This deserves high praise. It feels like it was written by Ents.
I like the conceit that the trees are communicating through their roots.
Some of the nicest touches are in the little bridge passages between sections of dialogue, such as this:
-
The forest grew lively, bristling in the
river breeze, their roots and crowns aquiver
with intrigue.
-
The whole poem feels like you are inside a forest.
The vocabulary demonstrates intimate acquaintance with the subject matter without feeling like you have raided a botanical dictionary.
The blank verse flows well and is poised right on the precarious ledge between being old-fashioned enough to suit this kind of tale, and contemporary enough to not sound archaic and wooden. Though there is still the occasional archaism I would avoid (like "ope" as a one syllable equivalent of "open", assuming that it is not a typo).
My positive impression is mostly based on the flow of the verse and the overall mood and effect created by the descriptive language. The narrative itself (and characterisation) works so far, but I can't judge it without seeing how it unfolds in the rest of the poem.
Thank you very much for your thoughts Luke. I appreciate them. I think you're right about "ope", and some of the anachronisms. Some of the trees speak in them, but for the narrator it's probably not necessary. It would be better left as "open", the rhythm gets me to swallow the 'n' anyways.
I'm glad to hear it skirts that line between old-fashioned and contemporary. That was a big concern while writing it.
I didn't raid any botanical dictionaries, but I did have to pour over quite a few field guides for trees and plants, in order to get better at identifying them on hikes through the woods.
Been reading this in stages over the past few days . . . I am eager to have it in book form, so I can dogear it and mark it up liberally. Any idea when it'll be coming out?
I was going to serialize it on Substack first, to give myself one more pass through it, then publish. So probably sometime by the end of the year. It's going to be a pain to typesetting, and I'd like to include some more illustrations by Andy Ives in the published version.
The end of the year is not too far off. I recognize some of it from Instagram, from several months ago. You are incredibly prolific, with this project and the ongoing Madysyn saga, very different endeavors.
Yeah, very different. I needed to write something more contemporary after this one, which I'd been working on for the last two and a half years or so. Madysyn will be much shorter than this one, too. I'm also working on a series on Caesar and Rome, which I started last summer. A little bit every day adds up.
This deserves high praise. It feels like it was written by Ents.
I like the conceit that the trees are communicating through their roots.
Some of the nicest touches are in the little bridge passages between sections of dialogue, such as this:
-
The forest grew lively, bristling in the
river breeze, their roots and crowns aquiver
with intrigue.
-
The whole poem feels like you are inside a forest.
The vocabulary demonstrates intimate acquaintance with the subject matter without feeling like you have raided a botanical dictionary.
The blank verse flows well and is poised right on the precarious ledge between being old-fashioned enough to suit this kind of tale, and contemporary enough to not sound archaic and wooden. Though there is still the occasional archaism I would avoid (like "ope" as a one syllable equivalent of "open", assuming that it is not a typo).
My positive impression is mostly based on the flow of the verse and the overall mood and effect created by the descriptive language. The narrative itself (and characterisation) works so far, but I can't judge it without seeing how it unfolds in the rest of the poem.
Thank you very much for your thoughts Luke. I appreciate them. I think you're right about "ope", and some of the anachronisms. Some of the trees speak in them, but for the narrator it's probably not necessary. It would be better left as "open", the rhythm gets me to swallow the 'n' anyways.
I'm glad to hear it skirts that line between old-fashioned and contemporary. That was a big concern while writing it.
I didn't raid any botanical dictionaries, but I did have to pour over quite a few field guides for trees and plants, in order to get better at identifying them on hikes through the woods.
Been reading this in stages over the past few days . . . I am eager to have it in book form, so I can dogear it and mark it up liberally. Any idea when it'll be coming out?
I was going to serialize it on Substack first, to give myself one more pass through it, then publish. So probably sometime by the end of the year. It's going to be a pain to typesetting, and I'd like to include some more illustrations by Andy Ives in the published version.
The end of the year is not too far off. I recognize some of it from Instagram, from several months ago. You are incredibly prolific, with this project and the ongoing Madysyn saga, very different endeavors.
Yeah, very different. I needed to write something more contemporary after this one, which I'd been working on for the last two and a half years or so. Madysyn will be much shorter than this one, too. I'm also working on a series on Caesar and Rome, which I started last summer. A little bit every day adds up.
Wow, that was really awesome!
Thank you fellow Robert