My Hand Knows the Way to the Blade

[DonMar]

No worries, Leanne. Good idea to leave the posts as excellent examples of how not to critique - or behave in general.

Thank you for your observations, which I've taken on board. With your feedback and Sandra's, I'm getting a clearer idea as to how I can reshape the poem. I've responded below in blue.

Donna

.

Milo needs a little lie down. Donna, many thanks to you for your exceptional tolerance in this thread (and to Sandra also, for being a voice of reason). I was going to remove some of those comments, but they may serve as an example of how a thread can so easily be derailed in Serious Workshopping, when the commenter's mind is not on track.

Now, to the poem.

An ice-floe to my lava,
you froze fire at its source,
crushed an upright spirit,
defiled my dreams, and worse. -- these two lines do bring in some pretty big abstractions and they're ones I think you're probably better off avoiding altogether. I agree. Will re-think these lines, either delete or replace. On a different note, source/worse is a near rhyme in my accent and I don't know if it is in yours, but to my ear it sounds out of place. Nothing wrong with near rhymes, but you don't appear to use them anywhere else. Yes, I was going for the near rhyme, but will look again at these lines in the context of the rest of the piece.

Clumsily I ricocheted
from pillory to post,
accused of things I hadn’t done,
and oh, that hurt the most. -- this is a great stanza. It moves along quickly with good rhythm and "pillory to post" is a solid idea.

But in that muddled mayhem,
I resolved to find an Amen,
a 'so be it' for my ragged, jagged plan. -- nice change-up here but I have to say "Amen" strangely to fit it into the scheme, which would really only work if there were music accompanying it in a country-western kind of way -- and even then it would still jar to me, but probably not to millions of others. I was going for the long 'a' in 'Amen' ('AYmen'), which would rhyme with 'mayhem'. Were you hearing it as 'AWmen'? I've never been overly fond of line 1 in this stanza, so may well look again at lines 1 & 2.

Now a word to the wise,
and damn your eyes, -- two lines of cliche, which will work fine in said country-western song but on paper they stick out like... well, you know Okey-doke. I get that. I'll definitely re-visit those lines.
you'll wish I hadn’t stayed;
for the knife is restless
in the drawer, and my hand
knows the way to the blade. -- these four lines are good though -- this makes a strong close

© Donna Devine