Dawn A New Day

A Poem by Webster

A blissful day does pass by
No tremors from the ground below
But as the dark of day comes creeping in
Again do the tremors flow.

Why in solitude do quivers speak
Through peaceful moments do fears weep
Do long for quiet hallowed days
When blissful sorrow will go down in sleep

Just as dawn breaks with light
My soul does yearn for morrow's delight
But then again does dusk sink in
With darkness follows the night begins

Through silence suffers the souls of past
Bleek and sinful whilst it's shadows cast
Must the night pull on this long
When sorrows in silence whistle a melodious song

Fortune alas the dawning ray
Brings with it a brand new day
When silence ends with birds of song
Humbled alas with the break of dawn

© 2022 Webster

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Reviews

JayG

Unfortiunately, while the thought you’re expressing is clear to you, the context and story in your head didn’t make it to the page, because you’re running into the effect of what I call , The Great Misunderstanding.

Simply put, we all leave school thinking we learned to write, and were taught what we need to know for such things as poetry and fiction. But in reality, we leave our school years precisely as ready to write poetry as to perform an appendectomy. And while we realize that to practice medicine, write a script or work in journalism, we need more training, somehow, we never apply that to poetry and fiction—probably because the pros make it seem so easy and natural.

But we need to. Take the case of rhyming structure. You begin with an ABCB structure for S1 & 2, then switch to AAAB for S3 & 4. And for S5 it’s AABC. This is true of all your work, but once you choose a structure the reader expects you to maintain it.

And look at the flow of prosody in each stanza’s first line:

S1: A BLISSful DAY does PASS by… Three feet, Imbic opening, and female ending,
S2: WHY in SOLiTUDE do QUAVers SPEAK… Four feet, Trochaic opening, male ending.
S3: JUST as DAwn BREAKS with LIGHT… Four feet, Trochaic opening, male ending.
Etc.

I must also comment that the last two words of that S3 are unneeded. What else would dawn break with but light?

My point isn’t to tear apart your work. And nothing I said has to do with talent or how well you write. The problem, as Mark Twain so wisely noted is: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And when it comes to fiction and poetry, when we leave our public education years, all we have is “just ain’t so,” till we take steps to fix it.

Our schooldays training is meant to provide us with a set of GENERAL skills that our future employers will find useful. Professions (and they offer degree programs centered on poetry) are acquired IN ADDITION to those skills. And employers want reports, papers, and letters, for the most part: nonfiction. Great for reports but useless for poetry, because its goal is to inform. Poetry’s goal is to make the reader feel and care. And that takes a methodology that’s emotion-based and character-centric—a set of skills not mentioned as existing during our school years.

Bad news, of course, but since we can’t address the problem that we don’t see as being one, I thought you’d want to know.

To see how pervasive the problem is, look at the wording as a reader, who has only the context you provide, and the emotion that punctuation and the wording suggests:

• A blissful day does pass by No tremors from the ground below

I’ve lived a fairly long time, and I’ve felt “tremors from the ground below” only twice. Once in 1980, in Northeast Philadelphia (a minor tremble that woke me and had the kids shouting “Daddy, make it stop”), and again in San Jose California in 1989 (REALLY scary).

My point? No one expects an earthquake, and notes that there wasn’t one at day’s end, unless they have reason. This person might, but until you give the reader context, it’s meaningless. And there is no second first-impression.

• But as the dark of day comes creeping in Again do the tremors flow.

Not a clue. I have not a clue of how the ending of a day brings “the dark of day,” or, what tremors, and how they “flow” are.

You know. And you have intent for how the reader SHOULD parse the words. But the story in your head that brings that wording is missing from that of the reader—which is why we need to edit from the seat of a reader, not our own. What’s perfectly clear to you, because you possess backstory, context and intent, becomes opaque to the reader who doesn’t. And as I said, that’s fixable once you possess those missing skills.

