Trees quiet down as darkness slowly descends.
Black streams of coal-tar pitch
alive with galaxies of shining dots,
Starry-eyed beasts of mechanical wonder
gallloping through asphalt plain,
The very air aglow with the magic of electricity!
'Say I'm beautiful, oh, say I'm beautiful'
the city lulls;
Concrete and glass in the embrace of night.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/85fsqv/i_cant/dvyl7x2?utm_source=reddit-android
*Edited.
Posted Mar 19, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC · edited
The imagery in your poem works really hard to tell the reader that it's talking about a city at night, but then the poem itself betrays that hard work by simply mentioning the city. I think you should trust your readers more.
Trees quiet down as darkness slowly descends.
I don't think this line adds anything to the poem or the scene its trying to create... "darkness slowly descends" is somewhat cliche and the rest of the imagery represents night very clearly, anyway. Also, I'm not sure what image "trees quiet down" is supposed to create in the reader's mind.
The very air aglow with the life of electricity,
The line above is slightly awkward for me. For example, the usage of "life" to represent the energy of electricity is slightly unimaginative as it's an abstract word. Maybe you chose that word to relate with the "life" the city lights bring to the air, but I don't know what "life" exactly you're talking about, if you know what I mean. I think you can try expanding upon that a bit more using solid imagery, so that the concept here becomes a little less abstract. I believe that you're trying to set a mood here and you need as much solidity as possible for that to be successful.
Also, I feel that the imagery in the poem, while coherent in its objective, is all over the place and quite disconnected when it comes to what it's trying to say to the reader other than just creating a city lit up at night. The imagery changes a lot, and it changes fast. In other words, I don't exactly know what mood your poem is trying to set.
Let me take you through how I see the images of your poem in detail: -
You start by describing the night scene with black streams and coal-tar(the night), and galaxies(the buildings). I've now not only got an image in my mind, but I also know what the narrator thinks of/sees it as. But then, the next set of images has nothing to do with what I currently know, because the imagery shifts to starry-eyed beasts(buildings) galloping through asphalt plain. In other words, you have represented the buildings as two entirely different concepts (from non-living to living and from static to dynamic) in the space of two lines, and the variation is far too large and far too quick for any kind of emotive coherence to remain. After that, you create an image of the air aglow with the life of electricity. Electricity here, is a surprisingly grounded player when you consider the large-scale and fantasy-like imagery in the previous lines, and that continues the incoherence. In the last line, you continue to take the grounded path by using "concrete" and "glass", but then you mention the night, which similar to mentioning the city, undoes the hard-work done by the imagery in the first few lines. Also "Concrete and glass in the embrace of night" doesn't help with the mood consistency because now, we suddenly have an intimate relationship between the city and the night and this intimacy is not implied anywhere else.
Also:
'Say I'm beautiful, oh, say I'm beautiful'
I get what you're trying to say here, but it sounds melodramatic and a bit unnecessary.
I apologize if this feedback seems pretentious, but I have a deep emotional attachment to city-life at night, and I don't think this poem manages to set any kind of mood coherently. However, there are some great images here, when looked at in isolation, so I personally feel that you should first decide on the emotion you feel towards the scene and stick to a set of consistent images to build up the mood.
Okay, where to start from... First of all, "The very air aglow with the life of electricity" I'm not going to disagree with you on your assessment of this line. "Trees quiet down as darkness slowly descends." I stick by my decision to open with this line because I feel it's representative of the transition to night, something along the lines of "the day with all its energy is leaving and night is coming home". The poem was supposed to be a love story between the city and night, which is also why the last line was that "intimate". "Say I'm beautiful, oh, say I'm beautiful" this line was supposed to be the climax of the poem, the culmination of all the imagery; the city simply showing off to welcome its love, and me just being lucky enough to witness all of it. The emotion I felt towards the scene, as you put it, was awe. Wonder with every new sight, which is why the imagery changes so fast and so much. "Starry-eyed beasts of mechanical wonder gallloping through asphalt plain" with this I didn't mean buildings, I meant cars and I really wish that had come across better. Thank you for your in-depth analyses and feedback, I appreciate any insight into how other people see what I write.
Thanks for clarifying your intentions and clearing some of my misunderstandings. I apologize for interpreting the mechanical wonders as buildings, it was a hasty conclusion on my part.
"the day with all its energy is leaving and night is coming home".
Hmm...but then I'm not sure whether "trees quiet down" is the best phrase to represent that. What does "quiet down" mean here?
It was supposed to mean inaction and dormancy, I'll try to get a better way to put that across.
Yeah, I got that...I'm just confused about what trees being dormant or "quiet" has to do with the transition to night. Anyway, happy writing and hope to see more poems from you.
I really like this. I love the way you describe things in such a metaphorical way. The comparison of urban landscapes to nature are wonderful.
concrete and glass in the embrace of night
I think this is a great line, "concrete and glass" being such "hard" and "raw" materials being sort of softly enveloped in night.. lovely.
Thank you! :)
I like the type of artificial 'nature' you create in this poem. There is movement, but everything is muted like when you drive through a city at night, observing things but not being observed. The atmosphere reminds me of a set of gifs called The Loneliness of Japan because of the sense of isolation that you can only feel when you're alone in a city. And it also reminds me of photos like this - I like how the poem starts with darkness descending, but then it lights up again with these clusters of artificial light that glow in the dark. You conjure really strong visual images throughout the whole poem, and I think it flows well so the atmosphere never breaks.
Thanks for the feedback! :) The gifs are amazing, photo too. 😃