09-12-2016, 10:58 PM
Love the title. Gets me ready for what's coming. Political poetry hard to write, but maybe this is more about the "after" and not so political. It just is.
Wouldn't mind the colors presented in their own stanzas/lines (more like the ending). The blending of all the colors at the beginning makes me have to sort through it more. Agree w/Achebe about the line breaks. They're too choppy and we don't get the impact of what you're trying to present. A bit of overwriting (e.g. "he looks but doesn't cry" / too much commentary / telling going on with lines like this).
Again here:
"He sees grey in the ten-foot mounds
Of concrete and rebar
That turned noisy homes into
Silent graves." (do you really need the last two lines?...you've already presented the "mounds" to us and yet you tell us again they are graves).
Don't like the repetition of "he sees grey / he sees grey / he saw grey" although I do like the way the color is fleshed out a bit more than all the other colors. Seems fitting it should be grey.
The poem is ambitious. Seems like you are there w/your POV. Are you? I like that.
Wouldn't mind the colors presented in their own stanzas/lines (more like the ending). The blending of all the colors at the beginning makes me have to sort through it more. Agree w/Achebe about the line breaks. They're too choppy and we don't get the impact of what you're trying to present. A bit of overwriting (e.g. "he looks but doesn't cry" / too much commentary / telling going on with lines like this).
Again here:
"He sees grey in the ten-foot mounds
Of concrete and rebar
That turned noisy homes into
Silent graves." (do you really need the last two lines?...you've already presented the "mounds" to us and yet you tell us again they are graves).
Don't like the repetition of "he sees grey / he sees grey / he saw grey" although I do like the way the color is fleshed out a bit more than all the other colors. Seems fitting it should be grey.
The poem is ambitious. Seems like you are there w/your POV. Are you? I like that.