My senses open my heart to desire
I sit here every day indulging, enjoying
hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting
I wonder what they will bring today
I sit here every day indulging, enjoying
The air feels cool on my face and I smile
I wonder what the day will bring.
When I open my body and let them in.
The air smells fresh and I know
The sound of trees the rustling leaves I see
I open my body and let them in
with these I believe my morning begins
I always start my day this way
hear, see, touch, smell, taste
each of them together do inspire
Now my senses open my heart to desire.
Hmmm, I'm not sure if this poem is working for you as well as some of your other poems. It's a poem about enjoying sensing the world, but it is curiously absent of actual sensory impressions. In fact, the only concrete thing mentioned is "The sound of trees the rustling leaves." I think it is hard to effectively celebrate perceptions of the physical world without, you know, actually portraying those perceptions. This poem talks about enjoying the perceptions, but we do not actually see specific moments of enjoyment. As such it feels too distant from its actual subject, at least as I see it.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue is the poem uses a lot of old fashioned inversions of grammar and syntax, which make some lines feel forced. We discussed avoid such "yoda-speech" earlier in the class. I am talking about inverted phrases like "do inspire" and "leaves I see." If I were revising, I would also want to cut down on the extensive use of big abstractions like "senses," "heart," "desire," all together in one line. This is especially true since the line in question, keeping with the pantoum form, both begins and ends the poem.
I love poems that show me someone profoundly engaged with the sensory world, but they almost always work best when working with actual perceptions, rather than talking about it from a distance.
I love what you do with this poem. I would suggest you add more stanzas like the third one, giving descriptive details of what you sense, because that was most interesting for me. I would also use less of the sensing words in the first stanza, limiting it to more interesting ones (keep indulging, remove enjoying, for example) because that list feels a little long and drags a bit in my opinion
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