So…some suggestions:

1. Jump over to Amazon and read the excerpt from Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Traveled. The man is brilliant, and what he has to say about the flow of words will have you saying, “So…how can I not have noticed something so obvious, myself? I was so impressed that I immediately ordered three copies, one for each of my kids, who are all a lot better at poetry than I’ll ever be.

2. Download Mary Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook. The site address is below. Lots of people swear by it.
https://yes-pdf.com/book/1596

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

Posted 1 Year Ago

Simply put, we all leave school thinking we learned to write, and were taught what we need to know for such things as poetry and fiction. But in reality, we leave our school years precisely as ready to write poetry as to perform an appendectomy. And while we realize that to practice medicine, write a script or work in journalism, we need more training, somehow, we never apply that to poetry and fiction—probably because the pros make it seem so easy and natural.

But we need to. Take the case of rhyming structure. You begin with an ABCB structure for S1 & 2, then switch to AAAB for S3 & 4. And for S5 it’s AABC. This is true of all your work, but once you choose a structure the reader expects you to maintain it.

And look at the flow of prosody in each stanza’s first line:

S1:   A BLISSful DAY does PASS by…    Three feet, Imbic opening, and female ending, 
S2:   WHY in SOLiTUDE do QUAVers SPEAK…  Four feet, Trochaic opening, male ending.
S3:   JUST as DAwn BREAKS with LIGHT…    Four feet, Trochaic opening, male ending.
Etc.

I must also comment that the last two words of that S3 are unneeded. What else would dawn break with but light?

My point isn’t to tear apart your work. And nothing I said has to do with talent or how well you write. The problem, as Mark Twain so wisely noted is: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And when it comes to fiction and poetry, when we leave our public education years, all we have is “just ain’t so,” till we take steps to fix it.

Our schooldays training is meant to provide us with a set of GENERAL skills that our future employers will find useful. Professions (and they offer degree programs centered on poetry) are acquired IN ADDITION to those skills. And employers want reports, papers, and letters, for the most part: nonfiction. Great for reports but useless for poetry, because its goal is to inform. Poetry’s goal is to make the reader feel and care. And that takes a methodology that’s emotion-based and character-centric—a set of skills not mentioned as existing during our school years.

Bad news, of course, but since we can’t address the problem that we don’t see as being one, I thought you’d want to know.

To see how pervasive the problem is, look at the wording as a reader, who has only the context you provide, and the emotion that punctuation and the wording suggests:

• A blissful day does pass by No tremors from the ground below

I’ve lived a fairly long time, and I’ve felt “tremors from the ground below” only twice. Once in 1980, in Northeast Philadelphia (a minor tremble that woke me and had the kids shouting “Daddy, make it stop”), and again  in San Jose California in 1989 (REALLY scary).

My point? No one expects an earthquake, and notes that there wasn’t one at day’s end, unless they have reason. This person might, but until you give the reader context, it’s meaningless. And there is no second first-impression.

• But as the dark of day comes creeping in Again do the tremors flow.

Not a clue. I have not a clue of how the ending of a day brings “the dark of day,” or, what tremors, and how they “flow” are.

You know. And you have intent for how the reader SHOULD parse the words. But the story in your head that brings that wording is missing from that of the reader—which is why we need to edit from the seat of a reader, not our own. What’s perfectly clear to you, because you possess backstory, context and intent, becomes opaque to the reader who doesn’t. And as I said, that’s fixable once you possess those missing skills.

So…some suggestions:

1. Jump over to Amazon and read the excerpt from Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Traveled. The man is brilliant, and what he has to say about the flow of words will have you saying, “So…how can I not have noticed something so obvious, myself? I was so impressed that I immediately ordered three copies, one for each of my kids, who are all a lot better at poetry than I’ll ever be.

2. Download Mary Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook. The site address is below. Lots of people swear by it. 
https://yes-pdf.com/book/1596

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

Rating /100

Chris Shaw

I have to say that when night's silence is broken by bird song, that is when my spirits are at their best. The darkness of night has a habit of bringing out the ghosts of the past. Roll on dawn. Thank you for posting Webster.

Chris