Since I finally managed to show up and want to see if I can get myself to a nice, even 400 before RevMo begins. Well that's not going to happen if I stand around yakking all day. Let the reviewing begin.
It's been a long, long time since I read bits of Exodus and even then I've probably forgotten everything that went. How couldn't you really? The style of this comes across to me as very formal, like the poem is puffing up its chest to try and get the readers to notice it more than it already would. The descriptive/narrative nature of it blends in so at times I really admire it and at other points it proved to be tiring to trying to get through the poem. The structure and length is also different from your other poems but then of course you gave the disclosure notice of that when you requested a review. Guess I'll just have to bend things to make them fit.
Opening Lines
Let's just have a look at the entire first stanza for the heck of it and that I don't feel lazy about reviewing for once in along time.
A viper coils before him, his knuckles whiten
as he grips arms of the throne, though he is too foolish
to unfasten the ropes that tether an exodus of wrists.
This set of lines seems to be more about the imagery and first picture in the readers' mind than anything else. I can clearly start to picture the main character of the narrative, even to the point where I can picture the snake just based off of Ark of the Covenant.
Brothers bound by blood, but adversaries by nature.
*coughs*
I believe that this line had a rather noble beginning and that it was meant to be all serious and everything but with my own personal experiences thrown in, I just couldn't see it that way. It screamed cliche to me, like I was sitting in the very back row of a sort of good school play, where only certain parts are terrible. That's really the best way that I can find to describe this poem without being too light or too cruel. It's okay but usually this early on is when I judge if I want to read the rest of the poem. This is resting on the edge right now but I think I'll manage to make it to the next stanza.
Overall
I'm skipping right to the overall opinions because Aley and the others have already picked apart the middle regions of your poem. Just think about this as a first opinion and a last opinion on the matter.
You've got the overall theme of the Pharaoh being "foolish in his ways". Something totally true based on the stories and you do a pretty good job of pushing the poem to this point everytime you got the chance. I liked the persistence of this one main point throughout the entire thing because often I see works that swap out main points, especially as the piece gets longer and they have to work through things.
I was surprised that this didn't get very many likes and/or reviews because most of your poems go over well. It does take a certain taste for someone to like it, with the connection to religion and all going on, where people sort all things containing religion together. I read this in a similar sort of way that I had read the Bible (basically I read it as a really epic adventure novel with all sorts of backstabbing and the like).
So yes now that I've gotten to the end, I still think this is 'okay' but in the star rating system, I moved it up to 4/5.
I'll probably come back at a different point and add on to this review but this is really all that I can think of for now.
~Liz <3
Points: 650
Reviews: 766
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