Noon Before Night (poetry)

Epishade

United States2267 Posts

May 22 2013 20:09 GMT

I wrote this because I was just randomly thinking of cool phrases. Noon before night came up and I thought that would be a good first line for a poem. Did this all in class and so I thought I'd show you guys.

Twas noon before night,
morning dusk filled the sky.
The stars were so bright,
I started to cry.

A single tear shed,
for such a beautiful view.
I rested my head,
In the sweet morning dew.

The stars were alight,
in the calm twilight scene.
What a magical sight,
for the sky so serene.

But it wasn't to last,
for my sky disappeared.
It went by so fast,
And as fast as I feared.

hp.Shell

United States2527 Posts

May 22 2013 20:13 GMT

I like it. It's like the sky is experiencing all times of day and night at once. Really cool.

hoby2000

United States918 Posts

May 22 2013 21:09 GMT

You have made the first steps in either becoming a musician or a poet. I think of random phrases sometimes while working, or reading a book, or playing Street Fighter, and I write whole songs off that one phrase. I actually did that today, and wrote a few lines I really enjoyed.

Well done man. I like it quite a bit. With your permission, i may steal this for a song... >.>

docvoc

United States5491 Posts

May 22 2013 22:06 GMT

It's short, it's sweet, not bad for just a quick little thing that popped into your head

. Very cool read dude :D.

Epishade

United States2267 Posts

May 22 2013 23:08 GMT

On May 23 2013 06:09 hoby2000 wrote:
Well done man. I like it quite a bit. With your permission, i may steal this for a song... >.>

Yeah sure go ahead.

pebble444

Italy2499 Posts

May 22 2013 23:19 GMT

Really nice i like this. You should write more. Gave me a slight goosbump.

AiurZ

United States429 Posts

May 22 2013 23:31 GMT

the action of the poem feels like someone is "looking up at the sky" for an extremely long period of time, no wonder the narrator feels like life is passing him by, he is watching as the world turns

several moments feel comical, the combination of the archaic language and the very clear easy rhymes, the overwroughtness of the narrator (crying, the sentiment at the end), i think they all sort of contribute. im not sure if thats intentional.

not sure how i feel about the structure of the poem especially considering the content of the poem, i feel like the narrator is watching time go by without taking any action, then bemoaning the fact that time passes by so fast, i think that the structure of the poem especially the clear and easy rhymes that you choose make me feel like the poem is saying that this is inevitable, inescapable, there seems to be no effort from the poem to suggest that its possible to break out of this "neat" "prison", i think that the use of archaic language is also a contributing factor to this, i feel no push towards the present moment, no push towards the celebration of life or the action of life

i feel like the poem is in a lot of ways its own enemy, it has a kind of circular nature that is stuck in the past, being obsessed with the "naturally poetic" imagery and "naturally poetic" phrasing rather than the moment truth etc., the ability to take action, any amount of effort/force, etc.,

the "beauty" here is purely illusory

Epishade

United States2267 Posts

May 22 2013 23:55 GMT

The only things I intentionally put into the poem were the alliterations in the last 2 stanzas because they sounded nice. Anything else you read is simply filler lines that I put in so I could use them to rhyme with. These cheap rhymes lend me the ability to not be so abstract. This is more a physical poem than a metaphysical one.

The real meaning of the poem that I meant for it to have is this: Someone takes a look at the sky a bit before the "twilight" part of the day (maybe around 3-4 in the morning). He rests down on the grass and stares at the stars. But as he admires them, the sun comes up and his "sky" goes away. He knew it would happen, just as he feared.

I'm glad you put so much thought into such a simple poem. Its definitely more thought than I put in to making it. I hesitated making this post to explain everything as it kind of degrades its potential from readers who might try to interpret actual meaning in it. The truth is, there is no actual meaning that I meant the viewer to find in writing it. But I applaud your effort to find one.

Also when you say the "beauty" here is purely illusory, does that mean you didn't like the poem, or were you referring to an abstract idea you thought I was trying to express inside?

