Dust specks illuminated by
indifferent sunlight.
Shadowed apparitions
surround the cardboard bed
(like they would again to throw
dandelions of lead)
A moment's given
View the scrapbook:
of bouquets gifted,
of hellos unshared,
of laughing children lifted,
of the stormy weathers faired.
Posted Jan 19, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC
Greetings, Dante. I have a few critiques for your poem that i'd like to discuss with you and iron out.
First: In your first 'stanza', you set up the flow of a free-form writing, a type of poem that does not rely on rhyming, but rather abstract message. Only to modify that flow at the end, by only rhyming the third to, and very last, lines in the stanza. This is followed by the second stanza, in which the first two lines once more follow the free-form writing technique, and the other four follow a classical ABAB type. There is nothing wrong with incorporating free-form into your work, but the way you've done it breaks up the poem, and makes it to where there is no consistent string leading from even one line to the next, much less from the beginning to end of the poem.
Second: Your stanza structure itself. I assume, though I may be wrong, that this is your unique art style of mixing free-form and traditional poetry, by separating them through visible text clues, such as shifting the lines that will and won't rhyme to appear different. However, this creates a basic disconnect in your work that makes it difficult to even see each stanza as a whole, much less associate them together. I think that this style has a lot of potential, but it needs work on presentation to not detract from the overall finished piece.
Third: In the free-form portions of your poem, the first stanza seems to have pairs of lines in which a sentence is broken in half, but the second stanza has it's free-form pair not follow this path, which causes a disconnect in understanding of the message. Swapping the established flow of the free-form style mid-way is another major factor that plays in to the issue mentioned in the first critique.
I can think of a bit more, but I will end my critique here, as this is already quite a lot to take in and contemplate for you. Your poem was beautiful, and the message of loss and tragedy was inspirational. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
Hi! I really like this. I think it works together and my only piece of feedback is that maybe establishing some sort of rhyme scheme would be helpful for such a short poem? I see that in stanza 1 the bed and lead rhyme and in stanza 2 that gifted and lifted rhyme. I’m wondering if shifting things so that the stanzas mirrored each other in rhyming would help the flow? If you prefer more free verse, I think the message is still conveyed. Nice work
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