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So last week I was somehow inspired to write a poem one morning, and thought I would share it. It's called "Windowpane". I was feeling a bit down at the time, so it's a little dark, but looking back on it, I think it's the best poem I've written. ^^ Feel free to voice your comments/criticism. Here it is:
As twilight fades to morning rain
The dim light enters through the windowpane
Wherein one sits in silence dreaming
Of the life that he had stopped believing
Windowpane, around the heart
Dreams so kind, thoughts so dark
Words so true and everlasting
One takes to the book, another to fasting
And with notice to the events of past
The old ones die, the young ones laugh
Until the days of trial and drudgery
Where they lose faith in a life of luxury
And through their windowpane they see
As life's comedy turns to tragedy
The helpless figures who wander aimlessly
In their life-long search for a place to be
It requires an ability to distance oneself
From life, from love, from heaven and earth
To attain to freedom in solitary disdain
For the world that scurries beyond the windowpane
Windowpane, do you not show us
The way in which we ought to look?
The path on which we long to follow?
The things whose substance is not hollow?
We long to live, we long to dream
For they are the same, so it seems
And yet they often go amiss
As they appear a cheat, a broken promise
And so as one sits in silence dreaming
Of the life that he had stopped believing
He cannot help but feel the same
As he pulls the curtain over the windowpane
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Hah, I couldn't understand any of the lyrics, but I actually like the song. Thanks for posting it. 
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Wow this is quite beautiful
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As Joyce would say, lyrical prose. Good, in the sense that it has overall theme and some direction. Poor, in the sense that it offers no ways to getting to the poem's ideals, or in identifying the crux of the state.
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I have no idea what is going on because I'm an uncultured lout most likely. Please explain, thank you 
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Thanks to all who commented so far.
On August 04 2009 07:34 Oxygen wrote:
it offers no ways to getting to the poem's ideals, or in identifying the crux of the state.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Is Joyce saying that a poem should have some sort ideal vision? I think my poem is more about describing a state of mind than anything ideological or visionary. But maybe I'm misinterpreting what you wrote.
On August 04 2009 07:39 Xusneb wrote:I have no idea what is going on because I'm an uncultured lout most likely. Please explain, thank you
It's likely that you simply don't relate to it well, and probably because it's too vague. Though if it were easy to explain, I wouldn't have written it as a poem.
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Some praise, and some criticism, in no particular order:
I get a definite feeling from reading this poem although it's hard to describe - it feels dark, detached, lonely, wandering, doubting, etc. The main thought it brings to mind is that I'm sitting in an otherwise deserted coffee shop, right next to the window, watching lots of people walking down the busy street doing whatever they do, feeling that all life is a bit shallow, and looking for reasons I keep participating in it anyways, and a little of the cold air is seeping through the window next to me. Why this thought I really have no idea since I have never sat in a coffee shop while it rained and watched people walking about, but rather it came from the sum of emotions contained in the poem.
I like a lot of your word choices throughout the poem: life, dreams, belief - maybe vague and simple words but they are very human concepts, and most readers would find something to related to them. I also like the windowpane theme, since it's both an actual, physical windowpane (with rain outside it and a curtain), and a symbol, showing a sort of distant view on life from which you can observe but not act through the pane of glass. I think starting the poem by introducing the image of the window, and ending it with closing the curtain, is excellent. On the other hand I think you may have mentioned it too much, the window pane is in almost every stanza, and the title, you could remove some and the reader would still get the point about the window.
The poem also seems to wander a bit much - I feel that it starts in a particular place, and ends in a particular place, and tries to go everywhere in the middle. This may be just a style difference between you and me, but personally I would like it more if there were a stronger sense of progression throughout. I find myself much more appreciative of the beginning and end rather than the middle. This also may be due to the particular word selection; I would hazard a guess that somewhere in the middle the rhyme scheme began to restrict your writing, instead of enhancing it. Some of the lines feel like they got shoehorned in based on a rhyme, not based on the meaning. "And with notice to the events of past" and "He cannot help but feel the same" stand out in particular as words that don't seem to add to the meaning. There are also some non rhymes that screw with the flow of the poem, such as past/laugh, us/look, amiss/promise (different emphasis in the latter). Perhaps you should try writing free verse (no meter/rhyme), or if you feel that the poem needs rhyme, try a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus and really try to make the words fit your meaning, don't let your meaning get pushed around to fit the poem structure.
My final complaint is that you used the word "luxury", and it happens to land right next to the "broodwar" tab on the sidebar, and at that point in the poem I got totally distracted thinking of Luxury and whether he really deserved to win that MSL and why the hell KT changed their name to FingerBoom and such things. You could interpret this as either that your poem moves too slowly and readers get distracted, or it was foolish to post such an emotional work on TeamLiquid, or that Ling is too easily distractable while on summer break.
