Critiquer of the Month for February Nominations, through March 10th Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Calling all writers of the Mosaic!

The time has come to nominate a member who you feel best demonstrated the CRITIQUE in FEBRUARY.



Nominate a member here by replying to this tile.

The award:
*Laurel Wreath

*Graphic provided by
Celtic Castle Designs

The details:

• Choose at least TWO posts critiqued by the member you'd like to nominate from the month of FEBRUARY. *You can do this by utilizing our 'sort by topic started' OR last post date' and 'descending sort' functions located at the bottom of each forum's page display and then look to make sure the critiques were posted in February as well.
• Post the two examples in this thread.
• Post only the CRITIQUES.
• Make sure your example critiques are from the month of FEBRUARY.
• State the tile's name, author and forum the critique was replied to.
• Eligible forums:
  Herme's Homilies and Seren's Synapse for poetry COM nominations
  Stonehenge and Loch Ness for Prose COM nominations

Nominations will be taken through March 10th, 2007.

Additional note: If more than one member is nominated for the COM award, this tile will serve as a balloting process. We will create a POLL and the members will vote the winner.

Good luck all!
Thank you for helping to build the Mosaic!

~ Mosaic Musings Staff

[Guest_Cathy_*]

I would like to nominate azurepoetry for February.

Example #1

Peterpan's 'With Windmills and Tumble Weeds (Seren's)

Hello PPan,

A pleasure to be reading your work again. i have not combed over your thread, so if i am redundant, then i apologise. Before i forget, could you give me a pronunciation of the word "mielies", so i can get a complete sense of rhythm of the opening lines?
Oh, i absolutely love the photo; the entire composition was stuning: dark clouds, just off-center windmill, curving road to the left (alluding to the past, imo)---partially framed by the car window.

i love where you take me with this poem and to be quite honest, i feel this poem needs is a little paring, and conversely a little less minimialsim, to move the poem along to the daydream's conclusion. A tone closer to conversation would add to the subject of reverie, imho, as a person recalling it to another...like this poem. :)



With Windmills & Tumble Weeds

Hypnotised by rows of mielies
which draw us to remote places ---don't tell me it's remote, just trust the images to show me.
forcing our minds to glide over sunflower heads, ---(comma)
while not a farmer is seen near bush covered hillocks.

An abandoned tractor, the only greenery, ---a sent. frag. here; so consider a comma
tumble weeds bring a scarlet
flush to the broad, bleak roadside.
Telephone wires -- hint of man -- ---the semi-colon creates a sent. frag. of the rest that follows it.
linking the isolated, with distant places.

City opulence forsaken -
Smog vaporises revealing a black bejewelled far-off sky.---Unless i misunderstand this line, the sky is usually considered far-off. Try these lines as one line. Let it sit by itself, heavy and important; to illustrate as a counterpoint what is being left behind and what the N comes to in the very next stanza.

Elements relied uponHere, the wind turns wheels, ---let "relied upon" be inferred for a stronger image.
blades pump underground streams,
life is less augmented; colours coalesce and erupt. ---this line is confusing to me. What do you mean by "augmented" it almost feels as if life is less augmented by the simpler designs of this place, compared to the city. Perhaps simplier would be simpler? /b]

Too swiftly, our tumbleweed is snared, ---again, semi-colon turns the rest of the sentence into a frag.
compelling us to return
homejourney
back to our hurried urban days. ---this may be just a matter of taste, but, again, let the inference be in the reader's mind, don't tell them, esp. at the end. Return home offers a duality in the ending. 1. the N( narrator) is returning back to the city at the end of this daydream, and 2. the N occasionally returns to it, when in waking life, her 'tumble weed' is stuck, she'll take a moment to remember this place. Just a thought.

So, below are my suggestions put into action:



Hypnotised by rows of mielies,
our minds glide over sunflower heads,
while not a farmer is seen near bush covered hillocks.

An abandoned tractor, the only greenery,
tumble weeds bring a scarlet flush
to the broad, bleak roadside.
Telephone wires -- a hint of man --
link the isolated with the distant.

Smog vaporises revealing a black bejewelled sky.

Here, the wind turns wheels,
blades pump underground streams,
life is less augmented; colours coalesce and erupt.

Too swiftly, though, our tumble weed is snared,
compelling us to return home.

i hope this has been of help; i know that some of my thoughts may not match your style, but see what you think.
Either way, i like the poem and love the message. Good luck!

~tim/azurepoetry





Example #2

Rayn's 'A birthday at home' (Seren's)

Hi Rayn,

In the interest of unadulterating my opinion (and sheer laziness), i have not read most of the other posts and replies. So i apology for any redundancy. i read this poem and saw a pleasant return to the love lost issue. Parts of it actually remind me of a friend of mine who used to do crazy stuff just to get a reaction out of his friends, never mind what he'd attempt for women.

As the lone dissenter, i do see the stanza breaks differently, i also missed the connection of the title and its possible usage within the piece. So with without further ado...i present to you my own interp on your poem...ta-ta-da-da-dada-dum!!!



You ask me, so casually,
what I plan for dinner tonight
as my heart leaps scurries ---i love 'manic furor' combined with reverie and "unfounded" hope by the N (i don't like leap in conjunction with heart)
in manic furor.

For one delicious moment you are here
like years ago...

when I opened my door to find you
three hundred miles from home,
grinning like the Hatter on my porch
for the sheer joy of seeing my face; ---semi-colon
when I discovered you so impossibly,
unexpectedly within reach. ---this stanza is one sentence frag. plus i think straightforward linkage and breaks would help, imo.

Those roses still hang on my wall,
a secret portrait of us...

“Hello?” you ask the silence
and reality spirits you away again; ---um, i don't see this line. What is reality? An impatient girlfriend, a child, a date with an oral surgeon?
only a breath of aftershave remains. ---i see something put out here like candles, but nothing warm, illuminating is left.

It will be years before we meet again.
We’ll stand politely apart
and mouth pleasantries;
while my eyes tell you you’re in all my stories
and while you try to make your crossed arms
look casual. ---i love this endings image. So much in so little, well done.

I sigh into the telephone;
I’ll probably just stay in.


Using the stanza breaks i've offered, i am confused about the changes in S's 5-7. i put up ellipsis for obvious reasons and while you may not dig them, i recommend the breaks. See what you think of those.
Okay, reading the first stanzas as the present, his voice sends the N (narrator) into the past. Then, there is a return to the present timeframe, where the poem starts. i am confused in S5 about the scent of aftershave, when she seems to be speaking to him on the phone? After, we move futuristically to show the next scene, but he final couplet suggests we've returned to the present and that doesn't quite work for me. Too jumpy, imho.

Perhaps i am just too thick to read this piece, but i think a little more tuning is required to tie up the missing pieces. i wonder why she doesn't actually talk about her birthday at all. In the past scene where he shows up 300 mi. away, i wanted to know if that was the N's bday he showed up for. imo, if you added that once, coupled with the title would make me think that he continues to run into her during her bday. A very comical and strange relationship.

This has the elements of a great story, yet i don't think it's quite finished......close.
~tim