Bad Hips

[ing4]

i come from a family of bad hips             we carry our weight in our walk

our legs at bad angles          my father simplified by his pain

on the stairs his back hunches             he sleeps with deliberate motions

on the farm he used to dig the fastest             the shovel his whole self

it was a way to survive               like stealing blackberries in the heat it was a way

lips smeared purple his tongue showed            when it finally rained he caught it mouthfirst

[Richard]

Hey ing4,
I like a lot of what you're doing here. I like how you experimented with the structure of the poem. I get the feeling it's presented in a disjointed pattern to mirror the idea of bad hips. I'll go into more detail below:

i come from a family of bad hips             we carry our weight in our walk -I keep wanting to combine the two lines on the left to read: "I come from a family of bad angles". I feel like if your title is going to be "bad hips," you don't need to say it again in the poem.

our legs at bad angles          my father simplified by his pain -This is where the lack of punctuation got to me. A colon here would have made me realize the next two lines expand on this. It took a few readings for me to realize this.

on the stairs his back hunches             he sleeps with deliberate motions -What would a deliberate motion look like here? I feel like you could go into more detail, or use a more specific image.

on the farm he used to dig the fastest             the shovel his whole self -I like the double meaning here. That this could mean he shoveled it all by himself or there was a oneness with the shovel.

it was a way to survive               like stealing blackberries in the heat it was a way

lips smeared purple his tongue showed            when it finally rained he caught it mouthfirst -I like how you describe the image here with the blackberries. The last line has a nice double meaning because it relates to the blackberries image and how rain probably aggravates bad hips. 

I think this is a nice first draft, and I look forward to seeing where you take this from here.

Thanks for the read,
Richard

[ing4]

Hi Richard,

Thanks so much for the comments! I like your suggestion of changing the first line, and I will also play around a bit with the punctuation and maybe further specifying/clarifying the "deliberate motions" image.

Thanks again,
ing4

[Knot]

.
Hi ing4,
lots to like here, especially the first line, so change the title.
I want to suggest 'Disjointed' but ...

S1 - Excellent verse.  The second 'bad' could be replaced by 'all', I think.


S2 - it feels like you need a one more example, to fit between 'hunches' and 'motions'.
The switch to the 'farm' comes too fast.

S3 - this is the weakest verse (except for the ending). Repetition of 'way' and nothing to do with 'bad hips'.
You could end on 'his whole self' (though I'd want to add something like, 'he worked himself to this/he
worked his whole life for this'), but I think you're left with the problem of where's the rest of the family?


Best, Knot.






.

[ing4]

Hi Knot,

Thanks so much for the comments! I think you're right about the switch to the "farm" being too fast -- I'll play around and see about adding some more before that. And yes, S3 felt off to me too. I wanted to open up the poem a bit beyond the hips, but maybe I do need to keep it more closely tied to that image for it to work. I'll experiment with that more.

Best,
ing4

[churinga]

i come from a family of bad hips
we carry our weight in our walk
our legs at bad angles
'bad angles' i'ts crying out for an image here, the repetition of 'bad', a weak word in the context, is not 'good'.

my father simplified by his pain
on the stairs his back hunches
he sleeps with deliberate motions

on the farm he used to dig the fastest
the shovel his whole self
it was a way to survive

like stealing blackberries in the heat (it was a way) you could omit this, I know the repetition as with bad is deliberate but grammatically it feels awkward and I don't think it helps.
lips smeared purple his tongue showed
when it finally rained he caught it mouthfirst
For me it falls by subject matter into triplets. I would use punctuation, it helps the understanding. I think the layout is unnecessary, it is a poem not a painting.

I liked it. Especially 'the shovel his whole self'. You deal unsentimentally with memories yet create sentiment. I would change the title to something better than 'bad hips'

best wishes
Ross