"Are You Dreaming?"

[milo]

Hi milo,
I really appreciate you taking the time, thanks a bunch


Where the old pendulum swing I thought there was an error here. I considered writing "Where the old pendulums swing". Would that work properly?
And the windblown church bells ring
In all eternity; the coloured memories cling. By abstract, do you then mean that the word "coloured" is too.. personalizing?

In the cottage from the woods "From" sounds a bit weird, yes. I just thought that if I wrote "In the cottage in the woods", the extra "in" would maybe be too repetitious?
By the lakes or the creeks I don't know if I understand why I can't use "or" here?
No sound weeps - all sleeps. I see your point, but "No sound weeps" is a very crucial statement, in the poem, so I don't fully know how to work around that.

No tearing, nor scratching I will. But why not "nor"?
No wearing, nor latching Same.
All things hatching. You're right. It needs something more specific.

In the place, where dark is darker This bit needs a lot of work. Not sure what to do right now, but I'll try and experiment
And the bright, - is so much brighter Same
Sounds; clean and clear
I must be here!

Fear and hate; Vanished
Greyscale; Completely and utterly banished. What do you mean by abandoning all detail? I feel like this section sums up the first verses/stanzas.

And so; Where the old pendulum swing
The windblown church bells ring
And all the memories cling
That's truly, - where all the blue birds sing. Could it work to replace "truly" with another word?


I look forward to try and improve this poem

ok, so I sense some confusion over abstraction. The bedrock and mortar of poetry are nouns and verbs - strong, specific nouns and verbs. All nouns are either concrete (things we can touch, taste, smell, etc) or abstract (vague conceptual nouns).

Concrete nouns are always better as they bring specific images and strength, abstraction is weak, it should be used sparingly or referred to and pretty much never modified.

Example - death. It is an abstraction. Hide it or don't use it, the worst thing to do would be modify it - dark death, sleepy death, dreamy death, these are all crap, they cannot truly be visualized.

So, in your poem we have:

Concrete - pendulum, bell, cottage, lake, creek, bluebirds

Abstract - eternity, memories, sound, things, place, bright, dark, sounds, fear, hate, grayscale

Here is a graph showing how my enjoyment changes as the ratio changes:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?...jNub1dXYWc&single=true&gid=0&output=html


good luck
milo