01-10-2016, 07:57 AM
(01-07-2016, 11:52 AM)Apache Wrote: The dark and oily blood of dinosaurs .... I pointed out in an earlier crit how petroleum does not come from dinosaurs. This is a glaring mistake that spoils all that comes after it.
coagulates remote in desert bores ... solidifies? it remains a liquid.
suckled by the gnattish maws of platforms. .... this line creates an impression of offshore oil rigs, which doesn't go well with 'desert bores'. Onshore platforms are quite unremarkable.
Pumped into the sky to burn, the warmth ..... this line is factually incorrect. gas is flared, not oil ("blood coagulated"). gas is a byproduct, but it can't be 'blood coagulated'.
of prehistoric heartbeats melts the ice ...I am confused as to whether you are talking about global warming, or oil fired generation somewhere up north. I'll assume the former, but I don't recall GW as bringing rain to the desert.
to water palm trees. Larva plump like rice ...nice line, underlined
in stagnant swamps. Mosquitoes, long and thin,
shake the air off of their wings in ecstasy. .. nice lines
The siren clout of dino-blood's temptation
draws them from the tropics. Led astray, ...don't quite get the connection here. the mosquitoes are not being drawn by dino blood, they are coming about as a result of global warming thawing the permafrost and creating stagnant pools of water all around (not quite how it works...), the thawing being made possible by dino blood. I don't see how it links back to the mozzies going out in search of dino blood.
bearing minuscule conquistadors:
protozoans wave their whip-like flags ...nice lines
and pray in chapels made of chitin.
Marooned where prey is bitten ...nice lines
by the insect's thirsty drilling,
history repeats
in miniature. ...It doesn't, because protozoans don't fossilise inside their victims
I wrote a crit earlier, but you didn't find it 'constructive' enough, so I replaced it with the version above.
The image you're trying to create is undermined by factual inaccuracy and glaringly false analogies.
On the other hand, some of the lines read quite well, so you've certainly got a knack for writing.
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe

