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5/7/2010 8:00:17 PM Michael Benkhen Posts: 40	I cannot find any flaws with this. Though I am saddened by your heart's pain. -- The land is littered with the graves of animals I never killed yet somehow mourn.
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5/8/2010 10:31:07 AM Michael Benkhen Posts: 40	Oh well Imagination is lovely...and you have plenty. -- The land is littered with the graves of animals I never killed yet somehow mourn.
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5/8/2010 1:47:21 PM Matt Caliri Posts: 4	"Popped," in "popped out of a street urchin" feels am little off-center from the imagery...just really hard a imagine the "popness" connotation towards a baby coming out of the naturally slow process of labor. Also, I think if you took out "Now white" between "paled" and "impatient" in the next line about the sun, you'd the poem good. Whatever you can take out, if its able to add a sort of powerful mystery (not to mention pace and brevity) in its omission, the better. And in the case of "paled" nd "now white" is just simple repetition...something we all fall into. Reading and re-reading it, honestly if I found this drifted to shore somehow and hand a handy red pen, and then cut out the first 4 lines of the 3rd stanza (start with "the past lies dead"), skip the dying heraldic section (feels a little self-glorifying...trust me, I fall into this feverish proclaiming in my own writing, then look backon it, and with 20/20 it feel deeply extraneous), take out that first "yet" and go straigh into "I crawl through the layers..." and that final stanza is just fine...man...I'd love to see it then! Cuz, y'know, I could always be wrong...but the best thing you can ever do to poem-in-progress inj tighten, tighten tighten, and make trails, as many trails as you can that get you either to the core of the poem, or very near it.
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9/8/2010 7:13:27 PM John Taylor Posts: 6	I just have a couple little suggestions. Well, one is just a common mistake (I probably wouldn't have caught it if I didn't just have someone else catch it in one of mine): in the fifth line of the second stanza you should do away with the apostrophe in the "it's". Apart from that, I think you could trade the period after "...the value of trust" for a dash or colon. Not that it's needed, I just think it could help the flow of the tone (after reading your response to Morepancakes's critique). Finally, I would change the second comma in "Oh laugh, Moon, laugh!" to another exclamation point, or better yet a dash. I think it would add to the feeling of frustration you're conveying by repeating the command in the first place. In the interest of writing a fully useful critique, I feel like I should let you know the kinds of things you did in this piece that really worked for me as well, so here goes: The main thing I enjoyed was the equal/opposite relationship of vocab and tone between the first and last stanzas. It gave me a feeling of time passed, journey traveled, and lessons learned; and of closure. This is a kind of silly one, but I like that you capitalized "Moon". On top of that, I enjoyed the overall tone. I hope these thoughts help.
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