12-13-2014, 04:58 AM
YES, YES, YES! A huge thanks to all of you--I've been really wanting this piece to be torn apart because I felt there was a kernel of a good idea in it but that the execution was somehow embarrassing in a way I couldn't define. Plus, you all made me laugh with your comments. I had difficulty expressing my main idea, and it's now extremely obvious that it's not coming through in the slightest. So the problems include an excess of SAT words, heavy adjectives, lack of imagery, annoyingly intentional vagueness, and a desperate need to sound intellectual or poetic, among other things. This was a poem I wrote a while back when I believed that poetry was meant to be "vague" (nowadays, I don't think it's necessarily meant to be vague, but that still seems to be the case when I'm reading poetry, as the meanings are always ambiguous to me).
Perhaps there are elements in this piece that I can repurpose, but I will probably end up doing a complete overhaul. Crow, I liked your comment about anticipating a "showdown" structure, "with an attack levied and a defense raised." "The Cold Ones" refers to asexuals, as in people with no sexual appetites, not beings capable of independent reproduction. I was definitely too in love with the food/sex metaphor in this draft, so much so that I seemed to have forgotten to provide any argument actually defending asexuality. A better structure for this poem would be presenting common criticisms of asexuality and then providing the counterpoint, as Crow suggested. I will probably start the poem with "Asexual" or "Asexuality," or at least define the term directly somewhere and relate it to "The Cold Ones." I really don't want there to be any ambiguity as to the subject matter. Let me know if you have any additional advice on revisions, given this explanation.
Perhaps there are elements in this piece that I can repurpose, but I will probably end up doing a complete overhaul. Crow, I liked your comment about anticipating a "showdown" structure, "with an attack levied and a defense raised." "The Cold Ones" refers to asexuals, as in people with no sexual appetites, not beings capable of independent reproduction. I was definitely too in love with the food/sex metaphor in this draft, so much so that I seemed to have forgotten to provide any argument actually defending asexuality. A better structure for this poem would be presenting common criticisms of asexuality and then providing the counterpoint, as Crow suggested. I will probably start the poem with "Asexual" or "Asexuality," or at least define the term directly somewhere and relate it to "The Cold Ones." I really don't want there to be any ambiguity as to the subject matter. Let me know if you have any additional advice on revisions, given this explanation.