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4/25/2021 11:45:17 AM
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Please critique my poem Ghostwriter
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Over all, I say well done. Conversational, clear, an enjoyable persona in the poem, addressing a heavy subject in light-hearted, life-affirming way that eschews wallowing. So, yes, very good.
There is one line I would experiment with during revision to see if there are options you haven’t considered yet:
from all the tears you cry
I would try to approach this line in an indirect way, perhaps something like:
like all the tissues
or something like that. The riddle invites the reader in; the more the reader fills in the gap, the more engaged they are in the poem (as long as it doesn’t become overly burdensome).
Putting the word tears, cry, etc... is kinda like tossing a penny off the empire state building.
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10/30/2021 11:50:13 PM
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Love Letter To The American Dream
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It looks like you’re doing a petrarchan sonnet, an octet (8-lines) followed by a sestet (6-lines), as per the poem you are responding to.
I think the theme is great. I think portraying the statue of liberty in an iconoclastic image that reflects anti-immigrant nationalism is perfect for the theme, and as a response to the lazarus poem.
You’ve done away with meter, but that is a common omission among contemporary poets (we can thank Mr Whitman’s nationalistic pride for that). As you’ve already noted, the rhyme scheme does need some work. I would go back to the Lazarus poem as it follows the petrarchan rhyme scheme very carefully abbaabba, cdcdcd. Your present rhyme scheme seems to be influenced by the shakespearean rhyme scheme of alternating rhymes.
Your choice to have a dialogue in the sestet instead of a soliloquy is interesting. I would do an experimental draft making the sestet a solid soliloquy like the Lazarus poem and see if it feels more impactful. Making it a dialogue might soften the larger than life quality of the “giantess”. Having an image of refugees approaching in the octet without giving them a voice might really reflect the sense of voicelessness, mirror reality, a monolithic soliloquy from lady liberty in the sestet reflecting that feeling of power that cannot be challenged, etc... boat too small to even be heard vs giant statue’s booming rebuking across the water is a really dramatic scale.
The bit at the end using lazarus as a double allusion, to the biblical lazarus and the idea of resurrection, and the author lazarus of the original poem is really brilliantly unified. My suggestion would be to change the title to Raising Lazarus - because that is the intention of the poem, raise the spirit of the American dream from the dead by creating a truthful and shocking image of the state of america’s attitude towards refugees and immigrants, something to provoke people into the feeling “it shouldn’t be that way”. And with raising Lazarus in the title, it frees the body of the poem to a more streamlined structure (if you wish to pursue the idea of a solid soliloquy in the sestet) so the image of the poem is dark by necessity, because it is redlecting a dark truth, but the image is ironic because the poem means to advance the opposite attitude.
Pyre and empire are fantastic rhymes for the theme and must absolutely be kept. I think “with dreams they come” would be stronger as “they come with dreams” because it removes the inversion of syntax and it gives dreams the strongest position in the line.
So, for the octet let’s say Pyre and Empire are your A rhyme. Aspire could be a useful word, Dire could be another useful word. Admire could be another, as could Mire. (Aspire Admire and Empire Pyre could make an interesting axis of rhymes)
Dreams could set the B rhyme in the octet. Seems could be useful (the Giantess is not what she seems...) Gleams could be useful, or Beams. Teams (the ocean teams, the boat teams, the passengers team, on board hope teams).
I would try an experimental draft where the first four lines describe the refugees/ immigrants, their hope, their certainty of relief, their approach, and the last four lines of the octet describing the statue in the dark iconoclastic image you have already cleverly made, then finish with a booming soliloquy that is an apocolyptic satirical refutation of the lazarus soliloquy.
If you try it, it’s possible the first version will still be better, but it’s fun to experiment.
Good luck. What you have is already really good. All this is just food for thought.
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2/1/2022 10:05:00 AM
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Critique please.. My plague
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Passionate. Dark. Poe-ish.
You do a lot of lovely things with language, in terms of rhyme and rhythm, shifts of sound. An intuitive fierceness of d’s and t’s throughout.
The iambs in line one are a really clean rhythm to open with. In terms of time, all the words are well-weighted with morae, all long vowels, diphthongs, closed syllables - all the words are heavy, yet they still pulse with a heavier rythm, matched by placing monosyllabic words at the stressed syllables. The d and t are great back to back, and beginning the poem with two plosive consonants in the onsets on the very first stressed syllables really sets the tone for the poem. Dare and bride have a round, throaty, elastic quality, the way a stalking tiger draws out a soft low growl from the shadows.
