The Human Invention as seen through the Eyes of F**k

The Human Invention as seen through the Eyes of Fuck

Aged eight-teen, oozing with vocabulary,
yet it remains my most enduring friend.
A dominatrix among the rest, but
that only furthers its purpose--
and my unceasing devotion.

Oh! The booming excitement!
A surge of power festers within,
leaving scars on the minds it
mystifies; my tongue cracks like
thunder.
(the menacing whip and preacher)

Linguistic Robitussin…and
with the same paradox. Many
relish in its healing prospects…
others, still, cannot escape the
“bad taste”

As if bad taste were
not just an addiction,
and addiction nothing
more than the same
unceasing devotion.

You should use age, not aged, eighteen is one word, no hyphen (etc) Big tip: proofread. Especially when you're going to turn something in for a college assignment, proofread. Also, the use of ellipses (.....) is often viewed as indicative of poor writing skills. I wouldn't use ellipses for my first college paper. I recommend a semicolon instead.

I like the Robitussin metaphor; it reflects the relief many find in profanity (a conclusion now supported by scientific evidence, that swearing lessens the nervous system's expression of stress; profanity IS healing.) Some incontinutities, though, with the pronouns; if you're going to use "its" when referencing the healing prospects, I think you should continue with its for that stanza. Also, your lines seem to be a little choppy, ended as they are.

Hm.

First off, I do proofread, and this is the fourth time I have re-written and re-worked this poem; my average count is seven. Aged the way I have used it is actually the correct way; if a professor saw that you wrote age instead, they would advise the word aged in its place. I hyphened eight-teen because this is a poem and I took rhythmic poetic license on that word, it's a technique that's pretty basic in most poetry. On the ellipses: the use of any component of language in the way it is meant to be used is actually indicative of proficiency in writing, which I have, seeing as I've won multiple awards for my writing, especially my poetry (although I may remove the ellipses in the second instance, it doesn't fit as well as it does after Linguistic Robitussin). As far as the incontinuities, the antecedent of the pronoun "its" in that stanza is the word Fuck, not the healing prospects, and I didn't use any other pronouns to describe the word Fuck in the poem, so I'm not really understanding your point there. I agree that the lines seem choppy at the end; they got my desired point across quite accurately but as far as meter and scansion I should try playing around with them a bit.

It isn't that I don't appreciate or take in your criticism, I gave it all thought, but I simply disagree with a lot of what you've said here. I trust my own opinion and knowledge of writing mechanics enough to defend my work's integrity. If other reviewers agree with what you've said, I will give it deeper consideration, but even then...we'll see.

And just for meta-cognitive erudition, realize that scientific evidence is actually nothing more than scientific observations, seeing as any proof they have that their claims are "Law" can only come from the authority of other human beings which is no more certain than the claimee themselves.

For all your insistence upon your proficiency in writing, your punctuation in particular displays a lack of poetic consideration. Grammatical acceptability aside, your punctuation more often than not breaks the flow rather than enhancing it, both in the sense of rhythm and connection between ideas. It is more obtrusive than enhancing, more gimmicky than practical, and veritably screams for attention towards it and its purported cleverness of usage.

It does draw attention, but in a completely negative way, especially if one examines the grammatical soundness of the period placements in particular. While poetry need not adhere to grammatical convention, it is very strange and counter-productive to adhere to such conventions for isolated sections of the poem rather than aiming for a consistency in which grammatical conventions are and are not adhered to.

Returning to rhythm, the unnecessary hyphenation of "eighteen" places undue emphasis on the harshness of the T, which not only feels awkward to say, but chops the one word into two very distinctly separate syllables characterized by a shared harsh-consonant. Rather than flow smoothly, we have a sudden break of flow before any has been established, resulting in awkward choppiness that, while it contrasts with "oozing", does not lead well into the rest of the poem and is rather off-putting because of how simply awkward it is to say and see.

As for your line breaks, they more often than not seem haphazardly placed, with lines broken more for visual aesthetic than auditory, especially in the last stanza. Poetry is the art of the spoken word, and the line breaks, as placed, do not seem to take this into account with how they often place heavy-handed emphasis on particles and conjunctions rather than core concepts of the poem. There is also the matter of how, for no apparent reason, you switched between breaking lines at natural pauses within sentences to breaking them elsewhere.

You have an interesting metaphor here with the Robitussin, however, it is only found in the latter half of this piece and is introduced without any foreshadowing, which seems counter to how much importance the title ascribes to this concept. The first two stanzas contain entirely different images, and it is quite a leap from dominatrix to thunder to preacher to cough medicine. It's doable, and you have the framework for dominatrix through to preacher, but the linkage between that first half of the poem and the second half is nonexistent, and they appear to be different beasts entirely.

This piece has room for expansion, and I would in fact say it requires expansion on the linkage between the preacher and cough medicine. It is not a particularly difficult link to forge, but without it, there is a distinct division between the halves of the poem that prevent it from being a cohesive, singular entity rather than two pieces loosely twined together by the thinnest of thread.