An English Patchword ( rewrite)

[milo]

Hello Michael and welcome to the pen!!

I have read through tis a few times and there is much I like which I will try to cover first.

The title - simple direct yet curious.  It drew me in as a good title should.

The phrasing was simple yet interesting throughout and avoided cliche.  The rhymes - as well - were clever and original.  There was plenty of interesting imagery, there was much to enjoy during the read.

Things I think should be considered:  The couplets, for one.  I am not sure about this choice.  On the one hand - couplets match the light verse tone of much of it and have been the go to choice for light verse for the bast 40 odd years so it seems a logical choice.  Still - I don't think couplets le lend themselves as much to long lines or poems that continue on for more than a bit.  To a modern ear (well, mine anyway) they seem to grow not just predictable but a little tedious over time.  What other options might be interesting?  Well, a nice ballad meter would really let this shine and break up the long lines, the couplets, add some musicality to the mix and push the pace a bit.  You already include plenty of internal rhyme anyway.  The refrain?  I am not sure about that either - is the repetition having as much effect as it could without the rhyme?  I would personally say no - you are using couplets - maybe consider rhyming the repetend.

For things that didn't work for me -the glaring sore thumb - the meter.  It seemed to receive no thought at all and forces the reader into a stutter-step when it should really sing.  And, finally, the metaphor - I feel like you could have leaned into a more consistent metaphor throughout -a turn somewhere?  i don't know.  If there is a driving metaphor I may have missed it other than "here are some cool English things" I am missing it.  (might just be me though)

Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England
A gingerbread bedspread with all its coasts and Inlands.

So, the intro had me intrigued.  You started with a loose heptameter and then fell on the second line to a murky kind of accentual pentamer.  If this had been ballad verse it would look something like:

Cover me over quietly
with a quilt of everything England
A gingerbread bedspread - spread politely
over the coasts and inlands

(not meant as a rewrite - for demonstration purposes only)

 
Squares of cloth with lots of plots and patches and small allotments,
A patchwork filled with fields and shires and boundaries and whatnot-ments.

One thing you can try when you find yourself in this situation is to move the "found" rhyme to the a1 slot and your original phrase to the a2 slot which makes it seem less forced:

A patchwork filled with fields and shires and boundaries and whatnot-ments
Squares of cloth with lots of plots and patches and small allotments

This also allows the clever callback rather than the less interesting continuation.  The abundance of "ands" becomes obvious which just makes it feel like you are struggling to maintain a meter that the reader probably thought would be difficult to maintain.  "lots" is weak filler.  You maintain almost perfect iambic heptamer here (with the padding) with the exception of the "and" before small which you could easily fix.

 
Within it all the tall tales woven well together:
Green men and grandes dames all in an English weather.

Here is where the meter really just falls apart and gets abandoned to the whim.  Because it is couplets - the ear seeks the musicality of meter but you have an assortment of awkward demotions (think tales) and inconsistent feet both in number and choice.

 
A hunter and a hare in a brilliant broad embroidery,
Stitched and fixed both higgledy piggledy, needle-neat and orderly.
 
Piping boys and girls and babes dressed in the altogether,
With John Keats among the pleats and the dancing that goes on forever.
 
Knights on Horseback, love in a haystack all their groaning sewn in,
Grandfather clocks and Goldilocks in the house she's all alone in.
 
Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England
 
Teacup spills and Welsh Hills, cat's hairs on the borders,
Cotswolds and blanket folds - all disruptions and disorders.
 
Little Jack Horner there in the corner, all rucked in and tucked up,
While Little Bo Peep has let her sheep get all muddled and mucked up.
 
Tipsy maids in Gypsy Glades with garlands on a Mayday,
Cripples with their cricket bats and crones playing croquet.
 
A Brueghel scene you might have seen but never on a bedspread:
The heroes and the heroines in all the tales you've ever read.
 
Simple Simon and the pie man and the Jack and the Beanstalk pedlar
Who'll turn you into Puss in Boots, a prince or Cinderella.
 
There's a stain on the pane where Sir Gawain is outside a dragon's den;
And biscuit crumbs where Humpty comes with all the king's horses and all the king's men.
 
Cover me over quietly with a quilt of everything England.

 
It continues in the same kind of clumsy stumbling to the end which is unfortunate - mostly because the phrasing and wording would easily be interesting enough to carry it along even without a turn or interesting metaphor but I think you either need to have precision perfect mechanics or a striking metaphor to have this work and it doesn't quite achieve either

None of this to say I don't like it or think it has promise because I do and I am confident you can easily iron out some of this on revisions.

Thanks for posting