ALChemy
on Gaia and Man by Blue Magpie
25 Feb 2006, 6:42 AM
No matter how beautiful your writing is (and this is some of the best formal verse I've read) if you write something this long you need to change things up a little, break the monotony. I would break up the man's speach into parts and between the parts a stanza of descriptive narrative like he then paused to go take a nap or something. Break it off into lessons(lesson 1, lesson 2 etc.). At least that way if the reader wanted to take a break they could leave when the man goes to take his nap and come back feeling like they don't have to go back over the last couple stanzas to find their place. The same way a story should have different scenes, the same way a good writer might stop part way through a long scene to go to another one and then holding your suspense conclude the former scene, that's how you should hold the reader to your poem. I think it's probably one of the hardest things to do in poetry but I think it'll be easier for someone as talented as you than it would be for most of us.
This was done in only an hour?!! Tremendous.
Whatever your poetic inspiration was, it's never a good idea to write a poem with 7 lines in a row using the same rhyme. You can be as clever as you want, and odds are it's still going to sound bad.
And I agree with ecargo, your points are a little overstated. It's nice that you made many of them part of a dialogue, but, to me, it doesn't work. Some tightening, shortening, and ambiguity seem in order. Also, (a minor thing,) the anthology-style line-numbering bothers me.
Far and away your finest offering for a long while!
I myself pray that I never have to choose between life and prawne. And I pray to Jesu that the same applies to you.
What was his name? You must have loved him very much.
I happen to enjoy this poem as is. Great flowing rhythm, excellent imagery. I do, however, agree with the others who have stated that replacing Lorelei with someone readers can relate to either Mary or the location of the poem. Excellent work though.
Two 'things' in two lines is not beautiful language, ask yourself what meaning the word 'thing' actually adds to the poem.
More of what's already been written, plus my personnal beef against the laziness. If you want an education I would start with punctuation, its very usefuly and makes a reader less likely to feel insulted.
As I have said in reply to other poems, you need to remember that you are not the first, or even the one thousand and first person to write about craving and addiction, so while people easily empathise with what you are saying, the way you say needs to be special, and to be honest this is not very special language, but I have seen worse.
Its so nice to see love transcending the darkness and shining in the wilderness of our lives.
Yes, amusing in its own way. Stanza 4 line 2 doesn't make sense - I think you want to change it to something like 'Do you want folk to think you're a dunce?' There are a couple of other typos in here, but I'd be pretty pedantic to go through listing them.
Enjoyable.
There are many sentences/lines here that could easikly be better
for example why
I feel not bold right now;
and not
I don't feel bold right now;
which is grammatically more correct and flows better.
Still it was not a bad read.
The first stanza made so little sense it put me off reading the rest of the poem, also, why the lack of punctuation, it just seems plain lazy to me.
Not so Nice
Ya know, I ask myself that question every day.
The proper spelling would be "Voraciously"
OK
A good list but you missed a few, like the various "Any Meds You Need" "Get a Credit Card Whatever" "Consolidate Your Debts" "Re cvmthwifdj" and these last might be because my mail account is through my own domain name "Your Account is Suspended For Security Reasons" "Account Near to Being Closed"
Nice