01-09-2016, 04:22 AM
Hi
This poem is rather aggressive in the writing, which I think works well with the aggressiveness of the panic. I like the ambiguity of the ending, "Dear God, where it all breaks down." The reader doesn't know if there was a meltdown or if an innocent family member was struck in the head, or what exactly the situation is. Maybe there really was someone in the dark and now he is going to kill her. One thing perhaps to note is that I as a reader do not feel anything for the narrator. A topic such as this has the potential for emotional appeal. Using first person narration would have more of an effect in that regard. Most interesting to me was the lead up to the ending. I do really like your ending. I have an issue with the title. It jars with me and doesn't seem quite right. True the subject in the poem isn't really living due to the state of fear and paranoia, but maybe there is a better way of phrasing it.
This poem is rather aggressive in the writing, which I think works well with the aggressiveness of the panic. I like the ambiguity of the ending, "Dear God, where it all breaks down." The reader doesn't know if there was a meltdown or if an innocent family member was struck in the head, or what exactly the situation is. Maybe there really was someone in the dark and now he is going to kill her. One thing perhaps to note is that I as a reader do not feel anything for the narrator. A topic such as this has the potential for emotional appeal. Using first person narration would have more of an effect in that regard. Most interesting to me was the lead up to the ending. I do really like your ending. I have an issue with the title. It jars with me and doesn't seem quite right. True the subject in the poem isn't really living due to the state of fear and paranoia, but maybe there is a better way of phrasing it.
(01-06-2016, 07:59 AM)crow Wrote: Shades of the Never Living
There's panic in your night gown (Something is a little award to me in the construction of the first stanza. I have a hard time putting my finger on it. I think it is that she wakes up in a state of panic already. It seems like there would need to be a moment for that to set in, especially if the subject was in the middle of a passionate dream.)
when you wake. Did something wake you?
Maybe just, it was, that one spider
everyone is supposed to eat
in their sleep per annum.
Lustful, vengeful, reckless, a passionate dream still ruddy upon your cheeks,
you shout, "If there's ! ! ! "
Then squelch yourself, fast.
What to grab?
Suddenly it's a clock radio you've taken into your hands,
mostly to stuff its light into your belly,
fool to think a man (could it *be* a female thief?)
would have any trouble divining her in bed . . .
You. You in bed.
Could make for a weapon though . . .
Suddenly frenetic, with no escape to safety possible,
you charge into the kitchen with your clock radio
and actually cry, "Hi-ya!" when you pitch it
into the empty dark,
where it all breaks down.
Dear God, where it all breaks down. (By the end this is a little scary and that is good for your poem).
"Write while the heat is in you...The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with." --Henry David Thoreau