Trust your instincts. You’re so clearly at the top end of users who submit here as far as talent and technical knowledge/ability. Criticism is great but confidence will get you further. I looked at some of your other work,  and you've earned the confidence to be critical of criticism Imho.

Thank *you* for responding. I will probably cut one or more stanzas between 3-5. I'm sort of trying them all out here, seeing what people say to help me decide. I'll have another go at the ending as well.

Wow. There are so many delicious moments in this piece. 

> nothing original comes from her,
a fault we share, she with more honesty.

Oof.

> hopscotch over trodden ground
>where the horses have all been
>brained and buried in heaps.

Beautiful allusion to cliche. All there is to write in the world has been trampled on already but I’m glad you still tread those paths regardless. You have a beautiful voice. 

> Indulge your idioms, you door—
>you're no window. A pool of black
>obsidian, no glittering fountain
>of chipped glass; be a good consumer
>and eat, eat, swallow, never spit,

My god. It’s like a slap in the face from my mother. 

If you’re a door, then you see the whole world through your spy-hole, wider through that fish eye lense than most who stand in an entire house of glass. 

I am so impressed with this piece and see even more potential in it. You say you haven’t bled enough, but your prose drips in your blood and guts.  

Give it another pass, maybe you can trim something

Personally I felt the pool of black obsidian line strengthened the door metaphor. I see your intention more clearly after your explanation but what I took from it was you expanding on the metaphor with the imagary of a stark, flat, stone-solid pool. Reflective, but no depth to it. Impossible to penetrate and offering none of the leisure or vitality of water.  It’s when I picture the *glittering fountain of chipped glass*, flowing chunks of obsidian pouring down, crashing over the impenetrable pool, thats when I start to lose the connection.

Never heard of that idiom before, but it’s a fascinating one. Here I almost thought the voice could be original.

✋ been writing since I was three, started revising at seventeen. Twenty-three now. 

Keep it up! Don’t let that voice pour poison in your ear. We have a long road ahead of us. Yeats wrote his best poems in his old age. (Though I keep thinking about how Eliot published prufrock at 26…three years left, haha.) Old age hones some poets, ruins others. (Eliot decayed into further impersonality.) Let’s be the kind it saves.

Hi cela_, thanks for dropping by.  

>If I wanted to be really anal about it, doll isn't technically a diminutive, I don't think  

It's not, but I stuck my fingers in my ear and went with it anyway.  

Re: door/window, I wanted to play with the saying "you make a better door than a window," which may be a Southern idiom, idk, but basically just means 'get the hell out of the way,' but here also meaning 'you lack the capacity to be able to help people see things, and would be better off not trying.' With the obsidian I was trying to play with that idea of not letting things through—I was thinking specifically of those ultra black materials that are made in labs that capture so much light, sort of this metaphor for shutting up and having nothing valuable to contribute (this is where the consumer bit is coming in also—you can take things in, but don't you dare try to speak; you cannot reflect things through you in an interesting or pleasing way). It's flimsy, though, you're right. This i

Hey red, haven’t talked to you in a while. Honestly, I was waiting for something good to come by, and this is delicious. I was a bit upset because my dad came by at eight in the morning and hauled me off on this hiking trip, and I didn’t bring my computer, so there goes that long comment I was working on—but it all works out, I get to read this poem.

I’ll admit, I kind of focused on decorum and skipped over voice in head the first go-round; thus, I thought this was the speaker’s lover speaking. By the end I thought it might be the speaker. 

(By the way, what do you think of this whole idea of the speaker? Sometimes I think it’s a paltry fiction. The same voice through different mouths…he do the police in different voices…)

I know I’ve criticized this two-title hybrid thing you’ve done before (make up your mind!) but here the voice in head is essential, it’s the context I’ve often told others to give. As for decorum, I like the sound, it seems appropriate…but it’s the lace in compari

Thank you for such actionable critique—cutting 'allusive' will markedly improve that passage, you're absolutely right, and I will revisit the brained horses as well. I also appreciate and will likely attend to your suggestion to limit S4 to a singular conceit (if I even keep it).

Hi, beautiful poem. I like the idea of turning a reflective eye on the inner-critic, and I also like how, by the end, though you've realized that this inner-critic is only a facet of your consciousness, it remains irreconcilable. You can make it say *I love you* but you can't make it mean it. You can choose to take over when it's berating you too harshly, but it always sneaks up on you again to remind you of some inadequacy, somewhere you fall short.  Reads like a 21st century Lily Briscoe :)

>O sweet child / you'll never bleed enough / to be a real woman

I love this line. It's ambiguous enough that I think you could be talking about not playing your role well enough as a woman, not showing enough sympathy, not giving enough attention to desperate men OR it could be taken more literally and refer to menstruation and the link that has to femininity. Either way, it works.

