CommentsDevious Comments wow. a well-thought-out, useful, and confidence boosting critique - i think you just made my day!
i would totally agree with you on the second stanza: it's my favourite. i'm glad that you picked up on the breaking of the fourth wall there - it was definitely on my mind when i wrote it. i was toying around with a line about "classifying it as free verse" and what that could mean, but i ended up cutting it because it didn't really work out in the end. i also agree with you on the first stanza: upon re-reading it, it seems a irritating. i wanted to get across the feeling that the most important times where the moments between being asleep and waking up, because they were the moments where the narrator misses the subject the most. in the first draft, there was a lot of comparisons between seasons but i cut it out because it was generally irritating. what do you mean about having some symmetry in it? there's a similar quote to the one you started with that's by aldous huxley: "after silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." it's not entirely what you meant, but i find it quite interesting nevertheless.  again, thankyou so much for such a detailed and helpful critique! (it's my first )-- =]  Wow, well I am honoured to have give you your first critique, and it was no problem whatsoever, like I said, this was such a good read.
I suppose I mean by symmetry, just that I sometimes imagine poems like shapes, perhaps with equal sides, so they reflect symmetrically? That makes very little sense. What I meant was that the first verse would do well to reflect the others, so it was symmetrical, balanced. I'm sorry for being so confusing, I'm confusing myself with this dreadful explanation! I think perhaps you were right, from the sounds of it, not to include season comparisons; another complex element like that would just confuse what is in many ways a wonderfully (seemingly) simplistic poem. I'm really glad you're okay with the critique, I was a little worried I'd been too harsh about the first stanza, and not got across that I actually do think this is a brilliant piece ha x -- Visit my prose account: ~frankieofthehills This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper |
Site Map
©2009 deviantART. All rights reserved
I love the middle stanza, it seems so simple but is so well crafted; the short, sharp "a" sounds contrasting with the "drawn-out vowels." in meaning and actual sound. It's almost like breaking the poetic fourth wall, acknowledging how you're writing it. I'm usually not a fan of contractions (I'm thinking of, "i can't, i can't stop thinking") but it works well here, again with the sharpness of the stanza, and so do the lack of capital letters throughout. Like I say, I loved this stanza, it really made me smile.
This will sound very harsh and probably utterly cruel but when I read this poem I just want to lop off the first stanza. The final verse is touchingly desperate, I really like the repetition, "it's okay, it's okay", reflecting the previous stanza and giving us a sense of someone trying to reassure themselves as much as the person they're talking to. The final line is right, it gets to the heart of something - this poem has a real sense of trying to prove something despite the odds.
So the first stanza. It doesn't seem to fit with anything else at all; it isn't cleverly thought out or full of emotion and seems almost generic in it's concepts, "between sleeping and waking", "cold and dark and wishing for sunlight.". What I would love to see here instead of this sort of thing is some symmetry, perhaps something to do with the hill and the person you're not thinking of, or the rational thought you're abandoning a couple of lines later. This part of the poem feels so unnecessary to me because it relays such vague concepts...
Gosh, well, congratulations on writing this, I truly enjoyed reading and critiquing it