All Comments on 'I, the Shadow'

Mr. 1201, you certainly do mix things up. I have to say I did not expect to read a poem by you using ye olde english, let alone making it actually work. What I like about this is that a reader can search for meaning on several different levels (rather like religion, but that is another discussion). I love the feel of the passage of time in this - via seasons, dawn to dusk, days, and metastasis. The ending and structure force the reader to go back, read it slowly, and read it again - but it is not (at least in my opinion) so obtuse as to mystify. The only thing I would consider is whether the word cancer is used maybe once too many times - you probably have a reason for that.

but I love how the play on the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet is woven expertly through the poem. Wonderful work on the assonance, too, and I like the very light touch of alliteration (too much has begun to sound purple prosey to me in most poems--maybe that's my bugaboo of the month). I think you could cut some articles here and there and maybe reshape the lines some: overall the poem feels slightly unconnected or unfinished to me, but hey it's still an easy five. :-)

by drawing shadows....but to add color takes a artiste. TK U MLJ LV NV

you're an idiot, short & sweet

"ANY ONE OF US CAN BECOME AN ARTIST

by drawing shadows....but to add color takes a artiste. TK U MLJ LV NV"

what do you mean by this?

can you do?

so FU TK FU U FU MLJ FU LV & FU NV 2

I've been looking at your comments, what is the purpose? what is the agenda? Every one of them has been less than impressive.

will return tomorrow with a proper comment. for now i am drinking this all in.

the purpose of the comments is that They are mine....if some one or anybody doesnt like them.....I have no control over their likes, dislikes or indifference....that is all theirs...Now to explain....when a tree or an object casts a shadow...people can trace them and using mathematics enlarge or shrink. ?But they still have a one dimensional figur....now an artiste can take a blank canvas or piece of paper and put life and color into it. Most of us can splash or crayola or paint by ?#s.....and be satisfied. An artiste or an author will not and can not...His nature is such as to be driven to a higher degree of perfection. At least you signed your negativism which is a point in your favor....TK U MLJ LV NV

duh, and what did your comments have to do with said poem? a sort of off handed statement of WHAT? remember these words are black. I really like it when some moron goes through and either summarizes what he thinks the poem is about, or worse, leaves some sad homily.

Negative? I've seen about 200 of yours, seen nothing positive, no TZ, not even "I like this".

So if you want to work on an additive basis, what do you add? This poem was a question of existence, now I'm questioning yours? Why Here? What You Do?

Thanks for the revisit. At least there is a name, a trackable history with you.

truely Remarkable.

Two spots only I found my read "hitching" a bit, in an otherwise seamless pleasure.

"whether to cut itself off

of or the cut itself back in"

convolutedly archaic or typo?? not sure

And the use of "wert". Which I experienced as a distraction. A set of final lines that needed no embellishment whatsoever, might better have been served by studied understatement.. simplicity.

As surely as chip has lauded this, this deserves my comment and my vote. Five is easy to give and to justify since your work here appeals to me on at least three different levels. 1) Visually; I love the contrast between the dark and light and black and white, since there is no color apart from blue in moonlight. 2) Aurally; you play with onomatopoeia as if this is how you speak all of the time and 3) Asthetically; you write about beautiful things, beautifully. - Thanks so much for the pleasure of this read and as Live4 states, those 2 lines really do mess me up as well. Perhaps an edit is needed to replace that awkward "the" with the properly sounding "to"? But regardless, I love this poem.

but left well stuffed with hearty repast. greatful thanks and a paltry 5

for 12 oh's valium prescription

Probably one of your very best. I just wanna know where the little green E is ?

good work 1201

~ m

muddy

I USUALLY DONT CRITIQUE STORIES OR POEMS BUT SINCE YOU ASKED HERE GOES...From the 1st with ref to Shakespeare..Drawings by the moon and street lamps...the grays emerging with the falls approach...while the mirror tells a tale...the Roses being delivered...a reminder of something lost...while in the dim lite hoping here comes the sun,,,mirroring blue skies....YOU ARE CORRECT IN READERS NOT KNOWING OR UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE AUTHOR ATTEMPTS TO PORTRAY like a picture.....WHICH ANYONE CAN DRAW USING STICK FIGURES OR CRAYOLAS....BUT LACK OF TALENT ONLY ALLOWS THE USER TO BE SATISIFIED, If You Can Ken, RESPECTFULLY TK U MLJ LV NV anything I comment I sign, mlj

This entire piece is an expression of mourning, and always deeper than first read, always rewarding. I'm glad i returned to this with a sound head on because it allowed me to express beyond the awful burdening of sorrow it laid about me.

