funeral of a doubt - (in three acts)

i.

have you ever attended
____a funeral of a doubt?
the dismal gloom arrays itself
in a sullen line of broken minds.
____the procession drum, drum, drums on
____in a quiet whisper, so fragile, it will
shatter.
__the mourning will never break for this doubt.


ii.

do you observe how
minute the coffin is? I tell you,
____it is because the thought was a
____newborn before it could expand.
the infant idea lived mere seconds
before growing into its casket.
_______it suffocated in its own feeble breath.


iii.

____please, be silent.
the darkened sky overcasts the hope of a fresh idea.
__(gloom reeks of immorality)
the casket is lowered,
lower, deeper, and is finally encased in
its own lonely death.
after all, no one ever really remembers
___a doubt.

FIN.

Basic thing -- second act, iss should be is.

I really like the idea behind the poem. It's original to me, having the death of an emotion, and expressing it in a human funeral idea. It's definitely something you should stick with, and revise, until it becomes really good.

Right now, I think it's okay, but could do with a lot of improvements.

I liked the use of "mourning" in the first stanza. That's probably your best line. The rest of the poem is quite bland, although it does flow nicely. I'm not quite sure why you've gone for three acts. I might have missed the meaning behind that. The "I tell you" in the second act is off-putting. Before then, the narrator isn't clarified, and suddenly they exist, and I'm not sure who they are, or why they are telling me. I think you should either have no mention of the narrator, or more of it. Otherwise it's out of place.

Overall, you use a lot of similar words. dismal, gloom, quiet, fragile, feeble, darkened, overcasts, gloom. The language is pretty ordinary and the repetition of gloom should be removed. It doesn't evoke anything in me. "the dismal gloom arrays itself/in a sullen line of broken minds" sounds depressing and funeral-like, but to me, evokes very little meaning to add to the poem's idea. Whose broken minds?

"do you observe how/minute the coffin is?I tell you,/it is because the thought/was a newborn before it could expand." This is the weakest part. You spend four lines telling us how small the casket is, and then the next two lines make a very similar point. I'm not a fan of the second act. It needs to be more active.

Something that makes it sound more dramatic, like "The coffin is minute/the infant suffocated in its own feeble breath."

Why "please be silent"?

The parentheses seem out of place, too.

(Sorry for the cluttered review.)

As an idea, I really enjoyed it. I don't think you executed as well as you could, because a lot of your lines are not full with enough active and evocative language to carry what you want to say. It leaves me empty. Good luck with a revision, though, I really want to see it!

Hello Jare-bear!

It's been a while since I've ripped apart I mean read a poem. So I am glad that I don't have much to nit-pick about because this was good though I'm going to have to agree with Jack.

This is good but this can be great. I love your idea and it seemed like is thought out and constructed perfectly but the execution lacked a gem in this fine poem.

Try experimenting with different words add a line here and there. Explore every aspect of a funeral of doubt. Right now it flows but in a sense that it's on life-support and not using the lungs that you have given it to breathe, understand?

My only suggestion to you is to experiment, my friend, experiment.

All in all, I love this and I smiled when I read it, so gold star for you, bear-bear!

Favorite stanza:

____please, be silent.
the darkened sky overcasts the hope of a fresh idea.
__(gloom reeks of immorality)
the casket is lowered,
lower, deeper, and is finally encased in
its own lonely death.
after all, no one ever really remembers
___a doubt.

This was the most well written stanza to me and it's beautiful!

And before I forget to say this, your formatting is straight up unique.

Keep writing (or else)

~Angel

Hey, Jared! I don't have a whole lot to say, but we'll see how the review turns out, no?

____the procession drum, drum, drums on

I, personally, think this would sound better if it were "drums, drums, drums on". The way you have it now sounds weird when your say it out loud. But I think it's more of a preference thing. Some might disagree with me about this. That's really all I noticed that was worth pointing out.

I agree with Firestarter, this is a good idea, but it just needs a little work. Some parts are worded weird, leaving me a little hazy as to what's going on. But I absolutely love the idea of doubt's death. I love how you personified doubt as a human, giving it a human-like funeral. I think it added a very nice touch to this idea, rather than you going about the poem in a more literal way. Basically, the only thing you need to change is giving us a little bit more of a clearer image. A just a little more description might be nice. But too much will ruin the poem, because I think the size and structure of it is good as is.

I'm sorry I don't have much else to say except for work on the poem a little more. It has a lot of potential, and I think you could definitely achieve that with a little work.

-Holly

Jared --

This is excellent. A vast improvement compared to some of your other poems. You have grasped the intricasies of imagery and ambiguous language. It was really refreshing to see that you definately have it in you to try new things, to experiment, and to master them easily.

Real quick: I'm not quite sure why you chose to structure the poem the way you did; you'll most likely claim poetic liscence. Personally, I would stay with a simple left to right structure. The extra indentation seems like frivolous bells and whistles in a poem that should be centered more on the actual meat and potatoes, the meaning and the language. The structure is distracting, but if you wanted to make the underscores invisible, just color them white so that they blend with the background of the post.

Try this code:

CodeSelect all

[color=white]Insert text here[/color]

Jack is right. The language you use is not only similar, but somewhat bland in places. Gloom should definately go, at least once. Also, words like 'encased' or 'darkened' or 'sullen' -- as Jack said -- do sound as if they belong in a funeral, but your job is not to state things in an obvious manner, rather, to go beyond, and unearth some sort of insight into the description or feelings of a funeral. Think outside the box. Use more robust and oblique language.

I didn't like the fact that you seperated this into "acts". Like the structure, it seemed a little frivolous. It's like, "Oh, if I use roman numerals and french then this will automatically be cool!" Unfortunately, this is not the case. It burdens down the poem, and distracts. I think the biggest thing that you need to work on with this piece is simplicity. The structure and the "acts" are too gimicky. When you want to structure a piece like this into acts, each act should be saying something different, and in a completely different way. To justify labelling each stanza as a different act, each stanza should be able to stand alone as its own poem. And then when you put all the acts together, you should achieve a broader meaning or perspective. Savvy? And putting "FIN" at the end of a poem is like putting "The End" at the end of a story. You did that in second grade. We can see that the poem is finished.

If you take anything away from this critique, make it the omission of the "acts". Go through some of Incan's stuff. He has a few poems rightly seperated into acts or parts. Read those.

Don't like the paratheses in the last stanza. I do that sometimes, and I've been called on it myself. It doesn't work.

____in a quiet whisper, so fragile, it will
shatter.

I don't like the rhythm of this line. I think the commas are throwing me off. Kill the second one, I think, replace it with 'that' , and all will be well.

Anyway, very nice job. I hope this helps.

-Kylan