with a little help

pearlmutt

i wrote this several years ago. i like it, but it needs help. it just seems to need footnotes, and I don't want it to need footnotes. Also the title is terrible:

Skimming National Geographic

If we were all botanists
the name games
might be more fun.

Cadyk, Russia's flower,
brushstrokes of violet,
looks so lovely
sounds so sweet.

Gold Beach and Easy Red,
the history books
would have to be rewritten
to suit the sound of it:

A blonde like Marilyn
in a blazing bikini
splashing through the waves
and laughing when her top falls off.

On a warm June night,
serious could mean cereus:
the quality of turning
from a scraggly cactus
into a star,
suggesting the way
your lips flash a smile.

Frown lines destroyed
and history rewritten
if everything was like the botanist's candy-k.

DopeBeastie

Hey there. I don't think it needs footnotes. I don't need to know where these images come from to appreciate them at all, so my advice... don't worry about that.

You could expand the name-games of which you speak, because the way it's worded now, it's hard to understand, even after getting into the rest of the poem. It's not like you need More words, either. Just perhaps a better selection for "name games". And, "fun"... it's such a non-descript descriptor. I'm wondering if you don't mean something else?

This is a good piece. Check the tenses in the first and sixth stanzas. In the first: "Looks" to "look", "sounds" to "sound", or perhaps "brushstrokes" to "brushstroke". I'm not sure exactly where the error lie, but it reads kinda wierd, there. And in the sixth: "was" to "were", perhaps.

Those are my only suggestions, though. Otherwise... quite nice.

pearlmutt wrote:

i wrote this several years ago. i like it, but it needs help. it just seems to need footnotes, and I don't want it to need footnotes. Also the title is terrible:

Skimming National Geographic

If we were all botanists
the name games
might be more fun.

Cadyk, Russia's flower,
brushstrokes of violet,
looks so lovely
sounds so sweet.

Gold Beach and Easy Red,
the history books
would have to be rewritten
to suit the sound of it:

A blonde like Marilyn
in a blazing bikini
splashing through the waves
and laughing when her top falls off.

On a warm June night,
serious could mean cereus:
the quality of turning
from a scraggly cactus
into a star,
suggesting the way
your lips flash a smile.

Frown lines destroyed
and history rewritten
if everything was like the botanist's candy-k.

pearlmutt

thanks so much; your pair of eyeballs got mine roving again.

I agree. I do need to look at the verbs. They are a mess and totally absent in some places, and after looking at it again I think they need to be present.

brushstrokes was supposed to read like noun, not a verb.

and fun is terrible.

this poem is one of my favorites, and it is such big clusterfu. . .

Ali

I like the part about marilyn!!!!!!!!
Very Hollywood!

DopeBeastie

pearlmutt wrote:

this poem is one of my favorites...

it's not that bad, at all
definitely not beyond fixing
that's for sure

pearlmutt

thank ye, thank ye.

Ali I know, Marilyn is just ummm, the saddest hollywood beauty. Elton John did it best, but I still gave it a shot; she is the most Gold Beach Easy Red girl I can think of.

Thanks again PastaNazi.

I'm off . . . officially summer is here for me. WAHOO-WOOHOO YIPPIE KI-YAY and I'm going for the verbs. I will post the edited version, and we'll see. This is the third time I've edited it in three years. Eventually it will deserve the love I feel for it.

Ms. Haiku

pearlmutt wrote:

i wrote this several years ago. i like it, but it needs help. it just seems to need footnotes, and I don't want it to need footnotes. Also the title is terrible:

Skimming National Geographic

If we were all botanists
the name games
might be more fun.

Cadyk, Russia's flower,
brushstrokes of violet,
looks so lovely
sounds so sweet.

Gold Beach and Easy Red,
the history books
would have to be rewritten
to suit the sound of it:

A blonde like Marilyn
in a blazing bikini
splashing through the waves
and laughing when her top falls off.

On a warm June night,
serious could mean cereus:
the quality of turning
from a scraggly cactus
into a star,
suggesting the way
your lips flash a smile.

Frown lines destroyed
and history rewritten
if everything was like the botanist's candy-k.

How to Remember Someone

A blonde like Marilyn
in a blazing bikini
splashing through the waves
and laughing when her top falls off.

On a warm June night,
the quality of turning
from a scraggly cactus
into a star,
suggesting the way
your lips flash a smile.

Frown lines destroyed
and history rewritten
if everything was like the botanist's candy-k.


I know I destroyed it, but the Marilyn and June stanzas stuck out for me. I think to focus on them would be a good place.

DopeBeastie

see? and i like the botanist's part

i don't wanna say make it two poems, so, i think the title does nicely to tie the different themes together

FinsburyParkCarrots

If we were all as botanists
with name games to engage us -
entranced to words like Cadyk, Russia's violet,
Gold Beach and Easy Red -
history books would be rewritten
renaming time by light and colorsound.

History rebloomed, renamed
we might call Marilyn
blonde in a blazing bikini
splashing through the waves
and laughing when her top falls off.

On warm June nights,
serious might mean cereus:
the quality of turning
from a scraggly cactus
into a star,
suggesting the way
your lips flash a smile.

Frown lines might be destroyed
and history rewritten
if everything were a botanist's candy-k.


That isn't a re-write. That's a suggestion for ordering the logic of the poem's argument and to show its structure. I deliberately haven't proposed any poetic phrases but just shown what I think is being said. I think the poem needs more before the last three lines: more examples of how our perception of time, life, history and nature might be re-defined by renaming.

I'd also suggest thinking about some of the ideological implications of renaming things in the poem. You know, post colonial countries abandon the colonial names given to places and things. But how arbitrary is a name from the thing it names? Do we need to keep the old names in order to understand our world and ourselves? Is there some myth of origin, some crux of our cultural heritage in the words that we might lose through renaming them? This topic can be explored in this poem! Keep it going!

pearlmutt

it is absolutely not destroyed. it's better a lot better. both versions are better than what I started with. (you should see the original, actually i threw it away it was that bad.)

I like what you did, Pasta Nazi, because it changed the focus, or maybe gave it focus? And I love the title with that version. I actually thought about it riding down the road -- How to Remember Someone

i like what you did, Fins because it kept my intended focus but made it more clear. And thanks for the verbs!

i wanted to do a lot with this poem, which is one of the reasons why i think it is such a mess to begin with

decisions, decisions, this is why editing is so hard for me.

"I'd also suggest thinking about some of the ideological implications of renaming things in the poem."

I know. And I agree about looking around for some more examples.

The entire issue of words and how or if they change our perception of a person, place, or thing is fascinating, the old what's in a name? (or a name change) I kind of like that for the title now that I think about it: What's in a Name Change?

What do y'all think?

burtschips

I like your poem in its current state (first post), but then I don't like perfect things too much. I can't comment on the structure but I think it flows well. I find that it's a little bit 'odd ball' but not really odd ball, I didn't pick up on some of the more subtle meanings or readings like say FPC did; I would need to stare at it a long time to do that but I think it's colourful.

pearlmutt

God, Bibliobella, I'm sorry! I'm telling you, trying to have a discussion via computer with more than one person is more than my head can handle. I apologize! I thought Pasta Nazi had given it the second title. Jesus. Talk about not picking up on things. And I thought I could read.

Thanks Burts. yep, i didn't read it outloud. I like the verbs in there though.

I haven't reworked it yet. It's just kind of sitting there. It might sit there for three more years, but I'm printing the other versions so they can at least sit on top of it (and maybe rub off of it if i'm lucky.)