Published July 13, 2009
This poem has been taken down as a new version now appears in yours truly's anthology, "Public Spaces, Private Reflections." If you would like a copy, please contact me!
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Hey, Gahks. :] Sorry that it's taken me a little while to get to this, but I'm here now and hopefully I can offer some good feedback.
I don't really like this poem all that much, because there's so much potential to the subject that you failed to capture. The description that you have is pretty solid, but you skipped over all emotion, but for the single word 'agony', which I think can definitely be illustrated through imagery, similes, etc.
What poetry I've read from you before always had emotion and personal-ness about it, but this one seems completely empty to me. When you're speaking about something that is obviously so life changing, how can you leave it so flat?
Anyways, barring a full re-write of the poem {though I think you can keep some of these descriptions}, there are still a few little problems with what you do have.
I don't like the repetition of 'tears', even with different pronunciations. I know it's there for effect, but if you try to keep with the tone of the beginning, which is like headlines {which I thought was a nice effect, Gahks, so if you do rewrite, try to keep some of that in there}, this seems too poetic. oO; I guess that reflects the problem of the poem, too, though -- poetic language seems out of place. If that's what you were going for, though, follow it through.
The tone also breaks down here. I'd think newspaper articles would have more in the headlines of 'too many dead', and 'a vacuum of uproar', and that the last one is too poetic.
Consider what you're trying to do with this poem and fix to accordingly. I'd suggest adding the emotion in -- there is so much fire behind this topic that you've kept locked away, and I think you should try to do it justice.
PM me if you have any questions!
-Hannah-
Hi Gahks,
Yeah yeah, Tiananmen Square. There's nothing here to liven up the image in the reader's mind. You might as well be writing a history book divided into poetic-like lines. "Holds up a line of tanks". What's so important about that? Don't tell the reader, but let him divulge the meaning and conception of a lone man standing in front of a tank by describing what's significant in that scene. Just throwing out the scene itself won't do anything for the reader.
Again, you're giving us umbrellas and not pinpoints. For example, I couldn't care less about the world being helpless and cowering unless you give me a reason to care, and in poetry, that reason has to come through flow and image. There's nothinga special about a "world". There is something special about what makes up the world, what doesn't, what should. Include that. You don't need to go on for lines and lines for each image, but those descriptions and more importantly, meanings, have to be there for the reader to hold on to.
Also, did the Chinese government even allow effigies of Mao to burn like that after the protests? I thought that Mao was still a revered figure in China and it was the Gang of Four who were accused of all of China's communist problems, but I could be wrong. Or...are you predicting a future revolution? In any case, make it clearer.
Hope that helped,
Galerius