• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

The Undead, a poem (and not one about D&D)

Acolyte

Acolyte

New Member
Again, the usual plea--criticism in any form, the good and the bad, what you like and what you don't like, all that jazz. Please take the time to comment, even if it's just a response and not suggestions for improvement. I really appreciate it.


The Undead
by Ross Shingledecker
6/24/04


One set of unblinking eyes
stares blankly past two molten orbs--
red-rimmed and webbed with crimson--
half-filled and filling with saline misery:
the saltysweet and flowing chrism
of this bleak and lifeless requiem

Time has passed these corpses by;
in the shadowed silent of a starless night
each eternal second marked by a single tear

There is mockery in such a death
for it was not always thus:
these eyes once sparkled with a laughing soul
those eyes once sang back with a joyful spirit
Together they danced to call forth a Spring
in which love and life would flourish.

But now it is the time of Frost
that evanescing rime
which has emptied and husked so many before

An eternal second passes
His deathmask of emotion
sees not his cold, lifeless hands
nor the cruel, fated sabre
he has just plunged into her heart
 
Great

I like it alot. Only one problem for me, and that is the word "emotionlessly." I think you can use a better word.

I get the impression, mainly based on the first paragraph, that we're looking at skeletons at the bottom of a sea, maybe trapped in a sunken pirate ship or something, but since you only hint at that it works really well. The vague setting is very surreal.

The third paragraph is absolutely STELLAR!!! The whole thing is great, but that paragraph is beautiful. Also I like how it ends, hinting some treachery but leaving it up to our imaginations...

All in all it's excellent.
 
i like it, it sounds like you're reading anne rice! this poem makes me feel sorry for the poor blood sucker!
:D
 
Hmm, emotionlessly is a bit wordy....anyone have any suggestions? Blankly? Stoically?

I'm glad you like the 3rd stanza...it's the most emotionally charged for me.

And while it's not Anne Rice-inspired, it is about a pretty bleak subject. It's not literal, though--anyone want to hazard a guess about the inspiration for this baby?
 
you want a guess?? i would say a break up of a relationship or unreturned love!
now you have to tell me what you inspiration was! :D
 
Got it in one. I wrote it after I ended a very long, very deep relationship that the other person did not want to end. Not the best day in my life.

*cough*

That said, though, it seems somehow 'rough' to me, in a way I can't really explain. I'm really looking for more solutions to improve it. And I still have to replace "emotionlessly".
 
Subtle Changes

:cool: I have a few suggestions, although I loved the poem:

1. First stanza, second line: change emotionlessly to emotionless

2. First stanza, third line: remove "red-" from rimmed; overkill of red since you already have crimson

3. Third stanza, forth line: change "those" to "these" unless you want it past tense, unlike the "these" in the line above.
 
I have a few suggestions, although I loved the poem
Click to expand...

Well thanks. *grin* Specific feedback is always appreciated.

1. The grammarian in my doesn't want to leave it as 'emotionless', unless the word had commas around it. Hmmm, how about "coldly" as a replacement? I like that.

2. Without the red, the parallels to the next line go away, and I like the way it rolls off my tongue when I say it. Does anyone else feel like it's too much?

3. My reasoning there was to distinguish between the two sets of eyes by calling one of them "these" and the other "those", as if the point of view was closer to one than the other. I thought it worked fine...but is the tense really that confused?

Thanks for commenting, though--it always helps to look at something I've written from someone else's point of view.
 
Acolyte said:
1. The grammarian in my doesn't want to leave it as 'emotionless', unless the word had commas around it. Hmmm, how about "coldly" as a replacement? I like that.

2. Without the red, the parallels to the next line go away, and I like the way it rolls off my tongue when I say it. Does anyone else feel like it's too much?
Click to expand...

i think emotionless and coldly are rather far away in their meaning!
and hell NO!! keep the RED RIMMED that sounds awsome!
 
I agree with most that it is only the second line that trips this piece up.

In my view I'd use, "Stare emotionless through two molten orbs,"

I also agree with Honeydevil, keep the Red-Rimmed.

