Yesterday, 03:20 AM
(10-31-2026, 05:35 PM)hylas Wrote: A red, red rose can only growHey dude yeah this is all really rough. Good advice is probably to resist all these impulses.
a bitter thorn from bitter dirt,
but my more digestive love
entices fortune's arrow-tips
to alchemise, with subtle art,
the sweeter fibre of her heart.
This is just a distasteful approach to what a poem is, albeit a common approach: speaker adopts a conceit and then explains their trouble directly, but with an extended metaphor or series of metaphors.
The problem here is the chosen gestures are cliches and/or hamfisted in execution. "my more digestive love" is really bad! :3
"entices fortune's arrow-tips to alchemise" you are just doing way too much. The sentence reads like you wrote it plain then went through and changed each individual word into something fancier. This generally describes the voice throughout the poem: ornate for its own sake. Meanwhile if we parse the actual content it seems vague and general. Who is she? How do they interact? We really could not say, other than that the speaker thinks there is bad love and good love and their love is good.
It's like it could be a funny poem but I think the speaker is being earnest. Maybe it is actually light verse? I think it is the poem's fault though, not mine, that I can't really tell how I am meant to receive it.
Wasp/fig is a cool idea. This approach isn't elevating it.