AiurZ

United States429 Posts

May 23 2013 00:18 GMT

poems arent like riddles etc. in that readers look towards them to see the poets "intention" "meaning" etc., the idea that a poem has "meaning behind it" is ridiculous and is something that is generally unknowable and not something that you will see very often in (good) poetry.

a reader can only really consider the words of the poem in reading the poem, i am only looking at the words of the poem and considering them as words.

the "meaning" that i derive from the poem is what the words point me towards: the action of the poem as the narrator lying in the grass looking up at the sky as the sky goes from noon, to night, to dusk etc. and then at the end saying that everything passes by so quickly, the way that the words are structured, the choice of the words, the sound of the words, etc.,

i dont think that you can really say that the poem is a "physical" poem, this is a poem that deals almost entirely with abstractions and with words that are defined not by themselves or their place in the poem but by the prior meanings that they might have ie "a serene sky" ie "magical sight" ie "beautiful view" ie "sweet morning dew"--

i think that the phrase "sweet morning dew" is somewhat able to summarize how i feel about the poem: morning dew isn't sweet.

it is good to write poems.

Mothra

United States1448 Posts

May 23 2013 01:12 GMT

#10

lol AiurZ at your painstaking deconstruction of his poetry when your own is so incredibly bizarre. OP the poem had a nice musical ring to it although some phrases felt like trite filler. Seems you have a good ear but can do better at creating vision, immersion and action.

Epishade

United States2267 Posts

May 23 2013 01:31 GMT

#11

On the contrary, I think poems, particularly old ones, do try to have a separate meaning behind it than what is otherwise stated directly. I think people can't just look at the surface of a poem and determine what it is really about when there is so much more that you can interpret as the meaning. Metaphors and allusions can alter the meaning of words as something much larger. Granted my poem is very straightforward and easy to understand so it doesn't (or at least I didn't intend it to) have any meaning beyond the words I use.

By pairing up those phrases you listed (serene sky I used because of alliteration) with an adjective, I don't feel I changed the meaning at all had I left them out and just said "view" or "morning dew". They are physical in the sense that they are supposed to be exactly what they are. Morning dew is the grass, and beautiful view is just a very nice thing to look at. Even so, "Sweet morning dew" doesn't give the dew an alternate meaning than what it currently is. Sweet is an adjective that most people would agree has a positive connotation, and with the use of sweet to describe dew, it is giving the reader the impression that lying in the grass is nice.

I think a poem that expresses my thought about abstraction and deeper meaning being important (and not just looking at the words themselves and taking the poem literally) is The Road not Taken. I'll spoiler it below. But the poem quite obviously has hidden meaning. It's not just about someone deciding to take a different road when the road splits in two, or looking at the grass and seeing that it wasn't very traveled. What I think (and I could be wrong, correct me if I am) you might do, is try to find the deeper meaning of the grass (or maybe the yellow wood would be a better example), instead of the entire poem and what it stands for about life in general.

+ Show Spoiler +

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

AiurZ

United States429 Posts

May 23 2013 02:59 GMT

#12

@Mothra i am and was a reader of poetry before a writer of poetry. my desire to write poetry comes from reading poetry, and from feeling strongly about poetry and poetics. i also wouldn't say that i "painstakingly deconstructed" this poem, because i wrote whatever surface thoughts i had towards reading the poem, holding back a lot in terms of looking at the language and instead the poetics/vision of the poem in general which i felt was in more pressing need of address.

@Epishade i dont understand what you mean by the "surface" of the poem because i dont think that a poem has a "surface". do you mean something like "the literal meaning of the poem" when you say "surface"? in this case i think that the literal meaning of the poem ie the surface of the poem is very important. since you quoted robert frost, consider poems from his contemporaries like wallace stevens anecdote of the jar, or william carlos williams red wheelbarrow.

consider what "metaphor" is and what "metaphor" does. i think that, especially considering all of history and the history of poetry/literature etc. that metaphor is increasingly and increasingly a bad thing. consider something like gertrude stein writing "a rose is a rose is a rose". consider william carlos williams writing something like "love is at an end/ of roses" and "the rose is obsolete". in the end it doesn't really matter what your thoughts on metaphor are, not because i disagree with them, but because the poem has no metaphor.

