Elevator Heaven 1

Well, I'm going to disagree here. Sure, poems need a healthy balance between literality and abstraction, reality and imagination, but sometimes a literal diction does indeed work best! After all, you are telling a story, and for narrative poetry, sometimes its easier to not have too many images clogging up the lines to give us room to think, breathe and get carried along the poem. In that regard, the beautiful directness of the lines acts as a rather unique device - instead of stuffing the poem like a Christmas turkey with colour and image upon image, more 'literal' poems show the writer's control to pare it back. Instead of looking naked, the poem comes across as decidedly subtle. In fact, I'm quite a fan of underwritten poems - they show a greater appreciation of language - sometimes - than do the ridiculously overwritten ones.

The first line is great - 'I once watched a man who saw god.' It's arresting, without being too bouncy. Perhaps its that indirectness here that detracts from it becoming too literal - it's sort of like saying you saw god indirectly, if you get what I mean. But you veer away from that very quickly and totally strip it down to the core - 'His eyes were full of hope and determination. He would never stop, and he would never falter.' This is not subtle enough. You do not need imagery to cover it up and make it more abstract - what I think you need is a bank of interesting verbs. Descriptions do not work here; they come across as if they're trying to shove the image of determination down the readers' throats too far, too fast. From here on, the poem reads like a list upon list of what the man is like - look at the lines, and you'll see that the each start with 'He.' Repetition, much? This is description again - and I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's telling too much without showing enough. Showing means letting us see events unfold and letting the intelligent reader infer the meaning you're getting at from the lines. Telling means saying it out loud, as it is. The latter does not allow for even the barest hint of mystery or emotion; the former adds to both our intellectual curiosity and our sentimental appreciation. Think about underplaying the qualities of this man and just talking about what he did. Let us derive what we will from that. No need to throw it at us.

For example, another great set of lines:

'As the elevator music played on
and the door opened, and he held out his
finger. So came out another finger, just bone, and
touched against the man's finger, and he was no more.

He had met god. But not with his body, but his soul.

Thank you all three of you for the amazing reviews. I've taken in all the advice and have considered this story strongly to become a short story or novel. Congrats to ziggiefred for being the first one to jump on it.

To ziggiefred: Thanks, I sure will keep on writing!

To Kyllorac: Yeah. I never thought that I was that poetic, but sometimes I do get a little poetic. I am too literal most of the time when writing. Oh, and thanks for noticing the typo. I geuss I just never noticed it.

To bigwordsarecool (last but not least): Awesome user name!

I must agree with the other two people who reviewed this in saying that this seems less like a poem that it does a storyline. Or maybe not really a story, but some sort of prose as it doesn't have any figurative language, really, or imagery or anything along those lines.

I loved the first line, though, just because the starkness of it made me want to figure out what you were going to say next.

The end seemed kind of cheesy, and I'm not sure how I feel about the elevator image as a climax. It's an interesting concept, no doubt, but it just seemed a bit, I don't know, maybe plain(?) compared to the rest of the poem. AS if it wasn't on the same level as the rest of it.

Hi there. The first thing I noticed was the typo in your title; it should be "heaven". I'm also a bit curious what the 1 represents, but that's a good thing since it piqued my interest.

To be honest, this really didn't strike me as poetic. It was far too literal, and there wasn't much by the way of imagery or layers of meaning (which I personally adore and look for in poetry). I agree with ziggiefred that this would make a great short story, though I also think that if you got a bit more creative with your descriptions, this could become quite the poem.

In any case, if you do rework this into a short story, I would love to read it; ditto if you make it more poetic. It really is an interesting idea you have here.

Hello there I thought I would do the honors.
Well, as I was reading this it did not strike me as a poem as such but a story line instead. You can write; the first stanza was really good, the whole interpretation of it, great imagery. But if I can make a suggestion; why don't you take this whole idea and transform it into a novel or short story. I really think it would make an enjoyable story, you have great ideas in this as a whole. So, what do you think?

Keep writing.