the stars winking up ahead
for here, our old selves
alive from our memories,
what has past and yet to come
This poem is called Flashbacks and it is about the past summer in July when it was ridiculously hot. My theme is an autobiographical self-reminder of happenings and memories from the past year. It connects to my theme because it is the essence of what happened last July. In that month, I did a lot of catching up with old friends having fun like we used to. I repeated past summer traditions of going out on summer camping trips by the water with a friend. I met new people and time with them felt like there had never been a time we didn't know each other.
This is a tanka poem, which is similar to the Japanese haiku. I tried to make it somewhat free by not weighing it down with poetic devices. However, I used many s and h 's throughout the poem as an almost theme and to give an impression of structure.
I like how you had the sentence run on from line to line and didn't use poetic devices, as you said. I think you could improve it by changing "past" to "passed" in the last line.
ReplyDeleteLike Alex said, I also like the sentence run on throughout the poem and I also liked the directness of what you were trying to say. However, it could just be me, but I find the last sentence to be a bit out of place and doesn't flow as well as the other ones do. Overall though, it was a nice poem!
ReplyDeleteGahh this was really good!
ReplyDeleteOnce again, the fact that you had one long poem was really effective in the flow of reading
but like nice said, the last sentence maybe interrupts the smooth, one-sentence flow of the lines prior to it
good job though!!
I really like this poem and it is a very interesting style of poetry as well. I also like the flow of this poem but I like that the last line isn't really the same as the others. It works well together as a whole I feel. I also love the way you were able to capture summer in such a short poem. It was very enjoyable to read.
ReplyDeleteI like the type of poem being a flashback, havent read one of those yet on the blogs. i likes the line "the stars winking up ahead" i think that is a personification, and the stars winking is a perfect imagery description. It is cool to see how you can picture a topic as big of the summer into 5 lines, that is something that makes a poem very powerful!
ReplyDeleteI really like how you made the poem about the past, and i thought the line "our old selves
ReplyDeletealive from our memories" was very powerful. I think that this poem captures the essence of summer very well, so great job!
Really nice job Rachel. Finding the right words to use in a Tanka is often not easy, but you did it perfectly. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteReally good poem Rachel! It's definitely not easy to capture the essence of summer in one poem but clearly you did it! I love the line 'alive from our memories' because it really reminds me of times which are not so great but I reflect on old memories and my day gets that much better in the sense of 'it keeps my spirits alive'. I actually really liked the last line because it's contrasting to the rest of the poem and it gives the reader a look into the future, into what is 'yet to come'. Speaking of which, summer is coming up SOOO soon!! :)
ReplyDeleteI like how there are no sentences or grammar used in this poem (other than commas), as it makes me think less about the style of the poem and I am able to concentrate on the message of the poem. However, like a few others, I am somewhat confused about the last line and what it has to do with the rest of the poem.
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