Nice work :)
 
Irene Wilde only understands simple words, and so cannot comment here. Actually, I'm only posting this because my eye keeps reading the topic line as "The Undead Slugbaby" and I find that disturbing. This way, it will read "The Undead Irene Wilde" -- which is less disturbing because I've always had a kinda goth complexion anyway, so I'm used to being called undead.
 
Irene Wilde said:
Irene Wilde only understands simple words, and so cannot comment here. Actually, I'm only posting this because my eye keeps reading the topic line as "The Undead Slugbaby" and I find that disturbing. This way, it will read "The Undead Irene Wilde" -- which is less disturbing because I've always had a kinda goth complexion anyway, so I'm used to being called undead.
Click to expand...

cool the undead people start to move in the 21st century, they use computers! :D
 
I've always liked this poem Ross,

I've finally caved in though to the pressure of you wanting criticism on it & here are my meagre suggestions: maybe impassively, callously or soulessly (the latter probably being too long) could replace emotionlessly. I also feel the "half-filled and filling" line could do with a little bit of reworking, but can not think of an adequate replacement.

I really believe it captures the emotion so well.
 
Thanks! I know you don't always want to do this, but I appreciate you letting my twist your arm here.

I don't like the meaning of callous, but soulless has potential. What about stoically?
 
It's not so much I dislike offering my thoughts & feedback, merely that I don't feel adequately qualified to criticize such strong pieces of work.

The word stoically - it all depends upon what feeling you are trying to convey. I know that strictly speaking it would really fit in with the mood of this piece, however I tend to mainly associate the word stoic with someone being heroic in the face of adversity, as opposed to the original feelings have gone.

Ooooo, my husband has come up with a good one, which is "stares past two molten orbs, emotions bereft"
 
I agree with Sar. The word stoically doesn't really fit with what you're trying to convey with "emotionlessly".

I think you're more on the mark with blankly or maybe coldly. Sometimes simple words work better than overly-contrived/overwrought words.
 
By popular demand, then, I think I'll go with "blankly." It's closest--coldly is REALLY not what I want to convey. It's active rejection, not the emptiness after you've got nothing more to give.

Thank y'all!
 
Acolyte said:
By popular demand, then, I think I'll go with "blankly." It's closest--coldly is REALLY not what I want to convey. It's active rejection, not the emptiness after you've got nothing more to give.

Thank y'all!
Click to expand...


sure anytime (just don't tell anybody that i wanted to be important here...) :D
 
Okay, Acolyte. Here goes. I really hope I don't discourage you with my comments, but I am going to be honest, as requested. :eek:



The Undead
by Ross Shingledecker
6/24/04


One set of unblinking eyes
stares blankly past two molten orbs--
red-rimmed and webbed with crimson--
half-filled and filling with saline misery:
the saltysweet and flowing chrism
of this bleak and lifeless requiem

(Confusion in the first two lines about how many pairs of eyes there are. The molten orbs don't work for me at all. Are they decayed? Do they still look like eyes. Very confusing. The saline misery, okay I get that you mean tears, but this just isn't conveying the emotion. The word saline takes away from the word misery. Also, would blood be flowing from a decaying corpse?)

Time has passed these corpses by;
in the shadowed silent of a starless night
each eternal second marked by a single tear

(Do you mean silence rather than silent? The single tear is very melodramatic.)

There is mockery in such a death
for it was not always thus:
these eyes once sparkled with a laughing soul
those eyes once sang back with a joyful spirit
Together they danced to call forth a Spring
in which love and life would flourish.

(Now you are getting somewhere, but still not giving enough information. There is a generic quality and continuing confusion about the particular circumstances. Where are we, what's happening? Who are we talking about? All this joyful dancing seems kind of fake. Nothing about real beings here.)

But now it is the time of Frost
that evanescing rime
which has emptied and husked so many before

(You can use some of this to better effect if you give the whole thing more context. )

An eternal second passes
His deathmask of emotion
sees not his cold, lifeless hands
nor the cruel, fated sabre
he has just plunged into her heart

(Another eternal second? We got it the first time. Applying emotion words to objects is problemmatic, e.g., cruel fated sabre. I would try to get away from adjectival descriptions and look more at who this is, where they are, and what they're doing. It's not enough to just be vague and throw some spooky images around.)


