How do you like my poem?Can you tell what it is about? Thank you to all of you who can be bothered to reply!

Question

Summer.

Like the hairy shell of a coconut

My tattered memories

Hang in shreds

In the July indigo dusk

Hinting still at the dregs

Of a purple sky.

Welcome to cuckooland

My sweet: you can taste

A slice of my past

Without the pains

That lace it.

You can share my sea

Without the rot that hides

With the seaweed

Behind the coral.

Answer 1

i like it...it gives two images that sort of clash but at the same time work really well together...the summer evening and the beauty that surrounds it...hides the way you were feeling inside...almost like a mask...

well done :)....i'm glad things are better for you now though

Answer 2

Is it about someone sitting alone on a beach on a summer's evening thinking melancholy thoughts?

Good poem. I like it.

Answer 3

I'm not good at knowing to meaning behind the poem is but I think it's awesome! I really suck at poetry. Good job though! :)

Answer 4

nice cool pease and smile life gets beter

Answer 5

It's beautiful.

Answer 6

well it sounds as tho you have had a bit of a bad luck in your life, hope things work out better for you,  not a bad poem  

Answer 7

Here, as with many poems that make us think and reread, one feels there is no perfect reading of its meaning, that part of the value of the poem is that the meaning seems close, but pleasingly elusive. Here’s a quick but earnest effort at sitting out its meaning.

It’s about a relationship that caused the poet pain, but which she nonetheless seems to treasure. Phrases like “tattered memories” and “in shreds” suggest the pain, and images like the coconut,  which, despite it hard and rough exterior, contains both a sweet liquid and a sweet pulp, suggest that the experience had its sweet, perhaps even nourishing rewards. Perhaps the poet wants us to believe that just as one has to break a coconut to get the reward, so too was that required in this relationship.

Furthermore, the poet feels that she has reduced, or distilled, at least in her poem, and perhaps in her life, the essence of the relationship down to something valuable that the reader can imbibe (taste, share, a slice). And part of what makes the distilled experience so wonderful for the reader to imbibe (like the milk of the coconut), is that the poet has left a clear and distinct hint (or taste) of the pain (dregs, pains that lace, rot that hides). The word “distilled” seems particularly apt if one considers, for example, a good Scotch Whiskey, distilled down to a fine and intoxicating beverage, but with a hint of the smoky taste of peat; some folks even say they can taste the sea in the malt. So too here the poem, like a good Scotch, has a pleasing effect, heightened by the lingering but not overpowering sense of the pain that helped produce the end result.

One last note, the word “cuckooland” often refers to a situation that is idealistic, sometimes unrealistically so. And some mixture of idealism and perhaps unrealistic expectations (or demands?) may have been part of the situation in the relationship addressed in the poem. For a general discussion of cuckooland, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_cucko...

In short, I like the poem and bet it will stay in my memory, which is my favorite test of whether a poem is good. If I were an editor thinking of publishing this poem in a magazine I worked for, I might suggest that the word “distilled” or some variation of, or synonym for, it be added to the title—just a thought and probably worth what you paid for it.

Answer 8

i like to write poems

to i think this is beautiful poem

please keep writhing :)