It's True, The Earth Is Flat edit 1 (Tiger, Tom, Achebe)

[heslopian]

I didn't read Dale's poem before writing this critique because I think that if a poem's good it'll stand on its own. I did enjoy this one, it has an elegance to the rhythm which makes for a surprisingly subtle-if-straightforward rhyme scheme, which is probably a lot more obvious when read aloud.

It's True, The Earth Is Flat (a response to Dale's Fresh and Young)


I hear your pleas to start again,
your longing to reclaim youth's yang, - Evoking the "ying/yang" concept is an interesting move. It almost seems to suggest that an old person is an entirely different human being to his younger self, as if youth falls on one side, age the other, and an impassable barrier lies between.
to wear again the supple skin - The literalism and use of "supple", alliteratively with "skin", makes this line chilling.
as if life were a boomerang. - I think that the extent of the rhyme between "boomerang" and "yang" might depend a little on accent. Not a criticism, just an observation.

Am I the only one who feels
one lifetime has been quite enough,
whose fractured soul still quakes and reels
at images so sharp, so tough
to comprehend as human cries
ring out to heavens born of dreams, - These three lines are the only ones which really trip me up in the whole piece. I think would have phrased them like so:

at images so sharp, so tough
to comprehend, as human cries
ring out, born of dreams

This is based more on my idiosyncratic sense of rhythm as opposed to a strict observation of meter, though, so I don't know if you want to take that advice seriously. I think what trips me is that the pause after "sharp" isn't reflected in the next two lines, so you have a short clause followed by a really long one, which trips (at least my) comprehension.
who's had their fill of truth, of lies
and soured on unending schemes? - I don't know if it's intentional, but I really like the correlation with "unending screams", which feels like the more obvious, cliched phrasing.

I wonder if I'll feel the same
the day I'm stepping off this plane.

Thank you for the read, ellajam