06-27-2013, 10:36 PM
Hi - this is, as tanglefoot says, a great topic. There is much that is good in the poem. However, I'm afraid the fact that it is meant to represent seven stages of Alzheimer's doesn't mitigate the fact that the poem is too long and diffuse. It is technically very difficult to write a poem that runs to a strict formula. The nature of the beast suggests each stanza must be the same in some way but slightly different. All your stanzas are very different - different speech acts, subjects.
Remember this is a poem and poems work best with a concentration - of ideas, of characters, of time and place - so at your stage of development, I would look at a character study or a monologue. The strongest would be inside the man's head - or there is also the interaction between child and parent.
Additionally, poems should be unique (art has to have a reason to be created), so this is in some ways a rather too straightforward description of an illness that is recognisable. A list of symptoms isn't a poem. It doesn't really bring much that is new. Often the poem comes when we connect one idea to another.
What I do, is I have a bunch of ideas in my head that could be part of a poem and then I live my life and wait for another one that might have something to do with the first - help explain the first. Like for example, I am working on a poem that considers alcoholism to be somewhat like a tsunami because of the ways it casually wipes out the things that one has come to recognise and rely on in one's life.
Hope this helps, doesn't hinder.
Keep writing
Takooba (Michael)
Remember this is a poem and poems work best with a concentration - of ideas, of characters, of time and place - so at your stage of development, I would look at a character study or a monologue. The strongest would be inside the man's head - or there is also the interaction between child and parent.
Additionally, poems should be unique (art has to have a reason to be created), so this is in some ways a rather too straightforward description of an illness that is recognisable. A list of symptoms isn't a poem. It doesn't really bring much that is new. Often the poem comes when we connect one idea to another.
What I do, is I have a bunch of ideas in my head that could be part of a poem and then I live my life and wait for another one that might have something to do with the first - help explain the first. Like for example, I am working on a poem that considers alcoholism to be somewhat like a tsunami because of the ways it casually wipes out the things that one has come to recognise and rely on in one's life.
Hope this helps, doesn't hinder.
Keep writing
Takooba (Michael)