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3/29/2018 9:17:23 PM keith osborne Posts: 59	Midnight bells commencing their ring throughout the country land shadows begin to cry and sing thirsting for their demand... Blood A quest that is not complete 'til receiving what they require Striking teeth and fleeting feet dart quietly through the quagmire... Rage Over uncharted territory quickly fly without a glance after prey they deem mandatory striking swiftly like a lance... Flesh Hunger quelled by carnage now tranquil they settle after the feast no one communicates how to survive the quandry of this beast edited by hempleaves13 on 3/30/2018
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6/25/2018 11:00:06 AM Jack Webster Posts: 255	It's spare on imagery, but I think it works really well. I think the most successful device is contrasting the musicality of tge quatrains with the monosyllables of the last lines; it is very metrically violent and very strongly conveys the intensity and violence of the poem without graphic imagery or gore. It is a brilliant device of subtlety that keeps the work from becoming distasteful or garishly overwraught. Making midnight bells tge first two words is a technically strong choice. However, it is worth pointing out, perhap that were it closer to the end of tge stanza there is an opportunity for in-stress with the word blood, which has the potential to capture the deep resonant boom of a great bell, in the right context and with the right proximity: Throughout the country land shadows begin to cry and sing; midnights bells begin to ring, as they thirst for one demand. Blood. This construction might make it sound as if it is bells that thirst for blood, but the semicolon introduces ambiguity, allowing the one thirsting to be any of three options 1) the shadows 2) the bells 3) both, because the semicolon construction could mean the second independent clause is giving more information about the first, or that they simply have equal positions and significance. The reader won't stop to figure it out; they will end with the word bloof, which should itself ring as if the bell had been struck. There are instances in the rest of the poem where things m be more clearly phrased, grammatically. I think the choice to ommit punctuation does not work in the poems favors stoppages help control flow and mood; for instance: Hunger quelled by carnage now, tranquil, they settle after the feast. None remain to tell us how to survive the quandry of the beast. The commas after now and traquil create pauses that create that sense of pause and tranquility in the flow of the poem, which will match the description of the poem.
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