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I like this - it has a lot of great content and images, and the final line made me smile. Having said that, I do have suggestions. Please don't be offended if I am thorough, because a lot of what I'm about to offer is nitpicking anyway, and I don't claim to be an expert at this, or even correct. Feel free to use none of this, if you like, or all of it.
First of all, there are some corrections that need to be made. "Dissapeared" and "untameable" are misspelled - they should be "disappeared" and "untamable". In addition, the ship/planet metaphor you use is cool, but reading it I wondered if you meant "From planet’s stern to planet’s bow"? Stern/bow being back/front of the boat, whereas port/starboard means left side/right side. It seems here that you're looking for a pair of poles, in which case stern/bow would be more appropriate.
Next are a few criticisms stanza-by-stanza that have to do with the flow, structure, and clarity of the piece. Here, I tried to offer suggestions that maybe changed the wording or word order without unnecessarily altering the content of the poem itself. Again, these are totally open to your discretion.
--In the first stanza, I think it would suit both the flow and the style of your poem better if you were to drop the "Where's" in favor of "Where is". Contractions in non-conversational literature, and especially poetry, generally don't look that great, and the couplet actually sounds better with the extra syllable "is" added in. This is true for the beginning of the second stanza as well. I also think it would behoove you to go ahead and capitalize the beginning of every line. This is basically standard practice in poetry - of course, there are exceptions, but usually the distinction exists for a reason. If you capitalize some lines and don't capitalize others, then the reader becomes distracted wondering whether the capitalization is significant, if certain parts of the poem are intended to be grouped, etc. Third, keeping with the idea of meter and flow, an extra syllable in line three would help a lot as well. For example, you could change 'feathered' into 'white-feathered', or something you feel better suits the poem. And since what follows is a continuation of the description of the bird, perhaps you should replace the dash with a comma, and then round out the question originally posed with a question mark after "behind":
"Marble eyes, polished, white-feathered glow,
Sunlit from behind? A century ago."
--With stanza two, if you like, make the same changes as in the first stanza, with capitalization and contraction elimination, but also consider the verb phrase "stamped on". The image I got with the bear as a "steamroller" and "engine" seemed to imply motion - that the bear is tearing through forests and rivers and mountains, killing lesser animals and being a badass. The phrase "Stamped on", however, makes it seem as if the bear is standing in one place, continuously stamping the same patch of earth with his foot. While the image of a bear contemptuously grinding the pulpy carcasses of his enemies into a hole in the ground is hardcore in its own right, it doesn't fit with the image of a bear roaming the land looking for victims. Consider changing "on" to an action verb like "'cross" as in "across" or, even simpler, "through". Next, with describing the bear: "heat" is fine, but something more visceral and "bear-like" would be "meat" - it is more closely related to "fur" (and it even rhymes with the original word).
"A stinking hunt engine" - a cool image, but I don't know how well 'hunt' works in this situation, because it is a verb. The verb present participle "hunting" would be more correct if you're describing the action of the bear, but if you're talking about the type of 'engine', then maybe another word altogether would be better - "death-engine", "doom-engine", something equally ominous or potent-sounding. And like in stanza one, you probably want a question mark after 'engine'.
--Third stanza and the stand-alone line: This is where the structure and meter is the most jarring. "Where is" doesn't work so well here as it does in the first and second stanzas. Instead, maybe you should replace "Where's" with "And"; it creates a sense of you asking 'And what about this?' which works well with what has led up to this point. The line "Of untamable living flesh" just doesn't work - it has one or two too many syllables in it. Consider removing 'living' - if you wanted to stress the 'living' aspect of the object, then maybe you can just call it 'untamable life'. Finally, you may want to end the second line in the stanza with a question mark. Again, all of this is entirely up to you.
The next line - "Has each category been winked out now," is passive voice. I strongly suggest doing something about this. The only problem is, it's going to be hard to preserve the wording of the sentence in the active tense. Here is what I suggest: replace the line with "Is all of it gone now", taking care to remove the comma, then add an 'or' in between 'flapped' and 'snarled' in the next line, followed by a dash:
"Is all of it gone now
Which hissed, flapped, or snarled -"
Here I'm assuming that your speaker is asking whether the parade is gone from the planet's (port/stern) to the planet's bow, not whether it hissed, flapped, snarled from one area to the other. If this is correct, then the dash prevents confusion between the two ideas.
--In the fourth stanza, "once-was-home" sounds awkward; try something less verb-ish like "one-time", etc. With "Others are still awake here, others still do roam-", it would be good to make the two statements parallel; instead of 'others are still' followed by 'others still do', make the first 'others still (awaken/exist/etc) here, others still do roam'. Finally, consider replacing the dash with a colon; "roam:".
--In the last stanza, I would replace "Below, below" with "For down beneath", partly in that it acts as a response to the end of stanza four. With the second line, again, try changing the wording to benefit the flow: making it "Life's parade is" or "Parades of life are" represent some possibilities. Following in this same vein with the third line, maybe make it "And all you men and all you women -". Finally, with the last line, perhaps do the same as you would have with the "From planet's port..." line by separating it from the rest of the stanza, and otherwise leaving it exactly as it is.
Here is how the poem would look with some possible adjustments:
"Where is the heron that
Speared on the sound -
Marble eyes, polished, white-feathered glow,
Sunlit from behind? A century ago.
Where is the bear that
Stamped ‘cross the land-
Steamroller hulk of meat and fur-
A stinking death-engine? Disappeared with the snows.
And the nameless parade
Of untamable life?
Is all of it gone now
Which hissed, flapped, or snarled -
From planet’s stern to planet’s bow?
Though our part forced so many
to leave their one-time home,
Others still awaken here, others still do roam:
For down beneath the dancing seas
Parades of life are in full swing
And all you men and all you women -
Be careful where you swim."
Hopefully this has helped you some. I'm sorry if I come across as pretentious with these suggestions - remember, this is your poem, and I'm not trying to tell you how to write it by any means. Even without the changes, I enjoyed it a great deal, but I figured you'd want tangible criticism more than ambiguous praise or abuse.
Anyway, good luck with your writing - I look forward to seeing more of this kind of material. |
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