03-22-2018, 03:19 PM
A few points:
I'm usually not a fan of a rhyme scheme maintained through the entirety of a longer poem like this, but I actually find the rhymes you've crafted to be really logical; I also appreciate they don't distort the syntax of the lines just for the sake of achieving an end rhyme (which, most of the time, doesn't end up making sense and feels forced, instead).
Obviously, the themes of poverty and extortion of the poor/downtrodden are central to your piece, but I think one way to make the poem even stronger would be to omit Johnny Angry's stanza. It's a little repetitive, as Sebastian's stanza follows so soon after his, but the latter stanza tells a better, more robust story of urban poverty's effect on the male psyche... I would also be interested to see how this piece would read if you restructured it so the biographical stanzas were let to flow one after the other, and then the more general commentary stanzas migrated to the end of the poem.
I think the ellipse cheapen the emotional impact of the characters' points of view. If they didn't get to take a respite from the reality of their tough situations, you can mirror that same weariness by not giving the readers pause. Let readers confront the grimness in real time.
I'm usually not a fan of a rhyme scheme maintained through the entirety of a longer poem like this, but I actually find the rhymes you've crafted to be really logical; I also appreciate they don't distort the syntax of the lines just for the sake of achieving an end rhyme (which, most of the time, doesn't end up making sense and feels forced, instead).
Obviously, the themes of poverty and extortion of the poor/downtrodden are central to your piece, but I think one way to make the poem even stronger would be to omit Johnny Angry's stanza. It's a little repetitive, as Sebastian's stanza follows so soon after his, but the latter stanza tells a better, more robust story of urban poverty's effect on the male psyche... I would also be interested to see how this piece would read if you restructured it so the biographical stanzas were let to flow one after the other, and then the more general commentary stanzas migrated to the end of the poem.
I think the ellipse cheapen the emotional impact of the characters' points of view. If they didn't get to take a respite from the reality of their tough situations, you can mirror that same weariness by not giving the readers pause. Let readers confront the grimness in real time.