So that's what I think. I don't know if this will be at all helpful, but you seem like a robust sort of person and obviously you're spending some time writing. I suspect you're not seeing your work from the reader's point of view. You have a certain thing happening in your head and your giving the reader about 30% of it, plus some emotion-loading words that seem unjustified.

Do let me know whether I should go on to other poems. You can PM me if yoyu like.
 
Wicked! Laceration! *grin*

Thanks, novella. Honestly, sincerely, the-paper-is-dripping-red-with-ink, thanks. PLEASE go on to the rest, even the older ones. How can I learn to cook better, if my kids' friends don't tell me what my kids are afraid to say? *wink*

(Confusion in the first two lines about how many pairs of eyes there are. The molten orbs don't work for me at all. Are they decayed? Do they still look like eyes. Very confusing. The saline misery, okay I get that you mean tears, but this just isn't conveying the emotion. The word saline takes away from the word misery. Also, would blood be flowing from a decaying corpse?)

Molten is the word I like--I don't like "orbs" at all (always makes me think of some magical device or something), but was lost on the words a bit. They aren't corpses (title aside)...more on that in a bit. I did like the saline bit, though. *ponders*

(Do you mean silence rather than silent? The single tear is very melodramatic.)

Perhaps silence is the right word...I honestly can't remember why I have the other one in there. Might've had something to do with how the line sounded when spoken aloud--with the "t" it's more clipped. I agree about the last line, especially with the repetition. It might have to get changed or swapped out for something else.

(Now you are getting somewhere, but still not giving enough information. There is a generic quality and continuing confusion about the particular circumstances. Where are we, what's happening? Who are we talking about? All this joyful dancing seems kind of fake. Nothing about real beings here.)

Eeep. If it's too fakey to be real, then it's a whopping failure. I think my problem here is that I cloaked away everything in metaphors and imagery and symbols and such, rather than telling it like it is (or was).

(You can use some of this to better effect if you give the whole thing more context. )

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that--I understand the need for context, but I don't know what you mean by the first part of that comment. Please explain, so I can get whatever gem of truth is contained therein. *grin*

(Another eternal second? We got it the first time. Applying emotion words to objects is problemmatic, e.g., cruel fated sabre. I would try to get away from adjectival descriptions and look more at who this is, where they are, and what they're doing. It's not enough to just be vague and throw some spooky images around.)

*throws spooky images around* Wow, that is fun--why can't it be enough? *smile* But more seriously, the factual origin of this poem is a breakup--I wrote it after I sat down (in a Sears parking lot of all places) and looked at someone I had once loved and told her, cruelly, that I no longer did, and watched her love turn in the space of a few hours into a harsh coldness. *beat* I had so much intense emotion afterward that I couldn't write down anything to her, or from my point of view, so I went 3rd-person to escape the situation, and used (*is speaking from psychoanalytic POV here right now*) metaphor in place of actuality so that I could encapsulate the horrible experience and put it away.

That said, however, it's been awhile, and I can talk about it more rationally. Perhaps it's time to majorly rewrite the poem, or maybe it needs only accoutrements. Continue to assist me, please. *thinks* Perhaps if I re-titled it something that indicated a break-up, so that you'd start off knowing the subject matter, the imagery might be a bit easier to pierce. Coupled with toning down some of the verbiage and adding in some cold, hard facts, taking it from fantasy-world to this mundane Earth....perhaps I can avoid a total re-write.

(So that's what I think. I don't know if this will be at all helpful, but you seem like a robust sort of person and obviously you're spending some time writing. I suspect you're not seeing your work from the reader's point of view. You have a certain thing happening in your head and your giving the reader about 30% of it, plus some emotion-loading words that seem unjustified.)

It's certainly helpful, and if by robust you mean able-to-take-it, thanks (if you mean just-a-bit-overweight I might be offended, as it's something I watch closely *grin*). And I think that you suspect rightly, at least most of the time, and especially here. I write to get something out of me but also to share it with other people, and if they don't get it, I'm not really fulfilling my criteria.

So thanks. I can't work on it right now--the workplace is a bad place to focus on poetry, when I should be watching a reaction--but I'll be thinking about it, mind you well. And I can't wait to see what you think about the rest--mince no words!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top