4/3/5

[canofworms]

Hi canofworms. So, it seems like what you have here is, at the core, a pretty timeless theme of the man-eater, the Pandora, the Delilah (and then the explicit reference to the Sirens). I get that the crow is important to the scene, but it's overdone -- you only need one or two references, and repeating it actually weakens its impact. The more you repeat it, the more it feels like you're trying to rip off "The Raven."

It's clear that you have a good handle on the English language, but it's still a sprawling piece. Needs a lot of trimming. Some things don't need to be repeated, like in line 4 you repeat almost verbatim the line about the window and the log that you have in line two. You don't need to hammer points home like that -- trust in your reader a little bit to remember and make connections.

Since this is in basic, I'll only make one more point, and that's that the line about watching a train wreck for the last 400 years...trains haven't existed that long. I understand that you're not being literal, but I keep reading that bit and being bothered by the logical inconsistency.

Hope this helps some.

Lizzie

I hear what you are saying. 

It's hard to mention any black bird making any noise without the reader thinking the Raven. 
The problem is that black birds have always been in the public mind as menacing and as long as man has been around they have been cawing and freaking us out. 

I'll give these suggestions a  a shot. 
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As far as sounding like prose.  
What I'm trying to do is space the sound of the the crow with my frantic prose thoughts. 
and to create a sense of urgency,

But it's hard to tell this tale without sounding like the raven. But Poe's bird (pun intended) called nevermore. not the name of a dead lover.

As far as the sirens... I refer to myself as Ulysses in the beginning and then draw it back to the sirens at the end. 
I resisted the urge to define my defiance of mother nature as "Hubris" Which was Ulysses's main flaw. My hubris is thinking I can fix anything do anything... 
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I'll see if I can do that without seeming so disjoited.