Mexico night

Club Cascadas at sunset.  Photo by Richard Puetter, 2004. Mexico night      ...Quiet places in the night, stirring thoughts, bringing peace and sleep Hear the hushful night, stirring thoughts and insight.   Distant    Cricket       calling,   …Singing through the night.     Feel the opiate night, all life’s pain, setting right.   Gentle    Breezes       blowing,   …making cares seem light.     Breathe the musky night, fragrant wind, such delight.   Scented    Flower       falling   …perfumed dreams in flight.

 

 

 

©2008, Richard Puetter

Author's Note

Well, I got some wonderful, helpful reviews again. Thank you, my friends, for your generous help!

Reviews

[The Thracian]

I really enjoyed this piece because even through the seemingly haphazard choice of words, you have created a beautiful paradigm here. For example, your alliterations cricket calling, breezes blowing, and flower falling; or your little rhyme scheme. However, like an old friend of mine used to say, just because it is poetry does not mean the sentences within it have to make nix sense. ==> Feel the opiate night, of life's pain, making right. Making what right good sire? And you should drop that first comma, it's just choking the piece and doesn't bring much else to your minimalism.

Otherwise you've my admiration. For an 'old' physicists, you've time to appreciate such dulcorations of life, more so the eyes and spirit to do it.

Thracian

[Zahra]

Wow, I love this poem, somewhat different from you. You have created such a serene imagery in so few words. Loved the form.

[Helena]

Oh Rick, what a superb and dreaming image you have conjured with your 'golden pen'.

A delight to the eyes, bringing a fragrant feeling to the soul. Truly, truly beautiful poetry.

I want to linger here......and never come out of that space!

'perfumed dreams in flight' ......gorgeous!

Thank you!

Helena

[Nancy Lee Shrader]

This a lovely poem. You did a wonderful job!

[Sheila Kline]

This write has me swimming in a sea of nectar dripped from the sweetness of your words!
Your descriptive phrases have awakened my every sense....hushful, musky, opiate night! To be in a place such as this for just one moment in time would leave a memory eternal!
Exquisite!

[Laura E. Aranda]

I am the flowing ease of this poem. I just wanted to tell you again that I enjoyed the honesty of your criticism to my work. I delight in learning all that I can about every kind of writing. So please feel free to nudge me along.
Sincerely, Laura Aranda

[Gray]

Very interesting choreography of the words on the page. Nice visual effect. I've not seen something like it before.

Gray

[Emily Rose]

Ah, beautiful as usual, Rick! I admire your use of alliteration and how it fits into your rhyme scheme. As always, you paint a wonderfully vivid picture with your words. I love how the italicized bits can be taken apart to form their own seperate poem part from the exposatory unitalicized bits; a very clever idea! The lines in italics are perfect, but I'm finding some problems with the unitalicized portions:

First, the comma after your first "night" feels unnecessary, and I think it rather hinders the flow. "Hear the hushful night stirring thoughts of insight!" The line is much more powerful without the slight pause and really, there's no grammatical reason for the comma to be there. Second, as far as I can tell "opiate" always functions as a noun and not an adjective (although I do love the comparison of night as an opiate). Therefore adding an "of" between "opiate" and "night" is in order. I'm sure that your first thought is that adding the "of" will upset the rigid meter that you've set for yourself, but honestly I think that this poem NEEDS a little variation of meter. It will make your sentiments more clear, and within your poem you are portraying night as free - how better to emphasize that portrayal than to use a freer meter in the poem that describes it?

I'm also having the issues with the lines "of life's pains/making slight" - the "of" doesn't really make sense in the context you have it and I suspect that you put it there purely for the sake of the rhythm without really thinking about the word you were using. (I've used this trick many times before and paid for it later in clarity.) Might I suggest that you switch the troublesome "of" to "all?" Thus: "ALL life's pains/making slight." This does you the double service of extending night's power (in keeping with your earlier comparison to night as an opiate) and making the sentence more understandable.

Finally, the lines "to the air/brings delight" puzzles me a bit - I'm assuming that you mean that the night brings delight to the air, but you're going to have to make this a bit more clear, so I suggest that you break your meter once again for the sake of clarity and add an "it" before "brings." Of course, before you decide to keep any of these changes, I would strongly recommend reading your poem aloud to see if you like them. I just did this and I thought they worked, but obviously the final decision is yours.

This is a wonderful poem and I enjoyed it very much; you have a real gift for capturing a scene in such few words!

[Ice Queen of the Vampir..]

Ooh, this is a lovely poem. I love how it's written and the flow is amazing. Great work!!!

Heather

[Rick Puetter]

Thank you Thracian,

As you know from a personal e-mail, I greatly appreciate your constructive comments. With the minimalist structure I also wanted to select simple words. But your comments on the second stanza are on target, and I shall make some changes to improve on these issues. Thanks so much.

Highest regards,

Rick