02-25-2018, 11:23 PM
Afternoon Bloodline,
Given that I am new here and no expert I offer you these opinions with caution, they are yours to use as you wish. From the offset I would suggest that this is much too long for my attention span, and some of my favourite poetry was written by poets prone to writing long works. So what is the problem then with this? I find the emotion of this piece, if any emotion exists at all to be conveyed through the use of cliché, while there is nothing wrong with cliché in one sense it is always of course born from truth, in literature or any art form for that matter it’s a potential Achilles’ heel. More so than anything else I believe poetry should illicit a response from the reader, I would hesitate to say that the feelings of the author at the time of conception to be of no importance. Why? Because the minute you send your baby out into the world it’s no longer yours it is now beholden to my gaze. And as such you have this work’s greatest weakness, beyond the technical issues some of which we will come on to later, it elicits little of me as the reader and I am left with the trite and the cliché.
What do I like? There is something, very obviously in my opinion, Khalil Gibranesque about the work and in fact I connect, my vague desire to read The Prophet, to reading your poem. You have stated that you wish to see this published, for this to be possible it needs serious and intensive pruning. I would start with Ocean's Winds - Part IV, and it is where I am going to leave you something a little more in-depth:
Such anger no longer felt in the heart of a Man
that has advanced forward into the mission of
his dedication to a love he felt with such intensity.
Given that this in my opinion, sits awkwardly with the rest of this section, I would let it go
The cliff face beckons us those to step into the void
that a moment of bewilderment, enticing all to jump
below the as the jagged rocks protrude and welcome us into from the Ocean below
Given the spirituality of the work why not allow the cliff face to speak the phrase “step into the void” allow the Cliff face and or the jagged rocks below to become sirens. In all honesty that would be the direction in which I would take this but that would involve a heavy re-write which is not my job. So the rest of my comments will reflect issues in the original text
assaulted by the roaring tides, once clear skies
turning into a storm, thunder cracking with ferocity
such power that is felt even in the Heavens above
It just reads awkwardly as was mentioned by a previous commentator it needs you to sit down and re-read it aloud.
from whence they came, striking again with the
strong wind, it's as if Poseidon's wrath is let loose
of nature's own backlash to everyone's ambitions
Punctuation and syntax need reworking
brought forth with the wrath of Zeus's lightning
and thunder massaged the notes of Gaia's violin,
these entities are a metaphoric description of
Actually kind of like this stanza
a glorious storm tearing through the vessels that
peter on its surface, beneath them the trenches
of the deep flooded with swordfishes and others.
I like what you are getting at here in terms of humanity’s scale in relation to all else, but I think with a little wording it could be a lot stronger in its realization
I continue through this storm, in search of my fate.
One final comment on this, I would suggest that at times the change of line and the break for a new stanza feel a little arbitrary, given that this reminds me so much of Gibran I don’t think it would be a bad shout to embrace the idea of prose-poetry for this work and say fuck it to formatting it like a traditional poem.
I can’t think of much else to add, again ignore everything I have said should you so wish.
Cheers
Johnny
Given that I am new here and no expert I offer you these opinions with caution, they are yours to use as you wish. From the offset I would suggest that this is much too long for my attention span, and some of my favourite poetry was written by poets prone to writing long works. So what is the problem then with this? I find the emotion of this piece, if any emotion exists at all to be conveyed through the use of cliché, while there is nothing wrong with cliché in one sense it is always of course born from truth, in literature or any art form for that matter it’s a potential Achilles’ heel. More so than anything else I believe poetry should illicit a response from the reader, I would hesitate to say that the feelings of the author at the time of conception to be of no importance. Why? Because the minute you send your baby out into the world it’s no longer yours it is now beholden to my gaze. And as such you have this work’s greatest weakness, beyond the technical issues some of which we will come on to later, it elicits little of me as the reader and I am left with the trite and the cliché.
What do I like? There is something, very obviously in my opinion, Khalil Gibranesque about the work and in fact I connect, my vague desire to read The Prophet, to reading your poem. You have stated that you wish to see this published, for this to be possible it needs serious and intensive pruning. I would start with Ocean's Winds - Part IV, and it is where I am going to leave you something a little more in-depth:
Such anger no longer felt in the heart of a Man
that has advanced forward into the mission of
his dedication to a love he felt with such intensity.
Given that this in my opinion, sits awkwardly with the rest of this section, I would let it go
The cliff face beckons us those to step into the void
that a moment of bewilderment, enticing all to jump
below the as the jagged rocks protrude and welcome us into from the Ocean below
Given the spirituality of the work why not allow the cliff face to speak the phrase “step into the void” allow the Cliff face and or the jagged rocks below to become sirens. In all honesty that would be the direction in which I would take this but that would involve a heavy re-write which is not my job. So the rest of my comments will reflect issues in the original text
assaulted by the roaring tides, once clear skies
turning into a storm, thunder cracking with ferocity
such power that is felt even in the Heavens above
It just reads awkwardly as was mentioned by a previous commentator it needs you to sit down and re-read it aloud.
from whence they came, striking again with the
strong wind, it's as if Poseidon's wrath is let loose
of nature's own backlash to everyone's ambitions
Punctuation and syntax need reworking
brought forth with the wrath of Zeus's lightning
and thunder massaged the notes of Gaia's violin,
these entities are a metaphoric description of
Actually kind of like this stanza
a glorious storm tearing through the vessels that
peter on its surface, beneath them the trenches
of the deep flooded with swordfishes and others.
I like what you are getting at here in terms of humanity’s scale in relation to all else, but I think with a little wording it could be a lot stronger in its realization
I continue through this storm, in search of my fate.
One final comment on this, I would suggest that at times the change of line and the break for a new stanza feel a little arbitrary, given that this reminds me so much of Gibran I don’t think it would be a bad shout to embrace the idea of prose-poetry for this work and say fuck it to formatting it like a traditional poem.
I can’t think of much else to add, again ignore everything I have said should you so wish.
Cheers
Johnny