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Straight
The world advertises the glory of
Straight.
Straight hair
Straight teeth
Straight brows
Straight paths
Straight A’s
Straight timelines
Straight love
but O,
the beauty in
rolling waves
scarlet curls
winding roads
bending oaks
rounded cheeks
joyful smiles
painted hands
joining together to form
our lives.
- ▀▄▀▄▀▄ depressedmetalhead ▄▀▄▀▄▀ ●︿● ˖ ⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖ ☿
Posts: 1,139
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Critiqued as if this piece were to be submitted for publishing:
It would be more interesting if you punctuated the whole first stanza properly. End the second line with a colon, put commas (and eventually a period) after all the other "straights". Normally we would advise not capitalizing the first letter of these lines, too, but it does seem that you've read more modern pieces, so I leave that off.
For both stanzas, however, you need to cut out some of the images, since they just don't make sense. For the first stanza, I'm not sure how proverbial "straight brows" or "straight rooms" are, especially since all the good brows I see have noticeable arcs in them, and then it sorta falls apart with the second stanza, where a good chunk of the images are already considered to be beautiful in general: "scarlet curls" and the media's obsession with redheads, "winding roads" and that one beatles song, "round cheeks" and "curved smiles" because if either of those are straight you basically have a cartoon rather than a flesh and blood person....
The last "for publishing" note I have is that all the italicizations, as well as the final period, are completely unnecessary.
Critiqued in a more general sense:
This is kinda cute, but that's the only impression I get from it. Kudos if you're the first one to think about doing a "concrete" manifestation of the contrast betwern straightness and queerness, but for something like that to be memorable, to truly provoke or deeply affect the reader, you need something more. One such "more" would be to be more outrageous with your imagery, first naming queer things that a lot of straight people already find disgusting, then dedicating a few more words in describing them. At the very least, my first thread here, which I believe I also made as a teen, didn't even have any cuteness or cleverness going on, so you do have that!
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This is lovely.i wouldn’t change it too much.
A great example of a “shape” poem
The first line echoes Hopkins ‘the world is aflame with the glory of God’. This is neither good nor bad. Just an observation
The several ‘straights’are fine by me. It’s a decently interesting list
I’m not so sure about “what if they could see”, because people actually do love winding roads, bent oaks etc - there are poems and poems on them. So did you mean “But O the beauty of/ jagged waves” etc
The ending with “our lives” is excellent. Not sure about the italics. Feels gimmicky
But I wouldn’t change it too much if I were you. This is a beautiful, beautiful piece
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Threads: 139
Joined: Jun 2015
Hi metal-
The vertically straight list format works well, visually, in contrast with the flowing lines.
That said, 'paths' and 'lines', though different, seems a bit redundant.
I'd lose 'rooms'. I get what you mean, but it interfered with my reading, because it should read 'straightened rooms'
I suggest starting the second part more inclusively, something like, "yet we can all see the beauty..."
jagged waves? maybe 'rolling'. waves aren't jagged
bent trees ? 'bending trees' would just sound nicer than 'bent'
round cheeks ? perhaps 'rounded cheeks'
curved smiles ? smiles are curved already; that's why they're smiles; perhaps 'simple smiles'
locked fingers? perhaps 'intertwined'
our lives ? perhaps 'around our lives' as in 'fingers intertwined around our lives' or something like that
All in all this is an interesting piece. It only needs a bit of tweaking.
... Mark