I think you could cut "allusive" later on in the stanza. By conjuring up Eliot in the previous line, the well-read

That makes a lot more sense than I thought it would -- I think my hang-up was mainly a matter of definitions. In particular I experience much the same "problem" with coming to dislike my old poems after a few weeks, though in my case it's more of an "I could do so much better now" than a disillusionment plain and simple (and in the few cases when I don't think I could do any better it doesn't happen). I apologize for coming off like an alien in my previous comment; my own "inner critic" often works backwards and unfairly berates others while pardoning myself, and often I fail to keep myself in line.

Something about this poem, through no fault of its own, still feels disconnected from me; it's clearly well-written, and if I really wanted to I could pick out individual aspects of it to praise or occasionally censure, but on the whole it doesn't "do much for me," and so the spontaneous upwelling of energy that would normally lead to a full critique is unfortunately lacking. I will say, h

Well, I can't speak to typicality—I can only speak of my own experiences, and dimly at that. What I can say is that I do experience unwanted self-critical thoughts, though I wouldn't, in attempting to provide an accurate record of my sensations, characterize them as constituting a 'voice'—that's more of a conceit to make that negativity visible and engage with it in an artistic space. Neither does it manifest as part of an inner monologue, although it's expressed as such in this piece. Again, this rhetorical maneuver of characterizing inner conflict as a dialogue is something of a facade, an attempt to pin down something much more slippery. To a certain degree I would say that it *is* a metaphor for my "demons," although I would say "anxieties," "doubts," or "insecurities"; but it is true also that it is "irresistibly received by the mind's ear" as you put it, in the sense that it cannot be shut off or overridden, only subdued, fed, distracted. In certain moods, one can say to me "What

(The above is from the Apology of Socrates, 31D.)

I don't know how well this will go over here, but I don't think the "voice" Socrates heard was typical either, or wholly internal for that matter; but thanks for the quote.

Google translate: A demon becomes a voice, which is also written in the epistle of Melitus.  I've tried to do political things before, even if it doesn't work or benefit you

Definitely outrun that demon, red 😊

δαιμόνιον γίγνεται φωνή, ὃ δὴ καὶ ἐν τῇ γραφῇ ἐπικωμῳδῶν Μέλητος ἐγράψατο. ἐμοὶ δὲ τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐκ παιδὸς ἀρξάμενον, φωνή τις γιγνομένη, ἣ ὅταν γένηται, ἀεὶ ἀποτρέπει με τοῦτο ὃ ἂν μέλλω πράττειν, προτρέπει δὲ οὔποτε. τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ὅ μοι ἐναντιοῦται τὰ πολιτικὰ πράττειν, καὶ παγκάλως γέ μοι δοκεῖ ἐναντιοῦσθαι: εὖ γὰρ ἴστε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, εἰ ἐγὼ πάλαι ἐπεχείρησα πράττειν τὰ πολιτικὰ πράγματα, πάλαι ἂν ἀπολώλη καὶ οὔτ᾽ ἂν ὑμᾶς ὠφελήκη

I'm sorry to use your poem as a jumping-off place for scientific enquiry rather than engaging with it as art, but I can't help my curiosity, and won't be much of a good evaluator anyway without it being resolved: What is an "inner critic," exactly? I've been hearing about this phenomenon for years, and definitely understand that it consists in some aspect of the mind that criticizes one's own actions and beliefs, but its precise nature beyond that remains a mystery to me; or rather, I should say that I suspect my own subjective experience is in this respect atypical, since most mental criticism of myself (and there is a great deal of it) is carried out consciously and willingly by myself. Until recently I thought all this talk about a "voice in your head" saying negative things about you was just a metaphor on the same order as one's "walls" or "demons," but through the preponderance of evidence I've come to realize that, on a similar principle to the limited occurrence of aphantasia, 

The ending thuds a bit for me, the sounds become a little too rote and the poem stutters over itself (which ofc matches content but still isn’t great to read.) Try ending it with the killer line “let me feed you my failures of language.” That says it all, really. All the stuff beyond that is extraneous—we get the love from “feed,” I think.

Thank you, Laurelles. I appreciate you taking the time.

Well, I try to avoid just lavishing praise on a poem, especially when it's in the workshop phase, but this is pretty astonishing. Wonderful imagery, poignant themes and masterful control of language. As someone who is still learning the ropes in terms of how to craft a poem, this is something I feel like I will go back to fairly often.

