posted
In morning, grey lazy dawn, awakening to capture the bird's song, In a vessel we float down impotent river, carving way through dirty brown water. In the eyes of death, I dither, it rides a steed amongst the pastoral countryside, asking bucolic hamlets for my name. The uniform hoof beats have now come into earshot.
Not much right now, too busy trying to come up with a plot. I just want to see if the style is spot on.
Welcome to Hatrack! This sort of writing can be pretty hard work compared to the preferred “invisible” style for most genre pieces. Personally I’d trim for clarity and give us a protagonist in the 1st 13. There are those who can be hooked by an impressionistic/poetic style, but it is a calculated risk. Of course, if you do this style extremely well, then some editors will take a chance, but it seems harder work than I’d prefer.
The essential information in this opening is that it’s just after dawn, the protagonist is in a boat and somehow, death is coming for him (whether figuratively or literally, we don’t know). This doesn’t hook me. If you gave some hint about the nature of the death that chases him or her, then I (personally) would have a better chance of being hooked.
In terms of rhythm and sound, I’d vary the wording of your opening three sentences (you start with “in” each time) and give us the articles (“the morning”, “an impotent river”) to make the writing invisible.
posted
I guess I'm wondering why you're trying to come up with a plot for a poem. I take it this will be a kind of verse story? That's an interesting idea. When I was studying poetry, one thing that was often emphasized was specific, vivid, concrete detail. I don't see that here. "lazy dawn" "capture the bird's song" "impotent river" "in the eyes of death" -- none of these things are concrete; they're all pretty nebulous. They're conceptual. It's the kind of thing that may work for some, but really doesn't work for me. To me, it all feels very vague, and it's missing what I look for, both in poetry and in fiction -- which is the sense of being present in a specific, vivid time and place.
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