12-03-2016, 05:10 AM
Hi Sparky - 'turgid' is the word!
Your lines are so crammed with adjective/noun constructions- in fact there's barely a noun standing without an adjective - that reading this is a struggle for me.
You skip tenses, from past in the first stanza, to present from then on, which doesn't really work for me. Maybe set the first stanza in the present as well, as the point of your poem seems to be how the present contains the past anyway.
Lots of passive verbs - was brutal, was thickened, are dribbled, am jostled, are pinched - I'd like to see some of them become active, so something actually happens as I read
Do you know the poem 'Tension' by Billy Collins?
.He uses this epigraph
“Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.”
—Writing Fiction
Your lines are so crammed with adjective/noun constructions- in fact there's barely a noun standing without an adjective - that reading this is a struggle for me.
You skip tenses, from past in the first stanza, to present from then on, which doesn't really work for me. Maybe set the first stanza in the present as well, as the point of your poem seems to be how the present contains the past anyway.
Lots of passive verbs - was brutal, was thickened, are dribbled, am jostled, are pinched - I'd like to see some of them become active, so something actually happens as I read
Do you know the poem 'Tension' by Billy Collins?
.He uses this epigraph
“Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.”
—Writing Fiction