03-28-2016, 03:20 AM
I thought this started out strong, especially with the interweaving rhymes: hue, view, blue. However as the speaker moves into the factory things get a bit muddled. BY the way it is described, the "only entrance" it seems would have flooded the entire complex as:
"Marble floors, wet, turn to wide stairs down.
Deep it goes, down,
down, into large dark halls
filled with cold air, subtle smell of mothball." (gratuitous if not forced)
Wouldn't the water run down? And why the smell of mothballs? Oil or chemical smell I could understand, but mothballs, is this a clothing factory? It doesn't appear so.
"At the base dynamos sit dormant..."
What does a cloth factory need with dynamos. This speaks of heavy industry, not a clothing factory, in fact the whole image is out of balance. The entrance speaks more of an office building, yet in the deepest levels sits dynamos. Here the reader is given to understand that these are not small electric generators, but large monsters that produce power for large machines with a heavy power load.
And then there is the metronome:
"a mechanical or electrical instrument
that makes repeated clicking sounds at
an adjustable pace, used for marking rhythm,
especially in practicing music." (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/%20metronome?s=t)
Used them often myself, but why would one sit among dynamos?
This seems a very Edisonian world you are trying to capture, and I suppose one could stretch things and say there is a second level metaphor where the dynamos represent the great men of the industrial revolution: Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al.. A sort of "there be dragons here", but I don't really believe it, although if I tried really hard I'm sure I could extract such juxtaposed to the Prufrockian world of today. Yet, I don't believe that was the writer intent. It could have been, but it is not.
Anyway, back to the poem at hand.
"Marble floors, wet, turn to wide stairs down.
Deep it goes, down,
down, into large dark halls
filled with cold air, subtle smell of mothball."
The first line here is very elegant. L2 Maybe too many "downs". L3 could do without the "in" and just go with the "to". Both for cadence and simply because it is unnecessary. I would drop the mothballs, even if you mean it as a metaphor and go with subtle smells of... just give it a defined cadence something like "oils and rust announce that something greater's waiting there."
I keep wanting to re-write the part "large dark halls filled with cold air" to "large halls filled with cold dark air" I want to avoid the cliche of "dank", but still impart a quality to the air, which sets the tone much more so than do the halls.
Your rhymes and cadence are very good, maybe give it a little more depth, unless I am simply missing something. Well you can let me know.
dale
"Marble floors, wet, turn to wide stairs down.
Deep it goes, down,
down, into large dark halls
filled with cold air, subtle smell of mothball." (gratuitous if not forced)
Wouldn't the water run down? And why the smell of mothballs? Oil or chemical smell I could understand, but mothballs, is this a clothing factory? It doesn't appear so.
"At the base dynamos sit dormant..."
What does a cloth factory need with dynamos. This speaks of heavy industry, not a clothing factory, in fact the whole image is out of balance. The entrance speaks more of an office building, yet in the deepest levels sits dynamos. Here the reader is given to understand that these are not small electric generators, but large monsters that produce power for large machines with a heavy power load.
And then there is the metronome:
"a mechanical or electrical instrument
that makes repeated clicking sounds at
an adjustable pace, used for marking rhythm,
especially in practicing music." (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/%20metronome?s=t)
Used them often myself, but why would one sit among dynamos?
This seems a very Edisonian world you are trying to capture, and I suppose one could stretch things and say there is a second level metaphor where the dynamos represent the great men of the industrial revolution: Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al.. A sort of "there be dragons here", but I don't really believe it, although if I tried really hard I'm sure I could extract such juxtaposed to the Prufrockian world of today. Yet, I don't believe that was the writer intent. It could have been, but it is not.
Anyway, back to the poem at hand.
"Marble floors, wet, turn to wide stairs down.
Deep it goes, down,
down, into large dark halls
filled with cold air, subtle smell of mothball."
The first line here is very elegant. L2 Maybe too many "downs". L3 could do without the "in" and just go with the "to". Both for cadence and simply because it is unnecessary. I would drop the mothballs, even if you mean it as a metaphor and go with subtle smells of... just give it a defined cadence something like "oils and rust announce that something greater's waiting there."
I keep wanting to re-write the part "large dark halls filled with cold air" to "large halls filled with cold dark air" I want to avoid the cliche of "dank", but still impart a quality to the air, which sets the tone much more so than do the halls.
Your rhymes and cadence are very good, maybe give it a little more depth, unless I am simply missing something. Well you can let me know.
dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.