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Young Writers Society



Drowning

by Caligula's Launderette


Books that are not books
Cling to fake oak
Scotch dribbles down
Into the fountains of youth
The Jazz Singer belts
And Fitzgerald spies through specs
Jotting lines in his palm-handled
Notebook
The melodic suffraging goes on
Noticed
In vacant slits of irony
Daisy flits among the crowd cooing at
The pallbearers; chimeras in their own concoctions
Of Beelzebub and champagne wishes
Milton would be proud that
The hero is at a loss but
Drowning in self sufficiency
Everyone is drowning here
In fountains of youth
And hitandrun acquaintances
Everyone is drowning here
Naive and quarrelsome
With ideas of smokestacks and
Opium dens and war
Seeping out of conversations now filled
To the brim
Spilling over sopping up yesterdays
Bread
No one cares much
For everyone is drowning here.

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766 Reviews

Points: 650
Reviews: 766

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Mon Sep 17, 2018 1:37 pm
Brigadier wrote a review...



Hey again.

So I've gotten to the point in the poetry forum list where a lot of your poems are listed and I just sort of have to review them. I'm still really bothered by your style, as I see the lack of formatting continues along with the dramatic side. There's nothing really wrong with poetry focusing on the drama but I'd rather it not be every laiden word of every single poem of yours. All of the emotion put into the word choice does not transfer to the other side and it just stands there in that awkward way now.

I get that you must be very passionate about the message that comes through this poem, which at the moment just seems like a reflection on the combined commentary on different writers. And then there's of course the necessary mention of the 1920s, which always seems to come up when we're critiquing either the decline of an era or trying to idolize a past age. That part comes off in the way I just described it, half critique and half praise, for something that really can't have either pushed against it.

And I think my confusion also speaks to the confusion of the poem itself, where you just couldn't decide what type of imagery you wanted. The poem is about drowning in some part of culture and if you wanted the readers to drown in the poem, well you certainly got that part of the formula correct. If you wanted to make a big grand statement about society, maybe try and make it more of a statement, and less dramatic wording.

Happy revmo.
- lizz




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78 Reviews

Points: 890
Reviews: 78

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Wed May 04, 2005 3:38 pm
Soyala Amaya wrote a review...



Wow...how long has it been since I've actually critiqued or posted something? Tis strange, I know. But I am back! Rar!

Anyway, I like some of the imagery in this piece, but the flow is a little out of place. Especially towards the end where you suddenly repeat about them drowning four times in the last half of the poem when you didn't repeat anything in the first half. It just doesn't flow right. Especially right here

Drowning in self sufficiency
Everyone is drowning here
You used drowning twice, right after the other, and with nothing to break it up. I saw that several times in this. Places where there needs to be a break or a punctuation mark of some kind because you are heading towards a new idea. Otherwise it just bogs up in the brain and makes the reader have to reead the lines a couple of times to get them straight. Otherwise, decent poem. I don't understand some of the refernces, but that's ok. We haven't read the same kind of literature obviously.





If all pulled in one direction, the world would keel over.
— Yiddish proverb