# Wind the Tide



## Darkkin (Dec 31, 2016)

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## Absolem (Jan 1, 2017)

Amazing man. Wish I could offer a more in depth critique but I wouldn't change a thing about what you wrote. I think I like your poems because your writing style is so drastically different then mine. I'm curious, how long did this piece take?


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Very interesting concept, idea, mythology being created here. I like imagery and the use of colour. 



I feel though that the repetition weighs the piece down instead of tying it together. I also think you changed the name of the second turtle from  Nod the 3[SUP]rd  [/SUP]to Oban. I also don't understand why, if they are equal, Helia gets front and center attention, while Nod/Oban is pretty much ignored. 

You have the moon rise in the Golden East *line 2 first stanza* but then you have the journey winding to the Golden East *line 2 last stanza* given that both your poem and the boys' journey are winding to a close at this point, shouldn't that be the west? 
(FYI cardinal directions are not capitalised). 

I also find your capitalisation a little odd / inconsistent.  For example why is "Utter Dark" in caps but "caster of dreams" is not?


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

Appreciate the feedback.  I will see what I can do to clarify.


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

Absolem said:


> Amazing man. Wish I could offer a more in depth critique but I wouldn't change a thing about what you wrote. I think I like your poems because your writing style is so drastically different then mine. I'm curious, how long did this piece take?



Different writing styles make the world a more interesting place.  My style is whackadoddle, tedious in the extreme.  Regimented nonsense, but it keeps me busy...So I stick with it.  Timewise, this piece took about twenty minutes, that being said, I had the benefit of a standardised form that I've had a lot of practice with, characters that I've been working with for the past year, and a clear idea of what I need the piece to do.  Point A to point B.  

I have severe ADHD and because of it I need to be in the mood to do something.  When I'm in the mood, I just sit down and do it.  Or more to the point, need to do it.  These stories are a need to do...

- D. the T.


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## Nellie (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Different writing styles make the world a more interesting place.  My style is ......... tedious to most .



Very tedious, IMO. It would probably take me hours to write something like you do. Thanks!


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## ned (Jan 1, 2017)

hello -

you have the wonderful setting, the magical imagery - but the narrative is hampered by the repetitions. as I read it.

your poems are more than just nice scenery - you ask the reader to go on a journey and follow a story, which is difficult
enough within the dense narrative, but very much rewarding - then, there is a repetition and the poem seems to tread water and 
the plot and drive of the poem is lost.
for me, they just add another layer of difficulty for the reader onto an already complex poem.

I know this is a favourite form of yours Darkkin, but relating a story requires 'what happens next' - 
not what was said before...

Wind the Tide

Twilight nigh, firefly gilt waves lap at cobalt sands—Turtle upon Tide.
A thirteenth moon, a grinning splinter rising from the far Golden East.

Equals and always, two Turtles of the Tide, a secret tucked deep inside,
at the heart of a circle, unbroken, a being of Utter Dark, a faceless beast.

Turtle with Nod the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP], napsand drifting, over sleep and dreams preside,
to the seas of molten sand, Helia of Far Side returns with day deceased.

Turtles, Guardians of the Tidal Clock, between violet and indigo abide,
tocking the tick, winding the Tide, the Dance of Time can never cease.

And with Helia, he travels, Oban, the maker of ocean bottles now rides,
collecting glass from Far Sands to bottle fresh wonder and deep peace.

A bottler of wonder, a caster of dreams, precious tasks the stories hide,
two boys astride Turtles of the Tide, a journey winding to Golden East.

Ahead, away she goes, Helia of the Gilded Shell, home to the Far Side.


your poems are unique and wonderful - skill and craft drip from every line
but please, save me the bother of a'cuttin' an a'pastin'?........ 

Happy New Year!
Ned


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

Thanks, Ned.  You were right.  I like both versions, but this one is more to the point.  


