Verse 1 poses a good question, the implications of which are much argued on Poemranker. Verse 2 doesn't help much to answer it. Verse 3 is good because it raises the dilemma between prose and meaning, which is most important.

Except for the last three verses, you have written a nice essay with line breaks. You promised, "we’ll have some lyricism soon," and so we do at the end. "So what the hell kind of poem is this anyway?" You said I'd ask and I do. My low vote is because you have posted an essay.

Good. I think it would be stronger if your lose these lines: He disbelieved. Doubted. And I just can't drop it.

so many pronouns! wean them away for a more concise image, and give me a little less narrative and a little more of why you stopped, and, having stopped, chose to then cross that wobbly span clutching that now-impotent pen?

the linebreaks seem to make no sense.

and again I must surrender high marks to you, oh master of the (typed) word.

Shouldn't you be chatting someplace?? ;O) Not bad, this one - not bad at all. Might be a little preposition heavy in S1 (fairly easily fixed - trade away across somehow since it's implied by the bridge). It's got a nice feel to it. ah - I just notice <~> hit on the pronouns. Those little words that offer little value are what will kill you. Over a third of the words are either preps or pronouns.

The first verse seems awkwardly worded, though understandable.

where’s the imagery? The metaphors? There’s no similes, No use of poetic devices, no alliteration. The writer doesn’t even appear depressed or suicidal, So what the hell kind of poem is this anyway?

awww, very sad.

I liked this. But this title is ridiculous. It sounds like the title of a handsome leather-bound poetry.com "anthology". I read I'm supposed to accompany my criticisms by "offering solutions." How about "Seventy-mile-per-hour Diesel-powered Avian Super-rape"? Sorry, that's the best I can think of on short notice, and it's your fucking poem. You fix it. -9-

I find it less readable now. Well, less clear.

It would probably be better if it made a bit of sense, whatever form it's in. If this poem is, as I imagine it is, about how some vaguely-defined (read 'nonexistent') INSTITUTION forces everyone to write in rhyme and prettily-formed phrases exactly like the 'Masters', and how much of a rebel you and a few other daring souls are who take poetry out for wild formless spins at night, then it's utter crap. In school (and I imagine you're thinking largely of some high-school-type setting) you're taught a bunch of stuffy carefully-metered rhyming poems and very few daring non-careful poems because you are being taught much of the best that poetry has done from its beginnings (in English at least), meaning 1200 years of rhyme and meter and pretty much only 150 years of not. And because in the lower-grades teachers are more likely to teach the rhymed and metered ones (like "My lady's eyes are nothing like the sun") because it gives them a whole lot of easy things to talk about which aren't closely related to its content, while such mostly non-rhymed, non-metered later poems as "The Waste Land" don't. If you have a problem with that, talk to your teacher, who, if he/she is anything like most American teachers, is hugely undertrained and liable to stick with what's easy. Or stick your head out a window and see what's going on everywhere else in the world, where non-rhyme non-meter has UTTERLY DOMINATED THINGS so long that many people are bored with it and looking for other things to do, such as write some kind of rhyme/meter again. Thank you.

slug

Sucked me into the story. I wouldn't have questioned the bounce if Richa hadn't said anything, but I think he has a point. Somehow it doesn't make me want to pick at the semantics of it - works for me.

'bloomsday'--that's pretty hot. and you didn't cop out at the end <<appreciation>> although 'they' did.

You may have set a record on number of revisions in one day. This, I think is better, clearer, assuming I remember correctly what it said before. However, I think you've lost some of the mystique the poem originally had.

Not as pleased with this one as some of your others. I do like this though - All that is left to do now is sit, write, and smoke, - because smoking is fun and so is sitting.

It is an essay with line breaks, but you make some good points.

I enjoy the first line especially. The moody internal M's throughout the piece make it feel somewhat surreal.