Demoness! ♥ It’s been way too long since I’ve read anything of yours.
I like the feel you’ve set up here—nearly the story of evolution for this girl who is completely Innocent—capitalized for a reason—and the eventual loss of both innocence, but herself as well. To be honest, there are times when I regret that this poem is set to a rhyme scheme and rhythm, but I constantly remind myself that it’s personal preference. In my opinion, I think you could do more if you used the rhyme occasionally, if you used set rhythm occasionally, but relied on the words to speak for themselves. But again, that’s personal preference; this would make a nice experimentation in your own style if you ever felt like it.
In line two, I’m on the fence regarding your use of commas to create pauses so your rhythm will work. On one hand, I love it for the effect, but on the other hand, I think that line breaks and spacing could do the trick more cleanly. There are dozens of tricks you could implement here, but I think you’re using one of the clunkier ones as far as grammar goes.
“But where she is oblivion, so oblivious” threw me for a loop. I’m pretty sure you meant to incorporate “oblivious” twice here, and that’s fine—try to slide a bit more meat into this instead of repeating the word. It didn’t really service your flow to me.
And regarding the last line, it feels almost like the poem wound down too quickly. You had a momentum built up with rhyme and rhythm, and the last line as a standalone breaks it without giving it a bit of diminishing volume, or a cue that it was going to end. But ultimately that’s fine…because you did something I liked.
You created a duality.
By naming the girl Innocence, you fit into the final line that
a. she lost her innocence, and
b. she lost herself.
That’s hauntingly beautiful, whether it was intentional or not.
If you want to discuss this any further, feel free to hit me up with a PM, and we can chat in a pad.
-Lumi
Points: 1626
Reviews: 745
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