no small amount, but then the second stanza! Oh, joy, they have found each other finally, after millions of lives apart. And, really, I could break this thought down line by line, but it's a sad author who says their interpretation is the only one. I think this poem is actually very open, and I'd love to hear what other people thought!

So! In conclusion, thank you very much for this thoughtful edit! Helpful suggestions, but more than that, I really like seeing what people are thinking as they read. I think I need to put as much work into all my poems as I did this one, but I don't often have the time. (Or the inclination, in honesty.)

Welcome to you and whatnot!

I love contrasting my own inspiration with what others can read from it as well. I read it again with your backstory in mind, and I'm now feeling this intimate distance that your two are groping through, a transcendental privacy. :] When I first read it, I was thinking civilizations littered with fleeting gasps of meaning.

I'm glad my first edit was good! :DD Hello to you!

hope I don't get cut for this
Oh, don't worry! I am editor #2, I am horrifically late some days, and no one cuts you from the team! You might not get assigned anything more until you talk to the editor coordinator though. Welcome to the editing team!

Late editor is delinquent and embarrassingly late, but here is your second edit!

without hope.
We are nothing.

We are nothing
without hope.
This is particularly wonderful! Actually I think the whole poem's structure is marvellous, but, you know, this direct contrast is especially. I think it must be the sudden reversal of pessimism into something resembling optimism.

Sentiments will always travel;
the fight never ends.
-The sentiments part seems unhinged here, and I don't mean crazy, just that it is seemingly uncoupled from anything else around it. What does sentiments mean? (Thanks to tumblr, I'm getting images of Loki, but anyway).

yet the cinders still glow
more than we can know.
-A little more obvious here than in the previous stanza, because there's no punctuation, but glow/know rhymes unexpectedly and kind of throws off the unrhymed rest of the poem. (Like the poet/don't know it sense.)

everything in its path was consumed,
more than we can know.
-This, too, is somewhat confusing. We don't know what everything was? Mostly I am having these question marks everywhere because some parts of the poem are quite clear and it's a poem that's not coyly trying to hide its meaning, but there are some parts that don't seem to quite match up to the other lines around it.

our flames burned
hotter than they have any right to,
-Changing tenses here (burned/have any right to) - not a problem in the previous stanza where you have this sentence coupled with another line.

our flames burned
-(in the second stanza) I think you should put some kind of punctuation at the end of this, because my eyes just jumped right to the next line without pausing to take in the burned bit. It really is the central idea of the poem.

There are a few places where I think that the line lengths were a little odd (especially hotter than they have any right to, - I'm still not sure about the "have any right to" part) but I'm not sure if that would be doable with your current structure.

Again, I really enjoyed the format you used! This is excellent.

I've messed around with this a bit before getting this edit (though most of your stuff still applies!) and I thought I should tell you that I could not figure out what bothered me about the glow/know lines, but I rearranged so the know-line ends in yet instead. Now I know what was vaguely irritating! hahaha. I feel pretty strongly about rhyming (it's good! but only if everything is rhyming), but somehow I didn't consciously notice those lines. *headdesk*

I am contemplating completely removing the 'hotter than they have any right to' line. Or maybe I would like something there. Maybe, hmm, 'improbably hot' or, or, something. I don't know! But it's a thought I am thinking. Other thoughts revolve around 'more than we can ever know' (which I guess I also changed since posting hahaha).

Though. The tense change in burned/have any right to is something I, hmm, I don't have a problem with? I think it's one of those tense changes that, it's not a bad thing, it's. It's sort of saying "they didn't have that right then, and they still don't now." I don't think it'd be incorrect to use that. Like, "I poked you in the arm yesterday, even though I'm not supposed to." It implies a continuity. In my head! Am I wrong about this? I'm probably wrong about this. I'm probably starting to think like the people around me! oh no! I speak better than them; I shouldn't let myself get dragged down by their verbal patterns! (and yet, it happens. allllll the time.) Anyway, I mean, this is a thing I'm going to try to remove from the poem, but now I'm curious is Everything I Know Is Wrong and whatnot :P

You are so right about this structure making anything but the tiniest changes immensely difficult. But so much fun! I can't say that enough.

Continued editing for the purposes of submitting to places. Am wondering ... hmm, too many things for a public comment. I CANNOT KEEP TRACK OF MY LIFE, SILVER.

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[brigits_flame] prompt - ember

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