Wind the Tide 2.0

Twilight nigh, firefly gilt waves lap at cobalt sands—Turtle upon Tide.
A thirteenth moon, a grinning splinter rising from the far Golden East.

Equals and always, two Turtles of the Tide, a secret tucked deep inside,
at the heart of a circle, unbroken, a being of Utter Dark, a faceless beast.

Turtle with Nod the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP], napsand drifting, over sleep and dreams preside,
 to the seas of molten sand, Helia of Far Side returns with day deceased.

Turtles, Guardians of the Tidal Clock, between violet and indigo abide,
tocking the tick, winding the Tide, the Dance of Time can never cease.

And with Helia, he travels, Oban, the maker of ocean bottles now rides,
collecting glass from Far Sands to bottle fresh wonder and deep peace.

A bottler of wonder, a caster of dreams, precious tasks the stories hide,
two boys astride Turtles of the Tide, a journey winding to Golden East.

Ahead, away she goes, Helia of the Gilded Shell, home to the Far Side.
As twilight bleeds across Midnight Bloom, he stirs, the Utter Dark beast.


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## Kevin (Jan 1, 2017)

Strikes me as song; not instrumental, or singing, but chant-rhyme.


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Thanks, Ned.  You were right.  I like both versions, but this one is more to the point.
> 
> 
> Wind the Tide 2.0
> ...



Wow so much more readable and understandable. Thanks for this edit. Although I still feel the weight of it somehow. Maybe the form + content + imagery is just too much. I'm not sure that many readers would work this hard for comprehension.


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## Firemajic (Jan 1, 2017)

Ell337 said:


> Wow so much more readable and understandable. Thanks for this edit. Although I still feel the weight of it somehow. Maybe the form + content + imagery is just too much. I'm not sure that many readers would work this hard for comprehension.





Huummm.... Maybe it is because I have followed this epic saga from the start... I don't feel like I have to work hard to comprehend at all, but as I said, I have followed this and have had the pleasure of watching it all unfold.
The imagery is so elegant and magical that I get lost [ in a good way] in it... 
Some of the poems stand alone, while others need the support of the entire story...


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Firemajic said:


> Huummm.... Maybe it is because I have followed this epic saga from the start... I don't feel like I have to work hard to comprehend at all, but as I said, I have followed this and have had the pleasure of watching it all unfold.
> The imagery is so elegant and magical that I get lost [ in a good way] in it...
> Some of the poems stand alone, while others need the support of the entire story...



I understood that after Darkin's lengthy explanation ... but unless these are all going in one anthology together ... any work that needs an essay to explain the story kind of fails even if well-written with amazing imagery.


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

These poems run in sequences.  Villanelle arcs of three or four interconnected poems, each linked to others.  This world is massive, the story intricate, all told in rhymed verse.  Terza Rima, Villanelle, Terzanelle, Triolet, Quatrain, Quatern, Tercet, and Pantoum.  All are part of a greater whole, but they are tried and true, defended before of a board of my professors and peers for my senior thesis, and again with a plagiarism case. 

Still in the eyes of the world I'm a screwed up freak, both spectrum and ADHD, so why slam my head against a wall with rubbishy stories no one cares about?  Because as atrocious as my work is, there are a couple of kids who ask after Turtle and the Star Socks Fox each week.  This poem is one piece of an entire world...If your cup of water has no fish, does that mean there are no fish in the ocean?

Just because something doesn't provide instant gratification doesn't mean that it has failed in its purpose.  Before you damn a story to failure, make sure you know the whole story, not just a single page.  Try rewriting the mythologies of the cliches, post for critique.  How is it supposed to be done?  Is everything I know just that wrong?


