“The most beautiful but the most unfortunate of the seven is what is known as psychic. This in its purity of type is a very rare hand to find. The name explains itself – that which appertains to the soul. The very word seems to suggest to one’s mind the old fable of the envy of Venus towards the maiden Psyche – the war of the Goddess of passion against the more spiritual charm of the daughter of the soul. In its pureness of type it is a hard hand to find: nineteenth century civilization does not encourage such rare flowers of lily whiteness and icy purity; the calmness, coldness and dreamy chastity of such a type are not sought after by the present-day sons of the soil, whose heads are bowed in the quest for gold, and whose blood is heated by the closeness of the cattle. “
The above passage is from Cheiro’s ‘Language of the Hand’ describing a particular type of hand known as the psychic hand. I find this description fits the writings on the blog ‘I rhyme without reason’ more than anything I can possibly say.The writings are sensitive and gentle like an early morning breeze. The writings remind me of the old Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Keats. Of course I am not suggesting he has reached their level. But the potential is definitely there. But for this type of writer, the writings must necessarily come from the heart and only his heart can tell him how to reach the next level. Visiting more scenic places and reading more from similar kind of writers can help the process. One suggestion I have is to avoid frivolous prompts. They can adulterate the purity of the writing of this kind of writer.
Coming to the more mundane practical aspects, the name is definitely appropriate as is the background with stylized writing and well chosen header pictures with well chosen quotes. Indeed he does live in words and writing is like breathing to him. The picture of a comic lion with a pen also goes well with his pen name ‘Leo’. The light yellow shades of the background are representative of his finer shade of writing unlike stronger colors that go more with much more intense and loudly passionate writings. The interaction is pretty decent. Navigation has scope for improvement. The sidebar links to his favorite poems and stories makes it easy to find the best works. But I am unable to find any way to locate posts by type say love poems or nature poems. The archives are a very tough way of finding something from over a thousand posts. Also some kind of random post widget can also help readers randomly sample works. I find the widget giving traffic by country totally useless and suggest removing the same.
In terms of content, the poems and stories are mostly on softer topics dealing with emotions handled with high amount of sensitivity. Nature, love beauty, dreams and passion are recurring themes in many of the works. I am tempted to suggest diversifying into a wider range of topics. But then people have their specialties. After all you can’t ask Shakespeare to write detective fiction or Arthur Conan Doyle to write plays. However I find his stories pretty good and would definitely suggest writing many more stories especially ones having some mythological connections. As far as the poetry goes, I recommend adding a note giving some context/ explanation as blog readers have low attention span and may not spend too much time doing critical analysis of poetry. So some amount of spoon feeding is in order.
Overall this blog is a treat for those who appreciate poetry and lyrical fiction. Find presented below 5 posts selected by the blogger to give the readers a preview before deciding to launch into the entire ocean of his writings.
Veilleuse
Envy of Mornings
Why should I not smile when I believe in me
On Heart's Papers
The Journey
The above passage is from Cheiro’s ‘Language of the Hand’ describing a particular type of hand known as the psychic hand. I find this description fits the writings on the blog ‘I rhyme without reason’ more than anything I can possibly say.The writings are sensitive and gentle like an early morning breeze. The writings remind me of the old Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Keats. Of course I am not suggesting he has reached their level. But the potential is definitely there. But for this type of writer, the writings must necessarily come from the heart and only his heart can tell him how to reach the next level. Visiting more scenic places and reading more from similar kind of writers can help the process. One suggestion I have is to avoid frivolous prompts. They can adulterate the purity of the writing of this kind of writer.
Coming to the more mundane practical aspects, the name is definitely appropriate as is the background with stylized writing and well chosen header pictures with well chosen quotes. Indeed he does live in words and writing is like breathing to him. The picture of a comic lion with a pen also goes well with his pen name ‘Leo’. The light yellow shades of the background are representative of his finer shade of writing unlike stronger colors that go more with much more intense and loudly passionate writings. The interaction is pretty decent. Navigation has scope for improvement. The sidebar links to his favorite poems and stories makes it easy to find the best works. But I am unable to find any way to locate posts by type say love poems or nature poems. The archives are a very tough way of finding something from over a thousand posts. Also some kind of random post widget can also help readers randomly sample works. I find the widget giving traffic by country totally useless and suggest removing the same.
In terms of content, the poems and stories are mostly on softer topics dealing with emotions handled with high amount of sensitivity. Nature, love beauty, dreams and passion are recurring themes in many of the works. I am tempted to suggest diversifying into a wider range of topics. But then people have their specialties. After all you can’t ask Shakespeare to write detective fiction or Arthur Conan Doyle to write plays. However I find his stories pretty good and would definitely suggest writing many more stories especially ones having some mythological connections. As far as the poetry goes, I recommend adding a note giving some context/ explanation as blog readers have low attention span and may not spend too much time doing critical analysis of poetry. So some amount of spoon feeding is in order.
Overall this blog is a treat for those who appreciate poetry and lyrical fiction. Find presented below 5 posts selected by the blogger to give the readers a preview before deciding to launch into the entire ocean of his writings.
Veilleuse
Envy of Mornings
Why should I not smile when I believe in me
On Heart's Papers
The Journey
5 comments:
That first paragraph was a complete bouncer tf!!!
I visit Leo's blog sometimes and do try to understand poems. But I seldom comment as my understanding and knowledge of poems is not much.
@DS - Actually what I was trying to say is a bit difficult to put in words. So I thought I will quite Cheiro instead of saying it myself. But seems like he is also not able to do a much better job.
His was the first 'creative writing' blog I started to really and truly follow. "Why should I not smile when I believe in me" has always been a favourite of mine...along with "To Falter".
Leo indeed is a wonderful poet though a bit over the head for some readers.
Firstly, my apologies for the delay in reaching here. Both net and power has eluded me these past two days.
Thank you TF for the wonderful review. I did follow that quote of Cheiro to an extent, it didn't go over my head completely :) I think the title of my blog pretty much says what it is about, what my heart says too.
As I said on the Indithread, which I could access from mobile, points duly noted. I'd add a random posts widget if I could, but WP.com doesn't support Javascript widgets so that is at present out of the question. I'll categorize into Nature, Love etc. though. I've over 1400 posts to do, but I will do it for sure.
Regards that country visitors thingy, that's just for me. It gives me a little joy knowing ppl are coming from so many places, esp since Google Analytics is not supported.
I am going to be lessening my frequency of writing (except for 3 or 4 months of challenge), and except my own Haiku meme, The Haiku Heights, I am not going to be writing for any prompt sites. And yes, more stories too hopefully.
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