07-04-2016, 04:55 AM
hello,
i haven't looked at this one till now. the title put me off. seriously people, titles! and 'god'? come on Dale, you can do better than that. i haven't read the other crits, nor your replies to them, so forgive me if i repeat what has been said.
i am not going to give this a line by line, despite it being in serious. it seems you have more than enough responses addressing the finer details to be going on with. so i will offer an impression from only two readings.
well, my first thought is, i have heard this before in every book ever written about intravenous drug addiction. in fact, so much so, that i actually think i could, given a copy, point out chapters from 'trainspotting' and 'junky' that are almost word for word. please don't misread this as an accusation of copying in any way shape or form. it happens. in fact, it is a bit of a compliment. i love those books. however, the descriptive parts were always the most skippable. the syringe in the spoon. the cotton in the spoon. the tourniquet around the arm. . . blah blah blah. and it always sounds so fake, anyway. it's like doing a bank robbery and then writing a poem about the traffic driving to a bank robbery. in fact, after the first two stanzas of your poem, i was certain it was going to be about insulin. like a play on the whole thing. but, by toilet water, i realised you were playing it straight. and i started to get bored of it.
that isn't to say there aren't some really beautiful ideas and images in there. but these are few and far between. personally, if i were to edit it, it would be about 5 or 6 lines long.
and the whole religious angle is awful. awful in concept and execution. it reads like a parody of a jim morrisson poem. and the whole 'god is a drug' thing is not only tired but entirely lazy for its misrepresentation of addiction.
anyway, sorry i couldn't offer more but time is against me at the moment.
i haven't looked at this one till now. the title put me off. seriously people, titles! and 'god'? come on Dale, you can do better than that. i haven't read the other crits, nor your replies to them, so forgive me if i repeat what has been said.
i am not going to give this a line by line, despite it being in serious. it seems you have more than enough responses addressing the finer details to be going on with. so i will offer an impression from only two readings.
well, my first thought is, i have heard this before in every book ever written about intravenous drug addiction. in fact, so much so, that i actually think i could, given a copy, point out chapters from 'trainspotting' and 'junky' that are almost word for word. please don't misread this as an accusation of copying in any way shape or form. it happens. in fact, it is a bit of a compliment. i love those books. however, the descriptive parts were always the most skippable. the syringe in the spoon. the cotton in the spoon. the tourniquet around the arm. . . blah blah blah. and it always sounds so fake, anyway. it's like doing a bank robbery and then writing a poem about the traffic driving to a bank robbery. in fact, after the first two stanzas of your poem, i was certain it was going to be about insulin. like a play on the whole thing. but, by toilet water, i realised you were playing it straight. and i started to get bored of it.
that isn't to say there aren't some really beautiful ideas and images in there. but these are few and far between. personally, if i were to edit it, it would be about 5 or 6 lines long.
and the whole religious angle is awful. awful in concept and execution. it reads like a parody of a jim morrisson poem. and the whole 'god is a drug' thing is not only tired but entirely lazy for its misrepresentation of addiction.
anyway, sorry i couldn't offer more but time is against me at the moment.