Feel free to respond to any of my comments, or disregard them, they're just the thoughts of an amateur poet. Also, Joyce was a pretentious ass and would have called all modern poetry "lyrical prose." A poem is what you make it, not what any particular dead guy says it is. Good work, good luck, and keep writing.
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Overall, I think you did a really wonderful job with this poem. The images and ideas all contributed to, as you put it, a certain darkness, but a certain kind of dreaminess as well - or is it an absence of dreams? The central motif of the windowpane is very intriguing in all the roles and meanings it implicitly takes on - is it something that allows a "dim light" of hope and dreams? Is it a window into truth and disillusionment with all those hopes and dreams? Is the world beyond the windowpane simply aimless wandering and deferred dreams, or is it really a place of substance and purpose?
Now that I try to parse the poem apart more, the complexity of the image really hits me (just like how good poetry should! yayyy). Windows are symbols usually associated with dreaming, of aspiring for something beyond your own limitations - and yet windowpanes can also be spectacles or viewing glasses to see how impossible or meaningless those dreams are (For some reason, our windowpane reminds me a bit of Gulliver's Travels and Gulliver's pocket full of of spectacles and telescopes).
You also seem to capture this sense of duality, this sense of everything being double-sided - with dreams and broken promises being one and the same. Similarly, it's very interesting to consider that the windowpane is double-sided as well (there are, after all, two sides to a window). What does it mean to be on the inside, looking out, and to be on the outside, living? Choosing a windowpane as your central focus was probably your subconscious poet being clever with potential interpretations.
So uh, I didn't mean to actually offer my own interpretation of the poem, but the message you've offered allows for a lot of analysis. Lots to work with and chew on. That being said, I think that even though there's so much substance and wonderful meaning to your poem, you need to polish and re-polish and re-polish again. Since you chose to follow a more structured poem with rhyme and meter, you have to be very careful with words and fit as much meaning into them as possible.
As twilight fades to morning rain
The dim light enters through the windowpane
Wherein one sits in silence dreaming
Of the life that he had stopped believing
This stanza, for example, does very well with the first 3 lines. I really liked the line "wherein one sits in silence dreaming," probably because it's iambic. However, the last line seems a bit clunky - "that he had" just offers a lot of physical resistance to the poem and also messes up the meter a bit. Similarly, your second stanza is all iambs, but then the last line turns into a muddled mess. This might be on purpose, but if it's a matter of forcing rhyme, you might want to reconsider how you phrase those lines.
Since you have to follow a certain structure, be really careful about making every word count. I think it's just a matter of revising and revising and exploring every possible meaning of the images you've presented. All in all, very nicely done.
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Wow, thanks for the awesome reply! It was interesting to read about how you envisioned the character in the poem. And you're right: the rhyme scheme certainly does restrict my writing. Usually I do write in free-verse. This is actually one of the very few poems where I tried to stick with a rhyme scheme, and it's pretty difficult for me. Also, your comment about it having a weak sense of progression is very true, haha. I feel that this is its biggest problem, and may once again be partly due to the fact that I'm concentrating too much on rhyming. I also agree with your comment about using the word "windowpane" too often.
Some of the lines feel like they got shoehorned in based on a rhyme, not based on the meaning. "And with notice to the events of past" and "He cannot help but feel the same" stand out in particular as words that don't seem to add to the meaning.
I agree with you about the first line you mentioned ("And with notice to the events of past"), but as for the latter, I think that it's actually an important line in the poem. The character I refer to in the poem has sort of mixed feelings. On the one hand, he feels content with the way he sees the world, content with being alone and perhaps even proud of it. Still, there is another side to him that desires a change of perspective, a change of opinion. After much reflecting, however, he is unable to stir any change within him. This is the intended meaning of the line, though the poem may be too vague for anyone to pick up on it.
My final complaint is that you used the word "luxury", and it happens to land right next to the "broodwar" tab on the sidebar, and at that point in the poem I got totally distracted thinking of Luxury and whether he really deserved to win that MSL and why the hell KT changed their name to FingerBoom and such things. You could interpret this as either that your poem moves too slowly and readers get distracted, or it was foolish to post such an emotional work on TeamLiquid, or that Ling is too easily distractable while on summer break.
Probably all three, LoL.
