04-14-2026, 03:37 PM
re allusion, i got it on the first read, having heard that song a bunch of times before. the song is so much simpler, so much more concrete and bluesier, so i can't say it really works here as an allusion, otherwise this piece really pales in comparison---better to just have it be a cribbed image.
but, uh, going back to the song, while its simplicity is not something you're going for, its concreteness is something half this poem seems to attempt, and i'd say concreteness is easier to work with for the poet that strives to make something decent than abstraction (and mixing the two like you try here takes the deftest hand of all). let's look at the second stanza, for instance:
ribs strained to make room
for rancour i’d accrue.
naïvely praying someday,
my rest would soon ensue.
"ribs strained to make room" is concrete, so good, but "to make room for rancour" is an abstraction, one that needs a lot more mental contortion to apprehend.
concreteness also tends to work better when you don't clump together images so much. let's look at the fourth stanza now:
rifts and tears flayed the place
my heart used to be.
severed from the sleeve
that anchored me to the belief
"flayed" is definitely concrete---good---but then it's immediately followed by "the place where my heart used to be", which is just overkill.
finally, there's something to be said about going for sound effects to make things sound more poetic, but with an inconsistency that instead makes it seem like parody. for one example, "my rest would soon ensue"---written that way, i bet, to maintain a rhyme scheme one eventually abandons---is just unproverbial. another example may be found in the last stanza:
i held on for our life, my dear.
yet still wallow in the gravel
of your grave mistakes.
"grave" just seems to be put in there for alliteration with "gravel". if the metaphors employed earlier were as dire as skinning a person's chest, then it's not really needed, not unless it was one word that completes the line's meter.
hope this helps in revising, or even writing something new.
but, uh, going back to the song, while its simplicity is not something you're going for, its concreteness is something half this poem seems to attempt, and i'd say concreteness is easier to work with for the poet that strives to make something decent than abstraction (and mixing the two like you try here takes the deftest hand of all). let's look at the second stanza, for instance:
ribs strained to make room
for rancour i’d accrue.
naïvely praying someday,
my rest would soon ensue.
"ribs strained to make room" is concrete, so good, but "to make room for rancour" is an abstraction, one that needs a lot more mental contortion to apprehend.
concreteness also tends to work better when you don't clump together images so much. let's look at the fourth stanza now:
rifts and tears flayed the place
my heart used to be.
severed from the sleeve
that anchored me to the belief
"flayed" is definitely concrete---good---but then it's immediately followed by "the place where my heart used to be", which is just overkill.
finally, there's something to be said about going for sound effects to make things sound more poetic, but with an inconsistency that instead makes it seem like parody. for one example, "my rest would soon ensue"---written that way, i bet, to maintain a rhyme scheme one eventually abandons---is just unproverbial. another example may be found in the last stanza:
i held on for our life, my dear.
yet still wallow in the gravel
of your grave mistakes.
"grave" just seems to be put in there for alliteration with "gravel". if the metaphors employed earlier were as dire as skinning a person's chest, then it's not really needed, not unless it was one word that completes the line's meter.
hope this helps in revising, or even writing something new.