richa1 Feb 2004

Poetry being short relative to prose attempts to make every line count. A reader is more interested in a new image than one used before. So for instance 'fall like rain into the earth' could be more startling 'bury like slate in the earth of my abandoned wonderland'

My second point was critics are quite receptive to when a poet uses words to impress rather than illuminate. Your use of 'fluvial' instead of river is perplexing - why start using scientific labels?

Related to my first and second point is the use of poetic words like forlorn - Such words are used so often in poetry they both lose their meaning and appear to be trying to hard to be poetic rather than to illuminate.

A final point is always try to find an image to represent the abstract - To you the 'depth of my shallow mind' may mean one thing but to others it could mean anything. Readers will get restless and lost if a poem is filled with such things.


This poem overall is rather good though, the flow especially and the use of images to anchor the reader.

Shuushin is a fine critic and he gave you 9.