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On August 04 2009 10:53 hazelynut wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Overall, I think you did a really wonderful job with this poem. The images and ideas all contributed to, as you put it, a certain darkness, but a certain kind of dreaminess as well - or is it an absence of dreams? The central motif of the windowpane is very intriguing in all the roles and meanings it implicitly takes on - is it something that allows a "dim light" of hope and dreams? Is it a window into truth and disillusionment with all those hopes and dreams? Is the world beyond the windowpane simply aimless wandering and deferred dreams, or is it really a place of substance and purpose? Now that I try to parse the poem apart more, the complexity of the image really hits me (just like how good poetry should! yayyy). Windows are symbols usually associated with dreaming, of aspiring for something beyond your own limitations - and yet windowpanes can also be spectacles or viewing glasses to see how impossible or meaningless those dreams are (For some reason, our windowpane reminds me a bit of Gulliver's Travels and Gulliver's pocket full of of spectacles and telescopes). You also seem to capture this sense of duality, this sense of everything being double-sided - with dreams and broken promises being one and the same. Similarly, it's very interesting to consider that the windowpane is double-sided as well (there are, after all, two sides to a window). What does it mean to be on the inside, looking out, and to be on the outside, living? Choosing a windowpane as your central focus was probably your subconscious poet being clever with potential interpretations. So uh, I didn't mean to actually offer my own interpretation of the poem, but the message you've offered allows for a lot of analysis. Lots to work with and chew on. That being said, I think that even though there's so much substance and wonderful meaning to your poem, you need to polish and re-polish and re-polish again. Since you chose to follow a more structured poem with rhyme and meter, you have to be very careful with words and fit as much meaning into them as possible. As twilight fades to morning rain
The dim light enters through the windowpane
Wherein one sits in silence dreaming
Of the life that he had stopped believing This stanza, for example, does very well with the first 3 lines. I really liked the line "wherein one sits in silence dreaming," probably because it's iambic. However, the last line seems a bit clunky - "that he had" just offers a lot of physical resistance to the poem and also messes up the meter a bit. Similarly, your second stanza is all iambs, but then the last line turns into a muddled mess. This might be on purpose, but if it's a matter of forcing rhyme, you might want to reconsider how you phrase those lines. Since you have to follow a certain structure, be really careful about making every word count. I think it's just a matter of revising and revising and exploring every possible meaning of the images you've presented. All in all, very nicely done.
omg I just noticed this. Thanks for the reply. I have to get ready to out for the night, but will certainly respond tomorrow!
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On August 04 2009 10:53 hazelynut wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Overall, I think you did a really wonderful job with this poem. The images and ideas all contributed to, as you put it, a certain darkness, but a certain kind of dreaminess as well - or is it an absence of dreams? The central motif of the windowpane is very intriguing in all the roles and meanings it implicitly takes on - is it something that allows a "dim light" of hope and dreams? Is it a window into truth and disillusionment with all those hopes and dreams? Is the world beyond the windowpane simply aimless wandering and deferred dreams, or is it really a place of substance and purpose? Now that I try to parse the poem apart more, the complexity of the image really hits me (just like how good poetry should! yayyy). Windows are symbols usually associated with dreaming, of aspiring for something beyond your own limitations - and yet windowpanes can also be spectacles or viewing glasses to see how impossible or meaningless those dreams are (For some reason, our windowpane reminds me a bit of Gulliver's Travels and Gulliver's pocket full of of spectacles and telescopes). You also seem to capture this sense of duality, this sense of everything being double-sided - with dreams and broken promises being one and the same. Similarly, it's very interesting to consider that the windowpane is double-sided as well (there are, after all, two sides to a window). What does it mean to be on the inside, looking out, and to be on the outside, living? Choosing a windowpane as your central focus was probably your subconscious poet being clever with potential interpretations. So uh, I didn't mean to actually offer my own interpretation of the poem, but the message you've offered allows for a lot of analysis. Lots to work with and chew on. That being said, I think that even though there's so much substance and wonderful meaning to your poem, you need to polish and re-polish and re-polish again. Since you chose to follow a more structured poem with rhyme and meter, you have to be very careful with words and fit as much meaning into them as possible. As twilight fades to morning rain
The dim light enters through the windowpane
Wherein one sits in silence dreaming
Of the life that he had stopped believing This stanza, for example, does very well with the first 3 lines. I really liked the line "wherein one sits in silence dreaming," probably because it's iambic. However, the last line seems a bit clunky - "that he had" just offers a lot of physical resistance to the poem and also messes up the meter a bit. Similarly, your second stanza is all iambs, but then the last line turns into a muddled mess. This might be on purpose, but if it's a matter of forcing rhyme, you might want to reconsider how you phrase those lines. Since you have to follow a certain structure, be really careful about making every word count. I think it's just a matter of revising and revising and exploring every possible meaning of the images you've presented. All in all, very nicely done.
Wow, I really like your analysis. You make my writing seem deeper than I actually intended it to be. For me, the windowpane is mainly a symbol of dispassionate detachment from life, and perhaps also doubtfulness about its purpose; though like you said, it also represents a sense of dream-like hope. And you're right, my rhyming is rather off here and there. I find it very difficult to have a consistent meter with perfect rhyming. Will have to work on that.
Thanks for your detailed analysis, it was very interesting to read.
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Epic win, this made me download their dvd.
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EPT
