an old man watches a boy

Well, I'm on a roll! I guess I could wait for tomorrow for the ides of March to not spend these points, but eh!

This is an attachment, sorry you "I don't like downloads" types, but my formatting demands it to be so!

Thanks for comments and reviews.

edit: *facepalm* "(are angels" is how that line should be typed. I suck at editing. LOL there are typos, "draft"--> drift. Ugh, sorry folks!
edit2: re-uploaded with revisions noted above.

written 3/13/11
reposted 4/16/11

I'm gonna save a spot here. Keep the attachment up until I get to the review, 'kay? Okay.

Urgh. I can't see the symbols in the poem for some reason. They only show as little boxes. I have no doubt that my experience would have been oh-so-much better if I could actually see them, but for now I'm just going to have to review as is. So. As of late, my reviews have been completely rambling and unintelligible, so this is going to be interesting. Well, for me, at least. I'll probably make no sense to you. But I'll try.

The thing I like about your poems is that they're so organized. You hardly ever stray from your foundations, or inundate us with a string of ideas and expect us to tie it together. Even with your post-modern style, you never fail in this department. This story you tell us, of a boy growing up, is written so clearly and methodically. No detours, no scenic routes. You're to the point. You're focused. That's what I like about you.

But there's definitely things that could use improvement. Such as your voice. This is one place where I think I found the poem a bit confusing. You maintain a respectable voice throughout, but there were some lines/areas of the poem that I found a bit odd-sounding. Such as:

and he thinks he knows ̶ yes, yes he does!
that, boy ̶ born, high noon on the ides of March
(the old man remembers as mother may have said
or is he mixing it up again in his head?)
why does he see this boy? ̶ oh yes, he's forgetting

There were quite a few lines here that I found irritating, ones that seemed to break off from the flow/voice. Actually, with the exception of the second line, all of these sounded off. Perhaps you were under the impression that using a certain number of these awkward phrases ("yes, yes he does" or "mixing it up in his head") would make them sound more natural, but it didn't. I'll admit that I've always been a tad bit biased towards phrases such as these, ones that sound as if they're contradicting a previous statement. Not only are they disorienting definition-wise (the reader must stop and remember what you're talking about), but they're complete flow-killers as well. Always too halted and abrupt. There were a few other places where I thought the wording could be better, but they're not worth mentioning. I'm sure you're capable of sorting those out yourself. Of course, these are minor issues. Which makes my rambling about them even more nonsensical. Time to move on.

I think I was talking about the voice, right? Mmm-kay. This is where I think you were overdoing it. You've got questions, you've got quirky statements, and you've got grim ones, but I could never really feel what kind of character you were trying to develop through all this. Towards the end, I was starting to think you were aiming for something of an old man's voice, but all of that perky phrasing and such pretty much killed that. The two are kind of fighting against each other, and you don't want this. It's disorienting. The reader likes to know from what perspective the story is going to be told. I'm patient (well, not really, but whatever), and, reading this, I had no idea where you were going. Clear that up, and I'll be happy.

Last thing I want to mention. The ending. Where the man dies. It didn't have any emotional effect on me at all, and I have a few theories why. Firstly, it could be due to the lack of voice. But I've said enough about that, and I'm sure you're done listening to me rant. Another possibility is it's suddenness. Only two lines before, you're talking about VCR's, and then, suddenly, he died. You're going to need more backup than this. Prepare me for it. Don't just, "An old man was watching his life go by. And then he died." That doesn't work. Finally - and this is somewhat more of a nitpick - it could be that the wording of the penultimate line is too distracting, and that this fact mitigates the effect the successive line should have had. Those are my three guesses as to why the ending didn't do so well. Or it could be a synthesis of more than one of these. I feel that line has potential, but as it is at the moment, I couldn't sympathize with it.

Anyway. Enough with that. Again, this has a promising infrastructure, and I'd like to see where it goes. Looks like my review was just as bad as I was expecting it to be. Oh, well. Hopefully you got something out of it. Cheers.

-Kafka