01-11-2014, 05:57 AM
Every Tuesday evening at 9:10,
I try not to dirty my jeans
on the dented car door
streaked by the dust of your job
when you come to drive me home.
Are you trying to develop a style with your lines? You have a consistent way of writing that blends run-on sentences and fragments, understatements and wordiness. Maybe you're trying to break through with this style, and in that case it's a positive and interesting thing and worth struggling with and refining.
I don't think the last two lines of that stanza are very good. It sounds a little better as
streaked with dust from your job
when [as] you come to drive [take] me home.
You could even say bring me home, but that might open up for more than you're trying to say.
Every Tuesday at 9:20,
at the intersection of the tramway
and Boulevard Gandhi,
we see him weave between the cars
waiting for green underneath the bridge.
Shaded leathered skin stretches
over crooked nose, around a jutting jaw,
blackened by life's drop-kicks
and unsuspected parasites.
Wraiths of defeat besiege his frame,
an omnipresent boundary
seen in the shadows of abuse
that circle stoic eyes.
He doesn't stretch out hands
simply lifts a finger pleading
one?
It has good and bad qualities all the way through. The long-winded sentences build before coming to abrupt stops. Your lines jut, throw brief drop kicks, then the poem ends leaving everything tied in a tiny knot.
Sometimes it's like you're speaking a sophisticated, middle-class ebonics that has no problem with using language but with describing things that should be indescribable.
It doesn't seem far from success, but there still seems to be an insecurity in handling it.
I don't know anything. But your poems usually deserve lots of attention, in the negative and the positive sense. I think you have a lot going for you.
I try not to dirty my jeans
on the dented car door
streaked by the dust of your job
when you come to drive me home.
Are you trying to develop a style with your lines? You have a consistent way of writing that blends run-on sentences and fragments, understatements and wordiness. Maybe you're trying to break through with this style, and in that case it's a positive and interesting thing and worth struggling with and refining.
I don't think the last two lines of that stanza are very good. It sounds a little better as
streaked with dust from your job
when [as] you come to drive [take] me home.
You could even say bring me home, but that might open up for more than you're trying to say.
Every Tuesday at 9:20,
at the intersection of the tramway
and Boulevard Gandhi,
we see him weave between the cars
waiting for green underneath the bridge.
Shaded leathered skin stretches
over crooked nose, around a jutting jaw,
blackened by life's drop-kicks
and unsuspected parasites.
Wraiths of defeat besiege his frame,
an omnipresent boundary
seen in the shadows of abuse
that circle stoic eyes.
He doesn't stretch out hands
simply lifts a finger pleading
one?
It has good and bad qualities all the way through. The long-winded sentences build before coming to abrupt stops. Your lines jut, throw brief drop kicks, then the poem ends leaving everything tied in a tiny knot.
Sometimes it's like you're speaking a sophisticated, middle-class ebonics that has no problem with using language but with describing things that should be indescribable.
It doesn't seem far from success, but there still seems to be an insecurity in handling it.
I don't know anything. But your poems usually deserve lots of attention, in the negative and the positive sense. I think you have a lot going for you.