Promise Ring
by shefallssoftly (Member) - published: February 28, 2005
Word Count: 355 Word Bytes: 2322 Viewed: 3781 times
Category - The Write Off
© Copyright by shefallssoftly

7.47

(21 votes)

Rating	Rated by

7	andyhavens

6	bookcritic1

10	BustedGirl

6	Chaney

9	Doc

8	Eleanor

8	fairgrace

8	hazelfaern

9	JEANNIE45

7	johnjohndoe

9	paddingtonbooks

7	Penelope

5	ruina

6	schizo_03

7	strangedaze

8	Teflon

9	the ..

8	Thea Veol

5	VinceClarke241

9	williamhill

6	wordwench

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There is a shining silver promise
Wrapped around my finger–
A vow from the one who loves me
So even when he’s an eternity away,
He’s always touching,
Always holding me.

Oh, he is my blue moon,
My once in a lifetime
For as his lunar nature tells,
He gives me
The sterling stream of mercy
I bask in, in darkness.
He guides me
And saves me from despair.

And I am his temple,
And when he calls sanctuary
I come to him,
And he promises me a new world.
He tells me I am his muse,
Too beautiful to be kept locked away,
Like Mama’s best silver;
Artfully hidden,
Beauty that never sees the light of day
But it was safe.

I smile, “You know, you could lose me that way,
Putting me on display.”
He shakes his head, “My beloved–
I will not show you off like a commodity,
I will open your cage.
I would rather see you walk away
Today, then know you were unhappy,
Or could find greater comfort
In someone else.

“I cannot want you selfishly!
Couldn’t bear to hold you here,
Captive to my adoration.
You know I love you
That I would give anything for you
That my heart, my soul is you.
That’s all I can, all I want to give you.”

“Silly boy...” I say, slow,
Resting my lips
Upon my fingers,
Like a statue thinking;
But no, there is no complacency,
No hesitance in me.
I am simply allowing my lips
To rest upon our silver band
And tasting not the metal
But the warmth of his skin.

“Silly boy...
I could not leave you
Any faster than I could escape
The silvery bath of the moon
At night, or misplace my shadow,
Or my soul. I love you
Like I breathe–

“Without doubt or reluctance,
But with need.
I love you as I love myself
For you are me, we are
The forces that balance to make
Infinity!”

He smiled, sweet,
“Hush, you, these words–
I don’t need you to explain,
To prove... I know as you do,
I love as you do.”

------
She falls softly down from towering pedastools...

Comments

The following comments are for "Promise Ring"
by shefallssoftly

hi
thank you, i read your piece and it was beautiful. best of luck

( Posted by: FangChen [Member] On: February 28, 2005 )

oh yeah
wasn't there supposed to be a third?

( Posted by: FangChen [Member] On: February 28, 2005 )

I thought so...
I thought so, maybe not though.

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: February 28, 2005 )

Promises
I really liked your title. It immediately set the tone of the poem. I commend you for using dialogue too. It's hard to carry that through while enabling the reader to become part of the poem. While this may be true, it doesn't translate well for me. It's almost as if you are slightly removed from the circumstances. Perhaps as if someone has confided in you instead of it being an intimate dialogue between lovers. I found the 'Silly boy' disengaging quite honestly. I would have liked this a lot more without it. It was here where I began to wonder about the truthfulness. I'm not suggesting you aren't sincere, what I am saying is that it didn't translate well for me. The length took away from the magic of the moment as well. I commend you for having the hutzpah to enter into this very public arena. Kudos to you.

( Posted by: Penelope [Member] On: March 1, 2005 )

P.Ring...
Shefallssoftly,

Point blank, the content did not suit me at all. That being said, however, I must commend you for taking something like this and adding some flavor to it. You seemed on the brink of something special, especially when I read lines like 'The sterling stream of mercy'. Still, too much I've seen before. A good all-around effort - I foresee great things from you - but I give the nod to Fangchen on this one.

Andrew

( Posted by: strangedaze [Member] On: March 1, 2005 )

silly boy
I disagree with Penelope in that I found "silly boy" to be appropriate. To me, it added something personal to the poem, which gives it extra credibility.
As much as I liked "The Silver Sword," my vote goes to "Promise Ring."

