03-12-2017, 02:09 AM
Hey Caleb, I really enjoyed the poem. This is my first critique (on this forum) so bear with me please 
“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
In just five words I wiped away my future.
I feel like the first 4 lines in this poem are a bit disorganized. It starts with an exclamation (which isn't bad at all) followed by a rather unusual grammatical structure. Then comes a question followed by a line which seems to ignore said question (which poses a rather important question that the entire following stanza is dedicated to) and instead refers back to the first two lines.
Now I do love the last line of the stanza a LOT so I understand why you want to emphasize this line by putting it last so I personally would keep it there. Seems to me the best course would be to take the question out entirely or make it part of the second stanza. let me give it a shot:
"These are the good times" - I thought to myself
thirty years ago, while visiting friends(.)
(and) In just five words I('d?) wiped away my future.
I tried to rewrite the lines so that they read a little easier and I thought the use of a reflexive verb was appropriate for such an introspective poem. If you are bothered by it becoming 3 instead of 4 lines you could try and add line in there somewhere. I'm personally not a big fan of quatrains though so chalk this up to bias if you want to
Now we need to find a way to plant the question in the readers mind somewhere.(How did I know the good times wouldn't last) But let's put it aside for the moment as I don't see a clear way to add it to this Stanza without detracting from it's clarity.
Now let's look at the second stanza.
Not that the young Caleb actually knew,
but he did: he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.
I think the contradiction between the first and second line hints at an interesting notion of youthful naivety but this construction kind of attacks that angle in a roundabout way. Ideally I personally would like to get rid of the 'but he did' and make the contradiction implied as I think those three words detract from the flow of the piece. I'd try to find a way to communicate with the audience that Young Caleb was 'seeing' something (in his mind) that he didn't have the maturity to fully integrate into his vision of the world and his notion of who he is (in the first line!) and then keep everything after 'he looked' as that is in my opinion good as is! Maybe you could do that in a way that the need for the question in the first stanza also disappears but then you probably would have to rewrite the stanza.
Something like:
How could young Caleb foresee
that he would find the end
by looking down
a bright and sunny road
and hasten its approach?
Now obviously, the way I wrote this stanza is rather ugly, I hope you can look beyond that and understand what I'm trying to convey. This way you communicate both the question you tried to pose in the first stanza and absorb the response into it as well, concentrate another 'thought' into a single stanza rather than dispersing it across multiple. This in my opinion would enhance the clarity of the poem.
Again, this is just my first critique. I hope it's useful and please, don't hesitate to tear my critique apart, I'd only be better of for it.
Overall I really like ideas and the subject matter of this poem and honestly, keep at it man.
“These are the good times” – thirty years ago,
while visiting friends, I had that thought.
How did I know the good times wouldn’t last?
In just five words I wiped away my future.
I feel like the first 4 lines in this poem are a bit disorganized. It starts with an exclamation (which isn't bad at all) followed by a rather unusual grammatical structure. Then comes a question followed by a line which seems to ignore said question (which poses a rather important question that the entire following stanza is dedicated to) and instead refers back to the first two lines.
Now I do love the last line of the stanza a LOT so I understand why you want to emphasize this line by putting it last so I personally would keep it there. Seems to me the best course would be to take the question out entirely or make it part of the second stanza. let me give it a shot:
"These are the good times" - I thought to myself
thirty years ago, while visiting friends(.)
(and) In just five words I('d?) wiped away my future.
I tried to rewrite the lines so that they read a little easier and I thought the use of a reflexive verb was appropriate for such an introspective poem. If you are bothered by it becoming 3 instead of 4 lines you could try and add line in there somewhere. I'm personally not a big fan of quatrains though so chalk this up to bias if you want to
Now we need to find a way to plant the question in the readers mind somewhere.(How did I know the good times wouldn't last) But let's put it aside for the moment as I don't see a clear way to add it to this Stanza without detracting from it's clarity.
Now let's look at the second stanza.
Not that the young Caleb actually knew,
but he did: he looked down a bright and sunny
road so far that he saw the end, and by
anticipating brought it to him sooner.
I think the contradiction between the first and second line hints at an interesting notion of youthful naivety but this construction kind of attacks that angle in a roundabout way. Ideally I personally would like to get rid of the 'but he did' and make the contradiction implied as I think those three words detract from the flow of the piece. I'd try to find a way to communicate with the audience that Young Caleb was 'seeing' something (in his mind) that he didn't have the maturity to fully integrate into his vision of the world and his notion of who he is (in the first line!) and then keep everything after 'he looked' as that is in my opinion good as is! Maybe you could do that in a way that the need for the question in the first stanza also disappears but then you probably would have to rewrite the stanza.
Something like:
How could young Caleb foresee
that he would find the end
by looking down
a bright and sunny road
and hasten its approach?
Now obviously, the way I wrote this stanza is rather ugly, I hope you can look beyond that and understand what I'm trying to convey. This way you communicate both the question you tried to pose in the first stanza and absorb the response into it as well, concentrate another 'thought' into a single stanza rather than dispersing it across multiple. This in my opinion would enhance the clarity of the poem.
Again, this is just my first critique. I hope it's useful and please, don't hesitate to tear my critique apart, I'd only be better of for it.
Overall I really like ideas and the subject matter of this poem and honestly, keep at it man.