Yesterday, 05:52 AM
Old:
Tucked behind the fountain
where the birds no longer come to drink,
a whisper-fingered hustler
palms another six of hearts.
I catch the look they give each other
—sly, almost reluctant
New:
...Tucked behind the fountain where the birds
no longer come to drink, a whisper-fingered hustler
palms another six of hearts. The shorter boy
holds out a dollar—shy, almost reluctant,
The new version reads like prose. The line breaks in the original were at the right pauses. The 'I catch the look...' was the right amount of lengthening.
You've cut out too much
I reverse what I had said earlier about slow, mindless, irreversible. In a shorter poem, I think the atmospherics work.
And I can live with 'rotten milk' in the shoter poem.
I don't think you need to edit much up to the breadcrumbs line. Maybe a bit. But don't rip the lyrical, dreamlike quality out and replace it with a CNN talk show on women's rights in Eritrea.
Tucked behind the fountain
where the birds no longer come to drink,
a whisper-fingered hustler
palms another six of hearts.
I catch the look they give each other
—sly, almost reluctant
New:
...Tucked behind the fountain where the birds
no longer come to drink, a whisper-fingered hustler
palms another six of hearts. The shorter boy
holds out a dollar—shy, almost reluctant,
The new version reads like prose. The line breaks in the original were at the right pauses. The 'I catch the look...' was the right amount of lengthening.
You've cut out too much
I reverse what I had said earlier about slow, mindless, irreversible. In a shorter poem, I think the atmospherics work.
And I can live with 'rotten milk' in the shoter poem.
I don't think you need to edit much up to the breadcrumbs line. Maybe a bit. But don't rip the lyrical, dreamlike quality out and replace it with a CNN talk show on women's rights in Eritrea.