4 hours ago
Read this again as you mentioned it in the other thread. With the benefit of some distance, it is easier to be critical (sorry).
The first stanza can probably completely go. It doesn't establish anything for the reader and is effectively masturbatory( EDIT: okay the first two lines are good establishing. The rest is Big Shrug). Start with the sister and the backseat of the rental (even though it "didn't happen.") Then force yourself to say some things about it that someone other than the speaker might understand.
You are kind of doing the classic amateur poet thing where you try to wring very charged, emotional language out of an occasion that remains a total mystery to your readers:
But there were gazes
burning with apology in new silences,
that were turned upon the mountains to avoid
spoiling the time we still created, gazes
Be real, do you really think any of us know wtf the speaker is talking about here. We do not. The combination of "wtf are they saying" with a vague sense of "this is all very dramatic" is a big turn-off for most readers, myself included. It makes it all just feel a bit of a wank. Like you're not writing for us but for yourself.
The first stanza can probably completely go. It doesn't establish anything for the reader and is effectively masturbatory( EDIT: okay the first two lines are good establishing. The rest is Big Shrug). Start with the sister and the backseat of the rental (even though it "didn't happen.") Then force yourself to say some things about it that someone other than the speaker might understand.
You are kind of doing the classic amateur poet thing where you try to wring very charged, emotional language out of an occasion that remains a total mystery to your readers:
But there were gazes
burning with apology in new silences,
that were turned upon the mountains to avoid
spoiling the time we still created, gazes
Be real, do you really think any of us know wtf the speaker is talking about here. We do not. The combination of "wtf are they saying" with a vague sense of "this is all very dramatic" is a big turn-off for most readers, myself included. It makes it all just feel a bit of a wank. Like you're not writing for us but for yourself.