A gorgeous sonnet! I absolutely loved this. The rhyme is subtle. The third stanza is my favorite. It really deepens the metaphor and gives the poem a lot of real feeling. A great read as usual!
This is an excellent essay that brings up a lot of very good points. I can't help but wonder if poetry will ever be mainstream again, knowing how seriously it is taken by intellectuals. I want my poetry to be serious and I enjoy the wordsmithing aspects of it, but a part of me wishes there was a poetic version of Danielle Steele bringing it madlibs style to the non-poet. Hehe... Not sure how or if that will happen.
You manage to cram a lot of story into 733 words. This story is impressive in its brevity, but I think you could use some more description. I was hoping for some more imagery...maybe not a lot because you wouldn't want to take away from the action too much but some extra details would really bring it to life. Smell of the forest, sounds of the bear...stuff like that.
Also, more character development would be good all around...even treating the bear as a character would help understand its motivation to kill. The confrontation between a human serial killer and an animal serial killer is wonderfully coincidental and worth highlighting.
The rhyme and rhythm are technically perfect, but I don't think they match the tone of the poem very well. They are sing-songy like a nursery rhyme and the poem is dark.
Also, there is no imagery to back it up. The backbone of the poem is the rhyme scheme. For example, "like a bulldozer" seemed picked only because it matched the rhyme, not really because the fears were like a bulldozer. (Because lets face it, outside of being big, bulldozers just move dirt around.) If the fears were really like a bulldozer I would linger on the image - plowing, shoving, crunching, etc. It would get your point across better.
The situational irony here is the best part of the story. I really like the ending. Thought-provoking and I like pieces that make me think.
I am not a big rhyme fan because I find imagery more powerful. However, I think the rhyme is a good choice for telling stories in poetry. There were only a couple places I thought the rhythm could be smoother and make the rhyme stand out more...like here... go hungry, dirty, and sick as they
shiver through nights cold and dark.
I guess the way I read it, the rhyme sounds a bit forced. I also don't like when rhyme makes the writer come up with alternative syntax such as..."and about that owl does read"
I guess there's a certain part of me that feels like rhyme should be sing-songy like that or that it should be paired with a set rhythm. Obviously, not necessary, just my preference.
Incredibly descriptive! The description makes the action feel like slow-mo, which seems to dampen the suspense a little, but I think it still reads well.
The archaic speak and words take a while to get used to it, but you stick to it so faithfully. I find that admirable.
You might be able to add some more characterization into the knights themselves. It's hard to see them outside of the armor, and it's hard to tell them apart. Perhaps that was your intent. It may be more effective to just have a bit of personality come out.
Those were just my thoughts! Overall, a good read!
Your rhythm here is nearly perfect. I think rhyme is a good choice for religious-oriented poetry.
There were a couple of awkward places: For me to it listen I think "for me to listen in" sounds better. I listen Him this say A good alternative to this may be "I listen to Him say"
But those were pretty minor. All in all, an enjoyable read!
You know this reminds me of a little girl having a tea party with her teddy bear. That's kinda creepy, isn't it? LOL I like the surreal aspects of this. I'm not sure you need to repeat the first stanza. You could use the third stanza for more imagery or other elaboration. But I enjoyed this anyway. Thanks for a good read!
Hehehe...cute story! The conversation is almost surreal - almost existential - without names and other environmental descriptions. It's actually pretty neat!
I'm curious to know if there was a word limit because you could easily make it longer, but even still this is a nice read. I enjoyed it!
Hehehe...very cute! I like the rhythm here and the way the rhyme isn't a main focus of the poem. This seems like a great poem to read outloud. On page it looks like it needs to have line breaks reanalyzed, especially since the rhyme could even be more subtle, but other than that it's great.
I love the interactions between the father and the daughter. The daughter is the most compelling character here. I think the father has the potential to be, but for the most of the story he comes across as very over-the-top, almost cartoonish. And in the end you see a softer side, but it still sounds like he your stock Ike Turner kind of character.
Overall, you do a wonderful time building the suspense and incorporating the storm. Your prose is very readable and polished. All in all, a good read!
The rhythm makes me think of many other narrative, epic pieces. The rhyme scheme is wonderfully obscured. I love when that happens. I like how "the one" could be a spiritual reference or a love interest.
I would just add in more imagery. You could easily expand this without too much trouble to add in more specifics of the story.
Your rhyme is very well-done. Your rhythm is nice and even, so the rhyme really stands out well. I think the idea of mercy could be explored further, and perhaps separated or compared to the idea of love. Love itself is such a common topic, this is a good angle to approach it. I would simply expand.
