01-15-2014, 09:11 AM
Chris, uncommon wording does not a poem make. I am unable to get past "overzealous dire-wolves". Yuck. You have an abstract adjective, further modified by being compounded to an abstract adverb, modifying a noun which is already over-modified, and rendered abstract, by its paring to an abstract adjective. Don't just do things with words, make the words do things. If you want to modify a noun, let another noun grab a verb and do something to it. In other words, the strongest modified nouns are objects of transitive verbs, and subjects with transitive verbs.
Here you have an entire stanza without a single verb! Is the comma in S1 an error? Is there supposed to be an "are" before "now"? It is grammatically, and otherwise, nonsensical; and it completely misses the point of what poetry is all about. In fact, you could write a poem with nothing but verbs, but you cannot write a poem without verbs!!!
Your reader, me, is reading to find out what happens. An experience occurs when something happens. By obscuring the action with over-modification, and worse, not supplying the necessary verbs at all, you are cheating your reader out of the experience. C'mon, Chris! Make something happen.
Quote:The ice bears careless hominids,
disabled mastodons
and overzealous dire-wolves,
now frozen TV-dinners
for sociopathic sharks
that have not yet evolved.
Here you have an entire stanza without a single verb! Is the comma in S1 an error? Is there supposed to be an "are" before "now"? It is grammatically, and otherwise, nonsensical; and it completely misses the point of what poetry is all about. In fact, you could write a poem with nothing but verbs, but you cannot write a poem without verbs!!!
Your reader, me, is reading to find out what happens. An experience occurs when something happens. By obscuring the action with over-modification, and worse, not supplying the necessary verbs at all, you are cheating your reader out of the experience. C'mon, Chris! Make something happen.