Hey there Ohio Impromptu. I meant to review your piece a long while ago back in September but then it fell to the bottom of my drafts. I'm always excited to see a piece of prose poetry, and also how Nate commented, stream of consciousness. There might come a need to split it apart more and make smaller bits of paragraphs, but I don't think you need any major formatting changes. And it certainly does not need to be moved into a more traditional stanza format because it's prose poetry, it has its own thing going on.
Overall, there comes a few issues with the wording. Maybe it is based on how the thoughts are just coming to the speaker and they're being rather emotional at the time, but it seems to ramble a bit. And then the thought goes over board in other manners, the emotions going up into dramatic wording that doesn't seem to have much of a base within the piece?
It almost sounds like you're trying to think too big, adding in a bunch of words that fit together but wouldn't work if other parts were simplified. I'm not sure how to explain it, so maybe I'll come back to it in a bit.
Here's a specific thing.
In a brief moment of wisdom you said, "Love without lust is the perfection we never had, and imperfection was never so good." The words sounded familiar as they had been said so many times though never put so bluntly. So the bluntness of the words was a welcome change from the ones that could pierce the skin like the result of falling from my 'throne' onto that spike i made a long time ago.
I would change this one portion by splitting it off from the big wall and also moving the dialogue line around just a touch. It would just look something like the formatting below and then I do have some actual commentary for you on the content.
In a brief moment of wisdom you said, "Love without lust is the perfection we never had, and imperfection was never so good."
The words sounded familiar as they had been said so many times though never put so bluntly. So the bluntness of the words was a welcome change from the ones that could pierce the skin like the result of falling from my 'throne' onto that spike i made a long time ago.
I really like the dialogue line here. It sticks out to me for a couple of reasons, mainly that it's not falling in line with the rest of the material you have. This is the first time that the speaker is actually addressing the person in question, the first time they are directly throwing a bone for the audience to chew on. With relating this thing the fallen person had once said to the speaker the audience does start to sympathize with this speaker.
However It does match in pace to the rest of the piece by requiring a couple of read throughs to find any sense but I don't mind that too much. I'd rather have a good poem with a bit of wordiness than anything else.
And then the last portion that bothered me enough to point it out was this line:
How did I ever end up here?
The strength of this line sways for me because it doesn't match much to the big lead up you built. But I can see employing it for that last question as the speaker ends their thought. The one way that I always find to be useful for statements like this one is splitting them off from the rest of the herd. And this might be a place to pose it as an actual question from the speaker, directed at whoever but not specifically said. That's more of a stylistic thing for me but it always seems to work.
I think the main issue with this poem is a lack of editing. Just because it's stream of conscious does not put a ban on being able to edit. Pick your best points, examine your word choice and clean this up for yourself and for the audience.
Good job and good luck.
- Lizz
Points: 650
Reviews: 766
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