Last walk (3rd Draft)

Hiya Traves!

First, some overall impressions: I can see you're working within a really tight structure, with specified rhyme, meter, and even repeated lines. A lot of times, the things I struggle with in super structured poems is getting my point across, or even having a point. Sometimes focusing on a consistent formula can take away from what you're actually saying. I think this poem evokes a sense of nostalgia, traveling and never coming to rest, and a lack of fitting in, but I'm not sure if there's a clear story or transformation that occurs, other than perhaps the narrator leaving.

Alright, and now for some stanza by stanza thoughts!

broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit.
hurrying past the ghosts of known faces
dragging out the end that my time here knit.

One interesting thing to this stanza is that it seems as if the broken-in shoes are doing both the hurrying and the dragging, despite the period at the end of the first line. I'm not sure if you want to introduce a narration, like, "I hurry past the ghosts of known faces" (which is still the same number of syllables!), but it could make more sense in terms of story. Additionally, I'm not sure how to feel about your use of the word "knit"--to me, it gives more of a sense of things done, events coming together, and what someone has created or tied together. To think that it's the end that's knit instead seems a little odd, and I'm not sure where the "dragging out" comes in; is the narrator prolonging the end which has to happen?

I leave un-whole from this town, I’ll admit.
walking down the streets of childhood’s chases,
broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit.

This stanza is pretty good in terms of both story and flow! One thing that stands out is "un-whole," just because I'm not sure it's the best word? Depending on whether you mean this more in terms of "broken" or "changed," there can be a lot of other words to use instead, so you might consider fiddling around with this line.

an intense urge to mend a needless rift
torn years ago ends in imagined embraces,
dragging out the end that my time here knit.

I really like the line here about the "needless rift"! Although your story line seems a little conflicting--the narrator wants to leave, but also wants to fix things? It's very interesting and complex. I'm not sure about the "ends" in the second line; I really, really enjoy the phrase "imagined embraces," but I'm not so sure how the rift ends in imagined embraces, unless it's just the imaginary end.

wandering through jagged parts of me unlit,
togethered at night by the same moon laces;
broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit.

I don't know if "togethered" is a real word, and it's hard to tell what you mean by it. Are the jagged parts united by the moon laces, perhaps? (also, what are moon laces?? why are they the same?) I really like the first line, but it's a little hard to see the stanza as a whole. It would be great if you had more lines to work with as an explanation, but I think that you could work within these lines to get more of a solid picture out of the first two. I like the semicolon at the end of the second line, because it changes the meaning of the third line just a tiny bit, which is good because you're repeating it!

Also, I wonder about your repeated lines--I think that you use them well, and it creates a unity throughout the poem. I don't know if you're following a specific poetry form that would force you to use the exact same line when repeated? But I think it would be super interesting if you could just tweak the line a bit each time you repeat it. For example:
"Broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit"
"Broken-down shoes resist the urge to sit"
"Broken-up shoes resist the urge to sit"
If I could find a good rhyme for broken, I might replace that too. But anyway, this just changes the meaning of the line a little bit, and it might be worth looking into to spice the poem up a little and add some intrigue! You definitely don't have to, I just thought it might be worth considering.

the old dog’s tail throws a morose last fit—
with each pat, our fellowship’s last traces
dragging out the end that my time here knit.

I enjoy the combination of these first two lines; again a theme of ending, and breaking up. However, I think you could find a better word for "fit" here because it seems a little awkward. Maybe there's another way you can convey the same sentiment? Also, the transition from the second to third line is a little odd, mostly because the fellowship's last traces seems to be dragging out the end--but the setup you start with the first line, it seems like you want to say something like, "our fellowship's last traces / disappear." So maybe it's a tense problem, that "dragging" doesn't quite line up with your sentence structure. I know you have to repeat the line, but maybe there is a way to make it "must drag" or something else in the right tense.

pulled away, apart on a train I quit
but hold on to memory-suitcases.
broken-in shoes resist the urge to sit,
dragging out the end that my time here knit.

In the first line, do you mean "pulled away and pulled apart," dropping the second pulled, or is there another meaning of "apart"? It seems a little oddly placed. I love the phrase, "memory-suitcases," though!! The ending seems to be the narrator leaving, which gives everything else a mysterious vibe, since we never found out what things were really left behind. I do like the clearness of leaving things behind, though, and no promise of a necessarily brighter path ahead.

You might notice I'm mostly pointing things out and asking questions! I don't really have a lot of solid suggestions, and I don't know what point you want to make most with this poem, so I'm leaving it up to you to tinker with word choice. If you want any help brainstorming ways to change anything I pointed out, though, I would be happy to try to help with that too!

Overall, I think you have done a really nice job of making a deep poem that still manages to be elusive. There seem to be many different layers of meaning, but in the end there's still mystery. I think you could give it a clearer point, but you use a lot of good imagery that helps to set a good atmosphere and mood. Nice job!! I hope I was able to help a bit, but do let me know if you want/need any more comments or another read-through.

Best of luck on further revisions, you're doing great!

-Q

Hi again Traves! I was considering leaving just a small comment, but decided instead to do a quick review.
First off, let me say again that I love the idea of this villanelle, and I think the circular nature of the poem really lends itself well to this format. The idea of revisiting places and people for the last time gives the poem solid direction, and you did really well keeping the poem's format and giving it a solid ending.
Here’s my criticism:
Looking back through your previous drafts, I can see that you cut down a lot to get here. Even though your previous drafts weren’t perfect, they had a certain spice or flavor to them that I really enjoyed. I think it was a focus on self-reflection, and the use of “I”, as well as references to the future like below:

It blows in jagged parts of me that don’t quite fit
so I’ll look for sandpaper in the next town’s graces—
broken-in shoes must resist the urge to sit.

Taken out of context, this might sound like prose, but the picture you paint is full of dusty colors and really fits well with the rest of the poem. What I am missing from your third draft is that picture: your stanzas don’t meld together to form a greater poem and message, instead, they are simply separate experiences; they could go in any order, and that gives them less impact and meaning. (Disclaimer: I am exaggerating, so take this all with a grain of salt.)
Here are my nit-picks:
1. Your third stanza doesn’t have a pronoun and it therefore objectifies instead of humanizes the “urge to mend a needless rift”. I will say that leaving a character nameless can allow a reader to more fully relate to them, but leaving out a pronoun(by which I mean: I, you, he, she, they) dehumanizes the subject.
2. Your fourth stanza is a really cool play with words, but because it takes a lot of time to figure out what the order of the sentence is, the reader loses the main idea of the stanza. It’s fun to pick apart metaphors and I think making your reader take another look at a certain phrase by hiding the meaning is a good idea, but when your reader has to translate the sentence AND look for meaning, they get tired/bored and can’t appreciate it fully.
3. I would suggest a quick punctuation change in your fifth stanza: get rid of the em-dash after "fit" and put it in place of the comma. I don't think "dragging" is grammatically correct otherwise.
4. I couldn’t figure out what you were quitting here:

pulled away, apart on a train I quit

You adhered pretty strongly to what I said last time about a syllable count, but I would suggest adding another syllable or two to clear it up.
Okay, so I think I was being a little harsh in this review, especially since you’ve worked so hard on this piece. I really admire what you’ve done here, so take what you think is helpful from this review and leave the rest. This is a brilliant piece--don’t feel like you need to chop away at it to make it better. Happy Writing!