I'd be overestimating my friends and family or myself if I felt the need to contribute something original to this thread but I'm never one to leave untaken any opportunity to viciously eviscerate hopeful, daring, or ambitious new writers. However your sentence is fine; any way I could critique it would be arbitrary, wherefore the resulting critique should only be used to look at your phrase from a different point of view and not be followed. With that in mind:

You make a modernly worded start: Her eyes were iceberg blue,. The fact that you compare her eye colour to icebergs rather than, say, sapphires comes across as jesting, not the least because most readers would never have seen an iceberg. The reason why one would go into eye colours ordinarily is romance, but unless iceberg blue eyes are the new rose red lips this would have to be a parodic romance. It seems likelier in this case that the eyes are involved to suggest particular character traits, especially innocence and youth. For some reason one never hears a nonagenarian described by the colour of their eyes––or lips for that matter––,which is a shame because If you did you would quite ironically hear that their lips are blue and their eyes red.

Anyhow onto the next: illuminated softly. Suddenly after this ice cold fresh and modern––and Germanic I might add––start we delve into the warm depths of Romanic origins in our encounter with 'illuminated'. It appears to be standing there so proudly in the middle of the sentence as if it's just usurped his evil little brother 'lit' who has been forced to trade his hometown for a cave after his wife was turned into a pillar of sult.

(Sorry, it's the time of night when I find these things unspeakably funny.)

As I was saying, the soft view that we are asked to take of this girl delineates a soft character. It shouldn't be this way, but it is; at least in my mind, I couldn't imagine Hitler in soft light for instance. This may be what you're after however, so time to move on.

by the midnight moon. Moons are fine; you can have early moons in the 1940s in China, late moons 440 BC, but midnight moons are restricted to gothic graveyards behind castles in Eastern Europe between 1896 and 1898 and your last name is Stoker. Also doesn't midnight moonlight tend to be harsher than early and late moonlight? (My personal record of nitpicking I'm sure but soft illumination may fit better with low moons.)

At risk of sounding even more like the kind of person you would take pleasure in strangling I'd like to suggest moving the blue bit to the end of the sentence. It's easier to imagine the effect of blue eyes shimmering in the dark knowing in advance of seeing the eyes that it is dark. That is because unless you tell me that it is dark I'm going to assume that it is not dark when you tell me about the eyes. So if you tell me about the eyes first and then about the darkness my imagination depicts first a bright scene with bright blue eyes and then a dark scene with rather disappointing blue eyes whereas the other way round I assume the darkness first before there appear two softly blue eyes. Either way I have trouble imagining them as iceberg blue in the dark, though. Maybe that description is best reserved for situations in which bright light can actually show the iceberg-blueness of the eyes so that it is more than just this random fact floating around that is nice knowing but which we don't have to imagine right now.

Softly lit by an early moon were her eyes that were also blue. This is what my personal and unjustifiably ill-supported preference would amount to. I hope it can be only half as helpful as it undoubtedly is offensive.

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The opposite of hatred is love; the opposite of tyranny is love; the opposite of censorship is love; the opposite of evil is love; the opposite of politics is love; the opposite of war is love; the opposite of god is love.–– Salman Rushdie
Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. –Bertrand Russell
Never believe a liar. Papa, angry people burn our home.

Very hard a critic you were U. Did´nt you, perhaps, were withering a writer´s call?

Your alternative does lack poetry. Maybe icebergs are not blue at all, but who cares?

The important thing is the picture, not the words. If you can convey the former the latter are trivial,

"Her eyes were iceberg blue, illuminated softly by the midnight moon."

To me the beginning phrase doesn't go with the second phrase. There is something jarring about it. Personally it is hard for me to imagine iceberg eyes of any color being softly illuminated. I think of ice, coldness and the color white. I guess it is the image of an iceberg that comes to mind, not eyes. When I think of ice bergs, I think of a looming mass of white ice...I guess I just can't get beyond the ice to warm up to the second part of the sentence.

I also have a hard time with the two pieces of the sentence.