( Posted by: Persephone [Member] On: March 3, 2005 )

Ring
I agree with Penelope that ur piece would be more likable without "silly boy"
although it was little bit long, it is still able to preserve its sweet falvour

Hiba

( Posted by: fairgrace [Member] On: March 4, 2005 )

what up
love your poem. it was very inspiring, it made a lot more sense then your opponents.

( Posted by: BustedGirl [Member] On: March 4, 2005 )

Ring of truth...
As I said on the other piece, just poking in here, not minding my own business, been waiting to comment on this all week, and I hope I'm not too late.

Casey, this piece is quite impressive, especially coming from one so (assumingly) new to the field. It's everything poetry can be and manyt things it should be. It leaves little to the imagination, but crates a picturesque scenario in the mind of the reader. Yes, as Pen pointed out, the 'Silly boy' bit can seem a bit immature or out of place, but that's the whole point of young love, isn't it? It's immature, it's young, it's beautiful, and yes, there are going to be some 'cheesy-esque' lines delivered, but they're sweet the endearing to those of use who, at times, find ourselves yearning for those days long past. It's a bit medieval in logic and in practice, the dialogue is verbose and sometimes corny (cornish? *wink*), but that's how it works, and it wouldn't work any other way.

As you can see, I could write a novel on this piece, but I'll spare you the insanity that spews forth from my pie-hole.

In short, this piece is enjoyable, it's fluid, it's romantic, it's concrete, and it's bright-eyed. Everything that can and should be expected from a young writer in love, am I wrong? I have to give you the nod. :)

Well met and welcome,
William A. Corder

( Posted by: the Co.konspirator [Member] On: March 5, 2005 )

afterthought and nudge...
P.S. your boy sounds Polish. You should dump him ;)

( Posted by: the Co.konspirator [Member] On: March 5, 2005 )

partition
You're just mad because you want to partition him :-p
Thanks Bill, and everyone else for all your comments. I really appreciate them.
-Casey

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: March 5, 2005 )

Lots here to like... maybe too much for one poem
I get flack from some of my best and most favorite critics (you know who you are, and I loves you so; keep it coming, dawgs) for droning on at length. For saying something in 100 words that could be said in 50, and saying in 50 what could be said in 15. Over the years I've tried (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much) to listen to this recurring theme from my editors and reduce the repetition in my work, especially my poetry. I believe that one of the key ways in which poetry differs from and can be much more compelling than prose is in its sparse clarity of language.

See? Big-ass intro. I coulda just skipped that... Anyway. There are some gems of lines in here, but they get, in my opinion, lost between some lines that are repetitive and don't add to the overall harmony of the piece.

"He is my blue moon" is great, as is "and I am his temple." Truly sweet, sexy stuff. I'm also deeply impressed with "calling sanctuary," "sterling stream of mercy," "tasting not the metal, but the warmth of his skin," "...escape the silvery bath of the moon/At night, or misplace my shadow..." There is a whole bunch of metaphoric, iconic imagery caught up in the "I am his temple" metaphor. Which is, frankly, pretty freakin' deep, sexy, a tad scary (which adds to both the deep and sexy part) and worthy of lots of exploration.

Where I start to lose touch with that power is during the conversational snippets. The back-and-forth between the narrator, "she," and the boy "him." It's too mundane. Too much like a couple of people who realize they are speaking in metaphor, inside a poem, rather than the characters themselves. It has a distancing effect rather than an embracing one. You never want the sense that the characters in your piece are "speaking their lines." They have to simply be their characters. If your narrator is a goddess, is the temple... leave it at that. I'd almost rather have no conversation between him and her. Or maybe just hear the prayers that a boy, a supplicant, coming into the temple has to give to his muse, his goddess.

It almost feels like there's two poems here, and you could probably separate them out and make two decent ones. The temple/moon/goddess/muse imaagery is clearly a powerful, mythic, iconic sort of piece. I love stuff like that and am always peppering modern narrative with gods, temples, blood sacrifice, etc. And you've got some truly arresting imagery going on here.

The 2nd poem is the conversation between these two people. I just don't quite believe that both the conversation and the temple/moon interaction happen together. The words "commodity" and "mama's silver" also belong to the more modern poem, the conversational one. They aren't mythic terms.

