09-05-2013, 12:42 AM
Evan,
This appears to be in a Modernist style (Imagism), however there are a number of grammatical and syntactical problems that obfuscate your meaning. I will use your first two sentences as examples of problems that seem to pervade the poem.
The first sentence is a sentence fragment:
"Within the cool night air, biting into the wind."
At best it is merely disruptive as the reader has to pause and ask, What is "biting into the wind?"
At worst it is non-nonsensical.
The next sentence suffers from lack of clarity due to being overly complex, and containing a number of redundancies.
"Shuddering, droplets gathering strength as they're falling from the sky, driven into the weathered concrete and pelting into my back
when I'm in its way."
Simple present tense would work much better here.
"Shuddering droplets gather strength as they fall from the sky, driving into weathered concrete and pelting my back.
"into" is superfluous, and "when I'm in its way", is redundant and overly obvious.
These are very common problems when people write in the "poetic form", i.e. short lines, instead of writing a sentence out long-wise. If we write sentences out as we would in prose, any problem with a line becomes much easier to see. Afterwards it can be put back into the shorter lines, of course it is a good idea to have a rationale for where to break the line, but that is another topic
Dale
This appears to be in a Modernist style (Imagism), however there are a number of grammatical and syntactical problems that obfuscate your meaning. I will use your first two sentences as examples of problems that seem to pervade the poem.
The first sentence is a sentence fragment:
"Within the cool night air, biting into the wind."
At best it is merely disruptive as the reader has to pause and ask, What is "biting into the wind?"
At worst it is non-nonsensical.
The next sentence suffers from lack of clarity due to being overly complex, and containing a number of redundancies.
"Shuddering, droplets gathering strength as they're falling from the sky, driven into the weathered concrete and pelting into my back
when I'm in its way."
Simple present tense would work much better here.
"Shuddering droplets gather strength as they fall from the sky, driving into weathered concrete and pelting my back.
"into" is superfluous, and "when I'm in its way", is redundant and overly obvious.
These are very common problems when people write in the "poetic form", i.e. short lines, instead of writing a sentence out long-wise. If we write sentences out as we would in prose, any problem with a line becomes much easier to see. Afterwards it can be put back into the shorter lines, of course it is a good idea to have a rationale for where to break the line, but that is another topic
Dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.