Bride and suicide are fresh rhymes, original, but it is uncertain just where the suicide fits in. Will the bride want to commit suicide, does the speaker, will the victim? The body of the work is about torturing the subject to death. If it is the victim the words bring suicide, perhaps it could be more clearly phrased with something a little more precise while staying in the dark theme, perhaps something like: you will not escape through suicide...
The alliteration on dangerous dagger is good.
‘Slowly cut your insides out’ carries the passion, but i think you could do more with it. Get your hands dirty. Play with the images, the symbolism. The poem has a theme of infidelity, which is right next door to the idea of unplanned pregnancy, abortion, or birth, cesaerean, which comes back to the stomach, the bowels, so to speak. Perhaps the bride became pregnant, but the speaker cannot harm his bride so he performs a symbolic cesarean/ abortion on the victim, cutting open his stomach and removing his s*** filled bowels - symbolic of the baby he can’t remove from his bride. Or, it could be something simpler - for some reason the soul is thought to be around the navel, so it could be something like, ‘I’m am the dagger that will search your bowels for your soul, and prove there is nothing there but s***’. Simply saying you are going to slowly cut someone’s insides out is like reading a promise on the menu - serve the actual dish.
I love the slant rhyme joke and rope. In terms of sound, they might play better reversed. Rope has kind of a soft sound to it because of the r and the p, and joke has a much sharper sound because of the j and the k. Reversing them might play as rope being tied tight - something like: did you know I know how to tie laughter up with rope? Your wrists will know it’s not a joke.
Alive you will be is sort of an odd/ineffective inversion. I think you’re trying to place ‘be’ nearer the middle of the line to place the rhyme nearer to ‘me’ in the following line? Also, repeating the word pain the following line is a little too soon. Perhaps they could be restated as: you will be aive through all this pain/ you and I will know the same.
Day in, day out - is a little pedestrian. Perhaps something like: the days of torture will bleed together. Here you get to use bleed as a double entendre, and it gives a visual, concrete, and thematic element to the abstract concept of time.
“I will cut off your face,
And wear it as my own, perfectly sewn,
Do you think she’ll love me more?” Is the strongest part of the poem. It is precise in its concrete graphic language - it takes the abstract question: would she love me if i was more like you? - and gives it a concrete image, projected through the lens of rage and pain. There is tremendous vulnerability beneath the mask of dismembered flesh, something very raw. The wound behind the rage.
I think you need to ditch rhyming more with door. The previous three lines are so strong, door is just too weak a rhyme. Morgue would be a stronger rhyme:
“...do you think she will love me more...” : or will she go to the morgue. Not quite the same as asking if she will abandon you, but it still captures the idea of her chosing between the speaker and the victim.
Only time will tell - is another pedestrian kind of phrase. Also, it’s not quite true - the victim will never live long enough to know the outcome of the previous question. I think emphasizing the fact the victim won’t ever know what happens to her or how things turn out is much darker than simply saying only time will tell.
The bit about crying from the well and no one will hear you yell is a mix of confusion and cliche. Is the speaker implying the victim is kept in a well à la Silence of the Lambs? Until this point in the poem, there really isn’t a specific time and place - acts are being proposed hypothetically. The bit about the well is a bit jarring because it suddenly shifts from a hypothetical space into a concrete time and place that hasn’t really been defined. No one will hear you yell is a horror genre cliche. You might just consider editing out the lines about yelling from the well and no one hearing the victim scream (or come at it from a fresh direction) - because the next two lines are so much stronger.
The perfect scent for settling our score — this is gold. Unifying the two halves of the phrase around the sce/se sound is absolutely wonderful, as well as the p in perfect following through from the p in putrefy in the previous line
“I will putrefy your remains under my floor,
It will be the perfect scent for settling our score” are some of the strongest lines in the poem.
The last line doesn’t work. Why? Cause there won’t be a next time, will there.
Fantastic draft. I can tell you are b*lls deep in your writing. Go deeper.
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2/24/2022 11:27:40 AM
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New to Poetry Soup
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Hi Jeanette,
It is unusual for people to give feedback/critique as a response to poems listed on an author’s profile, as not all authors may want feedback, etc...
