"Dreams in A Village" Freeverse inspirited by "Starry Night"

[BlitzZ]

I have no idea how to format this and it still is in progress, but whatever. It is for my 8th grade English poetry unit. Our "inspiration" was the painting "Starry Night" by Van Gough.

Dreams in A Village
By Zephyr

From a distant vantage point a village is spot,
Quiet, bathing under the glorious soft light of the stars,
A town silently dreams.

The surreal night brings back recollections of nights long past,
Dreams now gone,
Opportunities not seized.

Stars twinkling like a child's eyes,
soon give way to morning's first light.
As old must die before the new can be born.

Soon the villagers will begin to wake,
oblivious to the beauty they have missed,
But by then I will be far gone,
for my journey has just began.

--
Meh....Kinda crappy, just pointless rambling. If anyone can help my improve it you will be in my debt. One day I hope to aspire to flowing powerful-ness of Saiels prose and poetry. Oh, I also need to explicate a free verse poem so if any of you let my borrow one (credit will be given.) I will be so grateful.

[GundamFreakX]

I'm guessing you've probably heard this a thousand time from a thousand people before, but let me tell you it so you can be sure that I am the one thousand and first person to agree with them. It's YOUR poetry! WHat you do with it is what you do with it, and nothing nor no one can change your work. There, I said it before anyone...

As for grammar correction...nah, I'm just kidding. It's a really good wor, though. I almost forgot what Starry Night was, actually. Then, I read this, and it came to mind. No lying.

[Saiel]

(I'm so honored to be mentioned as a potential positive influence, that I just had to get my thoughts out. :) )

First off--this is for your eighth grade assignment? I'm shocked--this is well beyond what one would expect from someone your age. I can't wait to see what you're putting out in a few years, I'm sure it will be very impressive.

Now for the poem itself--I've always loved the idea of using art and artists as inspirations for poetry. The two just complement each other extremely well. It's nice that you're not just describing the painting but have sort of made a narrative out of it by using the first person "I" at the end. It might be fun to explore the narrative even further, have more specific details--like what is the name of the village? (Something Dutch, I'd assume?) Why has the "I" passed this village on this night? Why is the sky so surreal, is something happening at that exact moment? The more specific you can get, the more enraptured your audience. And sometimes it's just fun to play with.

You also have some really great slant rhymes in here that are so subtle they're almost enjambed..."dreams" and "seized," "eyes" and "light," "gone" and "begun" (if you change 'began' to 'begun,' which I think is what it should be.) I love that you didn't fall into the trap of a set rhyme scheme that ends up sounding forced or limmerick-y. This has a nice sound and flow. Maybe just be careful about line length--they don't all have to be uniform, but having one really long line like "The surreal night brings back recollections of nights long past" sort of breaks up the poem and makes it awkward when reading that specific area. That can easily be fixed by using shorter words, like instead of 'recollections' something like 'images' or 'thoughts'.

I don't want to go on too long. But very nice. I'm sure your class will enjoy it as well.