11-02-2014, 05:00 AM
This is such a poignant poem, and quite personal to me as these are the students I teach, when they near the end of their high school days and someone suddenly realises that the world has failed to make them part of it.
As the poem moves on you place greater emphasis on rhyme, both internal and end-rhyme, which helps create a quickening -- this comes to an abrupt end with your rhetorical question, which is not my favourite way to end a poem, but it does work here. I'd love to see a small reference to numbers or maths dropped in a little earlier to link to "count". Personally I'd be tempted to put a colon after "spit" and change the last line to a statement, such as "that counts for something".
I'd stick a comma at the end of L2 and remove the one at the end of L9.
Excellent use of the word "backward", blending image and concept together perfectly. Nicely done, Ray.
As the poem moves on you place greater emphasis on rhyme, both internal and end-rhyme, which helps create a quickening -- this comes to an abrupt end with your rhetorical question, which is not my favourite way to end a poem, but it does work here. I'd love to see a small reference to numbers or maths dropped in a little earlier to link to "count". Personally I'd be tempted to put a colon after "spit" and change the last line to a statement, such as "that counts for something".
I'd stick a comma at the end of L2 and remove the one at the end of L9.
Excellent use of the word "backward", blending image and concept together perfectly. Nicely done, Ray.
It could be worse