I, the Shadow

bytwelveoone©

...and Juliet

...and Juliet

Thou art the sun. I, the shadow.

From brightness unto night your aspect

magnifies my shape, my size.

My, how the twilights long.

the longing of the twilights for a source of light is echoing the longing heard/felt in those opening two lines... so three times we hear it. Naturally clever play on long and drawn. To be expected from your pen. What you also set up here is the source of light and the disembodiment of this yearning umbra, for it owns not the solidity of the thing that stands before the light... this shade is a creation of the interraction between the source of light and the object blocking that. Having said that, I'm left with the impression that the solid object is as much memory than anything else, and there's a looking back in time by this thing, this shape-shifting, energy (anti-energy?) that craves things to be as they once were. To be so residual, so - diaphanous, there and not there, in some purgatorial longing of existence... damn; all other light sources can never ever replace a sun.

Drawn. By moon and streetlights I

writhe, fade, blend and reappear, as a beginning

multiplies to too many ends.

Drawn - i like this for several reasons: the shadow's awareness stretched and faded to virtually nothing as it reaches longingly for sources of light for it to 'be', drawn to the lights, any lights eventually, for despite everything it's self-aware, it thinks, it . . . feels, though which is the crueller of the two i cannot say. The splitting, the twisting, the ... warping? Not as it remembered itself to be, a thing of more definition, as the following lines address.

By the fall the outline, unbecoming,

had become sharper as if

it were growing knives,

whether to cut itself off

of or the cut itself back in

to my vague space to metastasize.

the fall... *sighs* speaks of the altered angle of the light, chalk lines, destruction; either way, there's a quality about autumnal light, bright blue skies, that intensifies a shadow's existence or, under mistier skies makes its existence tenuous to the point of disappearing. Perhaps that last isn't in this write, but i see it as a residual echo of this:

I

writhe, fade, blend and reappear, as a beginning

multiplies to too many ends.

Your use of sharper, more defined words leads with a cutting edge; is it best to be cut free or embrace the darkness to fester and grow? Cancer holds the ideal allusion - mourning can be held so tight it forms a hard darkness, tumourous, with a solidity the shadow itself lacks.

What mirror mirrors me, drawn by sorrow

tomorrow horrifies, laughs with dull knell

of leaden bell; what light, what light - is there?

Again an echoing of longing, loss, searching.... Typically adroit word/sound-play that borrows from so many sources in a reader's head - without light, a shadow can't exist; it cannot be reflected in any mirror and so we're in the realms of the walking un-dead; the bell reference - for whom does it toll? There's a desire to 'be', again. But 'being' is pain, and sorrow, and despair.

An evil robe - floats - on the rising floor,

loomed with moonlit motes from a shade half-drawn,

- waits till this hated time abates in ice.

I didn't know the 'evil robe' reference or quite understand 'the rising floor' - it's like i feel it but can't quite reach your intention; it didn't prevent me from experiencing the amazing visuals - reminded me somehow of some old black and white vampire movie where light hit the vampire and stop-frame camera action show the dissolution of the body into nothingness... this works in reverse, even if only part way since the shadow (made more solid with the word 'shade' as well as the light... and damn, there's that word 'drawn' again... shade half-drawn/half-drawn shade) has only a weakened source of light. Love your choice of 'loomed by moonlit motes' - so... transient, so intangible and working in extraordinary cntrast with the

hard qualities of the triple A's used in 'waits/hated/ablates'. There's also the play on the contrast between the (assumed) heat of the sunlight and the chill of its absence - your use of 'ice' here, the moonlight (never considered a warm source) and, further along your use of 'frost'... It's also interesting to see how this moves from moonlight to the longing/expectation(?) of ice using frost a few step down as mid-point. It's like the gradual solidifying of the moon's cold light - motes become frost become ice. Is any solidity better than nothing?

