Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Elopement (Working Title - Poetry!)

Critique
#1

Well, as much as you may want to call this poetry. Anyway, this is the first piece of three that I’ve been working on, and follows a rough story that will move through each part. I’m going to keep quiet about this piece and my intentions. I have been working on this for the past week, and I’d like to see what outside eyes think of this. There are a few areas that I feel still don’t flow, however, that may just be me. Enjoy!

Elopement

Among the dark wood that coils deep, down,
Bracketed by bracken, black before thee;
I spy thy approach, a tremor of silver light
That pierced the wuthering bands of eventide veils.
Sprite or wisp? No, thou art born of snow;
The ether’s cloak reborn of corrupted earth,
Yet thy touch is light, a soundless dawn,
A misted spring who still mourns winter.
Before thee clad close, coated in coarse fur,
The Wolf stalks his regal step, streaked in grey
Lupine flesh, tempered by spirals of eldritch arts.
Before him, black branches twist and turn,
Into speaking tongues that glisten heavy with sap,
Gossiping of thy beauty in their passing whispers,
So the air hums to the tune of a wolf’s wild song.
His lofty head he turns to thee, murmuring haloed
Delicacies that drop form the dark wolf’s jaws:
“Cry out not, I harken to thee from high,
For thine own voice sighs of mine own howl.”
In a breath he knows, by a black snout’s quiver,
And amber eyes that dispel any heart’s shadows:
“I scent thy secret, whom moonlight tells alone,
But you shiver off the dreaming call, yet still
It haunts thy soul; a fruit forbidden for thy kind,
Whilst your wolf cries for thee; to hold, to hold!”
He turns about, deeper into the dark, where tree’s
Tufted branches, tipped with wolf’s white fur,
Drip the drowned fonts of his stopped inkwell.
Here he weeps and writes the solace of his ways,
Of his girl, drawn in a glimpse of gilded shadow,
Who now seems to shiver away her slender form;
Laid bare, a lupine beauty before the elder moon.
“Walk with me girl; savour the halt of my step,
Away, over the dread-bone paths we must fly;
Where men fear to tread, or heed their footsteps
Of time Back where they dressed neatly in the fall,
Or further still, when he swallowed his coarse pelt.
My girl, please, I come hither to teach thee well;
Let us pray in sinister wolf games that we’ll share
With smiles, down in the depths of the night.
I’ll wake thy flesh by my clandestine art alight,
And cast off the shackles of thy ill-fitting cloak.
I’ll wrap you in the soft pelt of my own, shared
Tenderly, you’ll come to know me well,
To learn to love the kiss of lupine tongues,
And all the untamed joys buried inside thy flesh.
I promise all to thee, without false rings given,
You’ll stalk among these woods with me,
Unfettered by a man’s silver wedding band.
Girl, I know the beat of thy dove-tailed heart,
You do not love him; you never loved him,
But neither am I your high-born prince;
A kiss cannot rend a wolf into man.
I am, this manner of beast, I am;
Wilt thou leave me, or love me?

#2

All right, I’ll read through it with a lot more attention now - I just wanted to say that you might want to split it into ‘stanzas’ (paragraphs? It’s free verse in the end), it’s a bit more difficult to read as a single block of text. It strains the eyes.

So, apparently everyone wants to do poetry now? That’s great ;D

#3

Hmm, I probably should do that. I have a good idea as to where I can break these up into separate stanzas.

Well, I’ve done a few poems before which have gone down well (this same sort of style) but I find either I have something to write or not. It’s a bit of an all or nothing thing. xD

#4

I read this out loud to see how it sounded, so this is very much as it comes:

Lots of very nice alliteration and assonance. I especially like ‘He turns about, deeper into the dark, where tree’s
Tufted branches, tipped with wolf’s white fur’.

The only line that didn’t flow properly for me was ‘That pierced the wuthering bands of eventide veils’, which is quite long - also, it goes into past tense, whereas everything else is very much in the present.

‘I spy thy’ is maybe an internal rhyme too far, and risks sounding unintentionally comical.

I would maybe swap out ‘any’ in ‘And amber eyes that dispel any heart’s shadows’ for something shorter, like’a’ or ‘the’.

Maybe lose the ‘But’ in ‘But you shiver off the dreaming call, yet still’, because there’s a ‘yet’ coming quite soon after.

Maybe lose ‘buried’ in ‘And all the untamed joys buried inside thy flesh’ to make the line pacier.

In the ‘Where men fear to tread’ bit, the men are ‘they’ and then go singular, but I don’t see a neat way round that as ‘they swallowed their coarse pelts’ sounds wrong.

Got one typo for you: ‘form’ for ‘from’ in ‘Delicacies that drop form the dark wolf’s jaws’.

#5

A very beautiful and haunting work, and personally the unbroken free verse doesn’t bother me. There’s so much rich, colourful imagery and metaphor - particular lines such as stood out to me included “In a breath he knows, by a black snout’s quiver” and “Drip the drowned fonts of his stopped inkwell.” Use of “thee/thy/thou” gives it a greater depth than you, your, etc would have, as well.

As I’ve said before I so wish you could come read this or another of your poems in my poetry class at uni. Classmates and instructor would be speechless.

Huskyteer already mentioned the one type and has offered some good critiquing but to that I’ll add: Perhaps omit “Back” from “Of time Back where they dressed neatly in the fall” - the word doesn’t fit into the flow of the line, acting as a sort of interruption, and “of time” hints well enough that the past tense is being referenced without requiring further clarification.