Okay, so in Poetry Composition today my verbiage was torn apart and I was told that focusing on abstractions only says that I waver with the absolute horror that I'm going to be misunderstood.

It was an interesting class. We workshopped my poem "flush." I was told that an image can give you all that you need for a poem. And that in this particular instance, my responsibility is to the snail. She made me write that down and underline it. And she screamed, "STOP!" and waved her arms violently when I went to explain that it was about confessing - ...and she said that I could hint, but I was never allowed to tell. Because your reader will NEVER understand you the way you want to be understood, which is why the aim of poetry is to convey the reader to the reader, and not the artist to the reader. (Which I happen to have said before...) I dunno. It was a poem I had submitted because I knew it needed a lot of work.

So, that said, here's the original, and then where I'm at with it so far:

flush

a snail discovered
midst repose
in its shell.

truth doesn't let
sad, small things
posess their dreams.

each moment
of soft hopes snatched
by that rush of tide,

and broken:
thrust upon
reality's shoals.

the waves
will never care.

birds peck at, eat
the remains of what
they cannot understand.


flush 2.0

a snail discovered
midst repose
in its shell,

curls so unassuming
between cobble and
cobble and
cobble.

it shivers
in the descent-gallop
of a careless wave.

snatched asleep;
how clear, but silent
an eggshell fortress
succumbs

to the unwhim
of water and insistent
rock.

after wet retreating -
on sunburnt stones -

birds peck at, eat
the remains of what
they cannot understand.


Which do you think works better? Why?