What light, what light multiplies cancered thoughts

that laugh at how it was, what I've now become;

laugh at the thought of the hand on the door

No Q-mark required here to interrupt considered phrasing and to rob the reader of the sardonic 'What light/watt-light' play, a jewel/joule play with energy 'conversion', electric lighting in the darkness of this time compared to the sun's natural light and warmth and energy. And, once more, your play on x3 throughout your write. Cubed... 3-D, solidity. A softened expression, though, of sound in this part and overlapping into the following - a softening required to express more deeply the actual words/image.

with roses. Obliterate that sad overlay

of time and memory, ablate the loss.

Go then, unfleshed robe of dark, unblesst kin,

Connect the dots, or sounds in this instance, that tie such longer writes together. Once again, use of contrast between hard and soft sounds, and introduce the hiss, the sting of the sibilance capped by that 't' in 'unblesst'. A reminder of what was mentioned before 'What mirror mirrors me'... you're not about to let this slip the reader's mind.

down the lightless hall past the half drawn shade

to the window pane streaked with moonlit frost.

Go to the light that multiplies and laugh.

This feels like drifting through darkness, senses numb in the lack of light (natural or otherwise); the shadow-narrator only half-drawn in diffuse light, definition lacking, perhaps pain less sharp with the feathery ice, for it's the solidifying of ice that means pain is rendered insensible.... 'moonlit frost' is, in and of itself a beautiful mind-picture; frost on the pain/pane the kind of layering i expect from you. There's also a sense of struggle, choices, going on here... the shadow seeks out the light even though it means feeling more - i get the impression that should the N head towards the window, the frost would deepen to ice, light would become so diffuse - so cold - as to render the shade insensible. Without feeling, there is nothing. A beautiful thing for some, yet this shadow, half-drawn by merit of a shade half-drawn on a window kissed with ice, craves existence and so heads on, into the electric lights - embracing the pain and laughing.

For what light is there...

*sighs* this lops and loops and loops, like a trapped shade, needing more than anything to 'go into the light'.

What light magnifies

the shadows, of substance

such as I,

of the creep of the cat,

of the rustled cloth,

in dance as things cancered grown,

of the flutter of the bat,

of the startled moth,

and of things never to be known,

that glimpst, uncaught

in cornered eyes of people

that pray for noon,

as do I.

Thou wert the sun in blue skies.

How life lies.

what follows feels a stand alone piece; what comes before isn't strengthened by these lines - with the exception of the final two lines that maybe need to be with the body of the write. I'm not sure. To omit them ends this on a drawn out sigh, a seeking. To include them brings it round full circle to start over again, just as the rest loops, eternally. I wonder if the lines would work in prose-form as an intro thing?

What light magnifies

the shadows, of substance

such as I,

of the creep of the cat,

of the rustled cloth,

in dance as things cancered grown,

of the flutter of the bat,

of the startled moth,

and of things never to be known,

that glimpst, uncaught

in cornered eyes of people

that pray for noon,

as do I.

as:

I, the Shadow

bytwelveoone©

"What light magnifies the shadows, of substance such as I, the cat's creep, the rustle of cloth, in dance as things cancered grown, the flutter of the bat, of the startled moth, and of things never to be known that glimpst, uncaught in cornered eyes of people that pray for noon, as do I. As do I..."

...and Juliet

...and Juliet

Thou art the sun. I, the shadow.

From brightness unto night your aspect

magnifies my shape, my size.

My, how the twilights long.

Drawn. By moon and streetlights I

writhe, fade, blend and reappear, as a beginning

multiplies to too many ends.

By the fall the outline, unbecoming,

had become sharper as if

it were growing knives,

whether to cut itself off

of or the cut itself back in

to my vague space to metastasize.

What mirror mirrors me, drawn by sorrow

tomorrow horrifies, laughs with dull knell

of leaden bell; what light, what light - is there?

An evil robe - floats - on the rising floor,

loomed with moonlit motes from a shade half-drawn,

- waits till this hated time abates in ice.

What light, what light multiplies cancered thoughts

that laugh at how it was, what I've now become;

laugh at the thought of the hand on the door

with roses. Obliterate that sad overlay

of time and memory, ablate the loss.

