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5/28/2018 1:29:18 PM levi johnson Posts: 15	Primrose path Sprinting sessions From dark undergrounds Never leave until unexpected Admiration Image collections Optic characters imitations Personality as a theatrical affair Social fluency Horse and carriage Stepladder for gnomes White concrete eclipsing the streets Cigarettes Music on Bourbon Street Caged souls, walking zombies Poverty weeps the loudest social lie Existence Revolving door exit To doubt linear presence Historic currency is a cold death Ideology Tall buildings Redesigned inner child Your snake skin is the verse of life
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10/2/2018 4:34:52 PM levi johnson Posts: 15	I need feedback on this piece. Thanks
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11/23/2018 9:56:48 AM levi johnson Posts: 10	No feedback yet?
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11/23/2018 11:21:30 AM Frank Frank Posts: 15	Good that you bumped your posting; I've only recently joined. As a form, starting each stanza with a noun or short phrase and then sort of expanding on it with ever-lengthening lines is not a bad idea. Some may consider this kind of a gimmick, but I think it works for you (although maybe just a little predictable by about the 3rd stanza). What doesn't work is the expansion. Some of those phrases probably won't make sense to anyone except you. One or two are not bad and might be salvaged if you were to rewrite ("Historic currency is a cold death" - although I don't know what that means), others are not as good. Please read this aloud. Does it really sound like a poem to you? Or something that you could imagine reading to someone else and them actually enjoying it? Or making any sense of it? I really think the most important thing someone starting with poetry can do is to make sense, then worry about the poetics.
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12/2/2018 2:28:14 AM Jack Webster Posts: 255	personally, i find exercises in abstract phrasing such as this to be extremely demanding of the author, and frequently ineffective as poems in their own right. exercises such as this eschew the niceties and forgiving ettiquettes of even free verse. the author leaves neither itself or the reader much room to breathe. everything is stripped to its fundamental elements; everything is left raw-facetted. i think many of the stanzas struggled for clarity. L1 clear 2 clear 3 ? 4? L5 (clear) 6 (clear) 7 ? 8 (clear) 9 clear L10 clear 11 ! / ? 12 ? 13 clear 14 clear L15 clear 14 clear 16 clear 17 clear 18 (?) 19 ? L20 (clear) 21 clear 22 [clear] 23 [clear] The clarity of some lines suffered because what they stated was unclear, sometimes because their clarity was dependant on other lines that were unclear, and at other times because the context of the stanza was not established. my overall impression is that you seem to be building a garland of vignettes of different stations of life, then concluding with a larger than life existential bird's eye view of the human condition and mortality. I think this is very poetically juicey. When the clarity issues are worked out, it could prove to be a very strong piece.
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12/2/2018 2:33:36 AM Jack Webster Posts: 255	p.s. something that i think really taxed the lines was the use of abstract and figurative language. normally one expects figurative language in poetry, but when there is no room to figure it out, it is not as effective. I would rely more of juxtaposition of clear, concrete imagery, context, gestalt of sensual details etc.
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