No problem with the ice-berg blue...but that particular blue is a light, almost phosphorescent colour. As a blue iceberg is cold, sharp, glittering I'm getting an image of cold eyes (especially that creepy light blue iceberg colour which I always associate with serial killers or Nazi torturers!)

So, for me, the next part simply jars: illuminated softly by the midnight moon is, as someone said, a romantic phrase and its hard for me to imagine that the soft light of that moon would do anything at all to those (imagined) pale, glittering (serial-killer) eyes.

When I think of "iceberg blue" eyes, I think of the White Witch in C.S. Lewis's Narnia tales (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) who holds Narnia under an eternal winter without Christmas or Spring or Summer...In the film the White Witch was portrayed really good. Exactly how imagine iceberg eyes and the type of person who has them.

Her eyes were iceberg blue, illuminated softly by the midnight moon.


Her iceberg blue eyes were softly illuminated by the midnight moon.


I do think of cold hard eyes when I see 'iceberg.'


peace out, >^,,^<

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The poor object to being governed badly, whilst the rich object to being governed at all. G.K. Chesterton

My eyes are dark green-grey-blue, so dark the girls thought they were black or dark brown when I was young and rock&rolling in the discotheques ;-)

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Oh, those disco times, sigh!

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Beautiful eyes indeed. Sorry, but tend to think of livor... when in the wavelength of blueish shades -not that there are signs of any purplish red discoloration of the skin, which would not show in the eyes. I know, but...

An icy blue picture of Finnish winter by Kari Liimatainen:

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Does anyone else have any written work they would like critiqued? Here's your chance to grow as a writer.

Maybe someone can explain a "peach/golden moment" just before the sun goes down. Here's some inspiration:

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You cannot reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into. Jonathan Swift

BTW, just looked outside, and the sunset here is quite peachy. (Not offering this sentence for critique. Just an observation.)

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"What is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

I think wercozy is seeing ghosts. Due to the laws of geometrical optics a reflection of the helicopter should be right beneath the camera, but that part of the water is outside the picture. It also can't be a shade of the helicopter because the sunlight is comming from behind the surfer. Even if you would be able to see a reflection of the helicopter the reflection of the rotorblades should be above the helicopter and can never be on the right- or leftside of it. The only thing I see is a reflection of a monster just infront of the surfer!


Diagram of specular reflection

If you turn the diagram 90 degrees clockwise the mirror is the horizontal surface of the water. "P" the position of the helicopter + camera and "Q" the position where the reflection can be seen. Only if the surface of the water would be tilted in such a way that it is in an angle of 90 degrees to the sightline of the camera it is posible that the camera can see the reflection of the helicopter. Maybe the surface of the big wave is in that tilted position, but the curved form of a wave will disturb the image.

Nooo... need no glasses, have more than a pair of them. Maybe need more fantasy?

Wercozy, I've been a light engineer and light designer for 25 years. So don't try to fool me with reflections that are not there and than telling me that my eye is untrained or that I need glasses.
If you want to proof your superiority above us, find a better way to do so.
Bye

A woman, wife, mother, my friend

Joanne asks for a miracle as others ask why

Helpless as this life meets a sudden end

In a room with her love, a man once so strong

Keeps her bright smile as she comforts others

"I love you", Jo says, the words still belong

He speaks them himself, in a whisper for her

They kiss on the lips, a love not lost, nor ended

Joanne tells Bill to get rest and remember

"I'll be back tomorrow ", as he drifts off to sleep

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Not alone, nor am I present

To Alias:

In your poem, I don't understand the second verse about the helicopter. I'm not sure how you are tying to tie it into the first verse of your the poem in which the surfer who went out for a surf, or its meaning in the last verse. In your last verse, I don't understand how a surfer is taking a picture--the shark being just out of shot. I guess I just don't understand the meaning of the helicopter and and taking a picture.

Are you trying to say you didn't see the danger because of your limited perspective? You didn't look at the big picture, only what was in front of you?

I think it could still be a good poem if you chose to leave the above out. But you should get more opinions from others who might have a better understanding and sense for poetry. Ruth P. is good at understanding things. Maybe she will voice an opinion.