Go then, unfleshed robe of dark, unblesst kin,

down the lightless hall past the half drawn shade

to the window pane streaked with moonlit frost.

Go to the light that multiplies and laugh.

For what light is there...

Thou wert the sun in blue skies.

How life lies.

I'm coming late with my comments, 1201. I'm not sure how I missed the posting but glad I found it. I've already spent an hour or so parsing it as well reading the comments and the posts between Tsotha and you in PF&D, and have enjoyed every minute of it.

I'll get my quibbling out of the way first.

It felt like an allegory of modern lovers to me until the end of the poem and then it felt like the actual play where Romeo finds Juliette supposedly dead just before he kills himself. If it's the former, I'm not sure the antiquated language adds much, except for the first line I like very much in that it grabs your attention; if it's the latter, "cancered" does but "metastasize" IMO doesn't.

I agree with Tsotha and find the allusion to Poe and Elliot confusing. Given your explanation, it left me with impression that you're speaking to an erudite small minority, and most readers who would otherwise enjoy the poem would be confused: Too much work, Man, and I'm not sure it adds a lot to the poem. I have no agenda in saying that, so if there's a reason, I'd enjoy thinking more about, but at this point am puzzled by it.

Your use of light and dark seems to me to be very similar to the excerpt from Wikipedia I found which follows, so I won't comment any further on it. If you think it doesn't effectively mirror what affect you were looking for, I'd enjoy reading further comment from you in PF&D about it:

"Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the play. Caroline Spurgeon considers the theme of light as "symbolic of the natural beauty of young love" and later critics have expanded on this interpretation.[40][42] For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun,[43] brighter than a torch,[44] a jewel sparkling in the night,[45] and a bright angel among dark clouds."

The sonics of the poem are inspiring: internal and near rhymes, the choice of consonants. It felt like one of those "out of body" experiences, almost like sleep walking, which is what Romeo must have felt like when he saw Juliette in a drug-induced sleep, thinking her dead. Then, however, you pick up the pace with shorter lines beginning as "of the creep of the cat.....

as do I.

Thou wert the sun in the skies.

How life lies."

The whole tone of the poem changed for me from a slow plodding, even morse, tempo to one of final frenzy before resignation. I end where I started: Is it Romeo about to plunge the dagger into himself? Is it a modern equivalent trying to rid his mind of his Juliette and move on, or maybe a modern Romeo resigned to the fact he can't? I decided it doesn't much matter. It provoked similar images and thoughts in any case.

Thanks for a wonderful poem.

it still bites. hard. but differently - using the sarcastic, bitter voice rather than the more (disclosed) sensitive one i first heard makes for a whole new feel. an armoured feel, but still not immune to acid.

but I have an inkling of some thoughts for you,

The tone in this piece flip, flops, the shadow is sad as fuck, but covers it up with sarcasm and wry thoughts. the duality is part of what has been hurting my head because when I think I have nailed down a tone it shifts, it has been like trying to grasp a shadow, I open my hand and it's gone,

first stanza comes across to me as two lovers, shadows need light to exist,

Thou art the sun. I, the shadow.

From brightness unto night your aspect

magnifies my shape, my size.

My, how the twilights long.

so this first stanza can be read as a need for a certain lover

or

a flippant sarcastic remark made, to un-poeticize,

"yeah with out you I can't live pffft," add rolling eyes.

the word long is a high light.

and can be read in multiple ways

you seem to be running four thought processes off of the word long

time duration and duality on tonality, The word long and twilight gives the visual of a shadow stretched out long,

my four thoughts

time frame

how long till you fuck off

or

I'm glad it's long because I can exist for a longer period of time.

*visually*

it is good to be a long shadow as you swell in size for your lover,

or

being stretched out is damn painful.

and that's just the first freaking stanza..........

____________________________________________________________________

more to come when I have time

I have come very late to this. It is one of the three or four most challenging pieces I have read on Lit in 9 years. It's not perfect by any means but to my mind it's a poetic Kaleidoscope constantly changing my view of it . I have read it several times and dont know whether I'm going to come to any more settled view - possibly not.

But this is great stuff in that it demands the reader to use their noggin/senses to a very unusual degree. Worth a 6, Gunna read it again now