Dick diddled Sue

[milo]

Well, I see that no one is coming to critique my poem, so I had better do it myself.

One of the biggest problems with it is that some of the words are not amenable to the meter of the rest of the poem. 

The problem arises with certain irreplaceable words which have a lot of syllables that don’t fit either dactylic or anapestic meter.  “Sustainability” is the worst offender (in stanza # 10).  I tried to force it by typing SUS-tain-a-BIL-ity, but now I realize that I should just leave it as is.  The word first gained wide acceptance with the Brundtland Report in 1987 and there aren’t really any suitable synonyms.  Oxford’s Compact Thesaurus doesn’t even list the word. 

There are some other examples of words with many syllables that are normally iambic or trochaic: The word “communication” in stanza 42.  And “cooperation” in stanza 33.  They are both examples of using all-caps and multiple hyphens to force the reader to accent the syllables which are not normally accented.  It’s too forced.  So I’ve taken out the all-caps on both and the hyphens on the second.

I see that I have two more offenders in Stanza 22: “society” and “citizenry”, but I’m not as bothered with the them, since I didn’t have to use all-caps.  All I did was space out the syllables.       

Then there are a few rhymes that suck.  “Sure” and “sewer” in stanza 25.  I should work on that. 

And then there’s the vitally important economics concept of “externalities” which mixes up different meters internally.  It’s in at least a couple of spots in the poem.  I shortened it to “externals”...which is dumb academically, but at least it can fit into the anapest/dactyl sentences. 

And “odd rumor” in stanza 27.  “Odd” is simply a dumb adjective for that line, so I’ve changed it to “old”.

While I would be tickled to read 70 stanzas of Dick diddling Sue, I just don't know if I can trust clicking on a link that takes me to whatever hole this leads to .  Best option might be to post it here.  If you are actually looking for feedback, maybe even match it to the leve of feedback you are looking for, I am certain someone would be to eager to give you a line by line critique of it.