I hope that's helpful. You've clearly got a ton of good material here, and lots of room to grow the subject. There's good subject matter and good artifice here, both, and I think if you concentrate on how one feeds the other, you'll have an even more satisfying final product.

( Posted by: andyhavens [Member] On: March 6, 2005 )

Thanks
Thanks a lot, Andy-- I think I'll be resubmitting this piece later with some of those changes. I was trying to create a layered timelessness to this piece, a bit of each level of the past paired with the conversation from the present, but it didn't seem to work out so well. Hmm I'll have to keep trying at that.
-Casey

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: March 6, 2005 )

Realistic Dialogue

The trouble I have with your dialogue is that it sounds too idealized -- more like Shakespeare than two ordinary, quite modern people talking about love. I think that in real life we very rarely say things quite as well while we're in the moment. The awkwardness and incompleteness of spontaneous conversation is a necessary quality to remember when creating realistic dialogue.

I have no problem at all with the endearment "Silly boy" -- I can imagine that as part of the back and forth between two young lovers. It's the bit about not being able to escape the bath of the moon which had me shifting awkwardly in my chair.

And I can almost see what you mean by trying to take different qualities of the promise ring and move them from older concepts to modern ones. Yet it's a bit of a stretch to take the protest that he could lose you by putting you on display and draw that back to the ring. I didn't see any connection at all, until it dawned on me that the ring, itself, is a form of display. I still think that's a rather shaky connection.

I agree with much of what Andy's said in his above comment, though I don't see two poems, here. I think that a lot of the narrational musing about what the ring means could be seriously condensed and linked more fully into the conversation, itself.

In a way, reading through your poem, I felt as though you've hit on a lot of really interesting ideas about love and rings, but no real nucleus, no central "Aha" moment, to help pull it all together in the end.

Which is not to say that you haven't got a lot of really lovely material, here. You've got some undeniably stellar phrases which have been pointed out by other commenters, before me. I simply feel that if you could apply them to a more concrete center and underline the unique, human qualities from which they arise, that your stellar phrases would be that much more powerful, tugging that much more insistently upon the feelings of your readers.

( Posted by: hazelfaern [Member] On: March 6, 2005 )

Congrats to shefallssoftly
Congrats to shefallssoftly, the winner of this write off. Both pieces were excellent. Nice job everyone!

( Posted by: Crowe [Admin] On: March 7, 2005 )

Thanks everybody
Thanks for all your criticism and compliments everyone, I really appreciate it. It was a good fight.
-Casey

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: March 8, 2005 )

Just a question
Was there not a word limit on this write off like there was in all the others? Just curious.

Since I handed it over to Crowe I've been out of the loop with write offs.

~Jessica

( Posted by: Jessicanm [Member] On: March 15, 2005 )

jessicanm
Not that I knew of, it wasn't in the rules I got.
-Casey

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: March 15, 2005 )

i commend you
i found the ideas in the beginning very thought provoking but because of my short attention span i was unable to complete reading the poem. i commend you on your ability to write such a lengthy and moving piece.

( Posted by: englishgal16 [Member] On: March 15, 2005 )

: )
I like the poem. It's got a nice balence and consistancy to it, allowing it to have a subtle flow, making it appear unforced.

My only concern is with the length. It has so many good and interesting lines that it might take away from the power of the poem.

But overall it's good and conveyed a positive feelings. Thank you.

( Posted by: Thea Veol [Member] On: March 22, 2005 )

Rating
Hey everyone, thanks for all your advice here. If you have anymore I'd like to ask you to post it at the revised edition of this poem. Any further rankings might be best off there too, as the write off is over. The revised poem is at http://www.lit.org/view/24491
-Casey

( Posted by: shefallssoftly [Member] On: March 23, 2005 )

hello..
my minds kindof blank right now so there is nothing i really want to say about your poem.. except of course that it is well written..

but im just commenting to say that.. and also.. im very new to lit.org.. so i do not know anyone as of yet..

ill get back to commenting on this later though..

my minds kindof a mess

xo, jon

( Posted by: DreamSyndicate [Member] On: March 27, 2005 )

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