With trembling twitches between a struggle's rumbling roar,
pages are scribbled in hastily scoured sentences,
exhales in shivering stirs
of minutiae moments that don't agree with the revisionist's log,
and thus are cleverly crafted as dramas preserved,
which will make the hours chronicled
a testimony, noble and refined,
laced with enough villains,
selected by impulse or bias
so the tale told
unfolds in credible passages
having face and form,
full in the penned pearls of valor and fear.
Legacy and lore are the inserts thoughtfully added,
posterity's reader unable to hear
all the events truest sound effects
that would make the ink fade.
Time's authors sometimes are the best storytellers,
who treated their records as the creative entries in a diary,
written in impassioned tear stains and scorching heart flames
orchestrated for effect on those who read the words.
Truth is the martyr to the imagination,
painting the scroll of yesteryear's sky
by hues that cast fame's light in shimmer and shine,
saving the shadows for demons the writer will assign,
even if they were really angels, innocent and kind.
Author notes
6) ‘…history is fiction.’ – Maximilien Robespierre
A contest entry
- Options by evidently.
1000 points, ended September 19, 2008, 10 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
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I like this a lot – I think you’ve used the prompt well and it’s vivid and dramatic and interesting. A few things:
- I think it’s a bit too long. I mean, I didn’t get bored, but I think it would have more impact if it was a bit shorter.
e.g. ‘a testimony, noble and refined,
laced with enough villains,
selected by impulse or bias’ could be cut because you explain about this idea already, really, in your last stanza.
- I think some of the slightly archaic or formal words and phrases you use maybe don’t quite work? I didn’t find them TOO jarring, as they can sometimes be, but I think it might be better without them. e.g. ‘thus’, ‘truest’.
- I think there should be an apostrophe in the third line of the second stanza: ‘all the events’ truest sound effects’.
- I actually think it might work quite well to swap the second and the last stanzas. Because I think the second one is a more dramatic stanza and feels more like an ending to me.
Of course, these are just my vague ideas; it’s your poem and you don’t have to listen to me.
The opening lines are very good: I like the way you’ve combined two different images, and they draws you right into the poem straight away. I like ‘trembling twitches’ too; partly because it creates a very vivid image straight away. In fact there are a couple of places where you combine images, and you do it very well – mixing metaphors can be awful, but you always choose them so that the effect is enhanced rather than damaged. Like: ‘all the events’ truest sound effects/that would make the ink fade.’ I love the image of the sounds echoing out of history and coming up through the paper and dissolving the ink.
Thanks very much for your entry!
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very good use of imagery here. Very interesting read. Good job in writing this.
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