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> These poems run in sequences.  Villanelle arcs of three or four interconnected poems, each linked to others.  This world is massive, the story intricate, all told in rhymed verse.  Terza Rima, Villanelle, Terzanelle, Triolet, Quatrain, Quatern, Tercet, and Pantoum.  All are part of a greater whole, but they are tried and true, defended before of a board of my professors and peers for my senior thesis, and again with a plagiarism case.
> 
> Still in the eyes of the world I'm a screwed up freak, both spectrum and ADHD, so why slam my head against a wall with rubbishy stories no one cares about?  Because as atrocious as my work is, there are a couple of kids who ask after Turtle and the Star Socks Fox each week.  This poem is one piece of an entire world...If your cup of water has no fish, does that mean there are no fish in the ocean?
> 
> Just because something doesn't provide instant gratification doesn't mean that it has failed in its purpose.  Before you damn a story to failure, make sure you know the whole story, not just a single page.  Try rewriting the mythologies of the cliches, post for critique.  How is it supposed to be done?  Is everything I know just that wrong?



I think the point is that you are posting in bits without the whole and expecting people to follow. If a thing is part of a whole, and needs the whole for comprehension then say so. Otherwise you are bound to be disappointed by the responses.


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

Fair enough, but the problem with that being the full scope of this realm...One poem was bad enough, you said so yourself.  This world has foundations from its genesis story onward.  No one has the time nor the inclination for that much pointless nonsense, (and rightly so).  Product of a broken mind, and unfortunately, no matter what has been done there is no fixing mine.  They have tried, I can't be mainstream, modern, and self contained...I'm the weed in the forum gardens.

I crawled out of the box and through the crack in the sidewalk...But hey, thistles have tough roots.


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Fair enough, but the problem with that being the full scope of this realm...One poem was bad enough, you said so yourself.  This world has foundations from its genesis story onward.  No one has the time nor the inclination for that much pointless nonsense, (and rightly so).  Product of a broken mind, and unfortunately, no matter what has been done there is no fixing mine.  They have tried, I can't be mainstream, modern, and self contained...I'm the weed in the forum gardens.



No, I struggled because I had no context (and well it did benefit from some editing and some punctuation) but once I read your story about the context it made more sense. Before that I had no way of making sense of things that were lacking contextual information and backstory. 

I do think that the form you are using is not the easiest to follow, then you pile complex mythology and dense imagery onto that form, so you need to be mindful of that. Not everyone is going to have followed (or possibly are even new to the forum) the story from the beginning so give the context when you post the next 'chapter' in the saga. HELP your reader. 

And I think you should publish the entire thing in its entirety with the explanation of the mythology. Now that I know what it is, what the context is, and what the myth is I think it is wonderful. And just because you aren't writing post-modernist drivel doesn't mean that what you are writing has no value.


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## Firemajic (Jan 1, 2017)

I thought you came in on the Firefly tide...


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

Firemajic said:


> I thought you came in on the Firefly tide...



Seaweed dragged in by a Glasslight Crab maybe...Somebody needs to keep the pond bilge company.


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## Ariel (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> Fair enough, but the problem with that being the full scope of this realm...One poem was bad enough, you said so yourself.  This world has foundations from its genesis story onward.  No one has the time nor the inclination for that much pointless nonsense, (and rightly so).  Product of a broken mind, and unfortunately, no matter what has been done there is no fixing mine.  They have tried, I can't be mainstream, modern, and self contained...I'm the weed in the forum gardens.
> 
> I crawled out of the box and through the crack in the sidewalk...But hey, thistles have tough roots.


Personally I have never viewed _The Ways_ as pointless nonsense. I would love to see them in a giant full-color illustrated book.  I see moonlight and an almost Lewis Carroll narrative winding through it. There's true beauty in these poems and there's true potential.

You keep selling your work short.


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## Darkkin (Jan 1, 2017)

The problem with the 'Ways is they require effort and commitment, the world building involved borders on psychotic, thus rendering it an atrocity to modern poetry standards.  That isn't fair to the readers.  Nobody wants to hear about butterfly effect and chaos theory when there is an internet full of funny cat videos.