carefully examine the phrase "sweet morning dew". in your consideration you want to say "sweet" has a positive connotation, so that you are telling your readers that it is good to rest your head on the dew in the morning. i disagree with this on the fundamental level: first, i disagree that you should be using words purely for the meaning that they have had previously-- i think that language becomes dangerous and unsuccessful when words are no longer allowed to stand on their own or mean on their own but instead become reliant on their past meanings (see wc williams "black wind/black heart" from spring and all); second, i disagree that it is the poets job to tell the reader anything, i think that making this value judgement "to rest your head on the morning dew is good' is something that is outside of what the poet should be doing, because "good" is not an objective term, and you as the poet should not be trying to force the reader into making any sort of value judgement but rather present your own perceptions and to invite the reader in to the perceive with you, rather than you taking an "instructional" tone; third, i disagree with the word sweet entirely. i disagree with the word sweet because sweet is a word whose primary meaning is in taste, i think when i read the phrase "sweet morning dew" that you are writing a phrase that is purely dishonest because it becomes obvious to the reader that you have never tasted the dew in the morning, because the dew in the morning is not sweet. i disagree with the word sweet because when we move to the other meanings of the word it becomes ambiguous and loses any sort of meaning that could be "striking"-- it becomes like words like "nice" and "good" that i feel should really only be used in the context of someone using the word with the knowledge that these words are vague and meaningless and therefore using them in a way that is in consideration of this. i dont feel that your use of "sweet" in this phrase is particularly aware of the meaninglessness of the word, especially when considering that there is no action in the poem, and that most of the images in the poem are wholly reliant on adjectives (generally meaningless adjectives) as a crutch.

for example: beautiful view. i think that the use of the word "beautiful" here is particularly meaningless. someone can say something like "oh, what a beautiful view" and it is completely without any real meaning, it is just a useless phrase. again with something like "beautiful view" the narrator is assuming this kind of instructive tone, maybe like a didactic tone, i dont know, but its not something that invites the reader in, its not something that the reader can come into and experience for themselves, it is simply the poem saying this useless phrase, "beautiful view"

consider something like "it was a magical sight"-- in what way is this sight "magical" in the purest sense of the word? by its very nature its something that is not magical, it is something that is ordinary and mundane, something that happens every day all across the earth, the passing of time in the sky. i think that this phrase is essentially a cliche (or it is a cliche, i dont know very many words/terms).

now look towards the poem that you quoted by robert frost, and see if you can find any of these sorts of things in his poem. how often does he use empty and meaningless modifiers? in what ways does he use phrases for the sake of using phrases? look at how careful he is with his language. i think one of the most important and touching parts of that poem is the ending lines, the stutter between lines 18 and 19 "and I--/ I took the one less traveled" and he creates this hesitancy, this uncertainty, etc. not by trying to create a clever turn of phrase, not by using meaningless phrases, not via metaphor but by repeating something as simple as the singular first person pronoun. he is using the word as the word, he is not using the word as used previously before, and he is engaging with the reader in a way that represents his perception. compare this moment of hesitancy and uncertainty with the overwrought crying at looking at the sky, the overwrought "single tear" observing stars at night, and ask which one is genuine (i acknowledge here the bias that i create in stating my opinion of the actions as "overwrought", you can probably ignore that in your consideration).

just please for the love of language let it stand for itself, let it do things that it can do, and let it be true and real.

Epishade

United States2267 Posts

May 23 2013 03:47 GMT

#13

I'll try to cut this short because I have to go to bed and it's getting late. I respect your opinion even though I disagree with it. What I disagree with what you say is that: 1. Words cannot be used out of their original context/meaning. 2. Take words at their face value and nothing more. 3. Do not associate words with connotations that a reader may misinterpret.

I feel that by leaving out 1 and 2, you won't be able to understand a poem that has deeper meaning. Again, my poem doesn't have a deeper meaning, so by you calling my phrases useless is completely true in the sense that it's meant to be taken at face value.

By leaving out 3, then how could you convey any sort of tone or emotion in a poem at all if you don't want to use connotation in word choice. This would imply (to me) that the reader has to go deeper into the poem in order to figure out the emotion since you don't want the author putting it in there with word choice.

Your resistance to budge on allowing words to convey different feelings by extending its definition baffles me as well. That you feel "sweet" can't be used out of context because it has a primary definition relating to taste is not, in my opinion, conducive to good poetry. Poetry lends words to be used specifically out of context to ensure a richer feeling that the author wants to express through his or her writing.

Also, I fear I may not be entirely sure what I'm trying to argue for or against at this point. In your 4th paragraph, you write "first, i disagree that you should be using words purely for the meaning that they have had previously". I'm confused because I thought your point was that words should not be used for anything else, other than what their meaning was previously.

This nitpicking with words and personal opinions of how poetry should be written is difficult to argue about. But I gotta get some sleep now.

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