Another poem?

Where’s the poem, hunnie?

lol..yeah

A thousand dandelions
Do you still remember the house,
the yard, the shed full of old tools and all your books?
Do you remember the porch, where we sat on warm summer evening
discussing family, friends and dreams as wide as the universe?
I swear saw you flying over the house, you were a black raven,
Your beautiful feathers shining blue black in the bright sun.
I ran to the edge of the yard, I called out you name and a thousand dandelions
fell from the sky.

I won’t pretend to know much about poetry which to some people I’m sure will mean I shouldn’t be responding to this thread but I liked it! Just look out for a couple minor spelling errors. I usually don’t dig poetry too much (I hate to admit because I just don’t get it), but I got that. And dug it. Good job!

spelling?

It’s lovely. Is it for your own personal writing or a school assignment?

“I swear saw you flying over the house” Not spelling, but you missed and “I” after “swear”.

“I called out you name” Did you mean “your”?

I don’t know enough about the laws of poetry so I can’t help you there, but I do think it’s pretty and I like it a lot.

The color imagery is really good, and I like the repetition of “Do you remember…” I almost wonder if you could add another remembrance to solidify that repetition

@ArizonaPancakes.

Again, very nice work. Thank you for sharing it.

1. Is the first line the title? If so, use title-style capitalization and set it off by skipping a line after it.

2. “on warm summer evening”
Should be either “a warm summer evening” or (more likely) “warm summer evenings” (plural).

3. essiness is right about the “I swear” line and “your name.”

4. Your capitalization is inconsistent. In some places you follow the traditional poetic convention of initial capitalization of a line (“Your beautiful…”) even though it is not the start of a sentence; in others you use lowercase (“the yard”). If there is a poetic reason for the inconsistency, such as a subtle emphasis on the “You,” you must know what your reason is. If there is no such reason, you should be consistent and follow one rule or the other. (I actually think lowercase suits your verse better.)

5. The same comment about capitalization also goes for punctuation. For the most part you follow standard sentence punctuation, but then in places you don’t. As I commented yesterday, your punctuation should be impeccable and should support meaning. There should be a reason for any departure from convention or from your established style. It can’t be random.

Here you have a comma splice (two grammatically independent sentences joined by a comma instead of being broken with a period): “I swear saw you flying over the house, you were a black raven,” If you have a poetic reason for doing this, you have to be able to articulate it in your own mind; otherwise it mars the poem and detracts from the reader’s confidence in you. (I do think there is a reason, and so I did not correct the two comma splices, but I am not the poet, and so my reasoned choice can’t be substituted for yours. I did add a series comma after “friends.”)

I would offer the following gently edited version:

A Thousand Dandelions

Do you still remember the house,
the yard, the shed full of old tools and all your books?
Do you remember the porch, where we sat on warm summer evenings
discussing family, friends, and dreams as wide as the universe?
I swear I saw you flying over the house, you were a black raven,
your beautiful feathers shining blue-black in the bright sun.
I ran to the edge of the yard, I called out your name and a thousand dandelions
fell from the sky.

So, then, after editing, a critique.

This is a small lyric with a broad expanse of content, extending across both time and space, evoked in miniature like a tiny painting of an immense landscape. It expresses longing and nostalgia, addressing an absent one who once was enfolded in the speaker’s daily life, written from the point of view of someone still on the old homestead—a close relative, perhaps. The questions—do you remember?—suggest a loss of contact and a wistful hope that those precious memories of the once-commonplace are shared.

A few details allow us to picture the place: the house has a porch, and the toolshed with old tools suggests a rural setting where the speaker’s family has lived for a long time, perhaps many generations of the same family. The absent party was a student or scholar, and the books suggest a reason for leaving: preparing for a career that would take him or her away to follow those summer-evening dreams.

The homely domestic image, quiet conversation on the open porch as the day cools, blends smoothly into a dreamlike vision of the absent one as a bird, free already, flying away, beautiful and elusive—not responding to the call. The thousand dandelions extend the mystery: the literal and the symbolic have given way to pure imagery. Dandelions are a common weed, as common as the landscape of the familiar, like ordinary moments perhaps not valued in their time; and yet seen as a multitude, their sunny gold—like a shower of sunlight in the night sky—is beautiful and brilliant. The image is breathtaking. At that moment we know the speaker’s loss.

Jeruba, your critique gave me chills.

ArizonaP, you seem to have a talent for this. Keep up the good work!

I love the poem, and I really enjoyed reading it. I’m a writer as well, so I know a bit about this stuff. But pretty much everything I had to say was in @Jeruba‘s critique. Well done, well done! :)

Not trite. Poignant, quiet, introspective. Evokes loss without bitterness, and a sense of catharsis. Once again, great imagery.

Good.

Thank you all for your most generous critque and comments.My grammar as much to be worked on and i really appreciate Jeruba’s words, changes as well as a little bit more studying of technique will be made.Jeruba, interpretation of the poem,perfect. Knotmyday,perfect.

mangeon show your stuff.

Eh. I had a great poem, but I lost it. D: