12-11-2015, 12:39 PM
I think I get what you are trying to do, but, as others have noted, the poem starts off awkward and only partially recovers.
The piece is so imagistic i wonder why you insist on full sentences. Virtually nothing is happening, so why use so many verbs and conjunctions? It seems to me that the whole thing could be stripped down quite a bit and become a lot more effective.
Outside of the first stanza, a couple problem areas for me were the phrase “rural cabin” in the second stanza and the last line of stanza three, both seem out of place, the first a little trite, the second overly dramatic.
The big problem, though, is the first stanza. When I read it I was ready and willing to write off the whole rest of the poem, and I kind of did until I read a couple responses and saw what else was going on. It doesn’t sound over the top, it sounds bad. It sounds like you are trying too hard, it sounds overwrought to the extreme (some good phrases though, I like “radiated in the atrophy”). That effect fades as the poem progresses. As I said, I get what you are trying to do, and I like it, which is why I’m writing this, it seems like a worthwhile concept, there’s just got to be a better way to get the reduction-of-the-world-as-sun-sets effect without starting with bad poetry and transitioning to good.
The piece is so imagistic i wonder why you insist on full sentences. Virtually nothing is happening, so why use so many verbs and conjunctions? It seems to me that the whole thing could be stripped down quite a bit and become a lot more effective.
Outside of the first stanza, a couple problem areas for me were the phrase “rural cabin” in the second stanza and the last line of stanza three, both seem out of place, the first a little trite, the second overly dramatic.
The big problem, though, is the first stanza. When I read it I was ready and willing to write off the whole rest of the poem, and I kind of did until I read a couple responses and saw what else was going on. It doesn’t sound over the top, it sounds bad. It sounds like you are trying too hard, it sounds overwrought to the extreme (some good phrases though, I like “radiated in the atrophy”). That effect fades as the poem progresses. As I said, I get what you are trying to do, and I like it, which is why I’m writing this, it seems like a worthwhile concept, there’s just got to be a better way to get the reduction-of-the-world-as-sun-sets effect without starting with bad poetry and transitioning to good.