06-16-2013, 02:26 PM
Hi bonevile
Me too! It's a welcome break from my physics, to say the least. Anyway... I mostly want to comment on S4, but I'd generally advise (for what it's worth) to get rid of everything after S3, though I found “or a sentence without a period” funny, given the lack of punctuation (I assume this humor was intentional?). I'll leave the language alone, except to obviously point out that you're not very consistent with your “I”s. Generally, you should watch for clichés. Here's what I see in the first 3 stanzas: read by millions, without a clue, penny in my pocket, paint the town, in the mud, I want you to hold my hand (though I appreciate the inadvertent Beatles reference), and wings in flight. Also, watch for forced rhymes: how do the voices of ancestors strengthen the hue? They don't: hue just rhymes with clue. Ok, now a rant on S4.
Why, in the middle of a poem about poetry, am I suddenly thrust into a discourse (if it can be called that) on American race relations? Nothing wrong with a poem about race, but the way it's introduced makes me think you've only done so to get a shock out of the readers (mission accomplished, I suppose). As to the substance... there isn't any!, just some talking points that have been bandied about over the last, what, 20, 30, 50 years? This isn't a criticism of you, the poet, but of the poem, which suffers from a case of cliché overload. Alright, think I'll stop it there. Anyway, hope it's helpful...
p&p
Quote:I want to be a poet
Me too! It's a welcome break from my physics, to say the least. Anyway... I mostly want to comment on S4, but I'd generally advise (for what it's worth) to get rid of everything after S3, though I found “or a sentence without a period” funny, given the lack of punctuation (I assume this humor was intentional?). I'll leave the language alone, except to obviously point out that you're not very consistent with your “I”s. Generally, you should watch for clichés. Here's what I see in the first 3 stanzas: read by millions, without a clue, penny in my pocket, paint the town, in the mud, I want you to hold my hand (though I appreciate the inadvertent Beatles reference), and wings in flight. Also, watch for forced rhymes: how do the voices of ancestors strengthen the hue? They don't: hue just rhymes with clue. Ok, now a rant on S4.
Why, in the middle of a poem about poetry, am I suddenly thrust into a discourse (if it can be called that) on American race relations? Nothing wrong with a poem about race, but the way it's introduced makes me think you've only done so to get a shock out of the readers (mission accomplished, I suppose). As to the substance... there isn't any!, just some talking points that have been bandied about over the last, what, 20, 30, 50 years? This isn't a criticism of you, the poet, but of the poem, which suffers from a case of cliché overload. Alright, think I'll stop it there. Anyway, hope it's helpful...
p&p