The custom is to post each poem you are seeking feedback for here in the critique forums. If you’re just looking for comments like “this is good” or “i liked ___” the Be Gentle forum is best. If you are looking for feedback that is more rigorous and points out mistakes, ways to improve, suggestions for different directions to go in, the High Critique forum is best. If you are strongly attached to your poem and see it as part of yourself, the Be Gentle forum is best. If you see your poem as something that exists independently from you, is its own creation, and has its own needs, High Critique may have more to offer.
If you would like critique on your poems, I would be happy to have a look.
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3/19/2022 3:26:49 AM
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New to Poetry Soup
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You’ll need to post them here in the critique forums. Do a new post for each poem
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4/29/2022 12:31:13 AM
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Please critique my work.
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Some suggestions for your consideration
Remove sky weeps anguish - instead continue the image of rivers of blood. You can keep the image of the sky, but have it be the reflection of grey clouds passing across the surface of the river of blood; you can even compare the clouds moving across the river of blood to formations of soldiers invading the city, or you can pick up the idea of the clouds later by describing the soldiers like clouds.
Change bleeding from holes in our hearts to bleeding from holes in our chests. You lose the alliteration of holes and hearts, but hearts is kind of cliche and sentimental, BUT a hole in the chest can be a double entendre - the hole can be literally a bullet hole, or it can be a metaphor for grief. It just adds a bit more grit to use chest instead of hearts. Also, dropping the alliteration of holes and hearts allows the alliteration of heads and heroes to stand alone which will make it more noticeable.
Also, you miss an opportunity. You ise the phrase Life that is meant to be sweet - which is great - but you should contrast this with describing the taste of blood, the salt, the metal, etc... Life being sweet is of course metaphoric, but contrasting that with the literal taste of blood will be very powerful. You use blood in a lot of the images, so adding the sense of taste to blood will be unexpected and placed against the idea life is supposed to be sweet, it will be especially strong.
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7/11/2022 6:33:30 AM
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If you could give your honest opinion!
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It lacks a great deal of clarity. Unless it is about murdering someone in the woods and burning the body, I’d start over.
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9/6/2022 9:08:29 AM
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What's wrong with my poem
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The way you’ve written it, it’s more like flash fiction or a short short story, or the prologue to a story.
There are poetic potentials in the areas you’ve chosen -
There are a few contradictions in it. You say you know it is a goner, but later you say you know the captain will narrate a story or two - if the ship is a goner, the captain won’t be coming back. Also, you designate the body of water as Lake Michigan, but you refer to the boat as ready to sail into the deep. While Lake Michigan is very large, both the specificity and identity as a lake seem artistically incongruent with The Deep as a poetic entity. At first you say the boat ia gliding out yonder, and then right away you say it is just sitting at the edge of the lake.
Most of the rhymes feel forced, and they don’t flow smoothly with the language, except “a story or two”. Adieu is just a little over the top, and yonder and goner are too colloquial for the thematic scale and high drama of mortal dramatic irony.
Glorious is sort of painful editorialization. One rule that stays true in both prose and poetry is show, don’t tell (as much as possible). If you simply say it is glorious, the audience just has to take your word for it; all they can do is accept that you think itbis glorious; the audience doesn’t have their own reaction to the boat, or come to their own experience of the boat, because there is no description of it or how it moves, etc... it is simply “glorious” by definition, which requires no reaction in the audience.
So, there is a lot of poetic potential in the poem; the lamp is switched on, but it’s not plugged into the wall socket yet.
Your poem firts with the idea of mortality, death, not knowing when the end will come - momento mori; the idea that each of us will have one or two stories to tell before the end; the idea that we are something small in a big creation; the idea the Beauty is something larger than life and we sail through the midst of it until the end. What you’ve written flirts with these things, but doesn’t commit to them in a serious way. Your description is mostly matter of fact, stays on the surface of things like a winged water strider. There aren’t any clues that the author acknowledges the concrete elements of the poem as symbols for larger abstract elements. Is the boat just that boat, or is it a symbol for each of us and how we get through life? Is Lake Michigan just Lake Michigan, or is it the expanse of our lives? The stories the captain will tell - are they just his stories, or are they symbols for all of our stories?
Is the fact you know the boat is a goner but it doesn’t just a particular dramatic irony for that boat, or is it a statement about the nature of life, the nature of the human experience?
You are perfectly poised to dive into the depth of your almost-poem, and there is a lot that could be seen underneath the surface. Believe in yourself more. Follow through on your images - plug in. The lamp is just a lamp, concrete, cold, until it plugs into the power source. And it is the lamp that makes invisble, abstract electricity seen.
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