Let Your mercy fall like rain - I love this line. It calls forth a wonderful image. I think if you use more imagery like this, it will be a more powerful poem.
Welcome to the site!
If you do turn it into an epic, I would break it up into smaller pieces. I like the sun and moon part although the "waned and waned" line could be reworked. I seemed to have lost track of the girl by the end. I would make sure the reader knows it's the Moon talking there. Other than that, I would say you have great technique. Your rhythm is great. Your word choice is excellent in that all the words seem to work together either in their meaning or their sound. The rhyme is unintrusive, which I like in rhyming poems. Hehehe... I say this is definitely a good start, and expanding it will make it even better. Good luck with this and all your endeavors! Have a great day!
Short and sweet. With very few words, you deliver a good punch. To improve it would be to amp up your word choice - something more specific than "black." That kind of thing. I like the length, but if you switch out some of the more common words like "black" or "darkness" and put in some better ones you may be able to say more with the same low amount of words. On the other hand the common words have one advantage - neutrality. So if your intentiion was to convey a sense of ambivalence towards "eternity" you may not want to change. I think this is a good read, and slightly underestimated according to the ratings I see here already.
I like the small hints of rhyme you have here. The reader here feels like they are caught up in a heart-to-heart. I would definitely expand this. Another thing you can do is write it as a monolgue. This would be a very powerful thing to perform, I'm thinking. Oh, and either way, some things here could use repetition. I'm just imagining how heartbreaking it would be to have to tell someone to close their eyes more than once because their loved ones doesn't want to take their eyes of the other's face. This is an excellent start - expand, expand, expand. Let me know if you change it and I'll r/r again! Good luck with this and all your endeavors!
This is a great story! It's very emotional. I think it would be a particularly stirring play - very dramatic! There are a couple spots which I thought could use some smoothing over but only a couple:
Marge, a friend whose husband had died on the job, asked - you explain the circumstances of his death soon after. It seems cumbersome and repetitive here. I would use just "Marge, a friend."
We argued; I pleaded; she scoffed or ignored what I said; I felt as if the battle had lasted a lifetime. - the conversation is so natural and the story moves so fast, you could probably elaborate a bit here without risking any loss of interest.
Maybe later I'll even listen when you tell me about your God. - this was a little strange after getting no clue about Marge's religion early in the story. It sounds like this was part of the first draft and sort of got left behind when the story grew up around it. I would probably just cut it. It wouldn't destroy any of the meaning here.
All in all this is very good. I really enjoyed it. May the muses never leave your side!
Very lovely storoem! I like the sentiments the old man professes. It's a love poem within a war poem. It's like the other side of Lysistrata. Mention of the "gods" brings a ancient, mythological feel to the piece. Indeed, this is a problem that is age-old. Thanks for a great read!
Very beautiful! You definitely did it justice. I like the comparisons you make with 1986. Your words work so well together with all that alliteration. And the swan metaphor is perfect! This is a great read!
Hehehe...very clever idea! I think you could read over it a couple times more to really smooth out some rough grammar/wording spots e.g. "become a writer a victim of the virus." Seems like there should be a comma between "a writer" and "a victim." That's just an example. There were some other spots in there too. Other than that this is very creative piece! A great read! Very contagious! Good luck with all your endeavors!
Hi, I came upon your post in my forum, and thought I'd check your port out. Welcome back to the community!
This is really powerful! It would be an awesome monologue. I would love to see it performed.
I think perhaps the rhetorical questions become a bit burdensome. I would consolidate them into one paragraph, and then in the next few paragraphs I would round it up with some hard answers. It sort of has a stream of consciousness style which works well for a narrator that is very confused and upset, but it would seem a lot better if the aborted baby was more in control than the mother. That would be a very powerful dichotomy.
I do appreciate thee fact that you didn't go for the shock-value and talk about bloody fetuses and stuff. That would have been a little over the top, and here you proved that you can be dramatic and effective without resorting to those measures.
And on a Tuesday you think of me and count the weeks since I died, and you get upset. - this is an awesome sentence. It may be better if you end on this note. Well, this sentence and then "I'm upset too because..." sort of thing.
I think it's interesting the way the narrator grows up within a matter of a few pages of good writing. You capture his voice well. It seems sometimes people have a problem with first-person because the narrator isn't all that well developed as a character. You don't have that problem here. The clever little details added in make your prose interesting. An all around great read!
-Becky-
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