Unfortunately these stories matter enough that I cannot sell them short.  Believe me, I've tried.  The patterns, the extrapolations of the rhymes across interconnecting arcs, it's like putting together a multifaceted puzzle, piece by piece, sections of the interdimensional web connect and ignite.  The dog who saw a rainbow...

I don't plot, when a poem is right it is right.  And with a realm like the 'Ways, it is impossible to plot because you never know what frivolous detail might prove to be a critical turning point, something like the introduction of Oban Rowan Wright.  A clear path ahead connecting culminating tangents.  How does one defend a thought process, a project that stems from a mind that has been labelled as inadequate and daft by the real world?

In defense of a thesis you face a panel prepared to argue, but also prepared to listen.  It is a rarefied atmosphere when you can unleash the symphony that sings in your head, indulge in the details, the mythology, the balance of the cycles, the fractals of recurrent characters, the geometric extrapolations between varied forms of classic verse.  As the selkie is to the sea, for a moment everything clicks...You argue to the best of your ability and for an instant you make sense, people don't look at you as if you are mad.  They understand.

Back in the real world, everyday life, you know your work is less than nothing, as taboo as Winston's paperweight.  It serves no purpose except maybe as a weapon in the course of self defense. (Bore the villian to death...).  You hear the word failure enough to know you are little more than a waste of space...Yet still you keep on.  You understand minds like Hawking, Einstein, Grandin, Mozart, and Beethoven...The brilliance of their achievements, but all you have is a body of work deemed useless because it is aberrant and unintentionally complex.  

You speak a dialect that doesn't translate to the rest of the world, you aren't useful with things like algorithms, binary equations, organic chemistry, or algebra, but you get geometry.  You don't know what a box is, let alone where it is.  You have a weird affinity for blatant nonsense and symmetrical rhyme patterns...Your nearest and dearest are honest, looking at you like you've grown a second head.  Hell, a second head would have been preferable to poetry...

You want others to see as you do, but you know it will not happen, not because others don't want to, but simply because they cannot.  A fundamental flaw that shows in the hardwiring of your brain makes it impossible. You know better than to believe there will ever be a time or place when what you've created will matter, especially when the world (not the forums) has taken pains to tell you otherwise.

With nothing to lose, you keep trying because, these stories have a voice, tedious as it is.  It is a glimpse of a garden through a keyhole, but who has time to peer though keyholes anymore?  Moreover, a garden designed by a writer who understands string theory, but doesn't get a metaphor...:wink:

There are some things the best critique in the world cannot fix...Inherent tedium, being among them.


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## Ell337 (Jan 1, 2017)

Darkkin said:


> The problem with the 'Ways is they require effort and commitment, the world building involved borders on psychotic, thus rendering it an atrocity to modern poetry standards.  That isn't fair to the readers.  Nobody wants to hear about butterfly effect and chaos theory when there is an internet full of funny cat videos.
> 
> Unfortunately these stories matter enough that I cannot sell them short.  Believe me, I've tried.  The patterns, the extrapolations of the rhymes across interconnecting arcs, it's like putting together a multifaceted puzzle, piece by piece, sections of the interdimensional web connect and ignite.  The dog who saw a rainbow...
> 
> ...



As someone who has also been 'other' my entire life - seeing what others don't see, making connections in seemingly disparate events, seeing patterns unfold that allow one to grasp a greater reality unfolding, knowing things I dare not share (to the point that I lack your courage to reveal as much of myself as you just did), let me offer this advice :- to hang with everyone who does not understand, who can't 'get it' because there are those few who do. Do not despair because you walk to a different beat, and seemingly no-one can follow, and perhaps in truth no-one can fully, but some, even many, will follow in part, if you give them a chance. 

Publish and be damned - if this work means that much to you forget about what is fashionable or popular - great work, the very greatest work, never follows the whims of the public, it follows the passionate heart of the creator.


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