I will admit that I was fairly sceptical when I read the (Voice in Head) in the title, but my expectations were completely subverted. It's a wonderful exploration of (presumably) body dysmorphia and sexual politics (I could be completely wrong about this, it's not something I'm really too educated about) and, whilst I've tried to avoid cliches here, I have to say it does hit really hard.

I'm sorry that this isn't really feedback and I can't imagine you'll gain a lot from reading this. I'll leave that to the more experienced poets around here. However, I couldn't NOT leave a comment about this piece. Thank you for posting!

Beautiful writing. Came to say “Wow.”

I hope your life today is beautiful. We all have struggles like this. You aren’t alone. And you are obviously very talented.

**hug** from an empathic stranger.

Keep building your voice. You have power and insight.

Beautiful work here.


Hello readers, welcome to OCpoetry. This subreddit is a writing workshop community -- a place where poets of all skill levels can share, enjoy, and talk about each other's poetry. Every person who's shared, including the OP above, has given some feedback (those are the links in the post) and hopes to receive some in return (from you, the readers).

If you really enjoyed this poem and just want to drop a quick comment, to show some appreciation or give kudos, things like "great job!" or "made me cry", or "loved it" or "so relateable", please do. Everyone loves a compliment. Thanks for taking the time to read and enjoy.

If you want to share your own poem, you'll need to give this writer some detailed feedback. Good feedback explains from your point of view what it was like to read the poem, and then tries to explain how the poem made you feel like that. If you're not sure what that means, check out our [feedback guide](https://new.reddit.com/r/ocpoetry/wiki/feedbackcritiques), or look 

 The alliteration and the imagery hits hard. “I’ll spare the flesh we share” is a superb line.

There's a lot I like about this poem and it also gave me mild anxiety. I was upset with your "her" character and pulling for the speaker. I was happy when the speaker realized the control they have in the dynamic but, disappointed at the finality of the last few lines. It seems the speaker has fallen back into trying to control things they can't. To me this means they know they have control but, they don't know over what.

My connection with this level of humility, which my wife shines her insights (when I am able to listen), brings me sorrow at the plight of restrictions thrust upon the global social strata of female/feminine. You did well. The rest can be unsaid.

*One needn't always speak, doll—*  
She's fond of these diminutives,  
and of diminuendo, too; she loves  
when I trail off in conversation  
after I realize nobody's listening,  
nobody cares; better, when someone  
realer talks, she loves to say *quiet  
darling, the adults are talking*.  
&amp;nbsp;  
Loves to say *don't be such a navel-gazer,  
don't be such a chicken-counter*;  
nothing original comes from her,  
a fault we share, she with more honesty.  
&amp;nbsp;  
She says *you haven't bled enough  
to be a real poet, and O sweet child  
you'll never bleed enough  
to be a real woman.* She says  
*No one cares for your measured  
coffee spoons, your clever allusive  
crosshatch, your patchwork tapestry,  
your hopscotch over trodden ground  
where the horses have all been  
brained and buried in heaps.*   
&amp;nbsp;  
*Indulge your idioms, you door—  
you're no window. A pool of black  
obsidian, no glittering fountain  
of chipped glass; be a good consumer  
and eat, eat, swallow, never spit,  
and keep your innuendo to yourself.*  
&amp;nbsp;  
*You're not the man, the woman,  
or even the snake—just a fruit  
fallen by the tree uneaten, adrift  
on the shores of Eden, watching  
all the pretty couples suffer together.*  
&amp;nbsp;  
Oh, she'll praise me, too, never you mind,  
for all the things she thinks bear praising;  
she loves me on my knees, sucking someone's  
fingertips, says *cover those knobby knees with red.*  
*Bite the pillowcase*, she says, *this isn't about you*;  
*Bite your knuckles when you set your bones*.   
*Don't ask for novocaine or nepenthe,  
they're for paying customers only. Be happy  
for the few fingers of whiskey someone's sick enough  
to slip down your throat before they fuck you.*  
&amp;nbsp;  
But what she won't admit is that she controls me  
only inasmuch as I control her, and what a torment,  
what a turn; here, I get to hold the whip.  
I'll spare the flesh we share, if you'll come  
with me, let me feed you my failures of language—  
be good and help me dismantle these shrines,  
dispel these charms, dispense with our pretenses.  
Don't look away—yes, we're ending this way—  
because I can make you say as much as you  
can make me say, and all I have to say,  
all I've ever tried to say—say it with me now—  
is I love you I love you *I love you I love you*  
&amp;nbsp;  
***  
&amp;nbsp;  
[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/vx359r/comment/ifvcqm8/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web2x&amp;context=3) | [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/w08hml/comment/igejh2w/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web2x&amp;context=3)

Decorum (Voice in Head)