The structure of this one is much more appealing to the audience, even with the rough spots it still holds.
I think you're still suffering from what I started to point out in the short story of grouping too many ideas together. I know in poetry it's a very easy thing to do because we want it to be recognized as one cohesive idea. But we're also trying to point out all the little pieces that go into the puzzle.
This one is better than the last poem I reviewed because it goes beyond and has stanzas. I'm still feeling like the ideas presented could deal with more separation, mainly because every line is so heavy with emotion and that dramatic twinge. You're looking for a full effect but each side is canceling the other out.
Let's just take a look at the first stanza for instance.
are they over, these salad days?
I'm a very big fan of splitting up the main lines in formatting issues like this, just so that it will be isolated from the other lines. You want a really spectacular entrance and this sort of shift usually does it.
instead of blues and pinks is it now blacks and greys? because i thought i heard a
scream last night. a blood-curdling scream, sounding like cold-blooded murder
and i threw off the sheets, clambered out of bed and into the hall though
I cut off the stanza at though and decided to recommend moving the "i" down a line to better match. if we stop it at "though", this helps to create a more uniform length and ending, while still slowly cutting the line length down.
i had no candle and the power was out. there were only
fluffy shadows that were so slippery they could slide along the
carpet like the hot sunset
slides across the sky. (and believe me,
i checked under every
cushion, every lampshade
but i could not find a
thing). no clues were
lurking in deep black corners.
I've seen this style used a bit, where the poet forces the reader through despite the punctuation usage. I love to see it pop up whenever it does because yws isn't a fan of anything outside of the standard bit of formatting. Since this is so reliant on the emphasis of each line, in that quote above, I went ahead and broke it up a bit further to be more digestible to the reader. And also while maintaining all of the dramatic details originally intended for it.
These recommendations for line splits just exist to tell you about how it is sometimes better to have the line lengths uniform, to help out with the flow. The way longer lines jutting out from the smaller ones makes it so the reader might get hung up in certain spots, another distraction that is created in the path.
many of my yws reviews are focused on the ease of getting through the piece. so on an overall scale, this one was easier to tackle than the previous works that I reviewed.
Until next time,
-lizz
Points: 650
Reviews: 766
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