DANIEL E. BLACKSTON
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   Creativity & Reflections
by Daniel E. Blackston

It's a Poem!

12/16/2021

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Picture
Southshore
The first sailboat I ever saw
 looked like an angel
 floating over thoughts of God.

In a recent post I asked if you thought "Southshore" was  a poem. The response was a unanimous: yes. 

I happen to agree. It's interesting to ask ourselves why. The presence of a simile is one obvious aspect, but similes are common in prose and in everyday speech.

The stanza shape vaguely resembles a sail full of wind. The meter is irregular and mostly iambic.

Let's see what it looks like in prose: The first sailboat I ever saw  looked like an angel floating over thoughts of God.

Is it still a poem? You tell me.

One reader mentioned that they prefer metaphors to similes but they didn't elaborate on why. 

Can we rewrite the poem with a metaphor instead of a simile?

Yes, it's actually quite easy.

Southshore
The first sailboat I ever saw:
an angel  floating over
thoughts of God.

This  streamlines the poem and cuts out "looked like," which functions here more like punctuation than diction.

I think the poem is improved this way. Notice how "floating over" now actually floats over?

​Thanks, E.B., for the nudge!

​What do you think? 

Yes, I'm the author of "Southshore" and I wrote it as a bit of marginalia to fill up a nook of space on a  page in my working notebook. 

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  • Home
  • Stone Secrets Blog
  • SERVICES & FEEDBACK
    • POETRY FEEDBACK
    • Critiques and Editing
    • Poem Polisher
  • 7 Secrets of Poetry
  • Blackston Bio
  • Discover
  • ESSAYS
    • Non-Local Consciousness
    • Self-Identity
    • Being and Knowing
    • ​Concerning Kandinsky
    • Existential Metaphors
    • Sylvia Plath's "Tulips"
    • Sylvia Plath's "Blackberrying"
    • Sylvia Plath’s Ariel
  • MISSION
  • OCCULT & MAGICK
    • Ghost Flower
    • Order of the Crow