Rhapsody

Winds blow, and life flows, with the breeze
Children sing… their hearts are full and
Their cheeks are rosy
As they play jump rope in faded jeans.
The trees are rustling from beyond
And cannot wait to shed their leaves of
Orange, yellow, red, and brown.
The sky is blue and my love is true.
The overwhelming beauty of nature has
freed me
And I have found my own inner peace.
I am in tune to the heartbeat of nature
As I watch her go about her business
Of changing
And I cannot wait to share my rhapsody
With my love
Who takes my hand as we cross the sand
And as he lays me down to love me
I feel very grateful for all of the beauty
That His life brings to me.

Yaffa L. Leibowitz

Re: Rhapsody

Hi Yaffie,
Welcome, could you please tell us if you would like comment, or C& C which is more in depth critique. Have you read pod guidelines? They are at the bottom under the other poetry threads.

Re: Rhapsody

Hi, I thought i posted under C & C ??
NO, i don't know what i am doing that's why!!
 lol

sure..

comment away..

yaffa

Re: Rhapsody

I like the title Yaffie it sets a romantic tone for your poem. The internal rhyme is a nice touch,

blows - flows, hand -sand,  The sky is blue and my love is true., this one seemed a bit cliche or obvious, could you find something a bit more original here? 
I found the capitals on every line disrupted the flow a bit, if you check out a few books of modern poetry you will notice poets capitalise as in normal writing these days. 
I think you could look at the line endings, as the reader hangs on the last word before moving on to the next, a strong word is a better choice to end the line than a weak word like and or of drop those words down to the next line eg -

Children sing… their hearts are full
and their cheeks are rosy

and cannot wait to shed their leaves
of Orange, yellow, red, and brown. ( why capitalise Orange?)

I wanted to read in tune with nature, but that might be US ./ UK different usage

I notice two lines end with me at the end of your poem, if you want to lose the repeat you could say
I feel very grateful for all the beauty
that he brings to my life

Thank you for sharing your poem here.I know you love prose, and this has the feel of a romantic prose poem, nice pace too, was that your intention?  If you wish to make it poetic rather than prose you could try using metaphor/ simile , so that you show rather than tell your reader.  I hope you find some of my suggestions helpful. Sorry for the delay but I like to give each poem careful thought.

Re: Rhapsody

Hi,

It was one of my very first poems written many many years ago. Thanks..since i wrote it so long ago, i never looked to perfect it…lol…

But now you have given me something to think about..
i have sent others from around the same time period, but later…and later still…and will send you others..

Re: Rhapsody

hhmmmmm, show rather than tell….don't know about that, are all my poems like that??
let me know..
thanks..
yaffa

Re: Rhapsody

No right or wrong way yaffie, just different types of poetry eg

“LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE

“Poetry and prose are not in every case distinguishable, and twentieth-century poets often
write poems in prose. That it is written in prose doesn’t mean it isn’t poetry; it only
means that it isn’t verse. By prose we designate that writing which extends to the right-hand
margin; verse, on the other hand, breaks each line at a place not determined by the margin
on the page. The nineteeth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire was largely responsible
for popularizing the prose poem through his collection Paris Spleen, which he subtitled
Petits poemes en prose. Since the formal requirements of the prose poem require nothing
more than writing an effective paragraph, it is often a comfortable way to approach poetry
for those who have little experience with verse. Even for experienced verse poets,
prose poems are a challenging way to spread poetic wings.

Study this prose poem by Al Zolynas

Considering the Accordion

The idea of it is distasteful at best. Awkward box of wind, diminutive, misplaced
piano on one side, raised Braille buttons on the other. The bellows, like some parody
of breathing, like some medical apparatus from a Victorian sick-ward. A grotesque poem
in three dimensions, a rococo thing-am-a-bob. I once strapped an accordion on my chest
and right away I had to lean back on my heels, my chin in the air, my back arched like
a bullfighter or flamenco dancer. I became an unheard-of contradiction: a gypsy in
graduate school. Ah but for all that, we find evidence of the soul in the most unlikely
places. Once in a Czech restaurant in Long Beach, an ancient accordionist came to our
table and played the old favorites: “Lady of Spain,” “The Sabre Dance,” “Dark Eyes,”
and through all the clichés his spirit sang clearly. It seemed like the accordion
floated in the air, and he swayed weightlessly behind it, eyes closed, back in Prague
or some lost village of his childhood. For a moment we all floated – the whole
restaurant: the patrons, the knives and forks, the wine, the sacrificed fish on plates.
Everything was pure and eternal, fragily suspended like a stained-glass window in the
one remaining wall of a bombed-out church.

Write a prose poem in the manner of “Considering the Accordion.” Try to keep it about
the same length as the Zolynas poem. Make the subject of the poem an object that has
been with you for many years and that has special significance. Try to describe that
object with as much sympathy as possible. Bring it to life with your comparisons and
allow it to become luminous for both you and your readers by feeling its nature and
presence as deeply as you can. Try to end the poem with some epiphany – some sense of
transcendence, illumination, new knowledge either of the object, yourself, or of the
universe. A shift in perspective, viewpoint, or focus, as Zolynas has done in his
final sentence about the bombed-out church, can signal this widening of perception.

~ An exercise from “In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop”

http://www.types-of-poetry.org.uk/45-verse.htm link explaining verse